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HANDBOUND 
AT  THE 


UNIVERSITY  OF 


HISTORY  OF 
MODERN  COLLOQUIAL  ENGLISH 


SHAKESPEARE'S 
WORKMANSHIP. 

By  SIR  ARTHUR  QUILLER- 
COUCH,  M.A.,  Litt.D.,  King 
Edward  VII  Professor  of 
English  Literature  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge. 
Demy  8vo,  cloth.  153.  net. 
(Third  Impression.) 

4  Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Couch's  analy- 
sis of  Shakespeare's  craftsmanship 
goes  direct  to  the  principles  of  drama- 
tic construction ;  and  if  ever  the  poetic 
drama  seriously  revives  in  England  it 
is  more  than  likely  that  this  book  will 
be  found  to  have  had  a  hand  in  the 
revival.' — Westminster  Gazette. 

T.  FISHER  UNWIN,  LTD. 
LONDON. 


A  HISTORY  OF  MODERN 
COLLOQUIAL  ENGLISH 

BY  HENRY  CECIL  WYLD 

AUTHOR  OF  *;THE  HISTORICAL  STUDY  OF  THE   MOTHER  TONGUE* 
'A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH,'  ETC.  ETC.  ETC. 


LONDON 

T.   FISHER   UNWIN,  LTD. 
ADELPHI   TERRACE 


First  published  in  1920 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 
PRINTED  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 


PREFACE 

THE  collection  of  the  material  upon  which  this  book  is  based,  the 
arrangement  of  this,  and  the  writing  of  the  book  itself  have  occupied 
about  five  years,  during  which  I  have  also  had  many  other  distractions 
and  occupations.  Whatever  may  be  the  shortcomings  and  defects  of 
the  present  treatment,  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to  extenuate  or  excuse  them 
in  a  short  preface.  On  the  other  hand,  such  merits  and  new  informa- 
tion as  the  book  may  possess  may  be  left  for  the  discriminating  reader 
to  discover  for  himself. 

I  offer  no  apology  for  having  omitted  any  specific  treatment  of  the 
history  of  the  English  Vocabulary,  and  of  English  Syntax,  during  the 
centuries  between  Chaucer's  day  and  our  own.  Nor  do  I  conceive  that 
those  who  have  a  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  subject  will  make  it 
a  ground  of  reproach  to  the  author,  that  having,  after  all,  done  some- 
thing, he  has  not  attempted  to  do  everything.  It  seems  reasonable  that 
a  writer  should  select  for  himself  the  aspects  of  a  subject  with  which  he 
will  deal.  As  I  have  myself  not  been  altogether  idle,  during  the  last 
twenty  years  or  so,  in  attempting  to  add  to  knowledge  in  various 
domains  of  the  history  of  our  language,  I  think  I  am  entitled  to  invite 
others  to  give  the  world  systematic  treatises,  even  if  these  should  be  no 
more  exhaustive  than  the  treatment  of  other  aspects  in  the  present 
volume,  upon  historical  English  Syntax,  and  upon  English  Semantics. 
I  have  observed  that  these  are  branches  of  English  studies  which  many 
people  consider  important  for  somebody  else  to  tackle. 

With  regard  to  the  present  work,  the  facts  here  stated  are  with  very  few 
exceptions  derived  direct  from  the  sources,  that  is  from  the  documents 
themselves.  The  conclusions  drawn  from  these,  both  the  larger 
generalizations  and  the  more  minute  points,  are  independently  arrived 
at,  and  represent  my  own  interpretation  of  the  facts.  I  have  not  looked 
up  specially  everything  that  has  previously  been  written  upon  the 
innumerable  questions  here  discussed,  but  have  preferred  to  make  my 
own  inferences  from  my  own  material.  In  all  cases  where  I  have  taken 
facts  or  conclusions  from  others,  I  hope  and  believe  that  I  have  made 
full  acknowledgement. 

In  the  slight  sketch  of  Middle  English  dialectal  features  given  in 


vi  PREFACE 

Chapter  II,  I  have  made  use  to  some  extent  of  the  well-known  mono- 
graphs of  Morsbach,  Lekebusch,  Dolle,  and  Frieshammer,  but  most  of 
the  statements  are  based  upon  my  own  observations.  As  regards  the 
Modern  Period,  the  credit  due  to  a  pioneer  belongs  to  Dr.  R.  E. 
Zachrisson,  who  in  Chapter  II  of  his  important  work  on  The  Pronuncia- 
tion of  English  Vowels ',  from  1400  to  1700,  has  emphasized  the  impor- 
tance of  what  I  have  called  occasional  spellings,  in  the  writings  of  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.  Dr.  Zachrisson's  collection  of  these 
spellings,  and  his  method  of  dealing  with  them,  have  resulted  in  the 
need  for  a  modification  of  the  views  previously  held  concerning  the 
chronology  of  sound  changes  characteristic  of  the  Modern  period.  My 
own  treatment  of  the  vowels  in  accented  syllables  is  based  primarily 
upon  the  spellings  of  the  kind  referred  to,  and  I  am  personally  con- 
vinced that  further  investigations,  over  a  wider  period  of  time,  will 
vindicate  more  and  more,  in  the  main,  the  views  first  stated  by 
Dr.  Zachrisson.  I  believe  I  differ  from  some  of  his  conclusions — I  have 
not  compared  my  results  point  by  point  with  his — but  it  appears  to  me 
incontestable  that  we  must  put  the  *  vowel  shift '  much  further  back  than 
we  were  formerly  accustomed  to  do.  Future  research  into  the  history 
of  English  pronunciation  will,  I  think,  concern  itself  rather  with  the 
testimony  of  the  unconsciously  phonetic  spellings  in  the  documents  of 
the  past,  and  with  that  of  rhymes,  than  with  the  writings  of  the  old 
grammarians.  It  is  often  said  that  great  caution  is  needed  in  using 
rhymes  to  establish  the  existence  of  this  or  that  pronunciation.  This  is 
perfectly  true,  and  the  same  might  be  said  of  every  other  source  of 
information  concerning  the  speech  of  earlier  generations.  Great  caution 
is  necessary  in  all  research,  and  so  are  courage  and  imagination. 

I  have  utilized  the  phonetic  spellings  of  the  earlier  documents  in  an 
attempt  at  the  history  of  the  pronunciation  of  vowels  in  unaccentuated 
syllables,  see  Chapter  VII,  and  in  dealing  with  the  changes  under- 
gone by  consonantal  sounds,  see  Chapter  VIII. 

It  is  satisfactory  to  find  that  many  features  of  pronunciation  hinted 
at  by  the  writers  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  are  often 
expressed  by  the  occasional  spellings  much  earlier.  The  writers  on 
pronunciation  not  infrequently  adopt,  as  a  phonetic  spelling  to  express 
their  meaning,  forms  practically  identical  with  those  occasional  spellings, 
into  which  writers  of  letters  and  other  documents  quoted  below  so  often 
slip  unconsciously.  Thus  it  is  rather  striking  to  find  for  instance 
Porchmouth  for  c  Portsmouth '  mentioned  by  Elphinston  as  a  vulgarism 
in  his  day,  to  find  the  name  spelt  a  hundred  years  earlier  with  -ch-,  in 
the  Verney  Memoirs,  and  again  more  than  a  hundred  years  earlier  still 
by  Admiral  Sir  Thomas  Howard  (cf.  p.  292,  below).  In  the  face  of  this 


PREFACE  vii 

evidence,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  doubt  that  the  pronunciation  referred  to 
by  Elphinston  existed  about  two  and  a  half  centuries  before  his  day. 

The  references  to  the  old  orthoepists  and  grammarians  in  this  book 
are  taken  either  from  my  own  notes,  made  some  years  ago  from  the  copies 
of  these  works  in  the  Bodleian,  from  modern  reprints,  or,  in  a  few  cases, 
from  copies  of  the  originals  in  my  possession.  The  quotations  from 
Mulcaster's  Elementarie  are  in  all  cases  from  a  photographic  repro- 
duction of  the  Bodleian  copy  which  my  colleague  Professor  Campagnac 
kindly  lent  me. 

Books  and  collections  of  documents  written  in  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries,  from  which  forms  are  taken,  are  included  in  the 
short  Bibliography  at  the  beginning  of  the  book.  I  have  not  thought 
it  worth  while  to  draw  up  a  list  of  works  belonging  to  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  as  it  seemed  most  probable  that  all  of  these 
would  be  known  and  accessible  to  readers  of  this  book. 

My  gratitude  is  due  to  various  friends  who  have  helped  me  in 
different  ways.  Dr.  John  Sampson  read  the  first  four  chapters  in  manu- 
script and  gave  me  the  advantage  of  his  advice  on  many  important 
points.  His  kindly  interest  in  the  work,  continually  displayed,  and  his 
friendly  encouragement,  are  not  the  least  considerable  benefits  I  have 
received  from  him. 

Professor  Elton  was  so  kind  as  to  read  the  proofs  of  Chapters  IV  and 
V,  and  to  make  many  valuable  criticisms  and  comments.  I  regret  very 
much  that  I  was  unable,  owing  to  the  stage  which  the  work  had  reached, 
to  adopt  many  of  his  suggestions,  or  to  develop  further  several  interest- 
ing lines  of  investigation  which  he  indicated.  I  can  assure  him  that 
I  am  none  the  less  grateful  to  him,  and  that  his  informing  remarks  will 
not  be  wasted. 

To  Professor  R.  H.  Case  I  owe  a  peculiar  debt.  Not  only  have 
I  consulted  him  constantly  on  all  kinds  of  minor  points,  chronological, 
biographical,  textual,  and  never  in  vain,  but  I  have  derived  enduring 
pleasure  and  inspiration,  and  much  valuable  information,  from  our  fre- 
quent discussions  concerning  all  manner  of  literary  questions,  both  of 
a  general  and  special  character.  Mr.  Case  most  generously  placed  not 
only  his  stores  of  knowledge  and  the  benefit  of  his  highly  cultivated  taste, 
but  also  his  library  at  my  disposal.  To  him  I  owe  my  acquaintance 
with  several  important  sixteenth-  and  seventeenth-century  works,  notably 
Laneham's  Letter,  and  the  Comparison  of  the  Stages ;  he  also  lent  me 
copies  of  these  and  several  other  rare  books  and  tracts. 

I  offer  my  best  thanks  to  Professor  Campagnac  for  lending  me  his 
photographs  of  Mulcaster,  to  Professor  Foster  Watson  for  bringing  the 
Correspondence  of  Dr.  Basire  to  my  knowledge,  and  for  the  loan  of 


viii  PREFACE 

the  volume,  and  to  Professor  C.  H.  Firth  for  calling  my  attention  to, 
and  lending  me,  vol.  i  of  the  Verney  Papers,  and  for  pointing  out  the 
importance  of  the  State  Papers  of  Henry  VIII.  I  tackled  the  latter  too 
late  in  the  day  to  do  more  than  skim  a  few  forms  from  the  surface  of 
a  single  volume.  The  references  to  the  passages  from  BoswelPs  Life  of 
Johnson  on  pp.  167  and  212  were  most  obligingly  sent  me  by 
Mr.  A.  Okey  Belfour  of  Belfast. 

Miss  Serjeantson  of  the  University  of  Liverpool  has  helped  me  in 
many  ways :  in  verifying  and  checking  a  large  number  of  references, 
in  copying  out  several  rather  long  extracts  from  seventeenth-  and  eigh- 
teenth-century sources,  and  in  some  cases,  by  supplying  me  with  actual 
forms— for  instance  a  3rd  Pers.  Sing,  in  -s  in  Bokenam  which  I  had 
overlooked.  For  these  not  unimportant  services,  promptly  and  cheer- 
fully rendered,  my  gratitude  is  now  expressed. 

In  conclusion,  I  feel  that  if  this  book  succeeds,  on  the  one  hand,  in 
so  interesting  the  general  reader  that  he  is  impelled  to  study  the  subject 
for  himself  in  the  sources,  and  if,  on  the  other,  the  special  student  of 
English  should  find  in  it  such  a  collection  of  facts  and  inferences,  and 
such  a  mapping-out  of  the  ground  as  shall  serve  as  the  basis  for  further 
discussion  and  investigation,  then  the  volume  will  have  justified  its 
existence. 


HENRY  CECIL  WYLD. 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  LIVERPOOL. 
December, 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ALPHABETICAL    LIST    OF    SOURCES — FIFTEENTH    AND    SIXTEENTH 

CENTURIES  .  xi 

REMARKS  ON  PHONETIC  NOTATION .xiv 

TABLE  OF  PHONETIC  SYMBOLS  USED  IN  THIS  BOOK       .        .         .xiv 
CHAPTER     I.    INTRODUCTORY      .        .        .        .        .        .        .         i 

II.     DIALECT    TYPES  IN  MIDDLE  ENGLISH   AND   THEIR 

SURVIVAL  IN  THE  MODERN  PERIOD          .        .       26 

III.  THE  ENGLISH  OF  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY  .         .       62 

IV.  THE     ENGLISH     OF     HENRY    VIII     AND    QUEEN 

ELIZABETH     .         .        .         ,         .         .         .99 

V.     THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES   .     148 

VI.  THE  HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH  PRONUNCIATION  IN  THE 
MODERN  PERIOD — THE  VOWELS  OF  ACCENTUATED 
SYLLABLES 189 

VII.  THE  VOWELS  OF  UNSTRESSED  SYLLABLES       .        .258 

VIII.  CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL  SOUNDS        .        .        .282 

IX.  NOTES  ON  INFLEXIONS  .         .         .         .         .        .314 

X.  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM   , 359 


ALPHABETICAL  LIST   OF   SOURCES 

FIFTEENTH  AND  SIXTEENTH  CENTURIES  ONLY. 

Alleyn,  Edward,  Memoirs  of  (1593-1626).      Ed.  Payne  Collier,  Shake- 
speare Society,  1843. 
Alley ne  Papers  (1580-1661).     Ed.  Payne  Collier,  Shakespeare  Society, 

1843. 

Aragon,  see  Catherine. 

Ascham,  Roger.    Toxophilus,  1545  ;  The  Scholemaster,  1563. 

Audelay,  John.    Poems,  1426.     Percy  Soc.,  1844. 

Bath,  Earl  of.    Letters,  1540,  in  Ellis'  Orig.  Letters,  ser.  2,  vol.  ii,  157. 

Beaufort,  Margaret  (1443-1509).    Ellis'  Letters,  i.  I.  46,  &c. 

Berners,Jttliana.    A  Treatyse  of  Fysshynge,  1496.    Wynkyn  de  Worde. 

Berners,  Lord.    Translation  of  Froissart,  1520.     Ed.  W.  P.  Ker. 

Bokenam,  Osbern.    Lives  of  Saints,  1443. 

Boleyn,  Anne,  Queen.     Letters,  1528,  in  Ellis,  i.  I ;  i.  2  ;  ii.  2. 

Booke  of  Quinte  Essence,  1460-70. 

Bttckhurst,  Thomas  Sackville,  Lord.  Works.  Ed.  R.  W.  Sackville  West. 
London,  1859. 

Burghley,  William  Cecil,  Lord.  Letters  in  Ellis  (cit.  ser.  vol.  and  p.),  and 
in  Bardon  Papers. 

Burial  of  Edward  1 'V,  1483.     In  Letters  and  Papers,  vol.  i. 

Capgrave,  John.     Chronicle  14.     Ed.  Hingeston,  Rolls  Series,  1858. 

Catherine  of  Aragon,  Reception  of,  1501.  In  Letters  and  Papers,  vol.  i, 
pp.  404,  &c. 

Cavendish.  Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  1577.  Kelmscott  Press,  1893 
(reprinted  from  Author's  MS.). 

Caxton,  William.    Life  of  Jason,  1477.     Ed.  Munro,  E.E.T.S.,  1913. 

Celibacy,  Vows  of,  1459-1527.     In  Lincoln  Diocesan  Documents,  q.v. 

Cely  Papers,  1473-88 ;  Ed.  Maldon,  Camden  Soc.,  1900. 

Chetwynd  Chartulary,  1490-4.    Wm.  Salt,  Archaeol.  Soc.,  xii,  1891. 

Constable  of  Dynevor  Castle  (temp.  Hen.  IV).     Letter  in  Ellis,  ii.  I. 

Coventry  Leet  Book, from  1421 .    Ed.  Reader  Harris,  E.E.T.S.,  1901. 

Cranmer,  Archbishop.  Letters  (1533-7),  in  Ellis,  ser.  I,  vol.  ii ;  and 
ser.  3,  vol.  iii. 

Creation  of  Henry,  Duke  of  York  a  Knight  of  the  Bath,  1494.  In  Letters 
and  Papers,  vol.  i,  pp.  388,  &c. 

Dives  Pragmaticus,  A  booke  in  Englyshe  metre,  of  the  great  Marchaunt- 
man  called,  1563.  Reprinted  Univ.  Press,  Manchester,  1910.  [Remarks 
on  Dialect,  &c.,  and  a  Glossary  by  H.  C.  Wyld.] 

Editha,  Life  of  Saint,  1420.     Ed.  Horstmann. 

Edward  VTs  First  Prayer  Book,  1549;  Second  Prayer  Book,  1552. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  (i)  Letters,  in  Ellis;  (2)  Letters  to  James  I,  Camden 
Soc.,  1849 ;  (3)  Letters  in  Bardon  Papers,  Camden  Soc.,  1909 ;  (4)  Eng- 
lishings  (translations  of  Boethius,  &c.),  1593.  Ed.  Pemberton,  E.E.T.S.,  1899. 

Ellis,  Sir  Henry,  Original  Letters  Illustrative  of  English  History ;  3  series 
of  3  vols.  each.  Cit.  ser.,  vol.,  and  p. 

Elyott,  Sir  Thomas.  The  Booke  of  the  Gouernour,  1531.  Ed.  Croft, 
2  vols.,  1880. 


xii  ALPHABETICAL   LIST   OF   SOURCES 

Exeter  Tailors'  Gild,  Ordinances  of,  1466.  Ed.  Toulmin  Smith,  in 
English  Gilds,  E.E.T.S.,  1870. 

Fisher,  John,  Bishop  of  Rochester  (fl.  1459-1535)-  English  Works,  ed. 
Mayor,  E.E.T.S.,  1876  ;  and  Letter  in  Ellis,  iii.  2.  289. 

Fortescue,  Sir  John.  Governance  of  England,  1471-6.  Ed.  Plummer, 
Oxford,  1885. 

Godstow,  English  Register  of,  1450.     Ed.  A.  Clark,  E.E.T.S.,  1905. 

Googe,  Barnabe.    Eglogs,  Epytaphes,  and  Sonnettes,  1563.     Ed.  Arber. 

Gosson,  Stephen.    The  Schoole  of  Abuse,  1579.     Ed.  Arber. 

Gregory,  William.  Chronicle,  in  Historical  Collections  of  a  Citizen  of 
London.  Gairdner,  Camden  Soc.,  1876. 

Harvey,  Gabriel,  Letter  Book  of  (1573-80).  Ed.  C  J.  L.  Scott,  Camden 
Soc.,  1884. 

Henry  VIII,  King.  Letters,  1515  and  1544.  In  Ellis'  Orig.  Letters, 
ser.  I,  vols.  i  and  ii. 

Hoccleve.  Regiment  of  Princes  ;  Minor  Poems,  1413, 1414.  Ed.  Furnivall, 
E.E.T.S.,  1899  and  1892. 

Howard,  Lord  Admiral  Sir  Edward.  Letter  to  Henry  VIII,  1513,  in 
Ellis,  ii.  I.  213,  &c. 

Instructions  given  to  Lord  Mont joie,  1483.     In  Letters  and  Papers,  vol.  i. 

Ireland,  Conquest  of,  1450.     Ed.  Furnivall,  E.E.T.S. 

Ireland,  State  of,  151$-    In  State  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  Pt.  Ill,  1834. 

Irish  Documents,  1489-93.     In  Letters  and  Papers,  vol.  i. 

Knaresborough  Wills,  from  1512.     Surtees  Soc.,  vol.  civ,  1902. 

Knight,  Dr.  (Bishop  of  Bath  and  Wells).  Letters,  1512.  Ellis,  ser.  2.  i 
and  ser.  3.  i. 

Laneham,  Robert.  Letter  from,  1575,  in  Captain  Cox  his  Ballads  and 
Books.  Ed.  Furnivall,  Ballad  Society,  1871. 

Latimer,  Bishop  Hugh,  (i)  Seven  Sermons ;  (2)  The  Sermon  of  the 
Plough,  1549.  Arber's  Reprints. 

Lay  ton,  Richard,  Dean  of  York.  Letter  to  Lord  Cromwell,  1535.  Ellis,  2. 2, 
pp.  60,  &c. 

Lever,  Thomas.     Sermons,  1550.    Ed.  Arber,  1895. 

Lily,  John.  Euphues  Anatomy  of  Wit,  1579  ;  Euphues  and  his  England, 
1580.  Ed.,  one  vol.,  Arber,  1895.  Cit.  *  Euphues  p.';  Dramatic  Works, 
2  vols.  Ed.  Fairholt,  1892. 

Lincoln  Diocesan  Documents,  1451,  &c.  (Wills,  Leases,  Vows,  &c.). 
E.E.T.S.,  1914.  Cit.  L.D.D.,  name  of  Doc.,  date,  and  p. 

Lydgate.  London  Lyckpenny ;  Extracts  from  Story  of  Thebes,  in  Skeat's 
Specimens  of  Eng.  Lit. 

Machyn,  Henry.    Diary,  1550-3.    Camden  Soc. 

Margaret,  Queen,  of  Anjou,  and  Bishop  Bekinton.  Letters,  1420-42. 
Camden  Soc. 

Margaret,  Queen  of  Scotland.     Letters,  1503,  in  Ellis,  i.  I,  p.  42. 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots.     Letters  to  Knollys,  1568.    Ellis,  i.  2.  253. 

Mason,  John.    Letter,  1535,  in  Ellis,  ii.  2.  54,  &c. 

Monk  of  Evesham,  Revelation  of  (1482).     Ed.  Arber. 

More,  Sir  Thomas.  Letters,  1523-9,  in  Ellis,  i.  i  and  i.  2.  Cit.  p.  See 
also  Robynson  and  Roper. 

Mulcaster,  Richard.  Elementarie,  1581.  [Quoted  from  photographic 
copy  of  original  in  Bodleian.] 

Oseney  Abbey,  Register  of,  1460.     Ed.  A.  Clark,  E.E.T.S.,  1907. 

Palladiuson  Husbandry,  1421.  Ed.  Lodge,  E.E.T.S.,  1873.  Cit.  p.  and  line. 

Paston,  Margaret.  Letters  in  vols.  i,  ii,  iii  of  Paston  Letters,  1440-70. 
Ed.  Gairdner. 

Paston,  William  (the  Judge).     Letters,  1425-30,  in  P.L.,  vol.  i. 

Pecock,  Bishop  Reginald  (<£  Chichester).  The  Represser,  c.  1449.  2  vols. 
Ed.  Babington,  Rolls  Series,  1860. 


ALPHABETICAL   LIST   OF   SOURCES  xiii 

Peele,  George.    Edward  II.     Malone  Society. 

Pery,  Thomas.    Letter  to  Mr.  Ralph  Vane,  1539.   Ellis,  ii.  2,  pp.  140,  &c. 

Puttenham,  Richard  (or  George).  The  Arte  of  English  Poesie,  1589. 
Ed.  Arber. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter.  Selections  from  his  Historic  of  the  World,  his 
Letters,  &c.  Ed.  G.  E.  Hadow,  Oxford,  1917  ;  also  Works,  8  vols.,  Oxford, 
1829. 

Rede  me  and  be  not  wroth,  1 528.    Ed.  Arber. 

Rewle  of  Su stris  Menouresses,  c.  1450.     E.E.T.S.,  1914. 

Robert  the  Devil,  fifteenth  century. 

Robynson,  Raphe.  English  Translation  of  Sir  Thomas  More's  Utopia, 
1556.  Ed.  J.  R.  Lumby,  Cambridge,  1891. 

Roper,  William.  Life  of  Sir  Thomas  More.  Prefixed  to  Lumby's  edition 
of  Utopia. 

Sackville,  Thomas.    See  Buckhurst. 

Seymour,  Sir  Thomas.   Letters,  1544.    State  Papers  of  Henry  VIII,  vol.  i. 

Shakespeare,  William.  Various  Plays  from  facsimile  of  First  Folio  of 
1623,  cit.  play,  act,  and  sc.  Reprinted  L.  Booth,  1864. 

Shillingford,  John,  Mayor  of  Exeter.  Letters  and  Papers,  1447-50. 
Camden  Soc.,  1871. 

Short  English  Chronicle,  1464.    Ed.  Gairdner,  Camden  Soc.,  1880. 

Shrewsbury  i  Countess  of.  Letters,  1581-2,  in  Ellis,  ii.  2.  63,  &c. ; 
ii.  3.  60,  &c. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  Miscellaneous  Works.  Ed.  W.  Gray,  1893  ;  Complete 
Poems.  Ed.  A.  B.  Grosart.  2  vols.,  1873. 

Siege  of  Rouen  (in  Short  Eng.  Chron.),  c.  1420. 

Skelton,John.    Magnyfycence,  c.  1516.    Ed.  Ramsay,  E.E.T.S.,  1908. 

Smith,  Sir  Thomas,  (i)  De  Republica  Anglorum  (in  English),  1565  ; 
(2)  Letters  (1572-6),  in  Ellis,  ii.  3 ;  iii.  3. 

Spenser,  Edmund.    Works.    Ed.  Hales.    Globe  edition. 

State  of  Ireland  (see  Ireland). 

Suffolk  Wills  (Bury  Wills  and  Inventories),  1463-1569.    Camden  Soc. 

Surrey,  Thos.,  Earl  of.  Letters  to  Wolsey,  1520;  State  Papers,  Hen.  VI 1 1, 
Pt.  Ill ;  Henry,  E.  of.  Poems  in  Tottel's  Miscellany.  Ed.  Arber. 

Udall,  Nicholas.     Roister  Doister,  1553-66.     Ed.  Arber. 

Verney  Family.  Letters  and  Papers  of  fifteenth  century  to  1639.  Ed. 
Bruce,  Camden  Soc.,  1853.  Cit.  Verney  P. 

Watson,  Thomas.     1582-93.    Edited  Arber,  1870. 

Webbe,  William.    A  Discourse  of  English  Poetrie,  1586.     Ed.  Arber. 

Wilson,  Thomas.  The  Arte  of  Rhetorique,  1585  (3rd  ed.).  Ed.  Mair, 
Oxford,  1909. 

Wingfield,  Sir  Robert.    Letter  to  Henry  VIII,  1513.   Ellis,  ii.  i.  210,  &c. 

Worcester,  Ordinances  of,  1467.    In  Toulmin  Smith's  English  Gilds. 

WORKS  OF  LATER  DATE. 

It  has  not  been  thought  necessary  to  make  a  list  of  the  various  works 
referred  to  in  the  later  chapters,  belonging  to  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  as  when  these  are  not  well  known,  sufficient  references  are  given 
in  the  text. 


REMARKS  ON  PHONETIC  NOTATION 

I*  a  book  fike  the  present,  winch  deals  with  a  large  number  of  questions 
connected  with  prommciation  and  its  changes,  it  is  abfiotetdjmdispciisablc 
that  we  should  be  able  to  express  rapidly,  accurately,  and  tmambigtioaily 
the  precise  sounds  we  arc  dealing  with.  This  cannot  be  seemed  without: 
the  aid  of  Phonetic  Notation. 

The  main  essentials  of  a  Phonetic  Notation  are :  that  there  shall  be 
a  separate  symbol  for  each  separate  sound;  that  no  symbol  should  be 
written  if  there  is  no  sound  to  be  expressed— e.  g.  no  r  is  required  in 


to  fiiBtn*  the  prommciation  of  tfKMt  educated  V-tigHyKiiK»n  at  the 
present  day;  we  therefore  write  [pot];  that  the  same  symbol  should 
always  express  one  and  the  same  sound — thus  [s]  is  always  the  initial 
sound  in  soap,  [z]  always  the  final  sound  in  &KCK,  Ac. 

When  it  is  remembered,  for  instance,  that  the  official  speffing  takes  no 
cognizance  of  the  many  sound  changes  discussed  in  Chapters  VI,  VII, 
Vm,  it  is  evident  that  < spdtoig'  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  various 
problems  involved,  and  that  since  we  are  dealing  with  so**ds,  we  must 

are  considering.    Thus  the  word  jfc*£  although  often  so  spelt  in  the 

fifteenth  and  i*ni^^n|ii  centuries,  may  have,  at  a  given  tin>f,  inf^^  HiflSpfTpM^ 

of  speakers.    In 


these  we  can  express  the  various  sounds  quite  dearly  by  writing  [0,0,  a], 
but  not  by  speaking  about  the  '-' 


If  die  simple  principles  just  enumerated  be  borne  in  mmA  anH  if  the 
reader  does  not  associate  the  symbols  in  [  ]  with  the  sounds  which  they 
express,  often  very  inconsistently,  in  the  traditional  speffing,  he  wifl  find 
very  little  difficulty  in  making  out  what  sound  is  referred  to.  Even  if  he 
does  experience  some  trouble  at  first  in  getting  a  dear  idea  of  the  sound 
intended,  he  may  comfort  himself  by  remembering,  that  if  a  phonetic 
notation  were  not  used,  he  would  be  unable  to  gain  any  idea  on  the 
subject  at  aH 


TABLE  OF  PHONETIC  SYMBOLS  USED  IN  THIS  BOOK 

Note  that  whenever  phonetic  symbols  are  used  in  the  text  they  are 
enclosed  in  [} 

V< 


Symbol  Soumdexpresud. 

[0  =  English  i  as  in  **. 

[i]  =  English  «  as  in  ue\  or  French  i  in  ri.      The  vowel  of  the 
latter  is  short.) 


REMARKS    ON   PHONETIC   NOTATION  xv 

[e]  =  English  e  in  bet]  when  long  [g]  the  French  e  before  r  as  in  fire. 
[e]  =  French  /  in  df;  when  long  [e]  =  German  e  in  hhnen. 
[ael  =  English  '  short  a '  as  in  had]  [se]  =  the  same  sound  long. 
[u1  =  English  oo  as  in  hoot. 
[«]  =  English  u  in  />«/. 
[61  =  German  o  as  in  Bohne. 
[0]  =  French  o  mfol. 
[5]  =  English  <zz0  as  in  Z<n0,  or  a  in  ^a//. 
[:?]  =  English  o  in  w/. 

[j»]  =  French  u  in  fo ;  when  long  [y]  =  French  u  in  ^vr?. 
[<£]  =  French  eu  as  in  ceux. 
[ce]  =  French  «*  as  before  r—peur. 
[a]  =  German  short  a  in  hass  •  when  long,  [d]  =  English  a  in  &zr/ 

or  in  father. 

[a]  =  English  vowel  in  cut,  &c. 
[9]  =  unstressed  vowel  in  zi-a/<?r.  &c.     This  is  one  of  the  commonest 

vowel  sounds  in  English  ;   it  occurs  only  in  unaccented 

syllables. 

[A]  =  the  vowel  in  the  English  words,  curd,  term,  heard,  worm,  bird. 
The  diphthongs  [ai,  ot,  e;',  au,  ou,  £9,  «]  are  simply  combinations  of 
certain  of  the  sounds  mentioned  in  the  table ;    they  are  heard  in  bite, 
boy,  cake,  how,  note,  hare,  here,  &c.,  respectively. 

Definitions.  The  following  technical  terms  for  different  kinds  of 
sounds  are  often  used  : — Back  Vowel  =  a  vowel  made  with  the  back  of 
tongue  as  [a]  ;  Fr-ynt  Vowel,  one  made  in  the  front  or  middle  of  tongue 
as  [i] ;  Rounded  Vowel,  one  in  which  the  lips  play  a  part,  as  [u,  y],  &c. ; 
Tense  Vowel,  one  made  with  the  tongue,  hard,  braced,  and  muscularly 
i] ;  Slack  Vowel,  one  made  with  the  tongue  soft,  and  muscularly 
slack,  as  [i] ;  High,  Mid,  Low  Vowels :  these  terms  refer  to  the 
different  degrees  of  height  of  the  tongue  in  articulation ;  [i,  e,  ae]  are 
respectively  High,  Mid,  and  Low,  Front,  Slack  vowels.  Raising  refers 
to  the  movement  of  the  tongue  in  passing,  e.  g.  from  [e]  to  [i]. 

CONSONANT  SYMBOLS. 

[xl  =  sound  of  ch  in  Scotch  loch. 
[j]  =  sound  of  g  in  German  sagen. 
[j]  =  sound  of^  w yacht,  or/  in  German  jagen,  &c. 
[j]  =  sound  of  ch  in  German  -ich. 
[w]  =  sound  of  w  in  English  wall,  &c. 
[w]  =  sound  of  wh  in  Scotch  or  Irish  white,  &c. 
[k]  =  sound  of  k  as  in  king. 
[g]  =  sound  of^  as  in  good. 
[g]  —  sound  of  ng  as  in  sing. 


xvi  REMARKS   ON  PHONETIC  NOTATION 

[J]  =  sound  of  sh  as  in  shoot,  &c. 
[z]  =  sound  of  ge  in  French  rouge,  or  of/  mjamai's. 
[t,  d,  b,  p,  n,  m,  1,  r,  f,  v]  express  the  same  sounds  as  in  ordinary 

spelling. 

[]}]  =  sound  of  English  th  in  think. 
[tS]  =  sound  of  English  th  in  this. 
[s]  =  sound  of  s  in  so,  or  of  c  in  city. 
[z]  =  sound  of  z  in  haze,  or  of  s  in  w,  ze;0  j,  easy. 


Definitions.  A  Stop,  or  Stop  Consonant,  is  one  in  the  pronunciation 
of  which  the  air-passage  is  completely  closed,  or  stopped,  for  a  moment 
—  p,  t,  k.  These  are  sometimes  called  explosives.  An  Open  Consonant 
is  one  in  the  articulation  of  which  the  air-passage  is  only  narrowed,  so 
as  to  allow  a  continual  stream  of  air  to  pass  —  [f,  s,  lp,  /],  &c.  A  Voiced 
Consonant  is  one  during  the  articulation  of  which  the  vocal  chords 
vibrate  and  produce  a  kind  of  '  buzz  '  —  [z,  v,  t$,  z],  &c.,  which  may  be 
contrasted  with  the  Voiceless,  or  Un-voiced,  corresponding  sounds 
[s,f,  }>,/],  &c. 


CHAPTER   I 
INTRODUCTORY 

WRITERS  upon  the  history  of  language  are  very  careful  to  insist  that  the 
process  of  development  or  evolution  of  speech  takes  place  in  the  living, 
spoken  language,  and  not  in  written  documents.  It  is  pointed  out  that 
language  changes  in  the  very  act  of  speaking,  that  changes  in  pronuncia- 
tion, accidence,  and  the  rest  come  about  gradually,  and  by  imperceptible 
degrees,  within  the  lifetime  of  a  single  generation,  and  in  transmission 
from  one  generation  to  another.  A  history  of  a  language  is  an  account 
of  these  slight  and  gradual  changes,  the  cumulative  results  of  which,  in 
the  course  of  several  generations,  may  be  very  remarkable.  In  a  primitive 
age,  the  written  form  of  a  language  is,  in  the  main,  a  reproduction  of  the 
spoken  form,  and  follows  as  nearly  as  may  be,  though  often  lagging 
somewhat  behind,  the  changing  fortunes  of  the  latter.  If  a  language 
ceases  to  be  spoken  as  a  normal,  living  means  of  intercourse  between 
man  and  man,  the  written  form  can  no  longer  change,  but  must  remain 
fixed,  since  it  must  consist  merely  of  a  reproduction  of  ancient  models ; 
there  is  no  longer  a  living,  changing  speech  to  mould  its  character  and 
keep  it  up  to  date. 

It  is  an  unfortunate  circumstance  for  students  of  the  history  of  a  lan- 
guage, but  one  from  which  there  is  no  escape,  that  they  are  dependent 
upon  written  documents  for  a  knowledge  of  all  but  the  most  recent 
developments,  since,  in  the  nature  of  things,  they  can  gain  no  direct  and 
personal  access  to  the  spoken  language  earlier  than  the  speech  of  the 
oldest  living  person  they  may  know.  We  are  bound,  therefore,  to  make 
the  best  use  we  can  of  the  written  records  of  the  past,  always  bearing  in 
mind  that  our  question  in  respect  to  the  writers  of  these  documents  is 
ever — How  did  they  speak  ?  What  fact  of  pronunciation  is  revealed  by, 
or  concealed  beneath,  this  or  that  spelling? 

Our  business  in  this  book  is  mainly  concerned  with  English  as  it  has 
been  spoken  during  the  last  four  or  five  centuries ;  we  are  not  attempting 
a  history  of  literary  form,  and  our  interest  in  written  documents,  whether 
they  rise  to  the  dignity  of  works  of  literature,  or  be  of  a  humbler 
character,  is  primarily  in  proportion  to  the  light  these  compositions  throw 
upon  the  spoken  English  of  the  period  in  which  they  were  written.  At 
the  same  time,  in  the  course  of  our  inquiry,  we  are  bound  to  deal  with 
the  origin  and  character  of  the  English  of  Literature  and  its  historical 
relation  to  the  spoken  English  of  the  various  periods.  If  we  turn  for 
a  moment  to  consider  quite  briefly  the  linguistic  conditions  in  our  own 
country  at  the  present  time,  there  are  several  outstanding  facts  which  at 
once  arrest  attention.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  a  written  form  of  English 
which  is  common  to  all  literary  productions,  and  which  is  invariable  as 

B 


2  INTRODUCTORY 

regards  spelling  and  grammar,  both  in  books  and  private  documents. 
Written  English  is  fixed  and  uniform.  On  the  other  hand,  we  find  almost 
endless  variety  in  the  spoken  language.  If  we  call  up  for  a  moment,  in 
no  matter  how  hazy  a  manner,  two  or  three  different  types  of  English 
which  we  have  heard  spoken  in  as  many  widely  separated  areas  in  this 
country,  it  is  apparent  at  once  that  these  types  differ  very  much  from  each 
other  in  almost  every  respect.  Their  sounds — that  is,  the  ways  in  which 
they  are  pronounced — are  different ;  so,  too,  in  many  respects,  are  the 
grammatical  forms,  and  there  are  differences  often  in  the  names  of  quite 
common  objects.  If  we  think  of  these  different  types  of  uttered  speech 
in  relation  to  the  written  language  we  should  perhaps  find  it  difficult  to 
say  which  of  them  appeared  to  be  least  effectually  expressed  by  our 
present  system  of  spelling.  In  any  case  it  must  be  obvious  to  every  one 
that  Literary  English  at  the  present  time  cannot  be  intended  to  repre- 
sent equally  the  language  as  spoken  locally,  let  us  say  in  Devonshire, 
Oxfordshire,  or  Yorkshire.  Perhaps  it  was  never  intended  to  represent 
any  of  these  types,  and,  if  not,  it  may  well  be  asked,  To  what  spoken  type 
does  it  correspond  ?  Again,  it  is  quite  possible  for  an  educated  person 
to  speak  with  a  very  marked  provincial  accent,  and  yet  to  write  perfectly 
good  English.  In  such  a  case  the  man  may  be  said  to  speak  one  dialect 
and  to  write  another,  and  the  character  of  his  spoken  dialect  need  not 
influence  his  manner  of  writing  to  the  smallest  degree.  Certainly  no 
indication  of  his  peculiarities  of  pronunciation  will  be  traceable  in  his 
spelling.  It  is  necessary  to  consider  rather  more  closely  the  varieties 
which  exist  in  present-day  Spoken  English. 

As  a  rule  when  we  speak  of  the  English  Dialects  we  mean  varieties  ot 
English  which  are  associated  with  particular  geographical  areas  or  counties. 
Many  of  these  types  of  English  at  the  present  time  are  distinguished, 
according  to  the  popular  view,  chiefly  by  possessing  a  more  or  less  strange 
pronunciation,  and  certain  elements  in  their  vocabulary  which  are  not 
current  coin  in  every  part  of  the  country,  and  especially  not  among  the 
more  educated  portion  of  the  community.  Speech  varieties  of  this  kind, 
confined  to  particular  areas,  it  is  proposed  to  call  Begional  Dialects. 

By  the  side  of  these,  there  are  numerous  other  types  of  English  which 
are  not  characteristic  of  any  special  geographical  area,  but  rather  of  social 
divisions  or  sections  of  the  population.  Of  these  the  chief  is  the  type 
which  most  well-bred  people  think  of  when  they  speak  of  '  English '.  At 
the  risk  of  offending  certain  susceptibilities  this  type  of  English  must  be 
further  described  and  particularized.  As  regards  its  name,  it  may  be 
called  Good  English,  Well-bred  English,  Upper-class  English,  and  it  is 
sometimes,  too  vaguely,  referred  to  as  Standard  English.  For  reasons 
which  will  soon  appear,  it  is  proposed  here  to  call  it  Received  Standard 
English.  This  form  of  speech  differs  from  the  various  Regional  Dialects 
in  many  ways,  but  most  remarkably  in  this,  that  it  is  not  confined  to  any 
locality,  nor  associated  in  any  one's  mind  with  any  special  geographical 
area ;  it  is  in  origin,  as  we  shall  see,  the  product  of  social  conditions,  and  is 
essentially  a  Class  Dialect.  Received  Standard  is  spoken,  within  certain 
social  boundaries,  with  an  extraordinary  degree  of  uniformity,  all  over  the 
country.  It  is  not  any  more  the  English  of  London,  as  is  sometimes 
mistakenly  maintained,  than  it  is  that  of  York,  or  Exeter,  or  Cirencester, 


VARIETIES   OF   SPOKEN   ENGLISH  3 

or  Oxford,  or  Chester,  or  Leicester.  In  each  and  all  of  these  places,  and 
in  many  others  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  England,  Received 
Standard  is  spoken  among  the  same  kind  of  people,  and  it  is  spoken 
everywhere,  allowing  for  individual  idiosyncrasies,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, in  precisely  the  same  way.  It  has  been  suggested  that  perhaps 
the  main  factor  in  this  singular  degree  of  uniformity  is  the  custom  of 
sending  youths  from  certain  social  strata  to  the  great  public  schools.  If 
we  were  to  say  that  Received  English  at  the  present  day  is  Public  School 
English,  we  should  not  be  far  wrong. 

It  has  been  said  that  Received  Standard  is  one  from  among  many  forms 
of  English  which  must  be  grouped  under  Class  Dialects.  By  the  side  of 
this  type  there  exist  innumerable  varieties,  all  more  or  less  resembling 
Received  Standard,  but  differing  from  it  in  all  sorts  of  subtle  ways,  which 
the  speaker  of  the  latter  might  find  it  hard  to  analyse  and  specify,  unless 
he  happened  to  be  a  practised  phonetician,  but  which  he  perceives  easily 
enough.  These  varieties  are  certainly  not  Regional  Dialects,  and,  just  as 
certainly,  they  are  not  Received  Standard.  Until  recently  it  has  been 
usual  to  regard  them  as  so  far  identical  with  this,  that  the  differences 
might  be  ignored,  and  what  we  here  call  Received  Standard,  and  a  large 
part  of  these  variants  that  we  are  now  considering,  were  all  grouped 
together  under  the  general  title  of  Standard  English,  or  Educated  English. 
This  old  classification  of  English  Speech,  as  it  now  exists,  into  Provincial 
(Regional)  Dialects,  and  Standard  or  Educated  English,  was  very  inadequate, 
since  it  ignored  the  existence  of  Class  Dialects,  or  perhaps  it  would  be 
more  accurate  to  say  that  it  ignored  the  existence  of  more  than  one  Class 
Dialect,  and  included  under  a  single  title  many  varieties  which  differ  as 
much  from  what  we  now  call  Received  Standard  as  this  does  from  the 
Regional  Dialects.  The  fact  is  that  these  types  of  English,  which  are  not 
Provincial  or  Regional  Dialects,  and  which  are  also  not  Received  Standard, 
are  in  reality  offshoots  or  variants  from  the  latter,  which  have  sprung  up 
through  the  factors  of  social  isolation  among  classes  of  the  community 
who  formerly  spoke,  in  most  cases,  some  form  of  Regional  Dialect.  It  is 
proposed  to  call  these  variants  Modified  Standard,  in  order  to  dis- 
tinguish them  from  the  genuine  article.  This  additional  term  is  a  great 
gain  to  clear  thinking,  and  it  enables  us  to  state  briefly  the  fact  that  there 
are  a  large  number  of  Social  or  Class  Dialects,  sprung  from  what  is  now 
Received  Standard,  and  variously  modified  through  the  influence  of 
Regional  speech  on  the  one  hand,  or,  on  the  other,  by  tendencies  which 
have  arisen  within  certain  social  groups. 

These  forms  of  Modified  Standard  may,  in  some  cases,  differ  but 
slightly  from  Received  Standard,  so  that  at  the  worst  they  are  felt  merely 
as  eccentricities  by  speakers  of  the  latter ;  in  others  they  differ  very 
considerably,  and  in  several  ways,  from  this  type,  and  are  regarded  as 
vulgarisms.  It  is  a  grave  error  to  assume  that  what  are  known  as 
'educated'  people,  meaning  thereby  highly  trained,  instructed,  and 
learned  persons,  invariably  speak  Received  Standard.  Naturally,  such 
speakers  do  not  make  '  mistakes '  in  grammar,  they  may  have  a  high  and 
keen  perception  of  the  right  uses  of  words,  but  with  all  this  they  may, 
and  often  do,  use  a  type  of  pronunciation  which  is  quite  alien  to  Received 
Standard,  either  in  isolated  words  or  in  whole  groups.  These  deviations 

B  2 


4  INTRODUCTORY 

from  the  habits  of  Received  Standard  may  be  shown  just  as  readily  in 
over-careful  pronunciation,  which  aims  at  great  '  correctness '  or  elegance 
— as  when  /  is  pronounced  in  often,  or  when  initial  h  is  scrupulously 
uttered  (wherever  written)  before  all  personal  pronouns,  even  when  these 
are  quite  unemphasized  in  the  sentence — as  in  a  too  careless  and  slipshod 
pronunciation — as  when  buttered  toast  is  pronounced  butterd  tose,  or 
object  is  called  objic,  and  so  on. 

Again,  the  deviation  from  Received  Standard  may  be  in  the  direction 
neither  of  over-carefulness  nor  of  over-slovenliness.  There  may  be  simply 
a  difference  of  sound,  as  when  clerk  is  made  to  rhyme  with  shirk,  or  laugh 
with  gaff,  or  valet  is  pronounced  without  a  -/,  as  if  it  were  a  French  word. 
Or  the  difference  may  not  have  to  do  with  pronunciation  at  all,  but  may 
consist  in  the  inappropriate  use  of  a  word — say  of  lady  or  gentleman, 
or  some  other  simple  *  derangement  of  epitaphs '. 

Different  social  grades  have  different  standards  of  what  is  becoming  in 
speech,  as  they  have  in  dress  and  manners,  or  other  questions  of  taste 
and  fashion.  Thus,  for  example,  while  some  habitually  use  'em,  ain't, 
broke  (past  participle),  shillin,  others  would  regard  such  usage  with 
disapproval. 

All  these  things  and  countless  others  of  like  nature  are  in  no  wise 
determined  by  '  education '  in  the  sense  of  a  knowledge  of  books,  but  by 
quite  other  factors.  The  manner  of  a  man's  speech  from  the  point  of 
view  we  are  considering  is  not  a  matter  of  intellectual  training,  but  of 
social  opportunity  and  experience.  It  is  of  great  importance  for  our 
purpose  in  this  book  that  the  distinction  between  Regional  and  Class 
Dialects  should  be  clearly  grasped,  and  also  that  the  existence  of  Modified 
Standard,  by  the  side  of  Received  Standard,  should  be  fully  recognized. 
The  very  nature  and  origin  of  the  English  of  Literature  and  of  Received 
Standard  Spoken  English  cannot  be  understood  unless  these  facts  be 
clearly  before  us.  Both  the  latter  and  Literary  English  derive  their  origin 
from  several  Regional  types,  and  have  from  time  to  time  been  influenced 
by  others  in  minor  respects.  But,  during  the  last  two  centuries  at  least, 
the  modifications  which  have  come  about  in  the  spoken  language  are  the 
result  of  the  influence  not  primarily  of  Regional  but  of  Class  Dialects. 

Upon  these  influences,  and  their  effects,  it  will  be  our  business  in  this 
book  to  attempt  to  throw  some  light. 

But  the  question  will  be  asked,  Where  does  Received  Standard  English 
come  from  ?  This  question  must  be  answered,  at  least  in  outline,  at  once. 

It  is  evident  that  any  form  of  language,  whatever  may  be  its  subsequent 
history,  must,  in  the  beginning,  have  had  a  local  habitation,  an  area  over 
which  it  was  Jiabitually  spoken,  a  community  of  actual  speakers  among 
whom  it  grew  up  and  developed.  In  other  words,  if  Received  Standard 
is  now  a  Class  Dialect,  and  the  starting-point  of  other  Class  Dialects,  it 
must  once  have  been  a  Regional  Dialect. 

If  we  examine  the  records  of  our  language  in  the  past,  it  appears  that 
from  the  thirteenth  century  onwards  a  large  number  of  writings  exist 
which  were  produced  in  London,  and  apparently  in  the  dialect  of  the 
capital.  These  documents  are  of  various  kinds,  and  include  proclama- 
tions, charters,  wills,  parliamentary  records,  poems,  and  treatises.  Among 
the  latter  we  may  reckon  the  works  of  Chaucer.  The  language  of  these 


ORIGIN   OF  LITERARY  ENGLISH  5 

London  writings  agrees  more  closely  with  the  form  of  English  which 
was  later  recognized  as  the  exclusive  form  for  literary  purposes  than 
does  the  language  of  any  other  mediaeval  English  documents.  So  far, 
then,  it  appears  that  Chaucer  used  the  dialect  spoken  in  London  for  his 
prose  and  poetry ;  this  is  proved  by  the  agreement  of  his  language  with 
that  of  other  documents  of  a  literary  or  an  official  character,  written  in 
London  before,  during,  and  after  his  time.  When,  after  the  introduction 
of  printing,  a  definite  form  of  English  becomes  the  only  one  used  in 
literary  composition,  that  form  is  on  the  whole,  and  in  essential  respects, 
the  normal  descendant  of  Chaucer's  dialect,  and  of  Caxton's.  The  latter 
writer  specifically  states  that  he  uses  the  type  of  English  spoken  in  London, 
and  in  the  following  century,  Puttenham,  to  whom  we  shall  again  refer 
later,  recommends,  as  the  proper  English  for  the  writer,  that  which  is 
spoken  in  London.  London  speech  then,  or  one  type  of  it,  as  it  existed  in 
the  fourteenth  century,  is  the  ancestor  of  Literary  English,  and  it  is  also 
the  ancestor  of  our  present-day  Received  Standard.  Written  Standard 
may  be  said  to  have  existed  from  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
although  it  was  not  used  to  the  complete  exclusion  of  other  forms  for 
another  hundred  years  or  so.  It  is  more  difficult  to  date  the  beginning 
of  the  existence  of  a  spoken  standard.  It  is  certain  that  educated  people 
continued  to  use  local  dialects  long  after  they  had  given  up  attempt- 
ing to  put  these  local,  forms  down  on  paper.  This  is  true  of  the  upper 
classes  no  less  than  of  the  humbler.  As  we  shall  see,  there  are  plenty  of 
proofs  of  this  in  literature.  The  question  is,  How  soon  did  men  begin  to 
feel  that  such  and  such  forms  were  '  right '  in  the  spoken  language,  and 
that  others  should  be  avoided  ?  for  it  is  the  existence  of  this  feeling  that 
constitutes  the  emergence  of  a  favoured  or  standard  dialect.  The  exis- 
tence gf  such  a  standard  of  Spoken  English  is  certainly  established  by 
remarks  of  grammarians  and  others  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  it  is 
highly  probable  that  the  first  recognition  of  the  superiority  of  one  type 
over  the  others  must  be  placed  at  least  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  perhaps  earlier  still. 

A  further  question,  closely  related  to  the  above,  but  not  quite  identical 
with  it,  is,  When  did  the  ancestor  of  our  present  Received  Standard  become 
a  Class  Dialect  ?  Another  way  of  putting  this  question  is  to  inquire  how 
early  do  appreciable  and  recognized  divergences  appear  between  the 
speech  of  the  upper  and  lower  classes  in  London.  There  are  general 
reasons  for  believing  that  social  dialects  would  arise  quite  early  in  a  large 
community ;  it  may  be  possible,  though  not  easy,  to  establish  from  docu- 
mentary evidence  a  probability  that  they  actually  did  exist  in  the  fifteenth 
century ;  it  is  quite  certain  that  in  the  sixteenth  century  a  difference  was 
recognized  between  upper-class  English  and  the  language  of  the  humbler 
order  of  the  people,  and  we  have  the  perfectly  definite  statement  of 
Puttenham  that  this  was  the  case. 

A  simpler  problem,  but  one  which  must  be  touched  upon  here,  is  the 
diffusion  of  the  common  literary  type  of  the  written  language  on  the  one 
hand,  and  of  the  Spoken  Standard  English  upon  the  other. 

As  we  shall  see,  before  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  long  before 
printing  was  introduced,  we  find  that  the  local  dialects  are  [less  and  less 
used  in  writing,  whether  in  private  more  or  less  official  documents, 


6  INTRODUCTORY 

such  as  wills  and  letters,  or  in  what  we  must  regard  as  literary  works 
in  the  special  sense.  This  is  due  partly  to  the  study  of  London  official 
documents  by  scribes  and  lawyers  and  other  officials,  partly,  in  the  case 
of  literature  proper,  to  the  immense  vogue  of  Chaucer. 

With  the  advent  of  Caxton  and  his  successors  the  spread  of  a  know- 
ledge of  the  English  in  which  he  wrote  became  easy  and  natural. 

The  diffusion  of  the  Spoken  Standard  was  a  much  slower  process.  It 
is  not  complete  at  the  present  time,  as  we  see  from  the  fact  that  more  or 
less  pure  Regional  Dialects  still  linger  on.  The  first  classes,  outside  the 
metropolis,  to  acquire  the  Spoken  Standard  would  be  those  representa- 
tives of  the  nobility  and  gentry  who  visited  the  Court  for  longer  or 
shorter  periods,  and  the  higher  officials  :  the  great  lawyers,  statesmen,  and 
ecclesiastics  whose  business  brought  them  into  contact  with  the  King  and 
his  courtiers.  Another  influence  was  that  of  the  Universities,  who  sent  out 
the  clergy  into  country  parishes,  and  masters  into  the  schools.  The  influ- 
ence of  printed  books  was  no  doubt  considerable,  even  in  modifying  actual 
speech,  for  although  these  could  not  affect  pronunciation  to  any  great 
extent,  they  made  an  ever-increasing  public  acquainted  with  the  gram- 
matical forms  and  general  structure  of  a  dialect  which  had  these  features 
in  common  with  what  was  becoming  more  and  more  the  standard 
medium  of  intercourse  in  polite  society. 

Not  less  important  than  the  above,  in  spreading  the  current  coin  of  the 
form  of  English  which  has  gradually  taken  the  place  of  the  old  Regional 
Dialects  nearly  everywhere,  are  the  activities  of  trade  and  commerce. 

The  necessity  for  intercourse  between  the  great  provincial  centres  of 
industry  and  the  metropolis,  and  the  extraordinary  development  of  means 
of  locomotion  during  the  nineteenth  century,  which  facilitated  travel, 
have  carried  the  speech  of  London  into  all  parts  of  the  country  and  made 
it  the  current  form. 

On  the  other  hand,  while  the  geographical  diffusion  of  some  form  of 
Standard  English  has  thus  grown  apace,  its  spread  among  all  classes  of 
the  population  has  been  secured  by  the  breaking  down  of  social  boundaries 
and  intermingling  of  classes,  as  well  as  by  the  development  of  education. 
In  all  the  schools,  in  no  matter  what  geographical  area,  or  among  what 
social  grade,  an  attempt  is  made  to  eliminate  the  most  marked  pro- 
vincialisms and  vulgarisms.  Thus  gradually  the  Regional  Dialects  are 
being  extirpated,  the  coarser  features  of  the  vulgarer  forms  of  Class 
Dialect  are  being  softened,  and  the  speech  of  the  rising  generation  is 
being  brought  up  to  a  certain  pitch  of  refinement — or  so  it  is  believed. 
At  any  rate  a  process  of  modification  is  always  going  on. 

Thus  a  form  of  speech  which  began  as  a  Regional  Dialect  has  become 
at  once  the  sole  recognized  form  used  in  writing,  and  has  gradually 
extended  its  sway  in  colloquial  use  not  merely  all  over  the  country,  but 
among  all  classes. 

But  this  latter  process  could  not  happen  without  a  loss  of  uniformity, 
and  thus  a  fresh  differentiation  has  taken  place,  resulting  in  the  large 
number  of  forms  of  Modified  Standard  which  now  exist. 

Among  the  forms  we  may  distinguish  two  main  kinds— one  kind  which 
is  definitely  modified  by  some  existing  Regional  Dialect,  and  another 
which  seems  to  be  more  purely  a  Class  Dialect  with  no  characteristic 


PROVINCIAL  AND  VULGAR  ENGLISH  7 

Regional  influence  that  can  be  discovered.  Of  the  former  kind  there  are 
innumerable  varieties,  and  they  may  be  heard  in  the  larger  towns  such 
as  York,  Manchester,  Liverpool,  and  Birmingham,  &c.  The  other  kind 
of  Modified  Standard  seems  to  exist  chiefly  among  the  more  or  less 
educated  Middle  Class  of  the  South,  especially  within  fifty  miles  or  so 
of  London,  and,  of  course,  in  London  itself.  The  distinctive  character 
of  the  Modified  Standard  of  the  big  towns  remote  from  London  consists 
chiefly  in  certain  approximations  in  the  pronunciation  of  vowel,  and,  to 
a  lesser  degree,  of  the  consonantal  sounds  to  those  of  the  nearest  Regional 
Dialect.  This  kind  of  English  is  often  described  as  '  a  provincial  accent '. 
We  ought  probably  to  reckon  the  typical  Cockney  English  of  London,  as 
spoken  by  educated  Middle  Class  people,  in  the  same  class  as  the  above, 
only  here  we  should  not  speak  of  a  '  provincial  accent ',  but  of  a  '  Cockney 
accent '.  The  peculiarities  of  this  kind  of  London  English,  which  dis- 
tinguish it  from  Received  Standard,  are  doubtless  as  much  Regional  in 
origin  as  are  those  of  Liverpool  or  Manchester. 

Much  below  these  types  in  the  social  scale  we  have,  both  in  London 
and  in  the  big  towns  of  the  Midlands,  other  forms  of  Modified  Standard, 
also  influenced  by  the  Regional  Dialect,  only  more  strongly  so  than  the 
educated  speech  just  referred  to,  various  other  Class  Dialects  which  we 
should  not  hesitate  to  describe  as  vulgar.  The  London  Cockney  of  the 
streets  is  an  example  of  this  genre. 

The  special  type  of  Modified  Standard  spoken  in  such  a  centre  as 
Liverpool  or  Manchester  may  become  so  well  established  that  each  of 
these  and  similar  cities  may  form  a  starting-point  whence  linguistic  influence 
spreads  over  an  area  coextensive  with  their  social  and  economic  influence. 

Thus  the  process  of  differentiation  is  almost  infinite,  and  the  tendency 
of  language  is  not,  as  it  has  sometimes  been  wrongly  said,  in  the 
direction  of  uniformity,  but  of  variety.  The  former  view,  which  arose 
from  a  realization  that  the  old  Regional  Dialects  of  England  were  dis- 
appearing, lost  sight  of  the  fact  that  their  place  was  being  taken  by  a 
totally  different  form  of  English,  not  developed  normally  from  the  several 
Regional  Dialects,  but  one  of  different  origin,  acquired  through  external 
channels.  The  old  dialects  were  not  growing  like  each  other,  but  were 
vanishing.  In  their  places  various  forms  of  Modified  Standard  have 
arisen. 

We  may  now  briefly  consider  the  dialectal  character  of  the  London 
English  from  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  Already  in 
Henry  Ill's  Proclamation  of  1258  we  find  that  the  dialect  has  both 
Southern  and  East  Midland  features,  while  Davie,  about  half  a  century 
later,  and  the  fourteenth-century  London  Charters  show  the  same 
mingling  of  type,  and  also  have  some  specifically  South-Eastern  or 
Kentish  forms.  The  East  Midland  characteristics  become  more  marked, 
and  the  purely  Southern  less  so.  Chaucer's  poetry  shows  a  slight 
increase  of  the  East  Midland  element,  and  a  corresponding  diminution 
of  the  Southern,  and  in  his  prose  the  Southern  element  is  weaker  still. 
Fifteenth-century  official  London  documents  and  the  language  of  Caxton 
have  very  largely  lost  the  purely  Southern  features,  and  henceforth  the 
English  of  Literature  and  Standard  Spoken  English  display  less  and  less 
the  characteristics  of  the  old  Southern  Dialect,  and  an  ever-growing 


8  INTRODUCTORY 

proportion  of  typical  East  Midland  peculiarities.  Thus  London  English 
has  ever  been  a  combination  of  elements  characteristic  of  at  least  three 
Regional  Dialect  types,  and  while  all  three  are  still  clearly  traceable 
to-day,  present-day  English  is  very  largely  descended  from  the  old  East 
Midland  type.  Throughout  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  how- 
ever, purely  Southern  features,  since  discarded,  crop  up,  here  and  there, 
in  the  published  works  and  in  the  private  correspondence  of  the  best 
writers. 

The  history  of  London  English  since  Davie,  and  later  of  Received 
Standard,  has  been  a  gradual  shifting  of  the  relative  preponderance  in  the 
various  Regional  elements  of  which  it  is  composed.  The  influence  of 
the  Class  Dialects  probably  began  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  mixed  character  of  the  dialect  of  London  in  the  Middle  Ages  is 
not  to  be  wondered  at,  having  regard  to  the  geographical  position  of  the 
city.  Further,  the  growing  importance  of  London  as  a  market  brought 
traders  into  it  from  all  parts  of  the  country,  and  the  strong  East  Midland 
influence  probably  came  from  the  great  business  centre  of  Norwich. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  different  types  of  dialect,  and  it  is 
well  to  be  quite  clear  as  to  the  nature  of  the  distinctions  which  separate 
these.  It  will  be  convenient  to  deal  with  these  under  the  three  main 
heads  of  Pronunciation,  Accidence,  or  Grammatical  forms,  and  Vocabulary. 

Perhaps  the  most  important  characteristic  of  dialect  is  its  pronunciation. 
At  the  present  time,  it  is  certainly  this  feature  which  chiefly  distinguishes 
Received  Standard  from  the  different  kinds  of  Modified  Standard, 
especially  when  the  latter,  as  so  often  happens,  is  spoken  by  persons  who 
are  more  or  less  highly  educated.  Such  people  will  hardly  differ  in  their 
grammar  from  Received  Standard,  and  as  regards  Vocabulary,  except 
in  a  limited  number  of  .familiar  colloquialisms  and  slang  which  certainly 
do  vary  from  class  to  class,  it  may  be  said  that,  on  the  whole,  persons  of 
the  same  kind  or  degree  of  instruction  possess  approximately  the  same  range 
of  words.  This  is  largely  determined  by  general  culture  and  habits  of 
reading.  It  is  of  course  obvious  that  every  occupation  or  profession 
has  technical  words  of  its  own,  which,  while  habitual  to  its  members,  are 
unfamiliar  or  perhaps  unknown  to  those  outside.  These  technical  *  trade 
terms '  are  not  under  consideration  for  the  moment. 

To  return  to  Pronunciation.  In  the  older  dialects,  where  conditions 
are  less  complex,  the  question  resolves  itself  very  largely  into  the  special 
treatment,  within  a  certain  speech  area,  of  an  original  sound.  We  must 
illustrate  this  point  briefly.  In  Old  English  there  was  a  diphthong 
(i.e.  a  combination  of  two  vowel  sounds)  eo  which,  according  to  its 
origin,  was  long  in  some  words  and  short  in  others.  The  dialects  of  the 
South- West,  and  West  Midlands,  by  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century 
at  any  rate,  had  altered  this  sound  into  one  closely  resembling  the  present 
French  vowel  in  du.  This  vowel  is  written  ut  after  the  French  method, 
in  Middle  English.  On  the  other  hand,  the  dialects  of  the  East,  especially 
the  East  Midlands  (East  Anglia),  changed  this  old  diphthong  into  a  sound 
which  was  written  e,  which,  when  it  represented  the  old  long  eo,  was 
pronounced  like  Mod.  French  em  de,  and,  when  it  corresponded  to  the 
old  short  eo,  was  pronounced  like  e  as  in  bete. 

Examples  of  these  two  types  are  :— -O.E.  eorfc  (/  =  <//$ '),  M.E.  on  the 


EARLY  LONDON  ENGLISH  9 

one  hand  urpe,  and  on  the  other  erfie  '  earth ';  O.E.  ceorl,  M.E.  churl(e) 
and  cherl(e)  'churl';  O.E.  deorc  Mark',  M.E.  durk  and  derk\  O.E.  ceosan 
(inf.)  ' choose ',  M.E.  chilsen  and  chesen  ;  O.E.  hod  '  people ',  M.E.  lude 
and  /<?<&.  It  is  probable  that  the  Mod.  Eng.  spelling  churl  and  the  now 
obsolete  spelling  chuse  are  survivals  of  the  old  w-type. 

One  other  example  of  an  old  vowel,  developed  on  different  lines  in 
different  dialects,  is  the  O.E.  sounds  (pronounced  like  the  vowel  in  hard), 
which  in  the  M.E.  dialects  of  the  South  and  Midlands  is  written  o,  oo,  oa, 
representing  no  doubt  some  kind  of  long  '  o  '-sound,  but  in  the  Northern 
and  Scotch  M.E.  dialects  is  still  written  a  (or  at)  and  rhymes  with  an 
V-sound.  We  find  these  differences  preserved  to-day  when  we  compare 
stone,  foe,  hot,  O.E.  stan,  fa,  hat,  with  the  Scotch  stane,  fae,  het.  In  the 
latter  word  the  vowel  has  been  shortened,  just  as  it  has  been  in  hot,  earlier 
written  hoate,  &c.  These  are  examples  of  old  differences  which  distinguish 
different  Regional  Dialects. 

Now  in  dealing  with  a  mixed  dialect  like  that  of  London  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  the  written  and  spoken  forms  of  which  later  became 
respectively  the  common  literary  language  and  Received  Standard,  the 
problem  arises  of  disentangling  the  various  Regional  types  of  which 
these  forms  of  English  are  composed.  The  variegated  character  of  the 
old  London  dialect  is  well  exhibited  in  the  developments  therein  found 
of  the  Old  English  sound  which  was  written  j;,  but  pronounced  like 
French  u  in  bu,  lune,  &c.  There  are  three  possibilities. 

In  the  larger  part  of  the  country,  the  South-West,  the  Central  and 
West  Midlands  as  far  north  as  Lancashire  and  Derbyshire,  the  old  sound 
remained  apparently  unaltered  in  the  M.E.  period,  and  was  written  with 
the  French  symbol  for  this  sound — u.  In  the  South-East,  Kent,  Essex, 
and  a  large  part  of  East  Anglia,  the  old  sound  appears  in  M.E.  as  e, 
indeed  it  had  taken  this  form  already  in  the  ninth  century  in  Kent; 
but  in  the  North,  and  in  the  East  Midlands,  including  parts  of  Nor- 
folk and  Suffolk,  O.E.  y  appears  as  z  in  Middle  English.  Now  the 
London  Dialect  of  the  fourteenth  century  has  all  three  developments  of 
this  sound ;  indeed  the  same  word  may  occur  in  more  than  one  type, 
showing  that  all  three  types  were  current  in  the  London  area.  Examples 
are : — O.E.  synne  '  sin ',  M.E.  sinne,  silnne,  senne ;  O.E.  byrian  '  to  bury ', 
M.E.  birie(n),  burie(ri),  berie(n) ;  O.E.  brycg  '  bridge ',  M.E.  brigge,  brugge, 
bregge ;  O.E.  cyssan  '  to  kiss ',  M.E.  kt'sse(n),  kiisse(n),  kesse(n). 

In  Present-day  English  we  preserve  all  three  types,  although  we  do  not 
admit  more  than  one  form  of  any  given  word: — thus  kiss,  sin,  hill, 
bridge,  ridge,  list  (vb.),  &c.,  belong  to  the  E.  Midland  type ;  bundle,  rush 
(the  plant),  thrush,  clutch,  cudgel,  and  some  others,  are  derived  from  the 
type  having  the  French  #-sound  in  Old  and  Middle  English,  though  this 
has  changed  since  the  latter  period  into  quite  a  different  sound;  while  fledge, 
knell,  merry  represent  the  Kentish,  South-Eastern,  and  East  Anglian  type. 
It  should  be  noted  that  our  bury  is  spelt  according  to  M.E.  w-type,  and 
pronounced  according  to  the  South-Eastern  type,  while  busy  is  also  spelt 
according  to  the  former  type,  but  our  pronunciation  of  it  is  derived  from 
the  E.  Midland  bisy,  very  commonly  found  in  M.E.  and  Early  Modern. 
All  the  above  words  have  the  vowel  y  in  Old  English. 

It  is  quite  possible,  though  at  present  difficult  to  establish, .  that  the 


io  INTRODUCTORY 

distribution  of  types  in  the  above  words  depended  originally  upon  Class 
Dialects.  In  any  case  the  usage  fluctuates,  even  in  good  writers,  during  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  does  not  altogether  agree  with  our 
present  habits.  One  of  the  things  which  complicates  our  problems  is  that 
it  is  possible  for  a  peculiarity  which  is  Regional  in  origin  to  pass  into 
London  speech  and  Early  Standard  English  through  the  channel  of 
a  particular  class,  so  that  so  far  as  this  particular  form  of  English  is  con- 
cerned the  feature  begins  as  a  characteristic  of  Class  Dialect.  From  this 
starting-point  it  may  gain  wider  and  finally,  perhaps,  almost  universal 
currency.  An  apparent  example  of  this  is  the  pronunciation  of  t  as  e, 
e.  g.  tell  for  ////,  sence  for  since,  cetezen  for  citizen,  and  so  on.  This  pecu- 
liarity, to  judge  by  the  occasional  spellings,  gains  ground  gradually  in 
London  English  from  the  late  fifteenth  century  onwards.  These  ^-spellings 
appear  to  be  more  numerous  among  the  middle-class  writers,  in  private 
letters,  &c.,  than  among  the  more  distinguished  members  of  society, 
though  the  latter  are  by  no  means  free  from  them.  In  the  eighteenth 
century  tell,  &c.,  is  distinctly  mentioned  as  a  London  vulgarism.  So  far 
as  our  evidence  goes,  these  ^-spellings,  in  words  that  originally  had  /', 
appear  earliest,  and  are  most  frequent,  in  documents  written  in  the 
extreme  East — Essex,  Suffolk,  and  Norfolk.  If  this  is  correct,  then  we 
have  here  a  Regional  character  which  was  given  currency  through  the 
lower  and  middle  classes  of  the  metropolis,  and  later,  to  judge  from  the 
spellings  in  the  Verneys'and  Lady  Wentworth's  Letters  (cf.  p.  229),  must 
have  been  fairly  widespread  in  the  speech  of  the  upper  classes  of  that 
period.  This  peculiarity  has  apparently  disappeared  entirely  from  decent 
English,  though  a  pronunciation  something  like/><?«  for  />?>/,  &c.,  is  common 
among  vulgar  speakers. 

A  rather  more  difficult  problem  is  presented  when  in  Received  Standard 
two  different  types  are  found  side  by  side,  one  of  which  is  of  compara- 
tively late  appearance,  when  this  later  type,  being  at  one  time  exhibited 
by  a  large  number  of  words,  has  at  the  present  time  become  restricted  to 
a  much  smaller  group — when  in  fact  the  distribution  of  the  types  among 
words  of  one  and  the  same  original  class  has  gradually  been  altered. 
A  case  in  point  is  seen  in  the  history  of  a  large  group  of  words  which  in 
Middle  English  contained  the  combination  -er-9  the  original  pronunciation 
of  which  was  approximately  that  of  the  Mod.  German  er  'he'.  As 
regards  the  spelling  of  these  words,  present-day  English  writes  sometimes 
-er-,  as  in  certain,  servant,  &c.,  sometimes  -ear-,  as  in  learn,  heard,  &c., 
sometimes  -ar-,  as  in  star,  far,  dark,  &c.  We  have  two  distinct  vowel 
sounds  in  the  above  words,  one  that  of  the  vowel  in  bird,  the  other  that 
of  the  first  vowel  in  father.  All  the  words  spelt  -ar-  are  pronounced  with 
this  latter  sound,  and  also  some  spelt  -er-t  as  clerk,  Derby,  &c.,  and  a 
certain  number  spelt  -ear-,  as  heart,  hearth.  The  rest,  whether  spelt  -ear- 
or  -er-,  are  pronounced  with  the  sound  heard  in  bird.  Now  all  these 
words  and  many  others  were  originally  written  with  -er-  in  M.E.  Why 
this  diversity  in  pronunciation  at  the  present  time,  a  diversity  which  has 
actually  to  some  extent  been  crystallized  in  the  spelling  ?  How  has  it 
come  about  that  many  of  these  words  are  now  pronounced  with  the  vowel 
as  in  bird,  which  in  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries 
were  pronounced,  by  good  speakers,  according  to  the  '  -ar- '  type  ?  That 


INFLUENCE  OF  CLASS   DIALECT  u 

this  was  so  is  proved  not  only  by  the  statements  of  writers  on  pronuncia- 
tion, but  by  the  spelling  in  private  and  published  documents.  Thus,  to 
mention  a  few  sixteenth-century  instances,  Bishop  Latimer  writes  swarving 
( swerving ',  faruentlye,  clargie,  hard  '  heard ';  Ascham  has  hard  '  heard '; 
Queen  Elizabeth  writes  harde  and  parson  'person';  Thomas  Wilson 
writes  darth  '  dearth '.  (For  a  fuller  treatment  of  this  point,  and  evidence 
of  -ar-  pronunciations  in  the  following  centuries,  see  pp.  212-22,  below.) 

At  the  present  time  the  distribution  of  the  -er-  (vowel  as  in  bird]  and 
-ar-  (vowel  as  in  father}  types  is  perfectly  fixed  in  Received  Standard,  and 
none  of  the  above  pronunciations  would  be  considered  polite,  though  the 
list  of  -ar-  pronunciations  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
which  differ  from  our  own  is  even  longer  than  that  for  the  sixteenth 
(see  pp.  165;  21 7-21).  Between  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  and  the 
first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it  is  evident  that  a  very  great  shifting 
took  place  in  Received  Standard,  in  the  distribution  of  the  two  types  of 
pronunciation  in  words  of  this  class.  What  is  the  reason  for  this  ? 

I  think  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  suggest  any  other  cause  than 
the  influence  of  Class  dialect.  The  history  of  this  question  is  very  curious, 
and  the  details  must  be  left  for  a  later  chapter,  but  it  may  be  stated  here 
in  outline,  and  without  proofs.  The  change  of  -er-  to  -ar-  seems  to  have 
started  in  the  dialects  of  the  S.  East  (a  few  spellings  occur  in  the  thirteenth 
century),and  to  have  spread  to  East  Anglia;  from  1460  onwards  these  forms 
are  pretty  numerous  in  the  Regional  dialect  of  Essex  and  Suffolk.  The 
London  Official  dialect  and  the  Literary  dialect  had  but  few  -ar-  forms 
before  the  fifteenth  century,  and  they  are  rare  before  the  end  of  this  or  the 
beginning  of  the  following  century.  Their  number  increases  with  the 
advance  of  the  century,  and  they  are  most  numerous  in  the  private 
documents  of  Middle  Class  writers  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  The  facts  seem  to  point  to  the  -ar-  forms  being  importations 
from  below  into  Upper  Class  English.  They  become  increasingly 
fashionable  until  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  they 
recede  before  the  other  type,  leaving  comparatively  few  survivors,  and 
those  chiefly,  though  not  entirely,  such  words  as  dark,  &c.,  where  the  -ar- 
spelling  was  by  this  time  traditional  and  fixed.  I  believe  that  the  explana- 
tion must  be  sought  in  the  influence  of  cultivated  Middle  Class  speakers, 
who  were  not  content  to  abide  by  the  now  traditional  pronunciation 
'  service ',  '  virtue  ',  '  sermon ',  but  preferred  to  adopt  what  they  conceived 
to  be  the  more  *  correct '  and  '  refined '  pronunciation  suggested  by  the 
spelling,  which  by  that  time  had  long  been  fixed.  If  this  view  is  the 
right  one,  and  the  facts  seem  to  establish  it,  then  we  have  here  a  linguistic 
feature  which  found  its  way  from  a  Regional  dialect  into  Middle  Class 
London  speech,  passed  thence  into  Received  Standard,  only  to  be 
ousted  later  by  a  fresh  wave  of  Middle  Class  influence,  this  time  in  the 
direction  of  a  deliberate  attempt  at  elegance.  In  its  inception,  this 
innovation  was  probably  considered  as  vulgar  and  finnicky,  as  we  still 
consider  '  fore-head '  instead  of  '  forrid ',  or  '  of/en  '  instead  of  '  offen ', 
which  last,  by  the  way,  Queen  Elizabeth  herself  wrote,  and  doubtless 
pronounced. 

While  so  many  words  formerly  pronounced  according  to  the  -ar- 
lype  are  now  pronounced  according  to  the  -er-  type,  the  former  is  still 


12  INTRODUCTORY 

adhered  to  in  clerk,  heart,  and  in  the  proper  names  Berkshire,  Berkley, 
Bertie,  Derby,  &c.,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  spelling.  To  pronounce  these 
as  with  the  vowel  heard  in  bird  is  a  vulgarism  from  the  point  of  view 
of  Received  Standard,  and  in  heart  this  pronunciation  is  probably  never 
heard. 

We  may  now  pass  to  illustrate  variations  in  Accidence  associated  with 
different  dialect  types.     Good  examples,  of  old  standing,  are  the  forms 
of  the  3rd  pers.  Pres.  Indie,  sing.,  and  the  pi.  of  the  same  tense  in  verbs. 
In  M.E.  all  the  Southern  and  most  of  the  Midland  dialects  used  a  3rd 
pers.  sing,  in  -eth,  cumeth,  &c.,  until  we  get  pretty  far  north,  to  Lincoln- 
shire, where  forms  in  -es,  -is,  cumes,  cumis,  &c.,  were  almost  equally 
common.     The  Northern  dialects  always  use  cumis,  cums,  &c.     At  the 
present  day  the  -eth  forms  are  Unknown  in  colloquial  English  anywhere, 
but  are  often  used  in  poetry,  chiefly  because  they  provide  an  additional 
syllable  for  purposes  of  metre,  and  they  are  familiar  to  all  through  the 
Bible  and  the  Prayer  Book.     These  forms  are,  then,  survivors  of  the  old 
Southern  and  Midland  usage.    The  -s  forms,  now  universal,  are  originally 
Northern,  but  from  the  point  of  Modern  English  they  may  be  regarded 
as  Midland,  since  it  is  pretty  clear  that  they  have  come  into  the  language 
of  everyday  life  from  East  Anglian  sources.     (On  this  point,  however, 
see  pp.  334-7,  below.)     Now  these  -s  forms  are  practically  unknown  in 
London  English,  official,  literary,  and  colloquial,  during  the  whole  of 
the  fifteenth   and   the  early  part   of  the  sixteenth   century.      In  East 
Anglia,  however,  they  appear,  even  in  prose,  during  the  latter  part  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  are  found  occasionally  much  earlier.     They  are 
very^  rare  in  Literary  English  prose  or  in   private   letters  until   quite 
late  in  the  sixteenth  century,  though  they  are  commoner  in  some  writers, 
e.  g.  Latimer,  Ascham,  Wilson,  than  in  others,  and  it  may  be  noted  that 
these   three   were  all  Cambridge   men,  and   belonged   respectively   to 
Leicestershire,  Yorkshire,  and   Lincolnshire.      The  -s  forms  are  very 
common   in   Queen   Elizabeth's   letters  written  during  the  last   twenty 
years   of  her  life,  but  much  rarer  in  the   earlier   ones,  written  when 
she  was  a  girl.     In  poetry,  in  the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  3rd 
persons  in  -s  are  commoner  than  in   the  prose  of  the  same  period, 
showing  that  their  use  here  at  a  time  when  they  were  not  in  common 
and  familiar  use  is  due  to  metrical  reasons.     It  seems  that  by  the  begin- 
ning of  the   seventeenth  century,  however,  these  forms  had  become 
usual  in  familiar  speech  and  private  letters,  though  the  -eth  forms  con- 
tinued to  be  used  not  only  in  poetry,  but  in  the  more  elevated  prose 
style.     This  is  well  seen  in  the  Authorized  Version,  and  in  such  writers 
as  Raleigh  and  Browne.     The  auxiliaries  hath  and  doth  continued  in 
literary,  and  perhaps  also  in  occasional  colloquial,  use  throughout  the 
eighteenth  century. 

The  old  M.E.  Pres.  Indie,  plurals  are  as  follows :  in  the  South  -eth, 
we  cumej>,  or  cumeth,  &c. ;  in  the  Midlands  -en,  we  cumen,  &c. ;  in  the 
North  -es,  or  -is,  we  cumis,  &c.  The  earliest  London  documents  have 
the  Southern  forms  exclusively,  but  as  early  as  1258  the  Midland  forms 
predominate  (Hen.  Ill's  Proclamation),  and  Davie'in  1327  has  only  one 
example  of  an  -eth  ending. 

The    later   fourteenth-century   documents,    including    the    works    of 


VOCABULARY  AS   TEST   OF   DIALECT  13 

Chaucer,  have  very  many  forms  in  -en  or  -e,  and  very  few  in  -cth. 
Caxton's  typical  form  is  -en.  Henceforth  we  may  say  that  -en  or  the 
•e  with  the  loss  of  -n  is  the  characteristic  form  of  Literary  English,  and 
this  is  the  ancestor  of  our  present  form  without  ending.  The  -«  is 
found  only  sporadically  during  the  sixteenth  century.  By  the  side  of 
these  Midland  forms,  the  Southern  -eth  occurs  in  private  letters,  and 
even  in  published  literary  works  here  and  there  throughout  the  sixteenth 
century,  being  found,  for  instance,  occasionally  in  Euphues.  (For  details 
on  the  Pres.  Indie.  Sing,  and  PI.,  see  pp.  334-41,  below.) 

In  the  history  of  these  verbal  forms  we  see  the  gradual  displacement 
and  finally  the  complete  elimination,  in  Literary  and  Standard  Spoken 
English,  of  one  dialectal  type  by  another. 

Turning  now  to  Vocabulary  as  a  feature  of  dialectal  type,  we  find  that 
in  the  older  works  on  Modern  Regional  Dialect  this  is  almost  the  only 
aspect  dealt  with;  indeed  most  of  these  works  are,  in  the  main,  mere 
glossaries  of  the  various  dialects.  It  is  a  fact  that  the  present-day 
provincial  dialects  between  them  possess  a  very  large  number  of  words 
which  either  (a)  are  not  used  at  all  in  Received  Standard,  or  (t>)  which 
express  different  ideas  in  the  dialects  from  those  which  they  express  in 
Received  Standard.  On  the  other  hand,  nearly  all  dialect  glossaries 
contain  numbers  of  words,  assigned  to  the  dialect,  which  are  perfectly 
current  in  the  best  spoken  and  Literary  English,  and  used  everywhere  in 
precisely  the  same  sense.  For  an  element  of  vocabulary  to  rank  as 
a  characteristic  dialect  feature,  this  element,  or  word,  must  be  either 
unknown  altogether  in  Literary  and  Received  Standard  English,  or  else 
must  be  used  in  different  sense,  with  a  different  idiomatic  value  from 
those  given  to  it  in  Spoken  or  Literary  Standard.  Such  Scotch  words 
as  neave  '  fist ',  steek  '  to  close  ',  ashet  '  dish ',  jaw-box  *  sink ',  amongst 
thousands  of  others,  fulfil  the  first  of  the  above  conditions—  all  of  them 
would  be  entirely  outlandish  and  incomprehensible  to  English  people  of  the 
South — while  Irish-English  after  in  he 's  after  doing  it  =  '  he 's  just  done 
it ',  Scotch  and  North  of  Ireland  to  think  long  meaning  '  to  feel  lonely ', 
Irish-English  to  knock  in  the  horse  knocked  him  at  the  stone  gap  =  '  threw 
him  at  the  stone  wall ',  and  bold  in  the  sense  of  '  naughty ',  said  of 
a  child,  fulfil  the  second  condition. 

As  regards  the  earlier  periods  of  English,  a  minute  analysis  of  the 
characteristic  regional  distribution  of  vocabulary  has  yet  to  be  made  for 
Middle  English.  It  is,  however,  a  well-ascertained  fact  that  in  certain 
districts  of  the  Midlands  and  North  very  large  numbers  of  Scandinavian 
words  were  in  use  which  were  unknown  in  the  South,  and  the  occurrence 
of  these  in  a  text  would  be  a  safe  test,  apart  from  other  considerations, 
by  which  to  rule  out  a  southern  origin. 

In  Middle  English  it  would  seem  that  words  often  had  a  comparatively 
limited  diffusion,  if  we  may  judge  of  this  from  the  rarity  of  their  occur- 
rence. In  such  texts  as  the  West  Midland  Alliterative  Poems  (Pearl, 
Patience,  Cleanness,  &c.)  and  Sir  Gawayne  and  the  Green  Knight,  there 
are  dozens  of  words  which  seem  to  be  peculiar  to  these  texts,  and  to  have 
died  out  of  all  dialects  at  the  present  time.  The  history  of  a  very  large 
part  of  the  vocabulary  of  the  present-day  English  dialects  is  still  very 
obscure,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  much  of  it  is  of  any  antiquity.  So 


i4  INTRODUCTORY 

far  very  little  attempt  has  been  made  to  sift  the  chaff  from  the  grain  in 
that  vast  receptacle  the  English  Dialect  Dictionary,  and  to  decide  which 
elements  are  really  genuine  '  corruptions '  of  words  which  the  yokel  has 
heard  from  educated  speakers,  or  read,  misheard,  or  misread,  and 
ignorantly  altered,  and  adopted,  often  with  a  slightly  twisted  significance. 
Probably  many  hundreds  of  'dialect'  words  are  of  this  origin,  and  have 
no  historical  value  whatever,  except  inasmuch  as  they  illustrate  a  general 
principle  in  the  modification  of  speech.  Such  words  are  not,  as  a  rule, 
characteristic  of  any  Regional  Dialect,  although  they  may  be  ascribed 
to  one  of  these,  simply  because  some  collector  of  dialect  forms  has 
happened  to  hear  them  in  a  particular  area.  They  belong  rather  to 
the  category  of  'mistakes'  which  any  ignorant  speaker  may  make, 
and  which  such  persons  do  make,  again  and  again,  in  every  part  of 
the  country. 

The  question  which  chiefly  concerns  us  here  with  regard  to  vocabulary 
is  how  far  Standard  English,  written  and  spoken,  has  been  influenced  by 
provincial  vocabulary  during  the  last  four  or  five  hundred  years.  This 
is  a  very  difficult  question  to  answer  with  any  degree  of  certainty,  but  the 
probability  is  that  such  influence  has  been  very  slight.  After  all,  the 
essentials  of  our  vocabulary  are  pretty  much  the  same  as  they  are  in 
Chaucer  or  Caxton.  Certain  terms  and  idioms  have  become  obsolete  ; 
certain  affectations  and  preciosities  which  occur  in  Caxton  have  perished — 
if  indeed  they  ever  lived  in  English,  outside  his  works ;  many  new  words 
of  learned  origin,  or  learned  concoctions,  such  as  terms  from  Greek 
elements  to  designate  new  scientific  discoveries,  many  words  from  foreign 
tongues,  have  become  current  in  our  speech  since  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century ;  but  has  there  been  any  great  influx  of  plain  English 
words  from  English  provincial  dialects  ?  Such  words  would  necessarily 
be  terms  connected  with  the  simplest  and  most  ordinary  experiences  of 
everyday  life,  and  life  on  rather  a  humble  plane.  But  words  of  this  kind 
have  not  been  renewed  since  the  fifteenth  century  to  any  great  extent, 
and  it  is  certain  that  it  is  not  from  the  uncouth  Regional  dialects,  already 
falling  into  disrepute  among  both  the  learned  and  the  polite,  that  the 
rising  Standard  English  would  derive  the  means  for  a  completer  and  subtler 
expressiveness. 

When  at  the  present  time  we  find  that  some  word  or  expression, 
claimed  as  a  characteristic  of  some  Regional  dialect,  is  in  ordinary  use 
either  in  good  colloquial  or  Literary  English,  we  shall  probably  do  well 
to  believe,  unless  the  contrary  is  proved,  that  the  so-called  'dialectal' 
term  has  been  borrowed  from  one  or  other  of  the  latter  sources,  rather 
than  that  the  reverse  process  has  happened. 

If  we  consider  contemporary  English,  whether  written  or  spoken,  it 
does  not  appear  that  the  Regional  dialects  are  exerting  any  appreciable 
influence  upon  our  vocabulary.  It  is  certain  that  no  one  picks  dialect 
words  and  expressions  out  of  a  dictionary  to  introduce  them  into  his 
speech  or  his  writings.  There  is  the  novel  which  contains  large  portions 
of  dialogue  in  dialect— sometimes  genuine,  perhaps  oftener  fictitious — 
but  the  sporadic  appearance  of  such  works  is  not  sufficient  to  give  a  wide 
currency  to  new  elements  of  vocabulary.  It  is  doubtful  whether  even 
Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  in  spite  of  the  considerable  vogue  of  the  Wessex 


REGIONAL   DIALECT   AND   LITERARY   ENGLISH      15 

Novels,  has  imposed  a  new  word  from  the  West  Country  upon  Literature, 
outside  the  circle  of  his  imitators.  It  may  be  that  here  and  there  a 
writer  deliberately  uses  a  dialect  word  which  he  has  learnt  either  from 
Mr.  Hardy  or  Louis  Stevenson,  for  the  sake  qf  novelty  or  picturesqueness, 
but  the  occasional  occurrence  of  such  a  word  in  a  novel  or  a  poem, 
a  word  which  perhaps  nine  readers  out  of  ten  do  not  understand,  is 
hardly  sufficient  to  establish  the  claim — if  indeed  such  a  claim  be  made — 
that  our  present-day  Literary  English  is  being  influenced  as  regards 
vocabulary  by  Regional  dialect. 

The  great  factor  which  nowadays  destroys  the  value  of  Vocabulary  as 
a  specific  characteristic  of  a  given  Regional  dialect,  is  the  migratory 
habits  of  the  population.  Almost  every  village,  even  in  districts  remote 
from  London  or  other  great  centres  of  population,  contains  several 
inhabitants  who  have  come  into  it  from  some  more  or  less  distant 
county,  either  because  they  have  married  natives  of  the  village,  because 
they  are  in  the  service  of  local  farmers  or  gentry,  or  the  railway  company, 
or  because  they  were  employed  in  the  construction  of  the  local  railway 
line,  and  stayed  on  after  this  was  completed.  These  persons  bring  with 
them  alien  habits  of  speech,  and  their  families  form  so  many  nuclei 
whence  these  spread  to  a  wider  circle.  This  is  certainly  true  of  pro- 
nunciation and  accidence,  but  probably  to  a  lesser  extent  than  of 
vocabulary,  for  this  is  far  more  readily  acquired  than  new  vowel  sounds 
or  a  fresh  grammatical  system. 

The  influence  of  one  Regional  dialect  upon  another,  brought  about 
by  the  migration  of  individuals  from  one  area  to  another,  would  be  a 
curious  chapter  in  the  study  of  local  dialect,  which  some  day  perhaps 
may  be  written.  So  far  nothing  has  been  attempted  upon  this  aspect  of 
the  subject,  and  it  seems  to  be  assumed,  for  the  most  part,  that  a  Regional 
dialect  is  a  pure  dialect,  except  in  so  far  as  it  is  influenced  by  some  form 
of  Standard  English.  The  fact  that  this  is  far  from  being  the  case  will 
become  more  and  more  apparent  after  the  War.  When  the  soldiers 
return  to  their  villages  they  will  undoubtedly  bring  a  greatly  enlarged 
vocabulary,  consisting  partly  of  new  technical  terms,  partly  of  the  current 
slang  of  the  Army,  partly  also  of  words  picked  up  from  their  mates  in 
the  Regiment,  who  represent  often  a  great  variety  of  linguistic  types. 
These  returned  heroes  will  naturally  and  properly  enjoy  a  considerable 
prestige  among  their  fellow  villagers,  and  it  would  seem  inevitable  that 
much  of  their  new  jargon  will  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  speech  of 
the  rising  generation.  It  is  thus  not  improbable  that  the  War  will  have 
destroyed,  in  many  areas,  the  last  frail  claims  of  Vocabulary  to  be  con- 
sidered a  specific  characteristic  of  the  dialect. 

But  if  the  vocabulary  of  Regional  dialects  has  not  greatly  influenced 
the  English  of  Literature,  neither  has  it  fait fortune  in  Received  Standard 
Spoken  English. 

Among  speakers  of  this  form  of  English,  country  dwellers  alone  have 
any  direct  contact  with  local  dialect  in  the  strict  sense.  It  is  impossible 
to  lead  the  life  of  the  country,  and  to  share  its  sports  and  interests,  without 
coming  into  more  or  less  close  relations  with  persons  whose  normal 
speech  is  the  Regional  dialect  of  the  place.  In  this  way,  most  speakers 
of  Received  Standard  who  live  in  the  country  gain,  involuntarily,  a  very 


i 6  INTRODUCTORY 

fair  knowledge  of  the  local  dialect  in  all  its  aspects.  They  can  imitate 
the  pronunciation,  they  know  the  characteristic  grammatical  '  mistakes ', 
and  they  know  a  considerable  number  of  the  typical  words  and  idioms. 
Yet,  in  the  South  and  South  Midlands  at  any  rate,  most  persons  whose 
natural  speech  is  Received  Standard  would  not  dream  of  attempting  to 
use  the  local  dialect,  pronunciation,  and  accidence  in  speaking  with  their 
humbler  friends.  If  they  did  so  it  would  be  felt  as  an  insult  by  the  latter. 
The  superior  classes  keep  their  excursions  into  dialect  for  occasions 
when  they  wish  to  reproduce  an  amusing  thing  that  some  villager  has 
said,  for  the  entertainment  of  their  equals.  On  the  other  hand,  while 
retaining  his  own  mode  of  pronunciation  and  his  own  grammar,  a  speaker 
of  Received  Standard  may  employ,  without  offence,  in  his  intercourse 
with  all  classes,  a  considerable  number  of  words  and  expressions,  relating 
to  the  everyday  life  of  the  country,  drawn  from  the  local  dialect.  Such 
words  will  for  the  most  part  be  of  a  more  or  less  technical  character,  and 
connected  with  agriculture,  horses,  cattle,  and  sport.  But  these  terms 
will  hardly  be  used  apart  from  the  scenes  and  occupations  to  which  they 
naturally  belong,  and  a  man  who  might  quite  naturally  speak  in  his  own 
village  of  selling  tegs,  of  finding  &  yaffle's  nest,  or,  if  he  were  an  Irishman, 
of  leaping  a  horse,  would  probably  use  the  ordinary  words  sheep,  wood- 
pecker, jump,  at  a  London  dinner-table. 

In  such  a  case  as  this  the  knowledge  and  occasional  use  of  dialect 
words  could  not  be  said  to  affect  in  any  way  the  normal  vocabulary  of 
the  speaker,  any  more  than  would  the  knowledge  of  the  words  of  a  foreign 
language,  and  the  proper  use  of  them  when  speaking  that  language.  Of 
course  if  a  speaker  were  unacquainted  with  the  words  current  in  Received 
Standard,  and  habitually  made  use  of  large  numbers  of  dialect  words,  in 
all  companies  and  places,  it  must  be  admitted  that,  even  if  he  spoke  '  good ' 
grammar  and  had  the  normal  pronunciation,  his  speech  had  so  far  been 
modified  by  the  Regional  form.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  such  a  case  is 
hardly  conceivable.  The  exclusive  use  of  a  typical  Regional  dialect 
vocabulary,  a  use  not  confined  to  a  few  categories  of  words,  but  em- 
bracing expressions  indispensable  in  every  aspect  of  life,  would  not  exist 
apart  from  the  employment  also  of  the  typical  pronunciation  and  gram- 
matical forms  of  the  dialect — in  fact  a  speaker  whose  vocabulary  is  of 
this  character  will  not  be  a  speaker  of  Received  Standard  at  all,  but  of 
Regional  dialect  pure  and  simple.  To  sum  up,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how, 
in  recent  times.  Regional  dialect  can  exercise  any  considerable  direct 
influence  upon  the  vocabulary  of  Received  Standard  English.  Such  influ- 
ence, in  so  far  as  it  exists  at  all,  must  be  indirect,  an  i  exerted  through  the 
medium  of  Class  dialect — that  is,  through  the  various  forms  of  Modified 
Standard.  Just  as  we  have  seen  that  the  other  Class  dialects  have 
reacted  and  are  continually  reacting  upon  Received  Standard,  and  thence 
upon  the  language  of  Literature,  in  respect  of  pronunciation  and  gram- 
matical forms,  so  this  is  also  true  of  Vocabulary.  This  brings  us  to  a  brief 
consideration  of  Vocabulary  as  a  distinguishing  and  typical  feature  in 
Class  Dialect. 

We  have  already  touched,  in  passing,  upon  this  point  (see  p.  4,  above). 
It  is  desirable  to  illustrate  it  rather  more  fully.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that 
the  characteristic  features  of  the  colloquial  vocabulary  of  Received 


VULGARISM  IN  VOCABULARY          17 

Standard  at  any  given  period  consist  rather  in  what  is  omitted  than  in 
what  actually  occurs.  There  exists  a  set  of  prohibitions  and  taboos 
which  are  quite  rigidly,  though  unconsciously,  observed  by  certain  circles, 
just  as  in  others  they  are  quite  as  naturally  and  innocently  ignored.  We 
may  begin  from  the  point  of  view  of  Received  Standard,  and  with  this 
negative  side  of  the  case.  It  must  be  clearly  borne  in  mind  that,  in  the 
following  and  all  remarks  upon  the  subject  of  contemporary  Received 
Standard,  no  attempt  is  made  to  dictate  upon  '  correctness '  in  speech,  to 
set  up  canons  of  propriety,  or  to  give  instruction  as  to  how  people 
'  ought '  to  speak.  We  approach  the  subject  merely  as  students  and 
observers  of  linguistic  facts,  which  happen  to  be  closely  related  to  social 
phenomena.  We  neither  blame  nor  praise ;  we  are  indifferent  to  what 
this  or  that  authority  may  censure  or  approve.  We  are  simply  concerned 
with  what  exists  among  different  sections  of  speakers,  and  our  business  is 
to  record  faithfully  certain  habits  of  speech,  and  not  to  exhibit  our  own 
preferences. 

With  these  prefatory  remarks  we  may  begin  our  brief  catalogue  of 
curiosities,  and  we  thus  designate  them  not  because  of  any  inherent 
strangeness  or  eccentricity  in  the  words  themselves,  but  on  account  of 
the  curious  fact  that  what  are  normal  and  natural  elements  of  speech  in 
some  circles,  are  regarded  in  others  as  *  vulgar '  and  laughable. 

We  may  begin  with  what  have  been  called  '  shopwalker  words ',  such 
as  vest  for  waistcoat,  singlet  for  vest,  neckwear  for  ties,  footwear  for  boots 
and  shoes.  It  is  possible  that  some  regard  all  these  terms  as  graceful  and 
elegant  modes  of  expression,  far  superior  to  the  homelier  words  which 
they  displace.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  many  speakers  who  would 
as  soon  think  of  uttering  horrible  oaths  before  ladies,  as  of  using  such 
words  seriously.  Another  word,  less  '  shoppy '  and  technical  than  the 
above,  but  used  by  some  with  a  sense  of  refinement,  is  serviette  instead  of 
napkin,  whereas  others  hardly  know  the  word  and  would  be  slightly 
startled  if  one  of  their  friends  were  to  use  it.  A  very  curious  usage 
belongs  to  that  of  the  definite  article  before  the  names  of  complaints  and 
maladies.  The  same  speakers  who  might  say  '  the  influenza ',  '  the 
measles  ',  '  the  cholera ',  '  the  stomach-ache ',  '  the  scarlet  fever  ',  would 
never  dream  of  saying  '  the  bronchitis ', '  the  headache ', '  the  appendicitis ', 
'  the  cough ',  '  the  cold ',  '  the  kidney  disease  ',  while  they  might  omit  the 
article  altogether  before  the  entire  list  of  aches  and  ills  just  enumerated. 
The  use  of  the  definite  article  before  the  names  of  diseases,  &c.,  was 
formerly  the  fashion,  and  so  great  an  authority  on  social  propriety  as 
Lord  Chesterfield  said  '  the  head-ach  '.  Again,  other  speakers  would  use 
the  article  before  the  name  of  every  ill  to  which  human  flesh  is  heir.  A 
word  which  many  reprehended  when  the  present  writer  was  young  is  gentle- 
manly, gentlemanlike  being  considered  the  proper  word.  The  latter  is  now 
apparently  obsolescent  in  wide  circles  of  speakers,  and  the  former  has 
nearly  won  the  day.  The  censure  formerly  directed  against  gentlemanly 
arose  solely  from  the  feeling — right  or  wrong — that  it  belonged  to  the 
vocabulary  of  a  lower  social  stratum  and  was  therefore  a  vulgarism.  An 
interesting  reference  occurs  in  a  letter  of  Lord  Macaulay  of  May  28,  1831, 
in  which  he  records  that  Lady  Holland  objected  to  certain  words, 
saying — '  Then  there  is  talented,  influential,  and  gentlemanly.  I  never 


1 8  INTRODUCTORY 

could  break  Sheridan  of  saying  "gentlemanly  "  though  he  allowed  it  was 
wrong.'  (See  Life  and  Letters  of  Macaulay,  Popular  ed.,  pp.  150,  151.) 
Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the  discrete  and  restricted  use  of  the 
words  gentleman  and  lady  which  many  practise,  preferring  the  terms  man 
and  woman  in  referring  to  the  human  male  and  female.  On  the  other  hand, 
many  sections  of  the  population  now  give  to  the  former  words  an  appli- 
cation so  universal  that  more  fastidious  persons  regard  these  as  possessing 
distressing  associations.  Thus  many  would  put  quite  differently  the 
statement — '  The  party  consisted  only  of  my  wife  and  one  of  her  lady 
friends,  myself  and  another  gentleman/  A  certain  experience  and 
dexterity,  if  instinct  be  lacking,  are  required  in  the  use  of  the  two  words. 
If  it  were  necessary  to  attempt  to  formulate  the  general  tendencies 
which  have  been  discernible  in  Received  Standard  English  during  the 
last  three  centuries  and  a  half,  and  which  have  been  increasingly  potent 
during  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years,  we  should  name  two,  which  are 
to  some  extent  opposed,  but  both  of  which  are  attributable  to  social 
causes.  The  first  is  the  gradual  decay  of  ceremoniousness  and  formality 
which  has  overtaken  the  speech  and  modes  of  address,  no  less  than  the 
manners,  of  good  society.  The  second  is  the  effort — sometimes  conscious 
and  deliberate,  sometimes  unconscious — after  '  correctness  '  or  correcti- 
tude,  which,  on  the  one  hand,  has  almost  eliminated  the  use  of  oaths  and 
has  softened  away  many  coarsenesses  and  crudities  of  expression — as 
we  should  now  feel  them  to  be,  however  little  squeamish  we  may  be — 
while  on  the  other  it  has,  by  a  rigid  appeal  to  the  spelling — the  very  worst 
and  most  unreliable  court  for  the  purpose — definitely  ruled  out,  as 
1  incorrect '  or  '  slipshod '  or  '  vulgar ',  many  pronunciations  and  gram- 
matical constructions  which  had  arisen  in  the  natural  course  of  the 
development  of  English,  and  were  formerly  universal  among  the  best 
speakers.  Both  of  these  tendencies  are  due  primarily  to  the  social, 
political,  and  economic  events  in  our  history  which  have  resulted  in 
bringing  different  classes  of  the  population  into  positions  of  prominence 
and  power  in  the  State,  and  the  consequent  reduction  in  the  influence  of 
the  older  governing  classes.  Among  these  events,  which  we  can  only 
glance  at  here,  are  the  break-up  of  the  feudal  system,  which  upset  tempo- 
rarily the  old  social  conditions  and  relations ;  the  extinction  of  most  of  the 
ancient  baronial  families  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses ;  the  disendowment  of 
the  monasteries,  and  the  enriching  of  the  king's  tools  and  agents,  which 
produced  an  entirely  new  class  of  territorial  magnates  in  Henry  VIII's 
time ;  the  rise  of  the  great  merchants  in  the  towns  in  the  late  Middle  Ages, 
and  the  further  growth  of  this  class,  which  under  Henry  and  Elizabeth  pro- 
duced men  of  the  type  of  Gresham ;  the  Parliamentary  Wars  and  the  social 
upheaval  of  the  Protectorate ;  the  enormous  growth  of  commerce  and 
industry,  and  the  rise  of  banking  during  the  eighteenth  and  early  nine- 
teenth centuries;  and  especially,  perhaps,  the  development  of  s*eam  in 
manufactures,  and  the  building  of  railways.  By  these  means  many  families, 
in  the  course  of  two  generations,  passed  from  the  shop,  the  hand-loom,  the 
plough-tail,  or  from  trundling  the  wheelbarrow,  into  the  great  land-owning 
classes,  and  became  endowed  with  political  influence  and  even,  occasion- 
ally, with  political  insight,  one  or  both  of  which  often  rapidly  led  them  to  the 
peerage.  In  quite  recent  times  the  judicious  exploitation  of  the  gold 


SOCIAL   CHANGES   AND   LINGUISTIC    HISTORY       19 

and  diamonds  of  South  Africa  has  brought  men  from  the  meanest 
fortunes  to  great  wealth,  and  therefore  to  positions  of  social  prestige, 
within  a  few  years.  Such  are  a  few  of  the  factors  which  have  brought 
about  a  continual  recruitment  of  the  upper  classes  from  below — often 
from  the  very  depths.  We  may  add  to  these  the  growth  of  educational 
facilities — very  much  enhanced  of  late  years — which  increasingly  through- 
out the  last  few  centuries  have  enabled  the  young  man  of  talent  to  carve 
for  himself  a  way  to  fortune  and  importance,  and  to  reach  positions 
where  he  could  be  useful  to  the  State  or  to  the  Church.  While  the 
skeleton  of  the  fabric  of  English  society  has  remained  the  same  since  the 
break-up  of  the  feudal  system,  the  actual  human  elements  in  every  section 
are  being  continually  modified.  Applied  to  the  time  of  Edward  IV  such 
phrases  as  '  baronial  class ',  or  Tenants  in  Chief,  imply  generally,  the 
descendants  of  the  companions  of  the  Conqueror.  We  still  have  a 
baronial  class,  but  its  members  are  not  all  the  sons  of  these  men. 
Every  class  is  for  ever  being  renewed  from  below,  and  though  the 
old  labels  remain,  they  have  largely  lost  their  significance. 

These  social  changes  have  inevitably  brought  with  them  corresponding 
changes  in  manners  and  in  speech.  It  may  be  said  that  the  new  arrivals 
within  each  social  group  would  assimilate  the  speech  and  manners  of 
those  among  whom  they  came,  and  this  is  no  doubt  largely  true,  but  the 
speech  and  habits  of  a  lifetime  are  not  changed  in  a  moment,  as  a  vesture. 
Much  of  the  old  remains,  and  slowly  and  imperceptibly  the  new-comers 
react  upon  their  environment,  almost  as  much  as  they  are  influenced  by 
it.  Thus,  for  instance,  it  is  suggested  that  the  Middle  Class  Puritan  ideals 
have  gradually  brought  about  a  greater  reticence  of  expression  and  a  more 
temperate  use  of  expletives,  and  also  a  greater  simplicity  of  manners, 
from  which  many  of  the  airs  and  graces  of  the  older  order  were  eliminated. 
Again,  a  highly  cultivated  and  intellectual  section  of  the  Middle  Class 
have  played  a  prominent  part  in  Church  and  State  since  the  time  of 
Elizabeth.  We  see,  under  that  monarch,  a  generation  of  courtiers,  states- 
men, and  prelates,  who  were  also  scholars,  and  even  some  who,  like 
Sir  Thomas  Smith,  were  educational  reformers  and  writers  upon  language, 
as  well  as  statesmen.  The  influence  of  these  learned  courtiers  would  be 
in  the  direction  of  correctness  and  elegance  of  utterance,  in  opposition  to 
the  more  careless  and  unstudied  speech  of  the  mere  man  of  fashion.  It  is 
not  forgotten  that  the  English  aristocracy  of  the  older  kind  has  always  pro- 
duced from  time  to  time  its  Surreys,  Sidneys,  and  Sackvilles.  There  can  be 
no  better  conditions  for  the  formation  of  colloquial  speech  than  a  society  in 
which  the  graces  and  lightness  of  the  courtier  are  united  to  the  good  taste 
and  sound  knowledge  of  the  scholar.  From  such  a  circle  we  might 
expect  a  mode  of  speech  as  far  removed  from  the  mere  frivolities  ot 
fashion,  the  careless  and  half-incoherent  babble  of  the  fop,  as  from  the 
tedious  preciousness  of  the  pedant,  or  the  lumbering  and  uncouth  utterance 
of  the  boor.  Such  a  speech  would  be  worthy  to  become  the  common 
standard  of  a  great  people,  and  the  conditions  under  which  it  could  arise 
existed,  if  anywhere,  at  the  Court  of  Elizabeth.  Lord  Chesterfield,  with 
his  usual  sound  sense,  remarks  in  one  of  his  letters :  ^  The  common 
people  of  every  country  speak  their  own  language  very  ill ;  the  people  of 
fashion  (as  they  are  called)  speak  it  better,  but  not  always  correctly, 

C  2 


20  INTRODUCTORY 

because  they  are  not  always  people  of  letters.  Those  who  speak  their 
own  language  the  most  accurately  are  those  who  have  learning  and  are  at 
the  same  time  in  the  polite  world  ;  at  least  their  language  will  be  reckoned 
the  standard  of  the  language  of  that  country '  (Letter  103). 

We  have  described  one  kind  of  result,  of  the  mingling  of  classes,  upon 
English  manners  and  speech,  but  there  is  another  which  is  less  happy 
in  its  manifestations.  It  is  one  thing  to  bring  naturalness  to  the  manners 
of  an  age  which  has  too  many  artificial  airs  and  graces,  by  introducing  an 
honest,  independent  simplicity  of  bearing;  it  is  quite  another  thing  to 
supplant  a  gay  geniality,  or  a  courtly  and  gracious  ceremoniousness,  by  a 
loutish  awkwardness  which  springs  from  an  ignorance  of  how  to  behave, 
by  a  blatant  and  vulgar  familiarity  of  address  which  knows  no  discrimina- 
tion, or  by  a  stiff-backed  pomposity  that  ill  conceals  an  uneasy  self- 
conceit.  These  things  neither  attach  nor  charm. 

Similarly,  in  the  matter  of  speech,  it  is  good  to  contribute  a  nice  and 
accurate  sense  in  the  use  of  words,  a  clearness  and  precision  of  construc- 
tion, a  definite  and  unambiguous  enunciation,  when  all  these  are  com- 
bined with  the  ease,  the  lightness,  the  swiftness,  and  the  complete  absence 
of  deliberately  studied  utterance  which  are  the  essentials  of  civilized 
colloquial  speech. 

It  is  quite  another  thing  to  be  so  haunted  by  the  fear  of  not  being 
'  correct '  as  to  attempt  an  over-precise  pronunciation — based  for  the  most 
part  upon  the  supposed  force  of  the  spelling — which  departs  so  far  from 
established  usage  as  to  suggest  that  the  speaker  is  ignorant  of  this ;  to 
adopt  words  and  locutions  derived  from  books  and  in  their  place  there, 
but  unusual  and  misplaced  in  colloquial  English;  to  aim  at  a  sham 
refinement  in  pronunciation  and  vocabulary,  to  shun  what  is  familial- 
through  fear  of  being  vulgar — in  a  word  to  be  either  artificial  or  pedantic. 

Such  are  among  the  chief  vices  of  Middle  Class  English  at  the  present 
time,  and  such  they  have  always  been.  These  traits  at  first  strike  speakers 
who  are  unaccustomed  to  them  as  ridiculous  and  vulgar,  but  by  force  of 
habit,  many  of  them  gain,  first  tolerance,  and  then  even  acceptance, 
and  the  history  of  English,  during  the  last  couple  of  centuries  at  any  rate, 
shows  that  many  of  these  features  have  been  imposed  upon  Received 
Standard  and  have  taken  the  place  of  the  old  traditional  forms,  while 
others  are  in  process  of  becoming  accepted  despite  the  contempt  of  the 
older  generation.  This  is  perhaps  the  natural  result  of  the  shifting 
standards  of  taste,  manners,  and  speech  which  were  inseparable  from  the 
social  movements  referred  to.  It  is  significant  that  while  the  Middle 
Classes  used  to  insist  upon  being  'genteel ',  the  very  word  has  now  fallen 
into  disrepute,  and  is  held  to  express  a  false  ideal  of  breeding,  a  bogus 
refinement,  far  more  vulgar  than  downright  coarseness. 

We  may  illustrate,  in  passing,  the  decay  of  ceremoniousness  as  exhibited 
in  language,  in  the  modes  of  address.  It  is  certain  that  the  plays,  novels,  as 
well  as  the  private  letters,  diaries,  and  memoirs  of  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, and  eighteenth  centuries  reveal  a  state  of  manners  and  address 
among  the  superior  classes  far  more  stately  and  elaborate  than  anything 
that  now  obtains ;  even  Miss  Austen's  novels  occasionally  exhibit  a  style  of 
colloquial  English  which  would  now  be  felt  as  stilted  and  high-flown. 

Taking  the  mode  of  addressing  and  referring  to  people,  whether  in 


CEREMONIOUSNESS   OF  ADDRESS  21 

conversation  or  in  letters,  we  need  only  consider  here  the  use  of  Sir 
and  Madam,  My  Lord,  My  Lady,  Your  Lordship,  and  so  on. 

How  many  sons  and  daughters  would  now  use  any  of  these  forms  to 
their  parents?  We  may  say  that  among  persons  who,  without  being 
intimate,  meet  or  correspond  on  terms  of  anything  like  equality,  and  still 
more  so  among  relations  and  intimate  friends,  all  these  modes  of  address 
are  obsolete  in  private  life,  and  survive  only  in  formal  letters  to  strangers, 
or,  in  uttered  speech,  only  from  the  public  platform,  in  courts  of  justice, 
and  upon  official  ceremonial  occasions. 

How  different  was  the  custom  in  the  eighteenth  century  may  be 
gathered  from  one  of  Lord  Chesterfield's  letters,  in  which  he  says — '  It  is 
extremely  rude  to  answer  only  Yes  or  No  to  anybody,  without  adding  Sir, 
My  Lord,  Madam,  according  to  the  quality  of  the  person  you  speak  to.' 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  writing  to  her  intimate  friend  Lady 
Bristol,  makes  constant  use  of  polite  formulas — '  You'll  wonder,  Madam,' 
&c.,  '  I  received  your  Ladyship's  letter ' ;  to  Lady  Rich  she  writes 
'  I  have  just  received  at  Vienna  your  Ladyship's  compliments ' ;  again — 
*  you  see,  Madam/  and  so  on.  Lady  Lucy  Wentworth,  writing  as  a  child, 
in  1739,  to  her  'Dear  Papa',  Lord  StrafFord,  signs  herself  'Your  Lord- 
ship's most  dutifull  and  most  affectionet  daughter ',  and  adds  a  postscript, 
referring  to  her  sister — '  Lady  Hariot  beggs  her  duty  to  your  Lordship/ 
Such  graces  of  address  have  vanished  from  the  friendly  intercourse  of 
intimates  and  relations,  apparently  with  the  triumph  of  '  the  genteel  thing ', 
and  it  can  hardly  be  temerarious  to  connect  the  modern  off-hand  style, 
and  the  decline  in  the  external  forms  of  politeness,  which  has  been  going 
on  for  a  hundred  years  or  more,  with  the  rapid  rise  of  a  wealthy 
bourgeoisie  and  industrial  class,  who  were  perhaps  inclined  to  attach 
too  little  value  to  externals.  The  social  movements  which  have  so 
profoundly  affected  Received  Standard  English,  have  changed  it  also 
in  that  aspect  which  is  the  outward  expression  of  manners,  and  nowadays 
an  off-hand  informality  and  familiarity  of  address  are  considered  a  part 
of  the  natural  and  inevitable  equipment  of  good  breeding.  No  part  of 
a  language  is  perhaps  more  difficult  for  a  stranger  to  acquire,  and  to 
apply  with  propriety,  than  the  polite  formulas  which  are  current  at 
a  given  moment  in  a  particular  society ;  nothing  in  speech  is  more  inti- 
mately related  than  these  to  the  social,  moral,  and  cultural  state  of  which 
language  is  the  most  vital  expression. 

With  regard  to  the  second  tendency,  that — at  its  best — towards  greater 
decorum  and  less  crudity  in  expression,  or — in  its  less  admirable  light — 
towards  '  gentility ',  sham  refinement,  and  a  mincing  utterance,  it  has 
already  been  said  that  the  Middle  Class  has  so  far  won  the  day,  for 
good  or  for  ill,  that  that  outspokenness  which  characterized  the  familiar 
speech  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  has  been  considerably 
toned  down.  While  among  both  the  upper  and  the  lower  classes,  as 
distinct  from  those  which  intervene,  a  freedom  and  frankness  of  thought 
and  expression  have  always  prevailed  which  differ  widely  from  what  the 
author  of  The  Decay  in  the  Art  of  Lying  called  'the  kind  of  conversation 
that  goes  on  at  a  meat-tea  in  the  house  of  a  serious  non-conformist 
family ',  it  would  be  easy  to  cull  from  the  plays  and  letters  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  words  and  expressions  placed  in  the 


22  INTRODUCTORY 

mouths  of  well-bred  ladies,  or  coming  naturally  from  their  pen  in  corre- 
spondence, which  women  of  equal  breeding  nowadays  would  consider 
coarse  and  indelicate.  Not  many  women  at  the  present  time  would 
write — if  they  could — some  of  the  poems  of  Lady  Mary  Montagu.  We 
may  take  examples  almost  at  random  from  the  dramatists.  '  I  wonder, 
Sir  Francis/  says  Lady  Heartfree  in  Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London — '  I 
wonder  you  will  allow  the  lad  to  swill  his  guts  with  such  beastly  lubberly 
liquour.'  If  the  genuineness  of  this  as  a  picture  of  the  speech  of  a  '  woman 
of  quality '  in  the  late  seventeenth  or  early  eighteenth  century  be  doubted, 
we  have  ample  confirmation  in  the  Wentworth  Papers  of  the  first  third  of 
the  latter  century.  '  My  father  is  laid  up  with  the  gout ; '  writes  young 
Lady  Strafford,  '  I  believe  I  shall  jumble  my  guts  out  between  this  and 
Russell  Street,  for  since  my  father  has  been  ill,  I  have  gon  every  day.' 
Again,  the  same  lady  says,  speaking  of  the  abode  of  Prince  Eugene  in 
London — '  I  wonder  Mons.  Marshall  can  talk  of  his  great  liveing  here, 
for  they  had  a  very  indifferent  lodging  in  St.  James  Street,  and  the  house 
was  keept  the  nastiest  I  ever  see  a  house,  and  used  to  stink  of  you* 
favorite  dish  onions,  ready  to  kill  me/  This  is  not  elegant  diction 
according  to  our  present  views,  and  few  great  ladies  would  now  speak 
or  write  thus.  (See  further  examples  in  Chap.  X.) 

Still  more  remote  is  all  this  from  the  speech  of  a  bourgeoisie  which,  if 
it  cannot  aspire  to  the  fine  manners  of  its  betters,  dare  not  cultivate  their 
freedom  of  expression,  as  it  is  not  always  sure  of  being  able  to  distinguish 
true  refinement  from  mere  sque^mishmess.  People  who  are  anxious 
above  all  to  be  '  genteel '  dare  not  run  risks  or  play  pranks  in  conversa- 
tion. A  very  shrewd  hit  at  the  flimsy  sham  refinement,  which  was  current 
already  in  the  eighteenth  century,  is  made  by  Goldsmith  in  the  immortal 
dialogue  of  the  alehouse  revellers  in  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  and  the  satire 
is  all  the  more  telling  and  laughable  by  reason  of  the  incongruity  of  the 
fine  sentiments  expressed,  and  the  vulgarity  of  the  language  in  which 
they  are  couched. 

Squire  Lumpkin  has  just  sung  the  stirring  ballad  of  '  The  Three  Jolly 
Pigeons ',  which  is  greeted  with  great  enthusiasm.  When  this  has  subsided 
the  following  comments  are  made  by  those  present : 

'I  loves  to  hear  him  sink,  bekeays  he  never  gives  us  nothing  that's 
low. — 

'O  damn  anything  that's  low,  I  cannot  bear  it— 

'  The  genteel  thing  is  the  genteel  thing  any  time :  if  so  be  that  a  gentle- 
man is  in  a  concatenation  accordingly. — 

I  like  the  maxum  of  it  master  Muggins.  What  though  I  am  obligated 
to  dance  a  bear,  a  man  may  be  a  gentleman  for  all  that  May  this  poison 
me  if  my  bear  ever  dances  but  to  the  very  genteelest  tunes :  "  Water 
Parted",  or  "The  minuet  in  Ariadne".' 

'  The  genteel  thing  is  the  genteel  thing '— '  Damn  anything  that 's  low  '— 
there  is  the  whole  gospel  of  a  certain  class  of  speakers.  It  may  be  put 
into  any  terms  you  please,  but  the  sentiment  is  the  same.  The  difficulty 
for  them  is  just  this,  to  be  quite  sure  what  is  '  genteel '  and  what  is  '  low '. 

Shakespeare  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Hotspur,  in  Henry  IV,  a  protest 
against  a  particular  form  of  'gentility'  which  has  completely  triumphed 
in  our  day,  namely,  the  use  of  mild  expressions  of  asseveration  instead  of 


THE   'GENTEEL   THING'  23 

oaths  of  a  more  lurid  character.  While  the  following  is  directed  specific- 
ally at  the  bourgeois  habit  of  avoiding  strong  expressions  of  a  particular 
kind,  its  wider  applicability  to  mincing  and  over-niceness  in  general  can 
hardly  be  doubted. 

(The  text  and  spelling  are  those  of  the  First  Folio.) 

Hotspur.    Come  He  haue  your  song  too. 
Lady.    Not  mine  in  good  sooth. 

Hotspur.    Not  yours  in  good  sooth  ? 

You  sweare  like  a  Comfit-makers  Wife: 

Not  yours  in  good  sooth ;   and,  as  true  as  I  Hue ; 

And,  as  God  shall  mend  me ;  and,  as  sure  as  day : 

And  giuest  such  Sarcenet-suretie  Oathes, 

As  if  thou  neuer  walk'st  further  then  Finsbury. 

Sweare  me,  Kate,  like  a  Lady  as  thou  art, 

A  good  mouth-filling  Oath:   and  leaue  in  sooth, 

And  such  protest  of  Pepper  Ginger-bread, 

To  veluet- Guards,  and  Sunday-Citizens. 

Act  in,  sc.  i. 

*  Like  a  Comfit-maker's  Wife ' !  '  Sunday-Citizens ' ;  there  is  the  whole 
matter  in  a  nutshell.  '  Swear  me  like  a  Lady  as  thou  art — a  good  mouth- 
filling  oath' — a  very  different  school  of  manners  this  from  that  which 
demands  '  the  genteel  thing '.  We  shall  return  later  to  the  subject  of 
fashionable  oaths  and  expletives,  the  use  and  character  of  which  varies 
from  age  to  age,  and  to  some  extent  from  individual  to  individual. 

We  may  note  here,  by  way  of  contrast  with  the  above,  that  that  very 
great  gentleman  Lord  Chesterfield,  while  admitting  that  '  you  may  some- 
times hear  some  people,  in  good  company,  interlard  their  discourse  with 
oaths,  by  way  of  embellishment,  as  they  think ',  adds — '  but  you  must 
observe,  too,  that  those  who  do  so  are  never  those  who  contribute,  in  any 
degree,  to  give  that  company  the  denomination  of  good  company.  They 
are  always  subalterns,  or  people  of  low  education ;  for  that  practice, 
besides  that  it  has  no  one  temptation  to  plead,  is  as  silly,  and  as  illiberal, 
as  it  is  wicked'  (Letter  166). 

This  pronouncement  is  at  the  other  extreme  from  that  of  Hotspur. 
It  has  a  certain  historical  interest  both  on  account  of  its  author  and  of  the 
date  at  which  it  was  written — 1748.  Even  allowing  for  the  century  and 
a  quarter  since  Shakespeare,  and  the  undoubted  reaction  in  speech  and 
manners  from  the  licence  of  the  Restoration,  there  are  reasons  for  thinking 
that  Lord  Chesterfield,  in  this  particular  respect,  was  decidedly  ahead  of 
the  society — or,  as  he  would  have  said,  the  '  company  ' — in  which  he  lived. 

One  of  the  greatest  charms  of  the  historical  study  of  a  language  lies 
in  the  picture  which  it  exhibits  of  the  kaleidoscopic  changes  in  the 
standards  of  taste  which  prevail  in  civilized  society  from  age  to  age. 
Rightly  interpreted,  language  is  a  mirror  of  the  minds  and  manners  of 
those  who  speak  it.  It  is  at  this  point,  perhaps,  that  the  two  studies  of 
'  language ',  in  the  technical  sense  in  which  universities  are  apt  to  use 
the  term,  and  '  literature '  seem  most  to  meet  and  merge,  so  much  so 
that  for  a  moment  the  interests  appear  one  and  the  same.  And  yet,  in 
general,  the  aims,  methods,  and  point  of  view  of  the  pure  philologist  are 
so  different  from  those  of  the  pure  student  of  literature,  that  a  foolish  and 


24  INTRODUCTORY 

mischievous  belief  has  arisen  that  these  two  great  studies  are  in  hostile 
opposition  to  each  other.  This  view  naturally  finds  most  adherents 
among  those  who  know  least,  or  at  any  rate  understand  least,  of  either 
Literature  or  Philology.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  there  is  a  conception  of 
literature  which  seems  remote  from  all  human  life  and  activity,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  such  a  conception,  or  the  kind  of  study  which  is 
naturally  based  upon  it,  can  appeal  to,  or  interest  any  healthy  and  normal 
mind.  It  is  unfortunately  also  true  that  there  is  an  equally  dismal  and 
sinister  hobgoblin  which  masquerades  under  the  title  of  English  Philology, 
and  from  this  bogey,  '  holy  souls '  at  all  times  recoil  with  loathing  and 
abhorrence.  These  two  monsters,  sham  '  Literature  '  and  dead  '  Philo- 
logy ',  may  well  be  opposed  to  each  other — very  likely  they  are — but  then 
they  are  equally  unrelated  to,  and  out  of  touch  with,  everything  else  in 
the  world  of  realities,  except  the  dreary  minds  which  have  conjured  them 
up,  and  find  therein  a  melancholy  pleasure. 

The  invitation  which  a  student  of  the  history  of  a  language  utters  to 
the  companions  of  his  voyage  of  discovery  should  be  : 

'Together  let  us  beat  this  ample  field, 
Try  what  the  open,  what  the  covert  yield ; 
The  latent  tracts,  the  giddy  heights  explore, 
Of  all  who  blindly  creep,  or  sightless  soar ; 
Eye  nature's  walks,  shoot  folly  as  it  flies, 
And  catch  the  manners  living  as  they  rise/ 

This  is  a  terribly  high  ideal  to  aim  at,  and  one  most  difficult  of  attain- 
ment, but  it  is  the  true  one.  It  means  that  the  study  of  language  is  one 
line  of  approach  to  the  knowledge  of  Man,  and  that  fact  is  one  we  must 
never  lose  sight  of. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that,  even  in  a  more  or  less  light-hearted  study 
such  as  the  present  work,  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  dry  detail  to  be 
gone  through,  which  many  may  find  very  dull.  But  let  these  believe 
that  *  even  the  weariest  river  winds  somewhere  safe  to  sea ',  and  that  the 
1  horrible  pit,  the  mire  and  clay ',  through  which  for  a  time  they  must  pass, 
is  only  as  a  Wilderness  in  which  they  wander  awhile — not  for  forty 
years — but  which  leads  to  the  promised  land,  '  a  good  land  and  a  large, 
a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey '.  This  is  the  reward  of  a  first-hand 
study  of  the  subject  itself.  It  is  not  always  given  to  those  who  merely 
read  books  written  about  it. 

To  'catch  the  manners  living  as  they  rise'  is  not  easy  when  we 
attempt  to  do  so  through  the  language  of  generations  which  are  dead 
and  gone.  Language  as  a  whole,  in  all  its  aspects,  its  words  and  idioms, 
its  coarseness  and  reticences,  its  pronunciation,  and  the  very  tones  of 
voice,  language  in  its  completeness,  is  the  most  perfect  mirror  of  the 
manners  of  the  age.  But  how  difficult  to  call  up  all  this  from  the  printed 
page,  how  more  than  difficult  to  convey  to  others  some  impression  of 
those  fragments  which  it  may  have  been  our  good  fortune  to  discover. 

As  we  steep  ourselves  in  the  English  of  successive  ages,  we  may  gradu- 
ally gain  a  sense  of  the  spirit  and  genius  of  each,  and  feel  the  slow,  almost 
imperceptible  change  which  creeps  on  from  age  to  age.  Wherein  pre- 
cisely do  the  peculiar  spirit  and  genius  of  each  generation  consist  ?  We 


IDEALS  OF  LINGUISTIC   STUDY  25 

may  set  forth  the  vocabulary,  the  turns  of  phrase,  the  cliches  in  vogue  ; 
\ve  may  give  an  account  of  the  inflexions,  and  describe  the  pronunciation 
of  each  period ;  but  in  none  of  these  things  severally  or  combined  does  the 
genius  of  the  age  completely  reside.  Of  course,  it  is  too  subtle  for  our 
analysis,  and  if  we  can  dimly  perceive  it,  we  cannot,  so  to  speak,  decant 
it,  and  say  '  here  it  is  for  all  to  taste '.  All  we  can  do  is  to  select  some  of 
the  most  obvious  and  least  subtle  aspects  of  language,  the  mere  husks  which 
contain  part  of  the  vital  principle,  and  attempt  to  bring  them  before  the 
reader. 


CHAPTER   II 

DIALECT  TYPES  IN  MIDDLE  ENGLISH,  AND  THEIR 
SURVIVAL  IN  THE  MODERN  PERIOD 

ALTHOUGH  this  book  is  concerned  primarily  with  Modern  English,  and 
more  particularly  with  the  colloquial  forms  of  speech,  it  is  necessary  to 
the  intelligibility  of  the  rather  complex  questions  arising  out  of  the  com- 
posite character  at  once  of  Modern  Literary  English,  and  of  Received 
Spoken  English,  to  take  a  preliminary  survey  of  the  main  types  of  English 
which  were  spoken  and  written  prior  to  the  establishment  of  one  of  these 
as  the  sole  medium  of  literary  expression,  and  the  recognition  of  the  same 
type  as  the  Received  Standard  of  the  Spoken  Language. 

And  first  it  is  desirable  to  understand  what  we  mean  by  the  chrono- 
logical labels  which,  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  we  attach  to  the  lan- 
guage of  different  periods.  When  we  speak  of  Old,  Middle,  and  Modern 
periods,  we  must  not  be  understood  to  imply  that  each  of  these  has  a 
perfectly  clear-cut  boundary  which  demarcates  the  English  of  each  from 
that  which  goes  before,  and  that  which  follows.  Such  sharp  divisions  do 
not  occur  in  the  history  of  a  language. 

Language  is  always  changing,  always  in  process  of  becoming  different 
from  what  it  was  before.  Just  as  the  succeeding  generations  of  mankind 
overlap,  so  that  at  any  given  moment  there  may  exist,  side  by  side,  the 
old,  the  middle-aged,  and  the  young,  so  do  the  characteristic  features  in 
the  speech  of  each  generation  overlap  and  intermingle.  Thus,  at  any 
given  moment,  we  have  the  speech  of  the  mature  and  effective  generation, 
the  central  type  which  represents  the  average  for  the  time  being ;  but 
there  is  also  heard  the  old  generation  which  is  passing  away  ;  and,  further, 
that  of  the  rising  youth  who  hold  the  promise  of  the  future.  There  are 
no  sudden  breaks  with  the  old  tradition,  but  a  gradual,  continuous,  and 
unperceived  passage  from  what  was  to  what  is,  and  yet  again  foreshadow- 
ings  of  what  is  to  be.  We  speak  habitually  of,  periods  of  Transition,  as 
wheji  the  English  of  the  twelfth  century  is  called  First  Transition,  that  is 
from  Old  to  Middle  English,  or  when  that  of  the  fifteenth  is  thought  of  as  the 
transition  from  Middle  to  Modern  English.  But  in  reality  each  period  is 
one  of  transition,  and  if,  in  looking  into  the  language  of  the  past,  we  seem 
at  times  to  get  an  impression  of  an  abrupt  and  sudden  change,  it  is 
because  our  record  is  imperfect,  and  our  analysis  not  subtle  enough,  so 
that  the  sense  of  gradual  development  is  lost. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  more  minutely  we  study  the  documents  from 
which  our  knowledge  of  the  history  of  English  is  gained,  the  greater 
becomes  our  feeling  of  continuous  development,  and,  consequently,  the 
more  reluctant  are  we  to  chop  English  up  into  periods,  and  affix  labels  to 


CHRONOLOGICAL  DIVISIONS  27 

each.  It  should  be  understood  that  whatever  test  we  may  take  in  decid- 
ing such  a  question  as — when  does  the  Modern  period  of  English  begin, 
and  the  Middle  English  period  end  ?  and  however  we  may  answer  the 
question,  there  is  always  this  mental  reserve,  that,  so  far  as  our  available 
evidence  goes,  this  or  that  feature,  which  we  choose  to  take  as  characteristic 
of  Modern  English,  is  not  proved  from  the  written  documents  to  have 
existed  before  such  and  such  a  date.  That  it  may  have  existed  in  actual 
speech  much  earlier,  no  sane  person  will  deny ;  that  it  must  have  existed 
some  time  before  it  was  sufficiently  recognized  to  be  recorded  by  the 
scribes,  is  certain. 

Bearing  these  considerations  in  mind  we  shall  realize  that  the  chrono- 
logical divisions  which  it  is  convenient,  and  indeed  essential,  to  make 
are  merely  rough  approximations  to  the  actual  fact.  We  may  make 
such  a  rough-and-ready  division  as  the  following :  Old  English, 
from  the  earliest  period  down  to  about  1150;  Middle  English,  which 
we  may  further  subdivide  into  the  Early,  Central,  and  Late  periods,  from 
1150  or  so  down  to  about  1400;  Modern  English,  from  the  early 
fifteenth  century  to  the  present  day.  We  should  further  distinguish  Early 
Modern,  from  1 400  or  so  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  ;  and 
after  that  it  is  often  convenient  to  distinguish  late  sixteenth-century,  seven- 
teenth-century, eighteenth-century  English,  and  in  the  same  rough  way 
we  may  consider  Present-day  English  to  begin  towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

It  is  proposed  to  give,  as  briefly  as  possible,  an  account  of  the  main 
characteristics  of  those  dialectal  types  which  are  represented  in  varying 
degrees  in  the  London  English  of  the  fourteenth  century,  more  especially 
the  language  of  Chaucer.  We  shall  then  examine  the  leading  features  of 
fourteenth-century  London  English,  emphasizing  the  different  Regional 
constituents  of  this  dialect. 

The  Middle  English  Dialects. 

Considering  the  speech  of  England  as  a  whole,  from  the  twelfth  to  the 
fourteenth  centuries  inclusive,  we  are  able  to  distinguish  four  main  types, 
clearly  separated  from  each  other  by  different  treatment  of  the  older 
system  of  vowel  sounds,  and  by  different  developments  in  the  accidence, 
principally  in  connexion  with  the  inflexion  of  verbs  and  pronouns. 

The  roughest  and  most  general  classification  of  the  M.E.  dialects  is 
into  Northern — including  the  speech  of  the  Scottish  Lowlands — Midland, 
South- Western,  and  South-Eastern,  of  which  the  Kentish  dialect  is  the  most 
marked  and  best  represented  in  written  documents.  Midland  may  be 
further  divided  into  East  and  West  Midland,  and  each  of  these  again 
varies  in  the  northern  and  more  southerly  areas.  The  Southern  group  of 
dialects,  while  they  all  possess  certain  characteristics  in  common,  are 
divided  by  definitely  marked  features  according  to  their  easterly  or 
westerly  situation,  and  we  should  further  distinguish  the  central  Southern 
dialects  of  Berkshire  and  Hampshire.  The  speech  of  the  latter  county, 
about  which  we  know  something  in  the  M.E.  period,  shows  on  the  whole 
the  features  of  the  west,  but  shares  with  the  more  easterly  areas  certain 
characteristics  not  possessed  by  the  former.  The  dialects  of  Hereford- 


28  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

shire,  Worcestershire,  Shropshire,  and  Oxfordshire  seem  to  have  been 
mainly  Southern  in  character,  but  to  have  had  also  certain  traits  which  we 
generally  associate  with  Midland.  This  group  is  best  regarded  as  South- 
West  Midland. 

The  most  important  dialects  for  our  present  purpose — the  making  of 
Standard  English— are  those  of  the  South  (Central  and  Western),  the 
South-Eastern  (Kent  and  Essex),  and  the  East  Midland,  especially  the 
southern  parts  of  this  area — Suffolk  and  Norfolk.  The  Northern  dialects 
have  had  very  little  direct  influence  upon  Standard  English,  and  those  of 
the  West  Midlands  still  less. 

(A  list  of  some  representative  M,E.  texts,  arranged  according  to 
dialect,  will  be  found  in  the  Bibliography,  p.  61.) 

A  few  words  are  necessary  concerning  the  pronunciation  of  M.E.  It 
must  ever  be  borne  in  mind  that  we  are  dealing  primarily  with  sounds 
and  not  with  letters.  The  Old  English  system  of  expressing  vowel  sounds 
was  considerably  modified  by  the  Norman  scribes.  Sometimes  sounds 
which  had  undergone  little  or  no  change  since  the  O.E.  period  were 
expressed  by  a  different  spelling  in  M.E.  Other  sounds  which  had 
changed  considerably  were  still  written  in  the  same  way.  Finally,  some 
sounds  which  had  come  to  be  pronounced  quite  differently  were  gradually 
expressed  by  a  new  spelling,  which  shows  that  a  change  has  taken  place 
in  the  pronunciation. 

M.E.  spelling,  though  used  according  to  method  and  custom,  is  not  by 
any  means  perfectly  consistent.  It  is  to  a  certain  extent  phonetic,  in 
that  there  is  often  a  genuine  attempt  to  express  the  sound  as  accurately 
as  possible,  but  scribal  custom  soon  hardens,  and  we  must  not  expect  to 
find  minute  shades  of  sound  carefully  distinguished.  On  the  other  hand, 
occasional  lapses  of  the  scribes  from  fixed  habit  may  give  us  a  valuable 
revelation  of  a  change  of  sound.  We  may  lay  it  down  as  a  general 
principle  that  the  alphabet  as  used  by  M.E.  writers  has  what  is  called  the 
1  continental  values ' — that  is,  the  letter  a  (in  the  South  and  Midlands) 
represents  roughly  the  same  sound  as  in  Italian  or  French,  long  or  short 
as  the  case  may  be  ;  e  represents  either  the  sound  of  e  in  French  de',  or 
that  in  bete  ;  /  represents  the  vowel  in  French  vite ;  o  sometimes  the  vowel 
in  French  beau,  sometimes  approximately  that  in  French  corps ;  //  never 
by  any  chance  stands  for  the  vowel  in  the  Mod.  Eng.  tune,  nor  for  that  in 
English  but,  but  either  for  the  vowel  in  Mod.  French  lune,  but,  &c.,  or  for  the 
long  vowel  in  Mod.  Eng.  spoon.  This  latter  sound  is  more  often  written 
ou  after  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  according  to  the  French 
habit.  As  a  rule  such  combinations  as  eu,  et,  at,  au,  and  sometimes  ou, 
represent  real  diphthongs,  that  is  two  distinct  vowel  sounds,  those  which  the 
letters  of  the  combinations  severally  express. 

Length  of  vowel  is  often  expressed  by  doubling  the  symbol,  as  goode, 
saaf,  and,  by  a  few  scribes,  by  marking  the  length  above  the  letter.  In 
this  book  long  vowels  in  Old  and  Middle  English  words  will  always  be 
marked  in  the  usual  way — a,  J,  &c. 

As  regards  consonantal  symbols,  #and>,  both  inherited  from  O.E.,  repre- 
sent indifferently  the  lth  '-sound  in  Mis  or  that  in  Mink  ;  u  and  v  are  used 
indifferently  for  the  '  v  '-sound ;  ght  h,  and  sometimes  g,  represent  either 
the  sound  of  ch  in  German  ach,  or  that  in  ich ;  3,  a  modification  of  an  O.E. 


THE   VOWELS   IN   EAST   MIDLAND  29 

letter,  generally  stands  for  the  sound  of^>  in  yacht,  but  in  many  texts  in  the 
fourteenth  century  y  is  used  for  this  sound ;  r  is  to  be  pronounced  pretty 
much  as  in  present-day  Scotch  wherever  it  is  written ;  wh  represents  the 
sound  of  voiceless  w,  as  in  the  Scotch  pronunciation  of  which,  white,  &c. 

We  now  proceed  to  indicate  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  various 
M.E.  dialects  both  as  regards  sounds  and  accidence. 


East  Midland. 

1.  O.E.  x  becomes  «,  or  when  lengthened,  a  : — Q.JL.g/xd,  M.TL.glad, 
O.E,    sxt,  M.E.   sat,   &c. ;    lengthened  in  :— O.E.  /xd-er,  M.E.  fader 
'father'. 

2.  O.E.  de  becomes,  according  to  its  origin,  either  [e]  with  sound  of 
Mod.  French  ete,  or  [e]  with  sound  of  Mod.  Fr.  bete.     The  former  occurs 
in  M.E.  seed,  side;  O.E.  sxd  'seed',  the  latter  in  M.E.  tcchen,  teachen, 
O.E.  tdecan  i  teach '. 

Note.  The  O.E.  symbol  de  represented  the  same  vowel  as  the  Mod.  Eng. 
sound  in  hat,  mad,  &c.  It  occurred  in  O.E.  both  long  and  short. 

The  O.E.  long  de,  had  two  distinct  origins,  (a)  x  represents  a  Primitive 
O.E.  vowel  of  very  frequent  occurrence.  This  vowel  remained  practically 
unchanged  in  the  West  Saxon  dialects  until  the  close  of  the  O.E.  period. 
In  all  the  other  dialects,  North,  Midland,  and  Kentish  or  S.  Western,  it 
became  <?  and  is  so  written  in  the  earliest  records.  We  may  refer  to  this 
sound  as  &. 

Examples  of  this  are: — W.  Saxon  sxd  'seed',  non-W.S,  sed\  W.S. 
Fret.  PL  sxton  '  they  sat ',  bxron  '  they  bore  ',  sprxcon  '  they  spoke  ',  &c., 
non-W.S.  seton,  beron,  sprecon,  &c.  The  existence  of  the  latter  type  in 
words  of  this  class  in  a  M.E.  text  shows  that  it  is  not  in  an  ideally  pure 
W.S.  dialect,  though  it  does  not  fix  it  as  definitely  E.  Midland,  without 
other  considerations.  The  proof  of  whether  the  Sthn.  [e]  or  the  non- 
Sthn.  [e]  exists  in  any  given  text  cannot  always  be  established  with 
perfect  certainty.  The  best  proofs  are  (i)  rhymes  in  which  words  which 
had  this  x  in  O.E.  rhyme  with  other  words  of  a  different  class  which  are 
known  to  have  either  one  or  other  of  the  two  ^-sounds;  or  (2)  the  occurrence 
of  the  spelling  ea  which  is  never  used  for  the  tense  [e].  Thus  if  rede 
'  council '  should  rhyme  with  bede,  '  prayer ',  it  would  establish  the  Southern 
type  of  pronunciation  of  rede,  O.E.  rsed,  as  bede,  O.E.  (ge)bedut  had  the 
long  slack  [e]  in  all  dialects.  Again,  such  a  spelling  as  weaden  '  weeds, 
garments ',  O.E.  gewxde,  which  occurs  in  Ancren  Riwle,  also  proves  the 
Southern  type  of  pronunciation.  Such  a  rhyme  as  dlde  with  jede,  see 
extract  B  (rf)  below,  shows  Midland  type,  asjeJe,  O.E.  ge-eode,  has  always 
a  tense  e. 

(b}  The  other  O.E.  x  sound  had  a  different  origin,  and  a  different  fate. 
As  regards  its  origin,  it  was  developed  in  O.E.  itself,  before  the  historical 
period,  from  a  long  a  vowel,  when  this  was  followed  by  either  -z'-,  or  -j- 
in  the  next  syllable,  Thus  O.E.  txcan  '  teach  ',  fr.  *takjan,  cf.  O.E.  tacn 
'  sign ' ;  O.E.  dxlan  '  to  divide  ',  dxl  '  a  part ',  fr.  *daljan,  *dati,  cf.  the 
unaltered  O.E.  dal  'a  part'  (our  dole)]  O.E.  Ixdan  'lead/  fr.  *  lad/an,  cf. 


3o  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

lad  'path',  'course ' ;  Ixran  '  to  teach  ',  fr.  *larjan,  cf.  O.E.  Idr  <  doctrine, 
lore ',  &c.,  &c.  The  de  of  this  origin  we  may  refer  to  as  £2.  This  % 
remains  in  every  O.E.  dialect  except  Kentish,  where  it  is  early,  though 
subsequently  to  the  change  of  the  former  de  just  considered,  changed  to  e. 
In  M.E.  this  characteristic  difference  between  Kentish  and  the  other 
dialects  is  preserved,  and  while  the  latter  have  the  slack  [e]  in  words  of 
this  class,  Kentish  and  South-Eastern  have  [e].  This  is  well  shown  in 
the  late  fourteenth-century  writings  of  Gower,  a  Kentishman.  This 
writer,  who,  as  we  shall  see,  is  on  the  whole  remarkably  free  from  pro- 
vincialisms, habitually  expresses  the  tense  [e],  whatever  its  origin,  by  ^'e, 
and  very  conveniently  for  us,  frequently  writes  diel  '  past ' ;  he  also 
rhymes  techen  '  teach ',  with  sechen  '  seek ',  where  it  is  certain  that  tense 
e  is  intended,  as  the  latter  word  could  have  no  other  pronunciation. 

East  Midland,  then,  agrees  with  all  M.E.  dialects  except  the  Southern, 
Saxon  dialects  in  having  the  tense  sound  for  de1,  and  with  all  the  dialects 
except  Kentish  in  having  the  slack  sound  for  £?. 

(3)  O.E.  J^,  which  had  the  sound  of  French  «  in  tune,  &c.,  becomes  z  in 
East  Midland  as  in  the  Northern  dialects.     Examples :— (short  y)  O.E. 
hyll,  M.E.  hill,  O.E.  brycg  '  bridge ',  M.E.  brigge,  O.E.  synn  '  sin ',  M.E. 
swne,&c.;   (longj?)  O.E.  fyr  'five',  M.E. /fr,  O.E.  hydan  'to  hide', 
M.E.  hiden,  O.E.  (ge)mynd  'mind,  memory',  M.E.  mind.     Note  that  the 
letter^  is  often  used  in  M.E.  for  long  or  short  i,  and  occurs  often  in 
the  above  words,  but  it  never  implies  anything  but  the  i  sound.     Note 
also  that  in  some  areas  of  the  E.  Midlands  the  old  J>  sound  appears  as  e. 
See  further  on  this  below,  under  Kentish  and  South-Eastern. 

(4)  O.E.  eo  becomes  I,  always  tense  when  it  represents  O.E.  eo  in  East 
Midland.   Examples  :— O.E.  eorfie  '  earth ',  M.E.  erfie,  O.E.  heorte  '  heart ', 
M.E.  herte ;  O.E.  ceosan  '  choose ',  M.E.  chesen,  O.E.  Jiedld  Fret.  Sing,  of 
healdan  'hold',  M.E.  held,  O.E./^//  Fret.  Sing,  tifeallan  'fall',  M.E. 
fell,  &c.,  &c. 

(5)  O.E.  ea  before  r  and  another  cons,  becomes  de  in  late  O.E.  and  in 
M.E.  appears  in  E.  Midlands  as  ar-.   Examples: — O.E.  earm  'poor', 
later  derm,  M.E.  arm,  O.E.  heard,  hderd  '  hard,  bold ',  M.E.  hard,  &c. ; 
ea  before  //  becomes  all,  O.E.  eall '  all ',  M.E.  all.     Bokenam,  however, 
still  has  such  belated  forms  as  sherp  '  sharp ',  yerd  '  yard ',   perhaps 
through  Essex  influence. 

(6)  Southern  O.E.  eald,  Late  O.E.  (Sthn.)  field,  appears  as  did  in  the 
Midland  and  Northern  dialects  already  in  O.E.     This  form  becomes  old 
in  M.E.  in  the  Midlands,  through  the  change  of  a  to  5.     Examples : — 
O.E.  (Sthn.)  eald,  deld,  Midland  aid  'old',  O.E.  Southern  beald,  bdeld 
'bold',  Midland   bald,  M.E.  Midland  bold,  O.E.  Southern  teald,  cxld 
'cold',   Midland    cald,   M.E.   Midland    cold,  &c.      Norf.    Guilds   have 
the    exceptional   helden,   inf.   and   Bokenam   held  imperat.      See    the 
Southern  and  Kentish  treatment  of  this  sound  below. 

(7)  O.E.  ie.     This  diphthong,  both  long  and  short,  is  typical  of  the 
Southern,   West  Saxon  dialects  in   O.E.     In  all  the  other  dialects  it 
appears  as  e  in  the  corresponding  words  already  in  the  OE.  period.   From 
the  point  of  view  of  the  Midland  and  other  non-Saxon  dialects,  therefore, 
including  Kentish  and  South-Eastern,  the  starling-point  is  e.     This  e 
remains  in  Midland  in  M.E.     See,  however,  under  Southern  below,  the 


EAST   MIDLAND    INFLEXIONS  31 

fate  of  Old  English  (W.  Saxon)  ie.  Examples  of  this  in  Midland  M.E. 
are : — O.E.  (non-Sax.)  ermpu,  West  Saxon  iermfru  '  misery ',  M.E.  Midland 
ermfie;  O.E.  (non-Sax.) herein  'hear',  West  Saxon  hieran,  M.E.  Midland 
heren,  O.E.  (non-Sax.)  lesan  '  release,  redeem',  West  Saxon  lusan,  M.E. 
Midland  lesen. 


Points  affecting  the  Accidence  in  East  Midlands. 

(8)  Pres.  Indie.  3rd  Pers.  Sing,  ends  in  -ep — comep  'comes',  tdkep 
'  takes ',  fienchep  '  thinks '.      In  the  more  northerly  area  (Lincolnshire, 
and  even  in  Norfolk)  the  Northern  ending  -es  often  occurs,  and  this  form 
gains  ground,  so  that  in  the  fifteenth  century  Bokenam,  who  wrote  in 
the  Suffolk  dialect,  often  uses  -es. 

(9)  Pres.  Indie.  PI.  ends  in  -en,  or  -e—we  hope(ii)  '  hope ',  we  seye(n) 
'  say  ',  we  mdke(ti)  '  make  '. 

(10)  Imperat.  PI.  ends  in  -ep — come}>  'come',  lokej>  'look',  &c. 

(n)  Pres.  Participle  ends  in  -end(e) — rennend(e)  'running',  touchend(e) 
1  touching  '.  In  the  northerly  area  of  Lincolnshire,  the  typical  Northern 
-and  often  occurs  (Handlyng  Synne).  Even  Norf.  Guilds  have  -and  at 
least  once,  by  the  side  of  the  usual  -end,  and  occasional  -yng.  The  ending 
-ing,  -yng  is  found  occasionally  quite  early  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
and  finally  becomes  the  sole  form. 

(12)  The  Fern.  Pers.  Pron.  sche,  she,  scho,  &c.,  is  found  quite  early — 
even  Peterborough  Chron.  (c.  1154)  has  sex.     This  form  is  Northern 
in  origin,  and  usurps  the  place  of  the  O.E.  heo,  M.E.  he,  heo,  &c.,  &c. ; 
cf.  the  Fern.  Pron.  in  South- West  and  Kent  below. 

(13)  The  Pers.  Pronouns  in  the  PI.  are  het  and  the  Scandinavian /«* 
'  they ',  and  gradually,  though  later, freir,  &c.,  'their ',  and/i?)#  'them',  take 
the  place  of  the  O.E.  hie,  heora,  heom,  &c.,  M.E.  hi,  he,  here,  hem.     The 
Scandinavian  forms  apparently  pass   into  Midland  fr.  the  North,  and 
the  Nom.  comes  first.    With  the  exception  of  Orm  (1200),  however,  who 
has /<?£?,  even  this  form  is  not  much  in  use  before  1300,  after  which  date 
it  apparently  becomes  almost,  though  not  entirely,  the  only  form  in  use. 
Norf.  Guilds  still  have   he  by   the  side  of  the   usual  fiey,  &c.      Orm 
has  Dat.  PI.  }>e%m  by  the   side  of  the  old  Aemm,  and  hem  seems   to 
be  the  typical  form  until  the  fifteenth  century  (Bokenam).     The  typical 
Possessive  PI.  is  here,  only  Orm  having  fieftre  (by  the  side  of  heore]  before 
the  fourteenth  century.     Early  in  this  century   Robt.   of  Brunne  has 
occasional peyr,  by  the  side  of  the  much  more  frequent  here',   Norfolk 
Guilds  (1389)  appear  only  to  have  here,  but  Bokenam  in  the  next  century 
has  both  the  English  and  Scandinavian  forms.     Compare  this  with  the 
state  of  things  in  South- West  and  South-East. 

(14)  Pres.  PI.  are,  aren  of  Verb  *  to  be' ;  also  ben. 

(15)  Loss  of  O.E.  prefix  £•£-,  M.E.  i->y-,  in  Past  Participles, and  reten- 
tion of  -»  at  the  end  of  strong  P.  P.'s.      This  latter,  however,  is  not 
universal: — cumen,  for  body  n  'forbidden',  tolde  'told';  cf.  Southern  icume, 
itold,  &c. 

The  following  short  extracts  from  E.  Midland  texts  give  some  idea 
of  the  dialect.  The  numbers  attached  to  certain  forms  refer  to  the  above 


32  DIALECT   TYPES  IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

statements  of  the  dialect  features,  and  the  words  so  numbered  illustrate 
the  feature  described  in  the  paragraph  with  the  corresponding  number. 

It  will  be  seen  that  in  most  cases  there  is  a  certain  admixture  of  forms 
which  do  not  belong  strictly  nor  solely  to  E.  Midland.  This  is  rather 
disappointing  and  disconcerting  to  the  student,  who  must  remember  that 
the  speech  of  one  area  dovetails  into  that  of  another,  as  do  the  areas 
themselves. 

Specimens  of  E.  Midland. 
A.    FROM  THE  BESTIARY,  CIRCA  1220. 

(a)  Wiles  £at  weder  is  s5  ille  at  times  the  weather 

|i         14  2.  b.  15 

$e  sipes  ftat  arn  on  se  fordriven  ships  that  are  driven  about  on  the 

i3                         4  sea 

15$  hem  is  de¥,  and  lef  to  liven  hateful  to  them  is  death,  and  dear 

9      13               9  to  live 

biloken  hem,  and  sen  £is  fis ;  they  look  around 

"*i3  9 

an  eilond  he  wenen  it  is  they  think  (*  ween  *)  it  is  an  island 

*3     14  i 

'Serof  he  aren  swr&  fagen,  they  are  very  glad  thereof, 

13  13        9 

And  mid  here  migt  £ar  to  he  dragen  with  their  might  towards  it  they 

draw 

Sipes  on  festen  at  anchor 

9 

And  alle  up  gangen  go 

(b)  Dis  devel  is  mikel  wr8  wil  and  magt 

So  wicches  haven  in  here  craft  their 

9  3 

He  doS  men  hungren  and  haven  Srist    he  causes  men  to  hunger  and  to 

3         3  have  thirst 

And  mani  o^er  sinful  list.  many  other  sinful  desires 

B.    FROM  ROBERT  OF  BRUNNE'S  HANDLYNG  SYNNE,  c.  1303. 
i 

(a)  Fro  }>at  tyme  ]>an  wax  Pers 
A  man  of  so  feyre  manors 

pat  no  man  my^t  yn  hym  fynde 

But  to  t>e  pdre  boj>e  meke  &  kynde ; 
A  mylder  man  ne  myjt  nat  be 

Ne  to  J>e  pore  more  of  almes  fre 
And  reuful  of  herte  also  he  was, 

2.  b. 

pat  may  si  )>ou  here  lere  yn  j>ys  pas.  learn 

(b)  Pers  stode  and  dyd  beholde 
How  }>e  man  J>e  kyrtyl  solde 

And  was  |>arwith  ferly  wrdpe  wrapped  up 

i  6 

pat  he  solde  s5  sone  hys  clo))e ; 
He  my^t  no  lenger  for  sorow  stande, 

4  II 

But  ^ede  home  ful  sore  gretand.  weeping 


SOUTHERN  DIALECTS  33 

(c]     Blessyd  be  alle  pore  men 

8          13 

For  God  almy^ty  loue}>  hem ; 

13  i  H 

And  weyl  ys  hem  |>at  pore  are  here  well 

13         14  44 

pey  are  with  God  bo}>e  lefe  and  dere 

i 

And  y  shal  fonde,  by  ny;t  and  day  endeavour 

To  be  pore,  5yf  )>at  y  may. 

J3          4 

{d)    Vnto  a  cherche  boj>e  )>ey  3ede 

3  aa 

For  to  fulfylle  hys  wil  yn  dede. 

i  2  a  15 

(*)     pe  porter  had  hys  speche  lore  lost 

7  i  15 

And  heryng  also,  syn  he  was  bore. 

Characteristics  of  Central  Southern  and  South- Western 
Dialects  in  M.E. 

(1)  O.E.  X  remains  as  a  front  vowel,  written  x,  ea,  or  e  in  the  M.E. 
texts  of  the  South,  of  the  twelfth  century  and  in  those  of  the  first  half  of 
the  thirteenth,  a  being  written  only  occasionplly ;  from  the  beginning  of 
the  fourteenth  century  we  find  either  a  exclusively,  or  ^-spellings  with 
a  certain  sprinkling  of  ^-spellings.    This  means  that  the  original  Southern 
type  was  gradually  eliminated,  even  in  the  West,  and  its  place  taken  by 
Midland  forms.     Thus  Holy  Rood  Tree  (c.  1170)  generally  has  x,  occa- 
sionally e,  once  eat  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  all  these  spellings  imply  the 
same  sound,  probably  something  between  [g]  and  [x].    This  text  only  has 
a  after  w — in  water.     The  Lambeth  Homilies  (c.  1190)  has  always  e — 
efter,  wes,  feder,  cweti,  O.E.  defter,  wxs,  fxder,  cwxfi  '  said ' ;  Moral  Poem 
(Egerton  M.S.),  c.  1200,  has  e-,  the  Metrical  Life  of  St.  Juliana  (Glos. 
1 300)  has  a  few  ^-forms,  spek  'spoke',  O.E.  sprxc,je/'ga.vG',  but  mostly  a — 
wat '  what ',  O.E.  hwxt,  quad,  jaf1  gave ',  O.E.  g&f>  was,  glade >  O.E.  glded 
'glad',  &c.;    Robt.  of  Glos.  (c.  1330)  writes  both  a  and  e',    Trevisa 
(1387)  nearly  always  a,  pat,  blak  'black',  O.E.  bldec,  schal  'shall',  Late 
O.E.  scxl,  &c.,  but  creftes,  O.E.  crxftas.    St.  Editha  (Wilts.,  c.  1420)  has 
a  alone. 

This  test  is  therefore  only  applicable  to  the  early  M.E.  period,  and 
then  needs  to  be  used  with  caution  and  combined  with  other  tests.  See 
the  treatment  of  O.E.  x  in  Kentish  below.  We  may  note  here,  as  we 
shall  not  devote  a  special  section  to  the  dialect,  that  the  texts  written  in 
the  Southern  part  of  the  W.  Midland  area — Oxfordshire,  Worcestershire — 
St.  Katherine,  St.  Juliana  (prose),  Lajamon,  Harleian  Lyrics  (Heref. 
1 300),  and  Piers  Plowman,  which  all  have  many  typical  Southern  traits, 
as  well  as  other  more  typical  Midland  features,  frequently  have  e  as  well 
as  a.  This  may  be  owing  to  the  Southerly  situation  of  the  counties 
whence  these  texts  emanate,  but  it  may  also  be  an  inheritance  from  O.E., 
since  in  a  portion  of  the  Mercian  area  x  had  become  e  already  in  that 
period. 

(2)  (a)  O.E.  xl,  which  normally  remains  in  W.  Saxon  alone  of  all  the 


34  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE   ENGLISH 

O.E.  dialects,  or  in  those  areas  over  which  this  speech-influence  extended, 
becomes  [e]  when  it  survives  into  M.E.,  and  is  written  either  de  (in  very 
early  texts  only),  e  or  ea.  The  best  proofs  of  the  existence  of  this  type 
in  M.E.  are  the  spelling  ea,  and  rhymes  of  words  of  this  class,  with  words 
whose  vowel  was  of  a  different  origin,  but  which  are  known  to  have  had 
the  [e]  sound. 

It  is  pretty  certain  that  the  area  over  which  the  Southern  type  of  this 
sound  extended  in  Late  O.E.  and  in  M.E.  was  far  wider  than  the  original 
South- Western  area  of  Wessex.  On  the  other  hand,  the  so-called  de-  area 
seems  later  to  have  been  restricted,  and  whereas,  for  instance,  there  are 
apparent  traces  of  this  sound  in  Southern  West  Midlands  (St.  Jul.  Prose 
Life,  Ancren  Riwle,  Harleian  Lyrics,  &c.),  yet  the  evidence,  even  of  the 
true  Southern  texts  of  the  later  period,  shows  that  the  other  type  with  tense 
[<?]  was  also  in  use.  Thus  Metr.  St.  Jul.  by  the  side  of  brep  rhyming 
with  de}>,  rede  with  lede  '  lead '  the  metal,  O.E.  6rxJ>,  deaj>,  rxd,  lead,  also 
rhymes  rede,  O.E.  rOed,  with  sede  '  said ',  and  drede,  O.E.  drM,  with  neode 
where  in  each  case  the  rhyming  word  must  have  had  tense  <?,  and  St. 
Editha  rhymes/^,  O.E.fixr  '  there'  withy/ere,  Adv.  '  together '.  Cf.  O.E. 
gefera ;  bere  '  bier  ',  O.E.  bxr,  with  here  ( here  ',  O.E.  her.  On  the  other 
hand,  Metr.  St.  Jul.  rhymes  brej>  'breath'  with  de]>  'death',  O.E.  brxp, 
deap,  rede  with  lede  '  lead  *  vb.,  O.E.  Idedan,  where  the  x  =  He*  (see  under 
E.  Midlands  above,  2  (6)). 

(£)  O.E.  de z  remained  as  the  slack  long  vowel  [e]  throughout  the 
Central  Southern  and  South-Western  areas.  (See  remarks  under  E.  Mid- 
land 2  (d)  above,  and  under  Kentish,  &c,,  2  (b)  below.) 

(3)  O.E.  $  remains  and  is  written  u,  or  when  long  sometimes  ui,  or 
uy.     In  part  of  the  Southern  area  O.E.  y  becomes  i  already  in  the  O.E. 
period  before  the  c  front-consonants ',  O.E.  cc,  eg,  and  perhaps  sc,  written 
ch>  §ge>  sch  m  M.E.     The  present  writer  showed  that  this  tendency  was 
particularly  strong  in  Devon,  Dorset,  Somerset,  and  Wilts.,  weaker  in 
Hants,  weaker  still  in  Glos.     See  Short  History  of  Eng.,  §  158  (/). 
There  is  also  a  strong  probability  that  O.E.^/  was  unrounded  to  i  in  part 
of  Devon,  independent  of  the  influence  of  following  consonants.      The 
occurrence  of  i-  forms  in  Southern  texts,  therefore,  does  not  necessarily 
show  impurity  of  dialect.    The  Southern  area  of  the  W.  Midlands,  whose 
dialect  is  represented  in  such  texts  as  La5amon,  Ancren  Riwle  ('  Morton's 
text'),  St.  Jul.  (Metr.),  St.  Katherine,  Harl.  Lyrics,  and  Piers  Plowman, 
preserves  the  sound  [y],  both  long  and  short,  with  great  fidelity  and  con- 
sistency— huyden  '  hide  ',  fur,  fuyr  '  fire  ',  murhde  '  mirth ',  cunne  '  kin  ', 
luper  '  wicked ',  sunne  *  sin ',  rug  '  back,  ridge ',  &c.  &c. 

(4)  O.E.  eb  seems  to  have  become  first  of  all  [<£]  in  German  sMn, 
and  then  [y]  in  a  very  large  area  of  the  South,  South- West,  and  West 
Midlands.     The  sound,  in  texts  from  this  wide  area,  is  at  first  written  eo, 
according  to  the  O.E.  scribal  tradition,  and  then  u,  ue,  or  o.     There  are 
traces  of  this  as  far  East  as  Surrey  (Owl  and  Nightingale)  and  Hampshire, 
and  Moral  Ode  (Egerton  MS.,  Hants)  writes  duere  '  dearly',  suelfer  'silver'; 
Usages  of  Winchester  (1389)  still  writes/«r>,  O.E./eorj>a  '  fourth ' ;  four- 
teenth-century forms  of  Hants  Place  Names  in  Hundred  Rlls.  have  Dupe — 
'  deep ',  O.E.  deop,  and  Nuther—Q.E.  neoper  'lower'.    The  u,  o,  or  eo  forms 
are  further  found  in  St.  Jul.  Metr.  Life  (only  eo,  generally  e,  never  u),  Robt. 


OLD   DIPHTHONGS   IN   SOUTHERN   ENGLISH         35 

of  Glos.,  Trevisa,  St.  Editha,  and  as  late  as  1447-50,  in  the  letters  of 
Shillingford,  Mayor  of  Exeter.  The  texts  from  the  South- West  Midlands, 
La^amon,  St.  Jul.  (Prose),  Harl.  Lyrics,  &c.,  all  have  these  forms  in  vary- 
ing degrees  of  frequency.  The  development  of  O.E.  eo  into  e  on  one 
hand,  or  into  u  on  the  other,  is  one  of  the  great  dialectal  tests  between 
East  and  West  (not  between  South  and  Midlands),  and  it  would  be  rash 
to  assign  any  text  which  has  only  e  in  words  which  had  this  diphthong  in 
O.E.,  to  an  area  farther  west  than  the  borders  of  Hampshire.  Examples 
are  horte  '  heart ' ;  Horned,  O.E.  geleorned '  learnt ' ;  bon  inf. '  be  ',  O.E.  bean  ; 
swore,  O.E.  sweor  'neck',  &c.,  &c.,  Owl  and  Nightingale;  clupep  'calls', 
O.E.  cleopep,  fame  'limbs',  O.E.  leomu,  brust  'breast',  O.E.  breast, 
in  Robt.  of  Glos. ;  suppe  '  after ',  O.E.  seoppan,  luver,  O.E.  leofor 
'dearer',  /«£/"' dear',  O.E.  leaf,  pueves  'thieves',  O.E.  peofas,  &c.,  in 
Trevisa  ;  vrthe  =  urthe  '  earth ',  O.E.  eorpe,  dure  '  dear ',  O.E.  deor, 
bude  'to  offer',  O.E.  bJddan,  in  St.  Editha.  None  of  these  texts  is 
perfectly  consistent,  however,  and  ^-spellings  are  fairly  frequent  in  all, 
which  perhaps  shows  that  the  easterly  type  was  coming  in,  at  any  rate 
in  the  written  language. 

(5)  O.E.  ea  followed  by  r-f  another  consonant.     The  earliest  South- 
western texts,  such  as  the  Lambeth  Homilies  and  others  down  to  and 
into  the  thirteenth  century,  preserve  the  typical  Southern  erm,  herm,  O.E. 
earm,  derm,  hearm,  hxrm,  but  the  Midland  type  arm,  harm,  &c.,  takes  the 
place  of  these  later.      In  this  particular,  as  in  so  many  others,  the  South- 
West  Midland  texts  adhere  to  the  Southern  type.      Similarly,  before  -// 
we  find  all  instead  of  Southern  dell  or  ell  very  early.     Thus,  for  instance, 
St.  Jul.  (Metr.)  has  hard,  harm,  warm,  uallep  '  falls ',  alle.     The  South- 
Eastern  translation  of  Palladius,  however  (Essex  c,  1420),  still  preserves 
e  in  hervest,  herd  '  hard  '  ,yerdes,  &c. 

(6)  The  O.E.  combination  eald  in  O.E.  eald  '  old ',  beald  '  bold ',  ceald 
'  cold ',  wealdan  '  to  rule,  wield ',  healdan  '  hold ',  appears  in  the  early 
Southern  texts  in  the  typical  forms  -eald-,  -deld-,  -eld-,  &c.,  which  all  =  [e/</], 
but  the  Anglian  type,  O.E.  did,  M.E.  old,  gets  in  very  early,  and  as  early 
as  the  twelfth  century  this  substitution  is  beginning.      In  the  thirteenth 
century  and  later  there  are  only  a  few  scattered  survivals  of  the  Southern 
type,  such  as  wdelde  in  Moral  Ode,  welde  in  Prov.  of  Alfred,  and  so  on. 
St.  Jul.  (Metr.)  has  only  old,  holde,  &c.      The  South-Eastern  dialects 
preserve  the  Southern  form  later,  on  which  see  below. 

(7)  O.E.  u  in  the  Southern  M.E.  dialects.      Already  in  O.E.  we  can 
distinguish,  in  the  various  Saxon  texts,  two  dialectal  types  in  the  treat- 
ment of  this  old  diphthong.    In  the  later  language  some  texts  write  y  as 
hyrde  '  shepherd  ',  earlier  hierde,  sylf  '  self,  earlier  sielf,  scyld  '  shield  ', 
earlier  scield,  hyran  '  hear ',  earlier  hteran,  &c.    Others  write  i :  hirde,  silf, 
said,  hiran.     The  former  type  appears  as  with  u  or  ui,  uy  when  long ; 
in  M.E.  when  retained  the  latter  is  written  i.     Thus  M.E.  hurde  and 
hirde,  sulfa.nd  silf,  schuld  and  schild,  huyre(n),  hmre(n),  or  hure(n)  by  the 
side  of  htre(n),  are  all  typical  Southern  forms,  as  distinct  from  herde,scheld, 
heren,  &c.,  which  occur  in  all  the  dialects  other  than  the  South- Western. 

The  Southern  conditions  are  more  faithfully  preserved  in  the  treatment 
of  the  original  short  diphthong  than  in  that  of  the  long,  and  many  texts, 
which  in  other  respects  are  quite  South- Western  in  type,  have  only  traces 

D  2 


36  DIALECT    TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

of  ui  in  the  verb  'to  hear',  and  many  more  examples  of  <?.  St.  Jul. 
(Metr.),  Robt.  of  Glos.,  and  Trevisa  adhere  most  faithfully  to  the  Saxon 
types  both  in  long  and  short,  though  all  have  some  e-  forms.  St.  Editha 
has  only  e,  though  otherwise  very  Southern  in  character.  St.  Jul.  (Metr.) 
has  hurde  (Pret.),  but  bileue  from  O.E.  Re/an]  bizite  'obtaine',  but  jelde 
1  pay '  Inf.,  W.  Saxon  gieldan. 

The  South- West  Midland  texts  of  the  thirteenth  century  have  certain 
traces  of  the  u-  forms. 


Points  connected  with  the  Inflexions. 

(8)  The  3rd  Pers.  Sing,  of  the  Pres.  Indie,  of  verbs  is  universally  •<?/, 
-ip,  or  -p,  and  we  do  not  find  the  -es,  -s  endings  as  we  do  in  E.  Midland 
texts.    A  very  curious  exception,  louys  '  loves ',  occurs  in  St.  Editha  (2228), 
and  there  are  a  few  other  -s  forms  in  this  text. 

(9)  The  Pres.  PI.  Indie,  normally  ends  in  -ej>  or  -ip. 

This  Southern  peculiarity  is  shared  by  the  dialect  of  the  Prose  St.  Jul., 
and  also  by  the  Herefordshire  (Harleian)  Lyrics,  though  the  latter  has 
some  examples  of  the  Midland  -en. 

(ro)  The  Imperat.  PI.  ends  in  -ep  and  -ip,  as  in  E.  Midland. 

(n)  The  Pres.  Participle  ends  in  -ind(e).  The  later  -ing  participles 
develop  rather  later  than  in  E.  Midland.  The  South- West  Midland 
texts,  while  exhibiting  examples  of  the  Southern  -inde,  have  also  the 
Midland  -ende. 

(12)  The  Fern.  Pers.  Pron.  Norn,  is  always,  in  the  South,  some  form 
derived  from  O.E.  hed. 

The  E.  Midland  and  Northern  she,  sche  forms  are  unknown,  except  for 
the  quite  exceptional  sse  in  Robt.  of  Glos.,  and  a  few  examples  in  Trevisa, 
who  generally  uses  the  typical  heo,  hue.  Robt.  of  Glos.  has  30  frequently, 
also  heo,  and  St.  Jul.  (Metr.)  has  he,  heo.  Other  forms  of  these  in  Southern 
texts  are  the  unstressed  ha,  while  he,  hee,  hoe  appear  in  St.  Editha. 

(13)  The  Pers.  Pronouns  of  the  PI.  are  Norn.  ///',  heo,  the  unstressed 
ha  and  a  (Lamb.  Horns.,  Moral  Ode,  Saules  Warde,  Owl  and  Nightin- 
gale, Robt.  of  Glos.),  and  the  weak  a  in  Trevisa.      St.  Editha  seems  to 
have  only  the  Scandinavian  forms,  pey,  pai,  pay,  and  this  is  the  first 
appearance  of  these  forms  in  the  South.    The  Possessives  are  hor(e)  (God 
Ureisun,  St.  Jul.  (Metr.),  and  Robt.  of  Glos.),  keore  (Lamb.  Horns.,  Moral 
Ode),  the  weak  eore  (O.  and  N.),  here  (Robt.  of  Glos.,  Trevisa,  and  St. 
Editha),  her,  hure,  hurre  (St.  Editha).     Ace.  and  Dative  heom  (Lamb. 
Horns.,  Moral  Ode,  O.  and  N.) ;  hem  (St.  Jul.  (Metr.),  Robt.  of  Glos., 
St.  Editha);  horn  (Robt.  of  Glos.,  St.  Editha);  ham  (Lamb.  Horns.,  God 
Ur.,  and  Trevisa). 

( 1 4)  The  Pres.  PI.  of  Verb  '  to  be '  is  normally  leap,  bep,  bup.    Usages 
of  Winchester  has  the  two  last,  Robt.  of  Glos.  has  bep,  Trevisa  the  last. 
St.  Editha  has  the  Midland  ben  and  arne.     The  South- West  Midland 
Harleian  Lyrics  has  both  Southern  bup,  and  Midland  aren. 

(15)  In  O.E.  the  particle  ge-  is  prefixed  commonly  to  the  P.  P.  of 
verbs,  both  strong  and  weak,  when  uncompounded.    The  P.  P.  of  Strong 
Verbs  ends  in  -«.     In  M.E.  in  the  South  and  South- West  Midlands  the 
prefix  is  generally  retained,  being  written  i-  my-.     All  Southern  texts 


SPECIMENS   OF   SOUTHERN   ENGLISH  37 

from  the  earliest  -  M.E.  to  St.  Editha  write  ychose,  yslawe  '  slain ', 
yfounde,  &c.,  &c.,  with  loss  of  final  -«.  Ancren  Riwle,  St.  Jul.  (Prose), 
St.  Katherine,  and  Harl.  Lyrics  generally  retain  the  prefix  y-,  but  adhere 
to  the  Midland  type  in  conserving  also  the  -n  in  strong  P.  P.'s,  e.g. 
tkumen,  &c.  The  prefix  is  often  used  in  the  Pret.  in  O.E.  and  in  Southern 
M.E.,  and  indeed  may  be  used  before  any  part  of  a  verb,  often  with  no 
particular  force,  though  it  also  has  the  function  of  making  intransitive 
verbs  transitive. 

(16)  Infinitives  end  in  -an  and  -ian  in  O.E.  In  M.E.  these  become  -en, 
or  -e,  and  -z'en,  ie  respectively.  The  latter  type  is  often  written  merely  -y, 
or  -i.  It  is  typical  of  the  South,  both  East  and  West,  but  disappears 
before  the  encroachments  of  the  -an  type  in  E.  Midlands.  Examples : 
O.E.  lokian  '  look ',  M.E.  lokie,  lokt,  loky ;  to  susteni,  and  somony  '  to 
summon '  both  occur  in  Robt.  of  Glos.  This  suffix  is  also  used  with 
Vbs.  of  French  origin.  The  loss  of  the  final  -n  in  the  Inf.  is  a  typical 
Southern  feature. 

Extracts  illustrative  of  Southern  Dialect. 

*  Note  that  in  the  South  and  South-Western  area,  initial  /-  is  often, 
though  not  with  complete  consistency,  written  v  or  u,  implying  a  voiced 
pronunciation. 

(a)    From  Moral  Ode  (Egerton  MS.)  (Hants,  circa  1200). 
Muchele  luwe  he  us  cudde,  wolde  we  it  understonde 

9 

pat  vre  eldrene  misduden  we  habbet  vuele  on  honde 

6 

Die^  com  in  J)is  middenerd  )>urh  }>e  calde  deofles  onde 
And  synne  and  sor^e  and  jeswinch  a  watere  and  ec  a  londe 

3  3        9 

Vres  formes  faderes  gult  we  abigget  alle 

1  5  15 

Al  his  ofsprung  after  him  in  herme  is  bifalle. 

3  7  2  a         2  a 

purst  and  hunger,  chule  and  hete,  eche  and  al  unel)>e 
purh  died  com  in  bis  middenerd  and  ober  vnisalbe. 

Notes,  vuele  =  uvele, ' evil ',  O.IL.yfet.  middenerd  =  O.E.  (W.  Sax.)  middangeard 
'earth'  (late  O.E.  -gerd).  The  ending  -ej>  is  written  -et  in  this  text  in  habbet,  abigget 
'  purchase '.  chule  =  W.  Sax.  tide  '  cold '  (late  O.E.  cyle,  whence  chule).  Died, 
instead  of  dej>,  as  the  other  MSS.  have,  may  be  the  result  of  Kentish  influence  in  the 
scribe,  v  and  u  are  interchangeable,  hence  vre  =  ure  'our';  vres  -=  tires,  gen. 
Line  5.  'the  guilt  of  our  first  father'.  Note  the  loss  of  h  in  unelj>e,  lit.  'unhealth', 
'  sickness '. 

(b)    From  Proverbs  of  Alfred  (1200). 

X  I 

pus  queb  Alured: 
Wis  child  is  fader  blisse. 

8 

If  hit  so  bitydeb 
pat  bu  bern  ibidest 
pe  hwile  hit  is  lytel 

ab 

ler  him  mon-bewes 
ii 

panne  hit  is  wexynde 


38  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

i 
hit  schal  wende  }>ar    o. 

i      iS    4 

pe  betere  hit  schal  iwur)>e 

4 

euer  buuen  eor))e. 

Notes.     Line  i.  u  written  for  v  in  Alured,  O.K.  Alfred. 
4.  bern  =  O.E.  beam  '  child  ';  ibidest «  await,  expect '. 

7.  =  O.E.  weaxan  '  grow '  (Late  W.  Sax.  wexari). 

8.  =  '  it  shall  turn  then  to '. 

N.B.  In  late  W.  Sax.  weorfian  often  becomes  wurfian,  but  this  could  not  rhyme 
with  eorj>e.  iwurfie  is  from  O.E.  gewcorlan,  and  the  spelling  shows  the  M.E.  change  of 
eo  to  [yj.  This  rhymes  with  eorfe,  which  shows  that  this  word,  too,  had  undergone 
the  change  in  spite  of  the  old  spelling. 

(c)  From  Robert  of  Gloucester  (c,  1298). 

i  4  »S  4 

(1)  po  }>is  child  was  an  vr)>e  ibore,  his  freond  nome  }>erto  hede, 

13  16 

Hi  lete  hit  do  to  Glastnebury  to  norichi  and  to  fede 
To  teche  him  eke  his  bileue,  pater-noster  and  crede. 

pe  child  wax  and  wel  tye},  for  hit  moste  nede. 

37  i 

Lute  3eme  he  nom  to  }>e  wordle,  to  alle  godnisse  he  drou3. 

(2)  In  chirche  he  was  devout  inow  vor  him  ne  ssolde  no  day  abide 
pat  he  ne  hurde  masse  and  matines  and  euesong  and  ech  tide. 

2  a 

(3)  And  )>e  Normans  ne  cou)>e  speke  )>6  bote  hor  owe  speche 

2  a  13  13  2  b 

And  speke  French  as  hii  dude  atom  ana  hor  children  dude  also  teche 

1  13 

So  J>at  heiemen  of  J>is  lond  J>at  of  hor  blod  come 

69  2  a  13  '13 

H6lde)>  alle  )>ulke  speche  }>a  hii  of  horn  nome 
Vor  bote  a   man  conne  Frenss  me  telj>  of  him  lute 

69  sa  7 

Ac  lowe  men  holde)>  to  Engliss  and  to  hor  owe  speche  5ute. 

(4) J>e  gode  quene  Mold 

pat  quene  was  of  Engelond  as  me  a)>  er  ytold 

12  15      I 

pa  g5derhele  al  Engelond  was  heo  euere  yb5re 

Notes,     (i)  1.  2.  hi=  'they'.  1.  4.   ifo,  fr,   O.E.  ge)eah,  gejxeh.  1.  5. 

•wordle  =  '  world '  shows  metathesis  of  Id. 

(2)  1.  i.  vor  =  'for'. 

(3)  11.  1-2.  Note  rhyme.          1.  2.  at6m  =  '  at  home',  still  so  pronounced  by  many 
good  speakers.        1.  5.  me,  indef.  Pron.  =  'one'. 

(4)  1.  2.    =  'as  one  has  told  before'.  1.  3.  goderkele,  adv.=  'fortunately 
for '.    heo  ~  '  she ' . 

(d)  From  the  Metrical  Life  of  St.  Juliana 

(Gloucestershire  c.  1300). 

1  3  i 

(i)    Swl)>e  sori  was  )>is  lu)>er  man  J>at  he  ne  mi:jte  hire  }>o}t  wende 

1  ii 

To  habbe  conseil  of  hire  fader  after  him  he  let  sende. 

16  * 

And  fondede  hire  clene  )>o3t  to  chaunge  J>oru  vair  biheste. 


SOUTHERN   DIALECT  39 

13  #  13 

po  hi  speke  uairest  wi)>  hire,  )>is  maide  hem  ;af  answere : — 

6        16  15  9 

Icholle  holde  }>a  ichabbe  itake ;   36  ne  do]?  me  }>erof  no  dere ; 

9  9  sa 

At  6  word  36  ne  turnej>  me  no}t,  J>er  aboute  ^e  spillej)  bre)>; 

10  i  9 

Dob  me  wat  pyne  ;e  wollej),  uor  I  ne  drede  no^t  J>en  dej>. 

13  16 

pe  hi  seie  )>at  }>is  maide  hire  }>o}t  chaungi  nolde, 

Hire  fader  bitok  hire  )>e  justice  to  do  wi)>  hire  wat  he  wolde. 

16 

(2)  We  ne  scholle  ]>\s  foule  wiche  ouercome  wi}>  no  dede 

}if  no  fiir  ne  mai  hire  brenne,  in  lede  we  scholle  hire  brede 
A  chetel  he  sette  ouer  }>e  fur  and  fulde  it  uol  of  lede 

16  12 

pis  maide  isei  bis  led  boili,  heo  nas  nobing  in  drede. 

12  15 

Anon  so  heo  was  )>erinne  ido,  )>at  fur  bigan  to  sprede. 
Fram  )>e  chetel  it  hupte  aboute,  in  leng)>e  and  in  brede. 
Sixti  men  and  seuentene  it  barnde  in  )>e  place 

Of  luj>er  men  }>at  stode  J>er  bl:    |>er  was  godes  grace. 
Amydde  J>e  chetel  \>is  maide  stode,  al  hdl  wi)>)>oute  harm  ; 

II  2  5 

pat  led  )>at  bolynde  was,  vnne)>e  it  }n>3te  hire  warm. 

IO  IO          *  12 

(3)  Ne  spareb  no^t  he  sede,  ac  heieb  uaste  bat  heo  of  dawe  be. 

I  10  Hi 

NabbeJ)  of  hire  nam5re  reu|>e  )>en  heo  hadde  of  me. 

12  I 

Nolde  heo  noj>ing  spare  me  of  al  j>at  ich  hire  bad, 
Vnne)?e  ich  dar  on  hire  loke,  so  sore  icham  adrad. 

7  12 

po  YIS  maide  hurde  J)is,  hire  eien  up  heo  caste, 

6        10  * 

A,  out !   out !   )>e  deuel  sede  holdej)  hire  nou  uaste. 

(e)    From  Treviscts  translation  of  Higderi's  Polychronicon  (1387). 

(1)  par  ys  gret  plente  of  smal  fysch  and  of  eeles,  so  }>at  cherles  in  som 

9  14  15 

place  feede)>  sowes  wij>  fysch.     par  buj>  ofte  ytake  delphyns  and 
se-calues  and  balenes  (gret  fysch  as  it  were  of  whaales  kunde)  and 
dyuers  maner  schyl-fysch  among  J>e  whoche  schyl-fysch  bu}> 

"9  J3 

moskles  J>at  habbe}>  wi})-ynne  ham  margery  perles  of  a 
manere  colour  of  hu}. 

(2)  Lond,  hony,  mylk,  chyse 
J>is  Ilond  schal  bere  }>e  prise 

(3)  Harold  come  vram  werre  of  Noreganes  and  hurde 
ty|>ynges  hereof,  and  hyede  wel  vast  and  hadde 

bote  veaw  kny^tes  aboute  hym;   vor  he 
15 

hadde  ylost  meny  stalword  me  in  J>e  ra)>er 

batayl  and  he  had  no^t  ysent  vor  more  help ;   and  jjey; 


40  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

a  hadde,  men  were  wrobe  and  wolde  haue  wy)>drawe, 
ham,  vor  hy  moste  haue  no  part  of  the  prayes  atte 

batayl  of  Noreganes.     Bote  Harold  sent  vor}>  spies  vor 

to  aweyte  and  se  J>e  number  and  ]>e  stringj>e  of  hys  enymyes.     Due 

William  touk  )>ues  spyes  and  ladde  ham  aboute  hys  tentes 

and  hys  pauylons,  and  vedde  ham  ry;t  realyche,  and  sent  ham 
to  Harold  a3e. 

Notes,     (i)  1.  4.  schyl,  fr.  O.E.  (W._Sax.)  sciell '  shell ' ;  this  is  the  Southern  z'-type. 

(2)  1.  i.  chyse,  fr.  O.E.  (W.  Sax.)  ctese,  later  ctsi '  cheese' ;  the  other  dialects  had 
cese  in  O.E.,  chese  in  M.E. 

(3)  1.  i.  vram  —fram  '  from  '.  1.  3.  veaw  =  O.E.  feawe  '  few  '.  1.  6. 
a  «=  he,  weak  form.      ]>ey)  -  O.E.  }eah  '  though',    atte  =  '  at  the'.       1.  10.  }ues, 
O.  E.  feds  <  these '.     vedde  =fedde (  fed '. 

(f)    From  St.  Editha  (Wilts,  c.  1420). 

12 

Bot  he  hurre-selff  dwelte  at  Wylton  stylle 

Wit  hurre  moder  as  y  sayde  $6we  ere ; 

For  hurre  m5der  to  serue  was  holyche  hurre  wylle 

4 

Wei  leuer  )>en  ony  other  gret  state  to  bere ; 
And  a  so  for  he  was  norysshut  vp  in  bat  place 

15 

And  furste  y-6rdryd  he  was  bere  berto, 
And  many  miracles  )>orow  goddus  grace 
For  hurre  werone  done  bere  also. 

When  he  hadde  regnyd  here  syxtene  3ere 

Fullyche  complete  wit  somewhat  more 

And  syxtene  ^ere  holde  and  somewhat  m5re  y  trowe  he  were 

When  he  was  kyng  furst  y-k5re 
Bote  of  his  deth  and  also  his  burynge 

Ychaue  y-writon  ^owe  herebyfore 

And  somewhat  of  his  gode  gouernynge ; 

And  J>at  is  cause  |?at  y  wryte  here  nomore. 

Note.    1.  i.  he  »  (she '.    1.  u.  holde  =  (  old'. 


Dialect  Features  of  Kentish  and  South-Eastern. 

( i)  O.E.  £  is  retained  as  a  fronted  [e]  sound  longer  and  more  consistently 
in  Kentish  than  in  the  more  Westerly  Southern  dialects.  But  even  here,  and 
that  as  early  as  1150  (Vespas.  Homilies),  the  Anglian  a  appears.  Vesp. 
Horns,  has  cweS,  O.E.  c WK}> ;  fedme  'bosom  ',  O.E.feffm;  weter  ' water', 
but  also  was, fader.  Laud  Sermons  (c.  1250)  has  efter,  O.E.  defter;  pet, 
O.E./ae/,  but  spac,  O.E.  sprxc  'spoke';  hedde  'had',  O.E.  h*fde,  but 
habbej),  hap,  O.E.  hxf]> ;  wat,  O.E.  hwxt  '  what ' ;  water,  O.E.  wxter, 
and  so  on.  Will,  of  Shoreham  (1320)  has  a  good  number  of  e  spellings  : 
wet,  O.E.  hwxt]  M  schal  < shall',  creft,  O.E.  crxft,  hep  'hath',  wetere, 
&c. ;  on  the  other  hand  wat,  schal,  water,  glas,  &c.  The  total  number  of 


THE   KENTISH  VOWELS  41 

a  spellings  is  greater  than  those  with  e.  Ayenbite  (1340),  the  latest  and 
on  the  whole  the  most  typical  example  of  Kentish,  has  eppel,  O.E.  deppel 
'  apple ',  huet  { what ',  gled  '  glad  ',  gles  '  glass ',  &c.,  but  also  occasionally 
a  as  in  uader. 

(2)  O.E.  se1  and  %P  have  both  the  same  (tense)  <f-sound  in  Kentish.    See 
remarks  on  this  sound  under  the  E.  Midland  characteristics  above.     The 
spellings  with  ie  seem  to  prove  tenseness  in  both  original  sounds :  Will, 
of  Shoreham  has  jzir  *  year ',  Prim.  O.E.gxr,  O.  Kentish  ger,  and  Ayenbite 
has  diem  'clean'  which  has  O.E.  v?  (see  E.  Midlands  2). 

(3)  O.E.  j>,  as  has  already  been  mentioned  (pp.  9,  30,  34,  above),  appears 
I  in  Kentish  and  South-Eastern.     There  is  further  reason  to  believe  that 
this  peculiarity  occurred  also  in  a  large  area  of  the  E.  Midlands.    It  is  found 
in  Suffolk  Charters  in  the  late  tenth  century,  cf.  also  p.  78,  below.  Examples 
from  Kentish  texts:  senne  ' sin  \fefye  or  velf>e  '  filth ',  O.E.  (Sax.  and  Angl.) 
fylfie  •   ke)?}>e  '  family  ',  &c.,  O.E.  cyj>j>et  were  hen  '  work ',  O.E.  wyrcan, 
merie  'merry',  O.E.  myrig,  &c.,  &c. 

(4)  O.E.  eo  never  appears  in  Kentish  as  a  rounded  vowel  (u,  oe,  &c.), 
as  in  the  West  and  South- West,  but,  especially  the  long  eo,  is  either  written 
*e>ye>  i°)  yo>  or  e-     I*  is  rather  doubtful  whether  the  ie,ye  spellings  imply 
a  diphthongal  sound  or  whether  they  merely  represent  a  tense  I.     The 
Vesp.  Horns,  writes  bien,  O.  W.  Sax.  bebn  ( be ' ;  chiesen  inf.  '  choose ',  O.E. 
ceosan,  dier-,  O.E.  dear  '  animal ',  diofles,  O.E.  deoflas  '  devils  '.      Laud 
Homilies  has  biep  '  are  ',  bien  (inf.),  but  sterre  '  star ',  O.E.  sleorra ;  herte, 
O.E.  heorte '  heart '.  Will,  of  Shoreham  nearly  always  writes  ee  or  e  for  eo  : 
depe,  crepe,  feende  'enemy',  but  has  also  soefi,  O.E.  seoj>  '  see  '  (Western 
influence  ?),  by  =  beon  (inf.).    Ayenbite  writes  herte,  erfie,  2\&Q  yer  the,  y  erne 
'run',  O.E.  eornan.    For  the  long,  dyeule,  O.E.  deofle,  uryend,  uriend  'friend ', 
Q.lL.freond,  uyend,  Q.lL.feond  '  enemy' ;  diere,  dyere  '  dear',  O.E.  deora, 
&c.     By  the  side  of  these  usual  spellings,  e  and  ee  are  also  written  occa- 
sionally.    In  view  of  the  fact  that  most  of  the  Kentish  texts  write  ie  for 
tense  /,  as  in  hier,  O.E.  her  '  here ',  and  hieren  '  to  hear  ',  Old  Kentish  heren, 
and  also  that  they  all  often  write  ee  for  O.E.  eo,  it  seems  not  improbable 
that  the  spelling  means  no  more  than  tense  [e].   In  the  writings  of  Gower 
ie  is  a  recognized  symbol  for  [e].     See  remarks  on  p.  57. 

(5)  O.E.  -call-,  -earm-,  -eard-  are  written  with  ea,  x,  or  e,  longer  than  in 
the  South- Western.     Vesp.  Horns,  has  xlra,  delmihli',  Will,  of  Shoreham 
earmes  '  arms ',  pou  ert '  art ',  her  my  inf.  '  to  harm ',  but  also  scharpe,  harde\ 
Ayenbite  seems  to  have  the  Anglian  -arm-,  -ard-. 

(6)  O.E.  -eald-  retains  the  front  vowel  of  the  old  Southern  type  in 
Kentish,  as  against  the  Anglian  -old-  type,  still  more  thoroughly  than  the 
combinations  -earm-,  -ea!/-,  &c.    Vesp.  Horns,  has  sselde  '  gave  ',  '  sold ', 
O.E.  sealde ;   healde,  inf.  '  hold ',  O.E.  healdan ;  Will,  of  Shoreham  has 
fA?/</'cold',  O.E.  ceald,  cxld;  tealde  Pret.,  andj-&/</,  p.p.  'told',  Late  O.E. 
tdelde,  &c. ;  to  helde  '  to  hold ',  elde  '  old ',  Late  O.E.  xld,  &c.,  &c. ;  Ayenbite 
has  ealde  and  yealde  'old',  chealde  'cold',  tealde  'told',  healde  'hold'. 
The  typical  Anglian  forms  with  -old-  do  not  seem  to  occur  in  the  last 
text,  nor  are  they  at  all  frequent  in  any  Kentish  text. 

(7)  O.E.  ea  in  Kentish.   The  late  treatment,  at  least  in  spelling,  of  this 
long  diphthong  deserves  a  few  words,  as  it  is  typical.     In  most  dialects 
O.E.  ed  became  x  in  the  Late  O.E.  period,  and  this  e  [e]  in  M.E.,  when 


42  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

it  is  often  written  ea — deafi  =  [defi],  &c.  In  Ayenbite,  however,  we  get 
dyaf1  deaf ',  O.E.  dedf\  dyap  and  dyeafi  '  death  ',  dyed  '  dead  ';  lyaf '  leaf, 
O.E.  leaf]  lyas  pret.  '  lost ',  O.E.  -leas,  &c.  Will,  of  Shoreham  has  traces 
of  these  spellings  in  lias  pret.  *  lost ',  senne-lyas  '  sinless ',  O.E.  leas, 
but  otherwise  writes  ea — deapes,  reaue,  &c.  The  Laud  Horns,  has  diad- 
lich  '  deadly ',  diath  '  death  ',  be-liane  '  faith ',  O.E.  ge-ledfa,  all  of  which 
occur  frequently,  by  the  side  of  occasional  be-leaue,  &c.  Vesp.  Horns,  has 
deddlic,  eadinesse,  O.E.  eddig-,  xac,  O.E.  eac  '  also ',  but  also  gecas  '  chose ', 
O.E.  ceas]  brad  'bread',  O.E.  bread]  admodi-,  O.E.  eddmodig  'humble', 
&c.  Whether  ea,  ia,  ya  all  represent  some  sound  like  [ae]  or  [§],  or 
whether  they  really  represent  a  combination  such  as  [j«],  it  seems  impossible 
to  say.  a  in  brad  can  hardly  represent  anything  but  [ge]  or  [s],  and  this 
may  well  have  been  the  sound  in  all  these  words.  If  this  were  so,  Kentish 
would  only  differ  from  the  other  dialects  in  employing  a  special  graphic 
device. 

(8)  Initial  s-  and/"  often  appear  voiced  in  Kentish.    This  is  particularly 
systematic  in  Ayenbite,  where  u  (for  v)  is  regularly  written  at  the  begin- 
ning of  English  words  uolc  i  people  ',  uor  '  for  ',  uoul '  foul ',  &c.,  &c.,  also 
before  cons,  uram,  uryend,  &c.,  &c.      In  French  words  f-  is  written : 

fauour  '  figure ',  flour  '  flower  \frut '  fruit ',  &c.,  &c.  Note  uals  '  false  ', 
&c.,  however.  Initial  s-  is  written  z  in  English  words,  only  before  vowels, 

except  in  the  old  combination  sw-,  which  is  written  zu zuyn,  O.E. 

swin  '  swine ',  zuete  '  sweet ',  O.E.  swete,  &c.,  also  zeche,  O.E.  sedan 
1  seek ',  zenne  '  sin  ',  &c.,  &c.  Before  consonants  s  is  written  in  English 
words  :  streme  '  stream  ',  strengfri  '  strengthen  ',  and  in  French  words  s  is 
written  everywhere.  All  the  earlier  Kentish  texts  write  s- ;  as  regards 
O.E.  initial  y-,  Vesp.  Horns,  seems  always  to  write  f-,  Laud  Horns,  has 
occasional  v — vaire  '  fair ',  QJL.fdeger  ;  uuluelden  lit.  *  fulfilled,  filled  full ', 
but  more  often  f-,  while  Will,  of  Shoreham  generally  writes  /-,  but  has 
also  uader  '  father  ',  vedefi  '  feeds  ',  velj>  '  filth ',  &c.  Thus  Kentish,  apart 
from  Ayenbite,  does  not  use  the  voiced  sound  for  initial  f-  nearly  so 
commonly  as  South- Western,  while  the  latter  is  far  behind  Ayenbite  in 
the  use  of  the  voiced  sound  for  s-. 

Points  connected  with  the  Inflexions  in  Kentish. 

(9)  The  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  Indie,  ends  in  -^,  ->  as  in  the  rest  of 
the  Southern  area.    An  exceptional  -s  form,  leles,  occurs  in  Vespas.  Horns, 
however. 

(10)  The  PI.  Pres.  Indie,  ends  in  -ej>  as  in  Southern  generally. 

(n)  The  Imperat.  PI.  ends  in  -ej>,  -j>  as  in  Southern  generally,  and 
E.  Midlands. 

(12)  The  Pres.  Part,  ends  in  -mde  (with  occasional  -ende)  as  in  South- 
western. 

(13)  The  Fem.  Pron.  Nom.  is  usually  hi,  never  sche,  &c. 

(14)  PI.  of  3rd  Pers.  Pronoun.     Kentish  agrees  with  the  rest  of  the 
Southern  in  having  no  /-  or  th~  forms.     A  characteristic  Kentish   or 
South-Eastern  form  his  is  in  the  Ace.  PI.  (=  '  them ')  in  Vesp.  Horns., 
Shoreham,  and  Ayenbite.     This  is  also  found  in  some  of  the  earlier 
E.  Midland  texts,  e.g.  Genesis  and  Exodus. 


SPECIMENS   OF  KENTISH  43 

(15)  The  characteristic  biefi,  PI.  Pres.  Indie,  of  bien  '  to  be ',  is  found  in 
Ayenbite. 

(16)  The  statements  concerning  the  prefix  i-  in  verbs,  especially  the 
P.  P.,  and  the  termination  -e,  without  -n,  which  are  made  above  with 
regard  to  South- Western,  apply  on  the  whole  to  Kentish. 

(17)  The  -te,  -y  endings  in  Inf.  of  Vbs.  are  very  frequent  in  Kentish 
as  in  South- Western. 


Illustrative  Extracts  from  M.E.  Kentish  Texts. 
(a)    From  the  (Vespasian  A.  22)  Kentish  Sermons  (c.  1150). 

(1)  An  )>esser  becvS  bedeles  and  la^ieres  to  berie  archebiscopes 

114 
and  biscopes,  prestes  and  hare  5egeng.    Ac  J>ah  we  fif  naemmie 

6  ,  14  39 

alle  hit  on  godes  wille,  and  elc  of  ham  ^estrenS  and  fulfele}> 

3  14  3  i         10 

o^re.     Of  Besses  fif  ce)>en  and  of  hare  bedeles  we  habbe)>  ^eu 

16  10  i  i 

3esed.     Of  }>e  folce  we  siggej)  J>at  hit  cum|>  fastlice,  fram  midden- 

ardes  anginn  alse  fele  alse  deade  beoS  alse  fele  beoS  to  berie 
i(>  i  i  i 

icome,  wat  frend,  wat  fa,  and  elce  de3ie  )>icce  ^ringeS. 

14  3  3 

(2)  pan  seied  ham  god  )>e  gelty  mannen  36  sene^den  an  }eur 

ecenesse,  and  36  scule  birne  an  mire  ecenisse.     ^e  sene3den 
alse  lange  alse  36  lefede  and  36  scule  birne  alse  longe  as  ic 

lefie.    Wite^  into  ece  fer,  be  is  3aearcod  mine  fo,  and  his  3egeng. 
Son  hi  wrSe'S  abroden  of  his  3esec)>e. 


(b)     From  the  Laud  Homilies  (c.  1250). 

(1)  Nu  lordinges  }>is  is  )>e  miracle  J>et  J>et  godspel  of  te  dai  us  telj>.     ac 
great  is  )>e  tokeningge.     Se  leprus  signifie)>  }>o  senuulle  me ;   3!  lepre 

3193  9 

)>o  sennen.     pet  scab  bitokne}>  ]>o  litle  sennen,  si  lepre  bitoknej)  J>o 

7  r         4        15  7  10      16 

grete  sennen  }>et  biedh  diadliche.  .  .  .  Nu  ye  habbeft  iherd 

i  9  4      15         2  [c] 

)>e  miracle  and  wet  hit  bitokned:.     No  loke  we  yef  we  blej>  clene  of 
)>ise  lepre,  J>at  is  to  siggen  of  diadliche  senne. 

(2)  And  bi  J>et  hi  offrede  gold  )>et  is  cuuenable  yeftte  to  kinge, 

i  i     14 

scawede  bet  he  was  sothfast  Kink.     And  bi  bet  hi  offrede 

i  6  14 

Stor  bet  me  offrede  wylem  be  bo  ialde  laghe  to  here  godes 
i|  i    14 

sacrefise,  seawede  }>et  he  was  verray  prest.    And  be  )>et  hi 

i  9  i       14  i  7 

offrede  Mirre  bet  is  biter  bing,  signifieth  bet  hi  hedde  beliaue 

1  7  J7  i 

J>et  he  was  diadlich  |>et  diath  solde  suffri  for  man-ken. 


44  DIALECT   TYPES  IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

(c)    From  William  of  Shoreham  (1310-20). 

i  z 

(i)    OnneJ>e  creft  eny  J>at  stat 

Ac  some  crefte}>  }>at  halue 
And  for  siknesse  leche  creft 

And  for  J>e  goute  sealue 
Me  make)). 

6 

For  wanne  man  drawij)  into  Sideward 

10 

Wei  oft  his  bones  akej>. 

And  be  a  man  neuer  so  sprind    . 

i 

3ef  he  schel  libbe  to  elde 

Be  him  wel  siker  )>erto  he  schal 


And  his  dej>es  dette 

To  gile. 

3et  meni  song  man  wenej)  longe  Hue 

And  leue}>  wel  litle  wyle. 

4W 

(2)    Leue  dame,  say  me  now 

i 
Wy  he)>  god  forbSde  hyt  }ow 

i 

pet  56  ne  m6te 

i  i 

Eten  of  al  J>at  frut  )>at  hys 

12 

Here  growynde  in  paradys 
To  joure  b6te? 

IO 

We  etej>  y-nou  quaj>  cue,  ywis 
Of  alle  )>e  trSwes  of  paradys 

*5  i 

And  be)>  wel  gled; 
Bote  ]>ys  tr6w  m5te  we  nau^t  take, 
For  boj>e  me  and  mynne  make 
God  hyt  forbede. 

(d)    From  the  Ayfabtte  (1340). 

48  i        8  8 

Aye  J>e  uondingges  of  )>e  dyeule  :  zay  )>is  J>et  uol^e))  :   Zuete 
iesu  |In  h6ly  blod/j>et  )>ou  sseddest  ane  )>e  rSd/uor  me 
and  uor  mankende:   Ich  bidde  )>e  hit  by  my  sseld/auoreye 
)>e  wycked  uend:   al  to  mi  lyues  ende.  zuS  by  hit. 

)>is  boc  is  dan  Michelis  of  Nothgate,  y-  write  an  englis 

of  his  Ojene  hand  ;   )>et  hatte  Ayenbyte  of  Inwyt.    And  is  of 

J>e  bSchouse  of  saynt  Austines  of  Canterberie. 

Holy  archangle  Michael 
Saynt  gabriel  and  Raphael 
Ye  brenge  me  to  J>5  castel 

58  8        10 

per  alle  zaulen  vare}>  wel. 


CERTAIN   TYPES   OMITTED  FROM   SURVEY          45 

i  5 

Lhord  ihesu  almtyi  Kyng,  J>et  madest  and  16kest  alle  )>yng, 
Me  )>et  am  )>i  makyng  to  )nne  blisse  me  }>ou  bryng.    Amen. 

7  858 

Blind  and  dyaf  and  alsuo  domb,  of  zeuenty  yer  al  uol  rond. 

88  8, 

Ne  ssolle  by  draje  to  )>e  gr5nd,  uor  peny,  uor  mark  ne  uor  p5nd. 

We  have  now  concluded  our  brief  survey  of  the  principal  distinguishing 
features  which  characterize  the  Regional  types  that  go  to  the  composition 
of  the  dialect  of  London  during  the  M.E.  period,  that  is  to  say,  the  South- 
Eastern  (especially  Kent  and  Essex),  the  Central  and  more  Westerly 
Southern,  and  the  East  Midland.  The  illustrative  extracts  from  texts 
written  in  the  various  dialects  furnish  examples,  in  the  actual  living 
sentence,  of  most  of  our  points,  though  possibly  not  of  all.  Outside  the 
distinguishing  marks  of  dialect,  which  are  here  selected  as  most  typical,  it 
will  be  observed  that  there  is  much  that  is  common  to  all,  and  which  belongs 
to  the  whole  of  English  south  of  the  Thames,  and  north,  at  least  as  far  as 
Lincolnshire,  in  the  East.  We  have  omitted  from  our  survey  the  Northern 
English,  and  Scotch  dialects,  and  that  large  area,  to  the  West,  rather  vaguely 
known  as  '  West  Midland '  among  students  of  Middle  English.  It  is 
obvious  that  the  dialects  of  these  regions  can  have  had  no  direct  influence 
upon  the  speech  of  London,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  no  typically 
Northern  or  West  Midland  elements  in  Literary  or  Standard  Spoken 
English  at  the  present  day,  nor  were  there  any  in  the  M.E.  dialect  from 
which  these  have  sprung.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  there  are 
many  features  of  grammar,  sounds,  and  vocabulary  which  belong  to 
English  as  a  whole,  which  therefore  occur  in  North,  South,  South-Eastern, 
East,  and  West  Midland  alike.  There  are  also  certain  features,  such  as 
-j  in  the  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Present  of  verbs,  which  were  originally  Northern, 
but  which  subsequently  passed  into  the  North  Midland  English  as  a  whole, 
in  the  first  place,  and  later,  from  East  Midland,  probably  through  Essex, 
into  London  English.  But,  so  far  as  the  latter  is  concerned,  these 
features  are  to  be  regarded  as  East  Midland.  See,  however,  pp.  334-7. 
below. 

There  are  many  other  points  of  considerable  importance,  besides 
those  above  discussed  under  the  various  dialect  headings,  which  arise  in 
the  detailed  and  minute  study  of  the  texts  from  which  our  illustrative 
extracts  are  drawn,  but  are  passed  over  in  silence  here,  because  they 
would  take  us  further  into  the  minutiae  of  Old  and  Middle  English 
grammar  than  it  would  be  permissible  to  go  in  a  book  of  this  kind.  It 
is  believed,  however,  that  this  omission  will  not  impair  the  general  argu- 
ment of  the  book,  and  the  omission  is  deliberate. 


The  Dialect  of  London  down  to  the  Death  of  Chaucer. 

We  now  pass  to  consider  the  dialect  of  London  itself,  down  to  the  close 
of  the  fourteenth  century  and  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth. 
It  must  be  assumed  that  the  reader  has  grasped  the  foregoing  statement 


46  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

and  enumeration  of  the  various  dialectal  features  of  the  different  regions 
dealt  with ;  at  any  rate,  the  tables  and  examples  can  easily  be  referred 
to,  and  the  references  given  to  the  various  points  dealt  with  will  reduce 
the  reader's  labour  to  a  minimum.  The  abbreviations  E.  Midi.,  Sthn.,  Kt., 
refer  to  the  dialect  areas  as  treated  above,  pp.  29-43,  &c.,  and  the  numbers 
to  the  particular  points.  Thus  E.  Midi.  6  refers  to  the  paragraph  above 
under  the  heading  E.  Midi,  in  which  the  O.E.  Midland  combination 
-did-,  which  in  the  Southern  O.E.  dialects  is  represented  by  -eald-,  later 
-xld-,  is  dealt  with. 

We  may  first  give  some  examples  of  documents  written  in  London, 
from  the  time  of  the  Conqueror  down  to  Chaucer. 


Illustrative  Specimens  of  the  Dialect  of  London  from  the 
Conquest  to  Chaucer. 

(a)     William  the  Conqueror's  Charter  (1066).     From  Liebermann's 
Gesetze  d.  Angelsachsen,  vol.  i,  p.  486. 

Willelm  Kyng  gret  Willelm  bisceop  and  Gosfreg^  portirefan  and  ealle 
J>a  burhwaru  binnan  Londone  Frencisce  and  Englisce  freondlice.  And 
ic  ky'Se  eow  )>aet  ic  wylle  }>aet  get  beon  eallra  J>asra  laga  weorSe  )>e  gyt  wseran 
on  Eadwerdes  daege  Kynges.  And  ic  wylle  )>aet  aelc  cyld_beo  his  fseder 
yrfnume  aefter  his  faeder  dsege  and  ic  nelle  ge}>olian  }>aet  asnig  man  eow 
senig  J>rang  beode.  God  eow  gehealde. 

(b)  Proclamation  of  Henry  III  (1258).  From  Patent  Rolls.  Printed 
Ellis,  Early  English  Pronunciation,  Pt.  II,  pp.  501,  &c.,  and 
Emerson's  M.E.  Reader. 

Henri  Jmr^  godes  fultume  King  on  Engleneloand,  Lhoauerd  on  Yrloand, 
Duk  on  Norm'  on  Aquitain*  and  eorl  on  Aniow  Send  igretinge  to  alle  hise 
holde,  ilaerde  and  ileawede  on  Huntendonschir'  }>aet  witen  36  wel  alle  j>aet  we 
willen  and  unnen  J>ast,  }>aet  vre  raedesmen  alle  o)>er  )>e  moare  dasl  of  heom 
baet  be5j>  ichosen  jmrj  us  and  jmrj  }>ast  loandes  folk  on  vre  Kuneriche 
habbej)  idon  and  schullen  don  in'}>e  wor}>nesse  of  gode  and  on  vre  treow)>e, 
for  )>e  freme  of  J>e  loande,  Jmr}  )?e  besi3te  of  )>an  toforen  iseide  redesmen. 
beo  stedefaest  and  ilestinde  in  alle  J>inge  abuten  asnde.  And  we  hoaten  alle 
vre  treowe  in  }>e  treow)>e  j>aet  heo  vs  ogen  )>aet  heo  stedefasstliche  healden 
and  swerien  to  healden  and  to  werien  )>o  isetnesses  J>ast  beon  imakede  and 
beon  to  makien  J>ur^  )>an  to  foreniseide  raadesmen  6J>er  )>ur3  )>e  moare  dael  of 
heom  alswo  alse  hit  is  biforen  iseid.  And  )>ast  aehc  o^er  helpe  J>aet  for  to 
done  bi  |>an  ilche  5}>e  a3enes  alle  men.  Ri^t  for  to  done  and  to  foangen.  And 
noan  ne  nime  of  loande  ne  of  e3te  wherj>ur3  J)is  besi^te  mu3e  beon  ilet  6J>er 
iwersed  on  onie  wise.  And  ^if  oni,  5)>er  onie  cumen  her  on^enes,  we  willen 
and  hoaten  J>aat  alle  vre  treowe  heom  healden  deadliche  ifoan.  And  for  )>aet 
we  willen  J>ast  ]>isbeo  stedefaest  and  lestinde,  we  senden  ;ew  }>is  writ  open 
iseined  wi^  vre  seel,  to  halden  amanges  ;ew  ine  hord.  Witnesse  vs  seluen 
set  Lunden'  }>ane  EjtetenJ)e  day  on  J?e  m5nj>e  of  Octobr'.  In  J>e  two  and 
fowerti3j>e  jeare  of  vre  cruninge.  And  in  jns  wes  idon  aetforen  vre  isworene 
redesmen.  And  al  on  )>o  ilche  worden  is  isend  into  aevriche  6|>re  schlre  over 
al  baere  kuneriche  on  Engleneloande,  and  ek  intel  Irelonde. 

(N.B.    PI.  Name,  Hwrtford  (Earl  of)  among  signatories.)     - 


SPECIMENS   OF   LONDON   ENGLISH  47 

(c)    Adam  Davy  (c.  1307-27). 

(1)  His  name  is  ihote  Sir  Edward  )>e  Kyng 
Prince  of  Wales,  Engelonde  |>e  faire  Jnng.1 
Me  mette  2  )>at  he  was  armed  wel 

B6J>e  wij>  yrne  and  wi}>  stel, 
And  on  his  helme  bat  was  of  stel 
A  coroune  of  gold  bicom  hym  wel. 
Bifore  J>e  shryne  of  Seint  Edward  he  stood 
Myd  glad  chere  and  mylde  of  mood, 
Mid  two  Kni^ttes  armed  on  etyer  side 
pat  he  ne  mi^t  }>ennes  goo  ne  ride 
Hetilich  hii  leiden  hym  upon3 
Als  hii  mi^tten  myd  swerde  don. 

(2)  pe  pursday  next  j>e  beryng  of  our  Lefdy 
Me  }>ou3ht  an  aungel  com  Sir  Edward  by ; 
pe  aungel  bitook  Sir  Edward  on  honde 

Al  bledyng  |>e  foure  former  clawes  so  were  of  jje  LSmbe. 

At  Caunterbiry,  bifore  £e  heije  autere,  }>e  Kyng  stood, 

YcloJ>ed  al  in  rede  murre ;   he  was  of  }>at  blee  red  as  blood. 

God,  )>at  was  on  gode  Friday  don  on  )>e  rode 

So  turne  my  swevene  night  and  day  to  mychel  gode. 

Tweye  poynts  j>ere  ben  fat  ben  unschewed 

For  me  ne  worj>e  to  clerk  ne  lewed ; 

Bot  to  Sir  Edward  oure  Kyng 

Hym  wil  iche  shewe  J>ilk  metyng. 

1  J>*ng  ~  '  creature '.  a  Me  mette  =  '  I  dreamt '. 

3  This  phrase  is  very  like  our  c  laid  into  him  '. 

(d)     Extract  from  '  A  petition  from  the  folk  of  Mercerye'  (1386). 
Rolls  of  Parliament,  vol.  iii,  p.  225,  &c. ;  Morsbach,  Engl.  Schriftspr.,  p.  171. 

And  yif  in  general  his  falsenesse  were  ayeinsaide  as  of  vs  togydre  of  the 
Mercerye  or  othere  craftes  or  ony  conseille  wolde  haue  taken  to  ayeinstande 
it,  or  as  tyme  out  of  mynde  hath  be  vsed,  we  wolden  companye  togydre  how 
lawful  so  it  were  for  owre  nede  or  profite  were  anon  apeched  for  arrysers 
ayeins  the  pees,  and  falsly  many  of  vs  that  yet  stonden  endited  and  we  ben 
openlich  disclaundred,  holden  vntrewe  and  traitours  to  owre  Kyng.  for  the 
same  Nichol  said  bifor  Mair  Aldermen  and  owre  craft  bifor  hem  gadred  in 
place  of  recorde  that  xx  or  xxx  of  vs  were  worthy  to  be  drawen  and  hanged, 
the  which  thyng  lyke  to  yowre  worthy  lordship  by  and  euen  Juge  to  be 
proued  or  disproued  the  whether  that  trowthe  may  shewe  for  trowthe 
amonges  vs  of  fewe  or  elles  no  man  many  day  dorst  be  shewed.  And  nought 
oonlich  vnshewed  or  hidde  it  hath  be  by  no  man  now,  but  also  of  bifore  tyme, 
the  moost  profitable  poyntes  of  trewe  gouernaunce  of  the  citee  compiled  to- 
gidre  bi  longe  labour  of  discrete  and  wyse  men  wythout  conseille  of  trewe 
men  :  for  thei  sholde  nought  be  knowen  ne  contynued  in  the  tyme  of  Nichol 
Exton  outerliche  were  brent. 

(e)    From  Chaucer's  Pardoner's  Tale. 

'Ye,  goddes  armes,'  quod  this  ryotour, 
'Is  it  swich  peril  with  him  for  to  mete? 
I  shal  him  seke  by  wey  and  eek  by  strete, 
I  make  avow  to  goddes  digne  bones ! 
Herkneth,  felawes,  we  three  been  al  ones ; 


48  DIALECT  TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

Lat  ech  of  us  hSlde  up  his  bond  til  other, 

And  ech  of  us  bicomen  Stheres  brSther, 

And  we  wol  sleen  this  false  traytour  Deeth ; 

He  shal  be  slayn,  which  that  so  many  sleeth, 

By  goddes  dignitee,  er  it  be  night.' 

Togidres  han  thise  three  her  trouthes  plight, 

To  live  and  dyen  ech  of  hem  for  other, 

As  though  he  were  his  owene  yboren  brother. 

And  up  they  sterte  al  dronken,  in  this  rage, 

And  forth  they  goon  towardes  that  village, 

Of  which  the  taverner  had  spoke  biforn, 

And  many  a  grisly  ooth  than  han  they  sworn, 

And  Crlstes  blessed  body  they  to-rente — 

*  Deeth  shal  be  deed,  if  that  they  may  him  hente.' 

Whan  they  han  goon  nat  fully  half  a  myle 

Right  as  they  wolde  han  trod  en  over  a  style, 

An  old  man  and  a  povre  with  hem  mette. 

This  olde  man  ful  mekely  hem  grette, 

And  seyde  thus,  *  now,  lordes,  god  yow  see ! ' 

The  proudest  of  thise  ryotoures  three 

Answerde  agayn,  'what?  carl,  with  sory  grace, 

Why  artow  al  forwrapped  save  thy  face  ? 

Why  livestow  so  longe  in  so  greet  age  ? ' 

This  Side  man  gan  loke  in  his  visage, 

And  seyde  thus,  'for  I  ne  can  nat  finde 

A  man,  though  that  I  walked  into  Inde 

Neither  in  citee  nor  in  n5  village, 

That  wolde  chaunge  his  youthe  for  myn  age; 

And  therfore  moot  I  han  myn  age  stille, 

As  longe  time  as  it  is  goddes  wille. 

Ne  deeth,  alias !    ne  wol  nat  han^  my  lyf ; 

Thus  walke  I,  lyk  a  restelees  caityf, 

And  on  the  ground,  which  is  my  modres  gate, 

I  knokke  with  my  staf,  bothe  erly  and  late, 

And  seye,  uleve  moder,  leet  me  in! 

Lo  how  I  vanish,  flesh,  and  blood,  and  skin ! 

Alias  whan  shul  my  bones  been  at  reste  ? 

Moder  with  yow  wolde  I  chaunge  my  cheste, 

That  in  my  chambre  longe  tyme  hath  be, 

Ye !   for  an  heyre  clout  to  wrappe  me  !  " 

But  yet  to  me  she  wol  nat  do  that  grace, 

For  which  ful  pale  and  welked  is  my  face. 

But,  sirs,  to  yow  it  is  nS^curteisye 

To  speken  to  an  old  man  vileinye, 

But  he  trespasse  in  worde,  or  elles  in  dede. 

In  holy  writ  ye  may  your-self  wel  rede, 

"Agayns  an  old  man,  hoor  upon  his  heed, 

Ye  sholde  aryse;"   wherfor  I  yeve  yow  reed, 

Ne  dooth  unto  an  old  man  noon  harm  now, 

NamSre  than  ye  w51de  men  dide  to  yow 

In  age,  if  that  ye  s5  long  abyde; 

And  god  be  with  yow,  wher  ye  go  or  ryde. 

I  moot  go  thider  as  I  have  to  go.' 

(f)    From  Chaucer's  Persones  Tale. 

Wherfore  as  seith  Seint  Anselm :  '  ful  gret  angwissh  shul  the  sinful  folk 
have  at  that  tyme ;   ther  shal  the  sterne  and  wrothe  juge  sitte  above,  and 


DIALECT   OF  EARLIEST   LONDON   DOCUMENTS      49 

under  him  the  horrible  put  of  helle  open  to  destroyen  him  that  moot 
biknowen  hise  sinnes,  which  sinnes  openly  been  shewed  biforn  god  and 
biforn  every  creature.  And  on  the  left  syde  mo  develes  than  herte  may 
bithinke,  for  to  harie  and  drawe  the  sinful  soules  to  the  pyne  of  helle. 
And  with-inne  the  hertes  of  folk  shal  be  the  bytinge  conscience  and  with- 
outeforth  shal  be  the  world  al  brenninge. 

Whider  shal  thanne  the  wrecched  sinful  man  flee  to  hyden  him  ?  Certes, 
he  may  nat  hyden  him ;  he  moste  come  forth  and  shewen  him.  .  .  .  Now 
sothly,  who-so  wel  remembreth  him  of  thise  thinges,  I  gesse  that  his  sinne 
shal  nat  turne  him  into  delyt,  but  to  greet  sorwe,  for  drede  of  the  peyne  of 
helle.  And  therfore  seith  lob  to  god:  'suffre,  lord,  that  I  may  a  whyle 
biwaille  and  wcpe,  er  I  go  with-oute  returning  to  the  derke  lond,  covered 
with  the  derknesse  of  deeth  ;  to  the  lond  of  misese  and  of  derknesse,  where- 
as is  the  shadwe  of  deeth  ;  where-as  ther  is  noon  ordre  or  ordinance,  but 
grisly  drede  that  evere  shal  laste.'  .  .  . 

.  .  .  And  therfore  seith  Seint  lohn  the  Evangelist:  'they  shullen  folwe 
deeth,  and  they  shul  nat  finde  him,  and  they  shul  desyren  to  dye,  and  deeth 
shal  fle  fro  hem.'  .  .  .  For  as  seith  seint  Basilic :  '  the  brenninge  of  the  fyr 
of  this  world  shal  god  yeven  in  helle  to  hem  that  been  dampned ;  but  the 
light  and  the  cleernesse  shal  be  yeven  in  hevene  to  hise  children ;  right  as 
the  gode  man  yeveth  flesh  to  hise  children,  and  bones  to  his  houndes.' 

The  first  document  is  given  here  chiefly  on  account  of  its  intrinsic 
historical  interest.  It  does  not  prove  very  much  from  a  linguistic  point 
of  view.  The  form  is  to  all  intents  and  purposes  Old  English,  and,  like 
most  other  documents  written  in  the  eleventh  century,  is  no  doubt 
very  archaic  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  English  then  spoken.  It  is  the 
conventional  Late  Old  English  of  the  scribes,  showing,  it  is  true,  some 
signs  of  departure  from  that  of  the  classical  period,  but  still  giving  no 
true  picture  of  the  changes  which  time  must  already  have  wrought  in 
uttered  speech.  As  regards  dialect,  the  charter  is  certainly  Southern 
English,  and  such  forms  as yt/-(nume)  and  wseran  (Sthn.  2  a)  are  charac- 
teristic of  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  West  Saxon.  We  have, 
unfortunately,  no  reliable  knowledge  of  the  differences  and  points  of 
agreement  between  the  English  of  Wessex  and  that  of  Middlesex. 
Probably  there  were  more  of  the  former  than  of  the  latter.  The  forms 
ealle,  eaUre,  and  gehealde  could  not  occur  in  a  Northern  or  Midland 
dialect,  though  they  might  just  as  well  be  Kentish  as  '  Saxon '  (Sthn.  6, 
Kt.  6).  The  fact  is  that  all  O.E.  documents  of  the  later  period,  with 
very  few  exceptions,  are  written  in  a  common  form  which  in  all  essential 
features  is  W.  Saxon — though  this  particular  charter  has  only  two  abso- 
lutely test  forms— -yrf-,  wxran — so  much  so  that  it  is  now  commonly 
assumed  that  after  Alfred's  time  the  prestige  of  Wessex  in  Government, 
Arms,  and  Letters,  was  such  that  the  dialect  of  that  area  became  a 
literary  Kotvfj  in  universal  use  in  written  documents.  That  this  was  true 
of  official  London  documents  this  charter,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  a  proof. 
The  fact  that  x  is  retained  in  fxder,  p&t,  ddege,  &c.,  tends  to  show 
a  W.  Saxon  character,  since  e  was  typical  in  these  words  in  Kent  (Kt.  i) 
and  in  part  of  the  Mercian  area.  On  the  other  hand,  Late  Kentish 
scribes  often  write  the  letter  K  for  the  <?-sound.  But  the  form  kyfo  is 
certainly  not  Kentish,  for  this  dialect  would  have  kef>e  (Kt.  3). 

The   written  dialect  of  London,  then,  in  the  eleventh  century  was 
definitely  Southern  in  character,  and  South -Western,  rather  than  South- 


5o  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE    ENGLISH 

Eastern.  It  may  be  asked  whether  the  actual  speech  of  the  metropolis  at 
this  period  is  represented  by  this  charter.  It  is  largely  a  question  of 
probabilities,  but  it  is  highly  probable,  if  not  absolutely  certain,  that  this 
document — apart  from  chronological  inconsistencies  with  the  spoken 
language,  to  which  allusion  has  already  been  made — does  represent  the 
type  of  dialect  which  was  actually  spoken  in  London  when  it  was  written. 
If  that  be  so,  the  speech  of  London  in  the  eleventh  century  was  Southern 
in  character,  and,  more  exactly,  approximated  to  South- Western,  having 
as  yet,  so  far  as  our  evidence  goes,  no  purely  South-Eastern  features. 

Passing  now  to  extract  (b),  the  Proclamation  of  Henry  III,  which 
is  nearly  two  hundred  years  later  than  the  above  charter,  we  notice  a  con- 
siderable difference  in  its  dialect  constituents,  as  compared  with  the  latter. 
We  now  observe  the  characteristic  blending  of  Midland  elements  with 
those  which  are  typically  Southern,  and  in  some  cases  the  Southern  and 
Midland  forms  of  the  same  word  or  grammatical  ending  both  occur. 

Among  the  characteristically  Southern  forms  are  the  following : — O.E. 
x  preserved  as  e  or  de  in  xt,  fiset,  wes  (Sthn.  i)  ;  O.E.  &  written  x  in 
rxdesmen  'councillors '  (Sthn.  2  a) ;  O.E.  y  preserved  in  sound,  and  written 
u  in  Kuneriche  ' kingdom'  (Sthn.  3);  O.E.  -eald-  written  -eald-  as  dis- 
tinct from  Midland  -old-  in  to  healden  =  [helden].  This  belongs  to  the 
South-East  and  Kent  as  well  (see  Sthn.  6  and  Kt.  6).  Its  survival 
here  may  be  due  to  Kentish  influence.  The  frequent  eo  as  in  hed,  beofi, 
treawe,  &c.,  may  be  more  than  a  traditional  spelling,  which,  indeed,  is 
unlikely  so  long  after  the  Conquest,  and  may  represent  the  Western 
rounded  vowel  often  written  u  (Sthn.  4).  It  is  possible  that  this  sound 
never  reached,  in  London,  the  stage  represented  by  South- Western  u,  but 
was  simply  unrounded  to  e  previously. 

The  spelling  Huriford  '  Hertford ',  O.E.  Heor(p)t-,  occurs  among  the 
signatures  to  the  document,  which  is  clearly  a  South- West  or  South- West 
Midland  form,  but  this  proves  nothing  concerning  London  speech. 

Other  Southern  features  are  the  common  use  of  the  prefix  i-  in  imakede 
'made'  (Pret.),  -tseid(e)  'said'  P.P.,  ilet  'hindered'  P.P...  iseened  'signed' 
P.P.,  igretinge  '  greeting  ',  idon  '  done ',  ichosen  '  chosen  ',  ilestinde 
'  lasting ',  &c.  (Sthn.  15);  the  Pres.  Indie.  PI.  in  -fi  as  in  blop,  habbefi 
(Sthn.  9  and  14);  the  Pres.  Part,  in-mde,  ilestinde  (Sthn.  u);  the  Inf.  in 
-ten,  to  mdkien  (Sthn.  16).  This  last  may  also  be  Kentish  (Kt.  17).  The 
Southern  PI.  Pronouns  heo,  heom,  are  not  decisive  as  to  dialect  at  this 
period,  since  even  in  E.  Midland  texts  the  /Morms  are  not  found  so 
early  as  this.  (See  E.  Midi.  13.) 

The  Midland  forms  in  the  Proclamation  are  alle,  halden  (we  should 
expect  holder  see  E.  Midi.  5) ;  the  Pres.  Indie.  PI.  in  -en,  beon,  cumen, 
willen,  halden,  hoaten  '  command  ',  unnen  l  grant ',  senden  (E.  Midi.  9) ; 
the  P.P.  of  the  Strong  Vbs.  chesen  '  chose ',  sweren  '  swear ',  and  of  the 
anomalous  don  '  do ' — ichosen,  isworene,  idon — retain  the  final  -n  (E.  Midi. 
15),  though  all  these  forms  also  agree  with  the  Southern  type  in  preserv- 
ing the  prefix  i-.  The  spelling  wherfiurj,  where  Southern  texts  very 
frequently  write  wer-  (w-  for  O.E.  hw)  and  Midland  texts  more  often 
wh-,  seems  characteristic  of  London  documents,  both  official  and  literary, 
during  the  whole  M.E.  period,  though,  as  we  shall  see,  the  spelling  w-  is 
fairly  common  later  on. 


THE  DIALECT   OF  ADAM  DA  VIE  51 

The  only  Kentish  or  South-Eastern  elements  in  this  text  appear  to  be 
iwersed  '  worsened ',  O.E.  gewyrsed,  where  y  is  best  explained  as  the 
original  O.E.  sound  from  earliest  *wurst-,  and  xnd  '  end ',  where  x  is 
a  curious  scribal  survival  of  a  Kentish  spelling  not  infrequent  in  some 
O.E.  texts  which  show  Kentish  influence  in  other  respects  also.  Other 
O.E.  dialects  usually  write  ende. 

There  seems  no  reason  to  doubt  that  this  interesting  document  repre- 
sents pretty  fairly  the  London  dialect  of  the  period,  allowing  for  the 
scribal  archaisms  of  spelling. 

We  now  come  to  a  specimen  of  London  English  written  during  the 
first  quarter  of  the  fourteenth  century,  taken  from  the  so-called  Five 
Dreams  of  the  monk  Adam  Davie.  From  a  literary  point  of  view  these 
'poems'  are  of  small  interest,  and  they  show  no  poetical  talent  of  any 
kind.  For  the  purposes  of  the  student  of  the  history  of  our  language, 
however,  they  are  of  the  greatest  value,  far  more  so  indeed  than  many  of 
the  M.E.  '  Set  Books '  often  prescribed  for  young  persons  at  our  univer- 
sities, and  certainly  the  literary  interest  is  hardly  less. 

The  Southern  element  is  still  considerable,  but  the  Midland  element  is 
larger  than  in  either  of  the  texts  hitherto  examined  by  us  here. 

It  was  impossible  to  choose  short  extracts  which  should  show  all  the 
dialectal  features  contained  in  the  poems,  and  we  shall  therefore  base  our 
statement  upon  an  examination  of  the  work  as  a  whole  and  not  confine 
ourselves  to  the  forms  in  the  extracts  given  above.  The  most  typical 
Southern  phonological  feature  is  perhaps  the  retention  of  the  long 
'slack'  [i]  for  O.E.  xl,  which  is  proved  by  the  rhymes  weren  (O.E. 
wxrori)  with  eren  '  ears ',  O.E.  earan,  and  of  drede,  O.E.  drxd,  '  doubt, 
fear '  with  rede  '  red ',  O.E.  read.  On  the  other  hand  the  spelling  Slret- 
ford,  where  the  first  element  can  only  represent  a  non-W.  Saxon  or  non- 
Central  Southern  stret '  street '  (W.  Saxon  strxt\  and  the  rhyme  drede  with 
mede  '  meed,  reward ',  which  points  to  the  E.  Midland  or  South-Eastern 
\_dred~].  This  shows,  as  we  have  seen  before,  that  the  same  word  was 
current  in  both  types.  Another  very  typical  South- Westernism  is  the  i  in 
the  verb  shilde  (Sthn.  7)  '  to  shield ',  instead  of  the  Midland  or  S.E.  shelde, 
and  this  type  is  represented  more  frequently  than  the  former,  as  in  stel 
'steel',  heren  'hear',  tfldc  vb.  'yield',  W.S.  gieldan.  O.E.  y  in  Davie 
shows  apparently  only  the  E.  Midland  type :  synne '  sin ',  Caunter&ry 
(O.E.  byrig\  yuel  'evil',  O.E.  y/el  JE.  Midi.  3).  O.E.  eo  is  always 
written^  e,  except  the  S.E.  form  to  bun  (Kt.  4).  Otherwise  leue  '  dear ', 
O.E.  ledfa,  derworp  '  precious ',  O.E.  deor. 

The  Pres.  PI.  has  the  Southern  -e]}  in  wilhp  (Sthn.  9),  but  the  verb 
'  to  be '  has  ben  (E.  Midi.  9). 

The  Pers.  Pron.  PI.  hij,  hit  is  the  only  form  of  the  Nom.,  and  this  is 
about  the  last  time  we  meet  it  in  London  documents.  (See  the  forms  of 
Pers.  Pron.  PI.  in  E.  Midland  and  Southern.)  The  form  ich  instead  of  E. 
Midland  ic  or  i  '  I '  is  typical  of  the  Southern  dialect  at  this  period.  The 
characteristic  Southern  p.p.  with  i-,  or_>/-,  occurs— yknowe,  ihote.ychosen, 
ywonden  '  wound ',  and  the  first  two  of  these  are  specially  Southern  in  the 
omission  of  final  -n.  This  feature  is  also  found  in  bore,  write  '  written ', 
where,  however,  the  prefix  is  lost,  and  in  awreke  '  avenged '. 

We  see,  then,  that  in  Davie's  time  the  Midland  elements  were  gaining 

E  2 


52  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

ground,  though  many  purely  Southern  features  still  lingered  which,  as  we 
shall  see,  disappear  later  on,  or  are  reduced  to  a  minimum. 

The  next  specimen,  which  was  written  in  Chaucer's  lifetime,  shows 
a  form  of  English  practically  identical  with  that  of  the  poet.  The  general 
appearance  of  the  document  (Petition  from  the  folk  of  Mercerye)  is 
very  much  more  modern  and  familiar  to  the  average  reader  of  the  present 
day  than  anything  we  have  so  far  discussed.  The  reason  is  that  London 
English  had  by  this  time  practically  settled  down  into  a  definite  blending 
of  the  various  dialectal  elements,  and  these  (that  is,  the  Regional  elements) 
have  not  altered  much  since  in  their  distribution. 

Compared  with  Davie,  the  most  striking  points  are  perhaps  the  use  of 
thei  instead  of  hij,  the  consistent  Pers.  PI.  in  -en  (no  forms  in  -th\  the  loss 
of  j-  in  the  P.P.;  the  usual  retention  of  final  ~n  in  this  part  of  the  verb — 
ben,  stonden,  &c.,  though  be  is  used  instead  of  ben.  Compared  with  the 
English  of  to-day,  putting  aside  differences  due  to  normal  sound  changes, 
there  is  very  little  difference  to  indicate — we  have  here,  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  the  exact  ancestor  of  Modern  Standard  English.  The  form 
shewe  is  a  different  type  from  that  which  has  produced  Mod.  show,  but 
this  is  probably  not  a  regional  feature,  and  the  same  is  true  of  togydrc 
compared  with  together,  and  ayein  compared  with  again.  Incidentally, 
we  may  note  how  near  the  spelling  is  to  that  of  the  present  day,  but  we 
must  not  be  deceived  into  supposing  that  it  represented  the  same  pro- 
nunciation as  our  own.  The  similarity  merely  shows  that  it  was  really 
the  M.E.  official  scribes  who  fixed  the  chief  features  of  English  spelling 
which  have  lasted  down  to  our  own  day.  It  cannot  be  too  often  insisted 
that  the  English  fourteenth-century  spelling  of  the  official  documents,  and 
of  the  Chaucer  MSS.,  which  was  virtually  continued  into  the  next  century, 
and  taken  over  with  no  vital  changes  by  Caxton,  and  so  handed  on  to  us, 
was  already  unphonetic,  and  no  longer  represented  adequately  the  facts 
of  pronunciation  in  Chaucer's  day. 

We  now  pass  to  the  language  of  Chaucer  himself,  and  this,  from  the 
importance  of  the  subject,  will  demand  a  rather  special  treatment,  though 
we  shall  endeavour  to  make  our  remarks  as  brief  as  possible. 

We  may  say  generally  that  the  dialectal  type  found  in  Chaucer's 
writings,  especially  in  his  prose  works,  agrees  very  closely  with  that  of 
the  official  London  documents  of  his  day. 

The  dialect  of  the  poetry  contains  more  purely  Southern  and  South- 
Eastern  elements  than  that  of  the  prose  works.  The  language  of  the 
latter,  therefore,  presents  a  greater  contrast  to  that  of  the  earlier  London 
documents  than  does  the  language  of  the  poetry,  and,  consequently, 
Chaucer's  prose  is  nearer  in  actual  dialect  to  Caxton,  and  to  the  English 
of  a  still  later  date,  than  his  poetry. 

It  need  not  surprise  us  that  there  should  be  this  difference  between 
the  prose  and  poetry  of  the  same  writer  at  this  period.  In  the  first 
place,  the  language  of  English  poetry  is  always  slightly  archaic — at  any 
rate  it  has  always  been  so  until  quite  recently.  Now,  to  be  archaic  in 
speech  in  Chaucer's  day  meant  that  the  writer  or  speaker  made  use  of 
more  Southern  elements  than  was  the  actual  contemporary  usage  in  either 
spelling  or  writing  business  documents.  We  must  take  it  that  many 
Southern  forms  still  lingered  on  in  the  speech  of  the  older  generation, 


LANGUAGE   OF   CHAUCER  53 

and  though  obsolescent,  they  were  perfectly  familiar  to  every  one.  A 
freedom  in  the  use  of  dialectal  variants  was  obviously  a  great  convenience 
to  a  poet,  since  it  increased  the  number  of  his  rhymes,  and  sometimes 
made  his  versification  more  supple  and  varied.  It  is  also  probable  that 
the  actual  Court  speech  of  Chaucer's  time  was  rather  more  Southern  in 
type  than  that  of  the  people,  or  than  that  of  the  official  scribes.  It  is 
certain  that  various  Southernisms  crop  up  from  time  to  time  in  private 
letters,  and  even  in  literature,  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
which  shows  that  this  element  lingered  on  in  the  usage  of  many  who 
spoke  and  wrote  Standard  English. 

Another  point  is  that  Chaucer's  poetry  shows  a  far  larger  number  of 
Kenticisms — especially  in  the  use  of  e  instead  of  E.  Midland  i  for  O.E.jy, 
in  such  words  as  kesse  '  kiss  \fest '  fist ',  berie  '  bury '  (verb),/##W/£ '  fulfil ', 
fery  'fiery ','&c. — than  is  found  either  in  the  London  documents  of  all 
kinds  before  his  day,  or  in  the  official  documents  written  during  his  life- 
time. This  may  be  explained  to  some  extent  by  the  fact  that  Chaucer 
lived  for  several  years  at  Greenwich,  but  also  perhaps  from  these 
Kenticisms  being  in  vogue  in  Court  English.  At  any  rate  the  use  of 
^-forrns  by  the  side  of  /-forms  in  the  above  and  many  other  words  was 
tolerated  in  the  best  English  throughout  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  Many  of  these  forms  are  fixed  in  our  language  to-day,  but 
many  others,  now  no  longer  used,  are  continually  cropping  up,  as  occa- 
sional variants,  in  writings  for  nearly  two  centuries  after  Chaucer's  death. 
This  feature  need  not  therefore  be  considered  a  personal  peculiarity  of  the 
poet.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  ^-forms  obtained  not  only  in  Kent, 
but  also  in  part  of  Essex,  and  Suffolk,  and,  to  judge  by  the  Norfolk  Guild 
Records  of  1387,  also  to  some  extent  in  Norfolk,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
they  should  gain  ground  at  a  time  when  the  Regional  influence  upon 
Standard  English  was  predominatingly  Eastern.  It  is  curious  that  in  the 
word  bury  we  write  the  Southern  but  pronounce  the  S.E.  type,  and  this 
latter  form  seems  to  preponderate  greatly  even  in  official  documents. 

In  Chaucer's  poetry  a  considerable  number  of  words  of  this  class  occur 
at  least  once  in  the  ^-forrn,  some  with  e  and  *',  some  with  e,  i,  and  u. 
The  /-forms  taken  all  round  are  the  most  frequent,  the  «-forms  the  least ; 
indeed  there  are  fewer  of  these  than  in  the  official  documents. 

Among  the  ^-forms,  now  lost,  which  occur  in  Chaucer's  poetry  are — 
besie  *  busy '  (we  still  write  the  Southern  type  and  pronounce  the  E.  Mid- 
land), also  bisie ;  sheite  '  shut ',  also  an  z-form ;  thenne  '  thin ',  also  tkinne ; 
dreye  '  dry ',  and  drye ;  kesse  '  to  kiss ',  and  kisse ;  lest  '  list ',  vb.  (over 
thirty  times),  and  list  '  desire ',  vb.  (over  fifty  times) ;  men,  myrie,  and 
murk ;  melle  '  mill ',  and  mille ;  knette  and  knitte ;  fulfelle  2cn.&fulfille  ;  fer, 
fery  ( fire,  fiery ';  fest '  fist ',  and/.?/.  Among  the  w-forms  which  are  now 
lost  are — burth  'birth',  and  birth ;  bulde,  and  Hide  'build';  murthe 
1  mirth ',  also  mirthe ;  put '  pit ',  and  pit  (three  times  each) ;  furst  and  first. 
Evel,  O.E.J//W,  'evil'  ('  Kentish '),  the  prevailing  form  in  Chaucer,  is  not 
necessarily  lost,  see  p.  207.  This  list  is  given  with  some  fullness 
because  we  shall  find  nearly  all  these  forms  occurring  much  later. 

Besides  the  Southern  features  already  alluded  to,  we  must  note  the 
extremely  frequent  retention  of  the  prefix y-  in  Past  Participles. 

We  pass  now  to  the  E.  Midland  features  of  Chaucer's  dialect. 


54  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

(1)  The  O.E.  combination  -eald-  always  appears  as  -old-,  except  in 
three  cases — helde  inf.,  helde  Pres.  Ind.  PI.,  and  behelde  inf.     We  should 
probably  put  these  very  exceptional  forms  down  to  Kentish  influence,  as 
it  seems  very  doubtful  from  the  evidence  of  the  purely  Southern  texts 
whether  they  would  survive  anywhere  but  in  Kent  at  this  period. 

(2)  O.E.  (Sax.)  ie,  non-Sax,  e  (see  above,  Sthn.  7),  is  often  e  by  the 
side  of  i,  so  that  we  get  sheld  (n.)  and  shelde  (vb.)  '  shield ',  and  shilde, 
her  en  'hear'  (always),  herde  'shepherd'  (always),  _>>#<&#  'yield,  pay',  and 
yilden,  yeve  '  give ',  and^tttf  ;  yf  and  yif  '  if,  yit  '  yet ',  appear  still  only 
with  the  Southern  forms.     Yelpe  f  boast ',  W.  Sax.  gielpan,  appears  only 
in  the  non-Southern  form. 

(3)  O.E.  (Sthn.)  ed  +  g  or  h  becomes  e  in  Anglian  in  O.E.,  and  this  is 
later  raised  to  i  before  g  (later_>>)  and  h.     In  Chaucer  we  get  eyen  '  eyes ', 
O.E.  eagan,  egan,  as  the  usual  written  form,  but  occasionally  yen,  and  the 
rhymes  show  that  the  latter  was  the  form  intended ;  similarly,  in  spite  of  the 
spelling  heighe,  O.E.  hedh, '  high ',  heye,  &c.,  we  also  find  hye,  and  the  rhymes 
generally  point  to  this  as  the  pronunciation  ;  O.E.  nedh  '  near '  is  written 
neye,  neyh,  and  ny(e\  but  the  word  does  not  occur  in  rhyme.    Our  present 
forms  are  derived  from  M.E.  jfc,  hye,  nye,  and  these  can  only  be  Midland 
forms. 

(4)  O.E.  del  is  shown  by  the  rhymes  to  have  had  both  the  Southern  pro- 
nunciation [g]  and  the  Midland  and  Kentish  [/].    Chaucer,  therefore,  used 
both  types,  and,  as  it  happens,  the  Southern  type  predominates  in  rhyme. 
This  does  not  necessarily  prove  that  Chaucer  heard  or  used  this  type 
in  ordinary  speech  more  than  the  non-Southern  type.     The  frequency 
of  its  occurrence  may  be  due  to  the  exigencies  of  rhyme,  or  at  least  to 
convenience. 

(5)  Another  test  of  the  original  type  in  use  is  found  in  the  spelling  of  the 
shortened  form  of  this  vowel.     The  shortening  of  Southern  x  produced 
&,  which,  together  with  all  as-sounds,  later  took  the  Midland  form  a 
and  was  so  spelt,  whereas  the  Old  non-Southern  /-type  when  shortened 
underwent  no  essential  change  in  spelling.   The  word  dradde,  p.p.,  &c.,  is 
frequent  in  rhymes  by  the  side  of  dredde,  the  former  being  more  frequent. 
Therefore  Chaucer  used  both  forms,  and,  while  still  retaining  the  original 
Southern,  occasionally  at  least  employed  the  non-Southern  form. 

The  following  are  chief  words  with  the  unshortened  vowel :  (a)  those 
which  rhyme  both  with  [e]  and  [e] — dede  '  deed ',  drede,  &c.,  vb.  and  n., 
'  doubt ',  &c.,  euen  '  evening ',  rede  vb.  '  counsel ' ;  (b)  those  which  rhyme 
always  wfchJ*]—&&sriSw,  seed,  threed  '  thread  ',  weete  '  wet',  where. 

(6)  O.E.  eo  always  appears  as  e.   There  is  no  trace  of  a  rounded  vowel. 

(7)  The  Pers.  Pronoun  PI.  thei  is  the  only  form  of  the  Norn.    The  old 
Southern  hij,  &c.,  has  disappeared. 

(8)  The  Fern.  Pronoun  she  is  the  only  form  used. 

(9)  The  Pres.  Indie.  PI.  usually  ends  in  -e  or  -en,  very  rarely  in  the 
Southern  -eth. 

(TO)  The  P.P.  of  Strong  Vbs.  usually  retains  the  -n  of  the  ending. 
•e  is  rarer. 

(n)  The  PI.  Pres.  Indie,  of  Vb.  'to  be'  is  usually  been,  more  rarely 
be,  occasionally  am.  The  Southern  beth  also  occurs  occasionally. 

A  word  or  two  upon  Chaucer's  position  in  regard  to  Literary  English 


CHAUCER  NOT  THE  CREATOR  OF  LITERARY  ENGLISH  55 

may  not  be  out  of  place.  This  is  frequently  misconceived,  though  less 
so  now,  even  among  those  who  are  not  professional  students  of  English, 
than  formerly.  To  put  it  briefly  and  bluntly,  Chaucer  did  not  create  the 
English  of  Literature,  he  found  it  ready  to  his  hand  and  used  it.  He  used 
it  far  better  than  any  English  poet  before  him  had  ever  done,  and  than 
any  who  came  after  him  before  Sackville  and  Spenser,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  he  was  the  first  English  poet  of  real  genius  who  ever  wrote. 
In  saying  this  we  are  considering  only  poets  since  the  Conquest,  and 
will  not  discuss  the  intrinsic  value,  as  literature,  of  Old  English  poetry. 
Chaucer  was  hailed  with  one  voice  by  his  contemporaries,  as  the  supreme 
singer  of  all  who  had  yet  appeared  in  English ;  and  by  his  immediate 
followers  he  was  worshipped  'on  this  side  of  idolatry'.  Except  for 
a  period  during  part  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  when 
men  were  so  rash  as  to  attempt  to  patronize  him,  all  true  lovers  of 
poetry  have  turned  to  Chaucer  again  and  again,  with  a  delight  which 
is  ever  renewed,  for  they  find  in  him  a  gaiety,  a  tenderness,  and  a 
humanity  which  have  never  been  surpassed,  the  fragrance  of  the  wood- 
land in  spring,  and  a  magic  which  resides  only  in  the  music  of  the 
greatest  poets.  In  this  sense  Chaucer  was,  as  the  discerning,  if  dis- 
reputable, Hoccleve  said,  '  the  firste  finder  of  oure  faire  langage  '- 
not  that  he  invented  or  created  it,  but  that  he  did  with  it  what  no  one  had 
ever  done  before.  There  is  no  mystery  in  the  instrument  which  Chaucer 
uses — that  had  been  gradually  becoming  what  it  was  in  his  day,  during 
the  centuries  of  law-giving,  and  preaching,  and  chaffering,  and  gossiping, 
in  court,  church,  and  palace,  in  market  and  tavern,  which  had  passed  in 
London  since  the  Conquest.  The  only  mystery  is  that  which  surrounds 
every  great  poet.  Who  shall  say  why  this  particular  kind  of  genius 
should  arise  just  when  and  where  it  does  ?  No  amount  of  grammatical 
investigation  will  explain  Chaucer,  any  more  than  it  will  explain  Spenser, 
or  Milton,  or  Keats,  or  Swinburne.  Neither  literary  historians,  nor  gram- 
marians, have  yet  explained  why  such  a  poet  is  just  what  he  is,  nor, 
probably,  will  the  students  of  the  japes  and  pranks  which  heredity  plays 
upon  mankind  be  able  to  do  so.  But  if  Chaucer  neither  created  the 
English  of  Literature  by  vamping  diverse  dialectal  elements  together,  as 
some  have  thought,  to  make  himself  more  widely  intelligible,  nor  yet  per- 
verted it,  as  others  have  maintained,  by  introducing  new  and  foreign 
elements  into  its  vocabulary,  it  may  be  asserted  that,  without  any  question, 
he  certainly  did  give  to  that  mixed  dialect  in  which  he  wrote  a  prestige, 
a  glory,  a  vogue,  as  a  literary  medium,  which  neither  the  most  industrious 
of  versifiers  devoid  of  genius,  nor  the  most  punctiliously  exact  scribe  in 
a  Government  office,  could  ever  have  given  it.  The  dialect  of  London 
would,  in  any  case,  have  become,  nay,  it  was  already  becoming,  the  chief 
form  of  English  used  in  writings  of  every  kind,  and  that  from  the  pressure 
of  political,  economic,  and  social  factors;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
process  was  greatly  hastened,  so  far  as  pure  literature  is  concerned,  by 
the  popularity  of  Chaucer — as  shown  by  the  number  of  MSS.  of  his 
writings  in  existence,  and,  afterwards,  by  the  number  of  printed  editions, 
as  well  as  by  the  frequent  expressions  of  reverence  for  him  scattered 
through  literature,  and  by  the  irresistible  impulse  among  poets  to'  imitate 
his  style,  his  turns  of  phrase,  and  his  actual  grammatical  forms. 


56  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE   ENGLISH 

But  we  must  return  from  this  digression  to  the  immediate  and  more 
prosaic  business  before  us,  and  sum  up  briefly  the  main  purport  of  our 
narrative  in  this  chapter.  We  have  attempted  to  set  forth  first  some  of 
the  main  distinguishing  features  of  the  chief  dialectal  types  of  Middle 
English  which  are  found  blended  in  the  dialect  of  London  during  the 
same  period.  We  have  illustrated  each  type  by  short  extracts  from  repre- 
sentative works  covering  between  three  and  four  hundred  years.  We  then 
approached  the  language  of  London  itself,  through  the  rather  scrappy 
remains  of  the  earliest  period  after  the  Conquest,  and  examined  the 
dialectal  features  of  a  few  documents  written  in  London  from  the  time  of 
the  Conqueror  down  to  Chaucer.  We  found  that  London  English  was, 
in  its  earlier  phases,  of  a  definitely  Southern  type,  and  more  particularly 
of  a  Central,  rather  than  an  East  Southern  type.  We  witnessed  the 
gradual  appearance  of  more  and  more  East  Midland  elements,  and  of 
some  South  Eastern,  or  Kentish,  peculiarities.  The  E.  Midland  ele- 
ments gain  ground  more  and  more,  sometimes  being  used  alongside  of 
the  corresponding  Southern  elements,  sometimes  exclusively,  instead  of  the 
latter.  By  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  we  found  that  London 
speech  had  become  predominantly  E.  Midland  in  character,  and  that  the 
purely  Central  Southern  elements  were  very  greatly  reduced,  though  still 
in  excess  of  what  they  are  in  Standard  or  Written  English  at  the  present 
time.  We  noticed  further  that  certain  Kentish  features  had  become  more 
frequent  than  in  the  earlier  documents,  and  that  in  some  cases  Chaucer 
makes  greater  use  of  these  than  we  do  at  the  present  time.  There  we 
leave  London  English  then,  at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  rapidly 
approaching  to  our  own  speech  so  far  as  the  general  character  of  the 
dialectal  elements  is  concerned,  which  make  it  up.  But  it  still  differs 
from  our  own  usage,  not  only  in  the  relative  proportion  of  the  different 
elements,  but  also  as  to  the  specific  distribution  of  the  types  among 
particular  words. 

We  cannot  close  this  brief  survey  of  the  English  dialects  of  the  South 
and  of  the  E.  Midlands  down  to  the  close  of  the  fourteenth  century  with- 
out glancing  at  the  language  of  the  three  best-known  writers  among 
Chaucer's  contemporaries — Gower,  Wyclif,  and  the  author  of  Piers 
Plowman.  Each  of  these  men  has  strong  claims  upon  our  interest. 
Each  wrote  voluminously  and  each  exhibits  in  his  writings  different 
phases  of  the  social  or  religious  life  of  his  age.  They  come  from  three 
widely  separated  areas  of  England,  and  their  training  and  experience  of 
life  was  different.  Gower  was  a  native  of  Kent,  Wyclif  of  Yorkshire, 
William  Langland  of  Shropshire.  It  is  natural  to  inquire  how  far  the 
language  of  these  writers  shows  signs  of  conforming  to  a  common  literary 
type,  or  how  far  each  preserves  a  strictly  Regional  dialect.  The  position 
of  Gower  in  this  respect  is  particularly  interesting.  If  the  reader 
compares  the  language  of  Gower's  Confessio  Amantis  with  that  of  the 
Ayenbite,  written  in  Kent  about  fifty  or  sixty  years  earlier,  he  will  at  once 
note  the  absence  from  the  former  of  most  of  the  typical  Kenticisms. 
Gower,  born  c.  1325,  died  1408,  was  a  Kentish  country  gentleman, 
a  member  of  a  Kentish  territorial  family,  but  the  dialect  of  his  gigantic 
English  poem,  with  a  few  notable  exceptions  which  we  shall  note  directly, 
is  practically  that  of  Chaucer,  that  is  to  say,  the  London  dialect.  One 


LANGUAGE   OF  GOWER  57 

feature,  the  ending  -ende,  which  is  his  chief  form  of  the  Pres.  Participle,  is 
distinctly  E.  Midland,  the  Kentish  form  and  Southern  form  generally 
being  -inde,  which  was  also  the  London  form  before  Chaucer.  (Cf. 
remarks  on  Davy  above.)  Chaucer,  however,  has  given  up  this  in  favour 
of  the  new  forms  in  -ing.  Gower  is  in  this  respect  archaic.  The  forms 
of  the  Pers.  Pronouns  are  not  those  of  Ayenbite  (see  p.  44,  ante),  but  sche 
(occasionally  scheo)  for  the  Fern.,  and  J>ei  in  the  Nom.  PI.,  while  the  typical 
Kent  hisey  Ace.  PL  '  them ',  is  not  found,  hem  being  used  as  by  Chaucer. 
The  Pres.  PI.  Indie,  of  verbs  ends  in  -en  as  in  London,  instead  of  the 
Kent  and  Southern  -e]>.  Gower  has  no  trace  of  the  Kent  spelling  dyafo, 
&c.,  with^z  for  O.E.  ea  (see  above,  Kt.  7).  For  old  eo  he  often  writes 
ie,  which,  however,  is  not  altogether  on  a  footing  with  earlier  Kent  ie,  ye 
(see  Kt.  4),  but  quite  clearly  implies  simply  a  long  tense  [e]  sound. 
This  spelling,  therefore,  though  hitherto  chiefly  found  in  Kentish,  as  a  re- 
presentative of  old  eo,  is  in  Gower  merely  a  convenient  graphic  device, 
which  in  words  like  driest,  O.E.  breost,  'breast',  behield  'behold',  O.E. 
behxld,  represents  a  typical  E.  Midland  type,  possibly  by  this  lime  current 
also  in  Kent,  but  quite  in  accordance  with  the  London  type.  Short  ed  as 
in  O.E.  heorte,  &c.,  is  always  written  e,  herte,  &c.,  as  in  E.  Midland  and 
in  the  London  dialect.  The  spelling  dradde  '  feared '  instead  of  Kent  or 
E.  Midland  dredde  is  Southern  and  has  the  retention  of  the  shortened 
form  of  W.  Saxon  &  rather  than  of  the  Anglian  * ;  and  the  rhyme  brep, 
O.E.  briiep  '  breath '  with  dep  proves  quite  clearly  that  the  former  word 
retained  the  Southern  type  of  the  long  vowel,  and  ladde  'led',  by  the  side 
of  the  Kent  ledde,  Late  Saxon  Isedde,  shows  the  non-Kentish  a  for  earlier  x. 
This  Midland  a  is  the  regular  form  in  Gower,  in  all  words  which  formerly 
had  se.  All  these  are  non-Kentish  features,  whether  they  be  Saxon  or 
E.  Midland,  and  they  are  shared  by  Chaucer  and  the  London  documents. 
Gower  has  no  trace  of  the  typical  initial  z-  and  v-,  for  s-,f-,  which  are  so 
characteristic  of  Ayenbite.  Now  for  the  other  side  of  the  picture,  the 
purely  Kentish  features  ol  Gower's  dialect.  We  must  not  attach  too 
much  weight  to  the  fact  that  the  poet  has  many  examples  of  e  for  O.E.^y, 
since,  as  we  have  seen  above,  these  are  very  common  in  Chaucer's  verse, 
and  fairly  frequent  in  other  London  documents.  Besides,  Gower  has 
both  i  and  u  forms  as  well — asyjr  '  fire ',  pitt,  gilt '  guilt ',  hide  '  hide '  vb., 
O.E. hydan,  sinne 'sm',jHle(M',J>mne  'thin',/™/;  also gulte, guileless,  hull 
'hill',  O.E.  hyll,purst ' thirst',  O.E./yrst.  The  <?-forms,  however,  appear  to 
predominate  in  words  having  the  short  vowel — besie,  bregge  '  bridge ',  hell 
'  hill ',  kertell,  O.E.  cyrtel,  '  kirtle  ',  keste  '  kissed ',  merie  '  merry ',  pet '  pit ', 
O.E.  pytt,  senne  '  sin ',  ferst.  Most  of  these  forms  occur,  however,  in 
Chaucer,  several  are  found,  much  later,  in  the  writings  of  persons  who 
apparently  spoke  the  Standard  English  of  their  day,  and  some  survive  at 
the  present  time.  Much  more  important  than  these  forms  is  the  un- 
doubted use  by  Gower  of  the  specifically  Kentish  tense  [e]  in  words 
containing  O.E.  %?  (see  above,  Kt.  2).  This  is  proved  both  by  rhymes 
and  by  the  spelling  of  these  words  with  ie — e.g.  tec  he  from  O.E.  txcan 
1  teach '  from  *takjan}  rhyming  with  beseche,  and  diel '  part ',  O.E.  dxl,  from 
*ddli.  Thus  those  essentially  typical  Kenticisms  in  Gower,  which  are  not 
found  also,  to  some  extent  at  least,  in  London  speech  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  are  reducible  to  this  simple  peculiarity. 


58  DIALECT    TYPES   IN   MIDDLE   ENGLISH 

The  results  of  this  brief  examination  are  remarkable,  since  they  prove 
that  in  the  fourteenth  century  already,  a  Kentishman  did  not  necessarily 
write  in  his  native  dialect,  but  adopted  the  London  form  of  English. 
This  fact  is  capable  of  two  interpretations.  One  is  that  people  of  a  certain 
social  standing  in  the  shires  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London  already 
spoke,  with  certain  provincial  modifications,  the  Court  dialect,  and  there- 
fore used  it  in  their  writings.  The  other  is  that  the  literary  use  of  the 
London  written  form  was  already  becoming  established  among  the  better 
educated,  although  they  still  retained  their  provincial  forms  in  actual 
speech. 

Possibly  the  truth,  in  the  case  of  Gower,  lies  between  these  two 
suggestions. 

Concerning  the  author  of  the  remarkable  work  known  as  the  Vision 
of  Piers  Plowman  much  has  been  conjectured,  where  nothing  is  known 
with  certainty.  Such  details  of  his  life  as  are  asserted  by  recent  writers, 
even  his  name — William  Langland — are  based  upon  statements  which 
occur  scattered  through  the  poem  itself,  and  are  believed  to  be  of  an 
autobiographical  character.  How  far  they  are  really  intended  to  refer  to 
the  author,  and,  if  they  do,  how  far  they  are  reliable,  is  a  pure  matter  of 
conjecture,  like  much  else  in  the  so-called  literary  history  of  the  early 
period.  That  the  poet  lived  in  the  South- West  Midlands  seems  certain — 
apart  from  other  arguments — from  the  dialect  of  his  work ;  that  he  had 
been  bred  up  as  an  ecclesiastic,  and  knew  the  ins  and  outs  of  the  lives  of 
the  monks  and  clerics  of  his  day,  seems  equally  certain  from  the  character 
of  the  poem  itself.  Who  his  father  was,  whether  he  was  married,  whether 
he  was  a  priest  or  only  in  minor  orders,  or  not  in  orders  at  all,  and  other 
details  regarding  which  many  cobwebs  have  been  spun,  are  speculations 
which  have  engaged  many  earnest  minds,  but  they  seem  to  have  no 
bearing  upon  the  literary  merit  of  his  work,  and  they  certainly  have  still 
less  from  our  present  point  of  view.  That  he  spent  some  part  of  his  life 
in  London,  if  we  could  be  sure  of  it,  would  be  of  importance  for  us,  and 
still  more  so  to  know  in  what  world  he  lived.  When  we  turn  to  the  poem 
itself,  which  exists  in  three  versions  and  innumerable  manuscripts,  we  find 
small  traces  of  any  London  influence  upon  the  language.  The  dialect  is 
rustic  and  archaic,  and  the  metre  is  alliterative,  and  unrhymed.  The  main 
dialectal  features — allowing  for  differences  between  the  versions  and 
manuscripts — are  distinctly  Western,  and  are  coloured  with  that  suggestion 
of  Southernism  which  we  are  apcustomed  to  find  in  texts  written  in 
Shropshire  or  Worcestershire.  O.E.  y  very  commonly  appears  as  u  or 
ui—buggen  <  buy',  huiden  « hide  '.  O.E.  eo  is  still  so  written — as  in  eorpe 
by  the  side  of  erthe,  beoth  by  the  side  of  beth.  The  old  Fern.  Pronoun 
he  '  she '  is  still  used  by  the  side  of  she,  and  the  PI.  Pronoun  heo  '  they ' 
occurs  as  well  as  they  and  pey.  In  the  Possess,  and  Dat.  only  here 
and  hem  are  found.  In  verbs  the  prefix  i-  is  often  retained  in  P.P.'s ; 
the  Pres.  Indie.  PL,  while  generally  ending  in  -en,  often  has  the 
Southern  -eth.  The_Pres.  Part,  is  always  in  -yng.  The  PI.  Pres.  of 
'  to  be '  is  ben,  beth,  beoth,  and  aren.  The  old  combination  -an-  usually 
appears  as  -on-  after  the  Western  manner.  The  blend  of  Southern 
elements  with  those  of  Midland  character  is  typical  of  the  dialect  of  the 
area  from  which  the  poem  emanates,  and  there  appears  to  be  no  reason 


DIALECT   OF  WYCLIF'S   TRACTS  59 

for  supposing  that  this  apparent  mixture  does  not  represent  a  genuine 
spoken  dialect. 

A  thorough  investigation  of  all  the  manuscripts  of  the  three  versions  of 
Piers  Plowman  would  be  a  long  and  tedious  task,  but  it  is  one  which 
ought  to  be  undertaken.  It  is  probable  that  from  such  an  examination 
a  pretty  clear  view  of  the  precise  dialect  of  the  original  would  emerge, 
and  further  that  this  dialect  would  be  found  to  show  the  characteristic 
blending  of  Southern  with  W.  Midland  features  which  is  sometimes 
mistakenly  supposed  to  be  due  to  the  influence  of  various  scribes,  but 
which  is  none  the  less  a  genuine  dialectal  type,  just  as  much  as  in  the 
mixed  dialect  of  London  itself.  Probably,  if  Worcester  or  Shrewsbury 
or  Oxford  had  been  the  capital  of  England,  Piers  Plowman  would  play 
the  same  important  part  in  the  history  of  English  that  the  works  of 
Chaucer  actually  do :  it  would  represent  what  would  in  this  case  be  the 
ancestral  dialect  of  Standard  Spoken  and  Literary  English.  As  it  is, 
however,  the  language  of  Langland  has  no  historical  relation  with  these 
types,  is  quite  unaffected  by  the  London  English  of  his  day,  and  agrees 
with  this  only  in  such  features  as  have  a  wide  Regional  distribution. 

Wyclif,  who  was  born  circa  1320,  died  in  1385.  He  was,  therefore, 
a  contemporary  of  Chaucer,  though  rather  older  than  the  poet.  A  North- 
countryman  by  birth,  Wyclif  lived  many  years  in  Oxford,  where  he  was 
Fellow  of  Balliol  in  c.  1345,  and  Master  of  Balliol  1361.  From  1374  to 
1384  he  was  Rector  of  Lutterworth  in  Leicestershire. 

His  writings,  apart  from  the  translation  of  the  Bible  which  bears  his 
name,  are  very  voluminous.  A  large  collection  of  sermons  and  contro- 
versial treatises  is  edited  by  Thomas  Arnold,  Oxford,  1871,  under  the 
title  Select  English  Works  of  John  Wyclif (3  vols.).  A  very  brief  account 
of  the  language  of  this  remarkable  man  must  suffice  here.  The  following 
remarks  are  based  upon  an  examination  of  Vol.  Ill  of  the  Select  Works. 
The  first  thing  to  say  is  that  on  the  whole  the  language  is  very  Midland 
in  character,  and  has  hardly  any  purely  Southern,  and  apparently  no 
Kentish  features.  The  reader  should  compare  the  language  of  these 
tracts  with  that  of  Chaucer's  prose.  Although  the  treatises  in  Arnold's 
edition  are  taken  from  various  manuscripts,  written  no  doubt  at  different 
periods  and  in  different  places,  and  possibly  in  no  case  giving  Wyclif's 
own  dialect  with  perfect  fidelity,  the  various  treatises  seem  all  to  agree  to 
a  remarkable  extent  in  the  main  characteristics.  Perhaps  the  first  thing 
that  strikes  the  student  is  the  extreme  frequency  of  i  in  suffixes,  -is,  -ipy 
-id,  and  occasionally  -in,  where  Chaucer  usually  has  -est  -ej>>  &c.  With  the 
exception  of  -m,  these  forms  of  the  suffixes  enormously  predominate  over 
any  others,  though  -es,  &c.,  and  more  rarely  -us  do  occur.  So  far  as  our 
evidence  goes,  therefore,  we  are  apparently  justified  in  assuming  that 
Wyclif  said  byndifi,  &c.  The  vowel  system  on  the  whole  agrees  with 
that  of  Chaucer,  except  that  whereas  the  latter  has  all  three  forms  «,  z',  e, 
representing  O.E.^,  Wyclif,  in  the  volume  under  consideration,  seems  to 
have  «,  and  this  East  Midland  or  Northern  form  only — synne,  birien 
*  bury ',  bisi,  gilti,fulfilli}>,  siche  '  such  ',  and  so  on.  The  only  exception 
appears  to  be  werse,  but  this  pay  be  otherwise  explained  than  as  corre- 
sponding to  W.  Saxon  wyrse  '  worse '.  O.E.  eo  is  always  I,  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  example  of  hurte  ' heart',  or  huld ' held',  O.E.  hedld. 


6o  DIALECT   TYPES   IN   MIDDLE  ENGLISH 

These  two  points  alone  seem  to  rule  out  much  South-  West  Midland 
influence,  such  as  we  might  expect  to  find  from  a  residence  in  Oxford. 
On  the  other  hand  the  Southern  i  for  O.E.  ie  occurs  in  jt'tte,  O.E.  jief, 
J>ei  sillen  'sell',  O.E.  siellan,  sillan,  stlf,  O.E.  sielf,  st'l/'self1.  The 
Inf.  of  the  verb  '  to  give  '  is  jeve,  which  is  Midland  or  S.  Eastern  or 
Northern,  in  place  of  the  Southern  zt've  ;  in  3rd  Sing,  both  $iuip 


occur.     Mon  '  man  '  and  con  '  can    are  rather  Western  than  Eastern. 

Turning  to  the  accidence,  we  find  }>ei  always  for  the  3rd  Pers.  PI. 
Nom.  ;  in  the  Possess,  here,  hore,  hor,  which  are  the  usual  forms,  but 
occasionally  per  ;  in  the  Dat.  Ace.  hem  and  horn.  Thus  Wyclif  agrees 
with  Chaucer  in  having  pet,  but  differs  from  him  in  having  per.  This 
must  be  put  down  either  to  E.  Midland  or  Northern  influence.  The  Fern. 
Sing,  is  always  sche,  and  incidentally  we  may  note  the  interesting  Possess. 
hern  '  hers  ',  used  absolutely  —  '  f>e  child  was  hern  pat  wolde  have  it  on  lyve, 
and  not  hern  pat  wolde  have  it  deed',  p.  310.  The  verbal  endings  are  :  — 
3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  Indie,  in  some  of  the  pieces  -ip,  -ep,  in  others  -is,  -s, 
&c.  ;  for  instance  Fifty  Heresies,  Twenty-five  Articles,  and  Seven  Deadly 
Sins  all  have  the  latter  type,  while  the  Church  and  her  Members,  and 
Wedded  Men  have  the  former.  The  -s  forms  point  to  the  North  or 
North-East  Midland;  the  PI.  Pres.  ends  in  -en  with  extraordinary  regularity, 
the  -n  being  very  rarely  omitted.  A  few  examples  of  -ep  occur  in 
Tract  XXI  —  'pay  lovep  Goddis  care',  &c.,  p.  247.  The  P.P.  of  Strong 
Verbs  is  generally  -n  after  the  Midland  fashion.  The  prefix^-  does  not 
occur.  The  PI.  Pres.  of  'to  be*  is  almost  invariably  ben  or  been,  bep 
being  very  rare  (see  p.  247,  Tract  XXI).  The  Pres.  Part,  of  verbs 
ends  in  -ynge. 

There  are  certain  indications  of  Northern  influence.  A  rather 
striking  one  is  the  writing  of  u  and  oi  for  O.E.  5,  both  common  Northern 
spellings  indicating  a  quite  different  development  from  that  which  this 
sound  had  in  the  South  and  Midlands,  .namely,  towards  a  sound  closely 
resembling,  if  not  identical  with,  French  il  —  the  sound  in  fact  which  in  the 
South  is  generally  expressed  by  u  or  uf.  The  examples  I  have  noted  in 
Wyclif  are  mut,  O.E.  mot,  '  must  ',  pp.  342,  343  ;  sunner  <  sooner  ',  p.  344  ; 
and  soip  'true',  O.E.  sop,  pp.  343  and  345. 

The  Pres.  PI.  schewis  'shows'  —  her  werkes  shewis  pis  wel,  p.  175,  and 
doubtless  there  are  other  examples—  is  a  striking  Northern  feature,  espe- 
cially as  it  is  surrounded  on  the  same  page  by  Midland  Pis.  in  -en.  The 
Scznd.jduen  P.  P.  ofjiuen  occurs,  rather  pointing  to  Northern  or  E.  Mid- 
land, though  the  form  occurs  in  Gower.  To  sum  up  this  very  brief 
sketch  of  Wyclif  s  literary  dialect  :  he  adopted,  no  doubt,  the  form  of 
English  current  in  the  University  of  Oxford  in  his  day,  a  form  which 
differed  from  the  surrounding  Regional  dialect  to  some  extent,  in  that  the 
most  typical  provincialisms  were  eliminated  in  favour  of  a  more  Easterly 
type  approximating  more  to  that  of  London.  At  the  same  time  certain 
Northern  peculiarities  certainly  clung  to  his  speech,  as  they  do  to  that  of 
certain  members  of  Oxford  University  in  our  own  day,  and  some  of  these 
occasionally  slip  out  in  his  writings.  In  point  of  prose  style  we  must 
count  Wyclif  among  the  great  masters—  perhaps  the  greatest  of  his  day 
and  before  it.  There  is  nothing  stilted  or  creaking  in  his  sentences, 
which  are  those  of  a  skilful  and  competent  writer,  with  an  instrument 


REPRESENTATIVE   TEXTS  61 

that  he  thoroughly  understands,  adequate  for  all  his  wants.  He  reminds 
one  of  Latimer  by  the  nature  and  force  of  his  prejudices,  but  he  is  a  more 
polished  writer,  without  that  excellent  bishop's  violence,  and  occasional 
vulgarity  of  thought  and  expression. 

Cristes  lore  and  his  apostles  twelve 

He  taughte,  and  first  he  folwed  it  himselve. 

Thus  the  fourteenth  century  closes  without  anything  like  a  general 
acceptance  of  a  uniform  type  of  English  among  writers  whose  native 
dialect  was  not  that  of  the  metropolis  or  of  the  surrounding  shires.  It 
appears,  however,  from  the  works  of  Wyclif,  that  the  type  of  speech, 
uttered  and  written,  in  vogue  in  the  University  of  Oxford  was  definitely 
influenced  by  a  more  Easterly  dialect,  and  we  must  suppose  that  this 
influence  was  exerted  through  the  medium  of  London. 

SHORT  LIST  OF  MIDDLE  ENGLISH  TEXTS  IN  VARIOUS 
DIALECTS. 

East  Midland. 

Peterborough  Chronicle  (Laud  MS.),  1121-54.    Ed.  Plummer. 

Ormulum,  c.  1200.     Ed.  Holt,  1878. 

Bestiary,  c.  1250.     See  O.E.  Miscellany,  Ed.  Morris,  E.E.T.S.,  1872. 

Genesis  and  Exodus,  c.  1250.     Morris,  E.E.T.S.,  1873. 

Robt.  of  Brunne's  Handlyng  Synne,  c.  1300.     Furnivall,  Pt.  1, 1901 ;  Pt.  II, 

1902. 
Norfolk   Gilds,    1389.      L.  Toulmin   Smith,  E.E.T.S.,    1870   (in  English 

Gilds}. 
(Bokenanfs  Lives  of  Saints,  c.  1430,  is  chiefly  dealt  with  as  Early  Modern 

English  in  this  book.    It  was  edited  by  Horstmann,  Heilbronn,  1883.) 

Southern. 
Lambeth  Homilies,  before   I2co.      Morris,   in    O.E.   Homilies,  E.E.E.S., 

1868,  Pt.  I. 
Moral  Ode,  Trinity  MS.  before  1200 ;  Jesus  MS.  1250  (both  in  O.E.  Misc.) ; 

Egerton  MS.  1200,  in  Morris's  O.E.  Horns.,  I. 
Wooing  of  Our  Lord,  c.  1200;   also  God  Ureisun  and  Sawles  Ward  of 

same  date,  all  in  O.E.  Horns.,  I. 
Owl  and  Nightingale,  1246-50.     In  O.E.  Misc. 
Proverbs  of  Alfred,  1250.     O.E.  Misc. 

Robt.  of  Gloucester,  1298.    Wright,  Rolls  Series,  2  vols.,  1887. 
St.  Juliana  (Metrical  Life  of),  1300.    Cockayne,  E.E.T.S.,  1872. 
Trevisa  (Translation  of  Higden's  Polychronicon),  1387.    Vols.  I  and  II, 

Babington;  III  and  IV,  Lumley,  1865-86.    Rolls  Series.     Extracts  are 

given  in  Morris  and  Skeat's  Specimens,  II. 

Usages  of  Winchester,  1389.     In  Toulmin  Smith's  English  Gilds. 
(The  Life  of  St.  Editha,  c.  1420,  is  regarded  in  this  book  as  Early  Modern 

English.    It  was  edited  by  Horstmann,  in  1883.) 

Kentish. 

Vespasian  Homilies,  c.  1150.     Morris,  O.E.  Horns.,  I. 
Kentish  Sermons  (MS.  Laud),  before  1250.     Morris,  O.E.  Miscellany. 
William  ofShoreham's  Poems,  1307.     Conrath,  E.E.T.S.,  1902. 
Ayenbite  of  Inwyt  ('Remorse  of  Conscience'),  1340.     Morris,  E.E.T.S., 

1866. 

Some  of  the  chief  texts  in  the  London  Dialect  before  Chaucer  are 
illustrated  above,  pp.  46-9,  with  references  for  each  extract. 


CHAPTER    III 
THE  ENGLISH  OF  THE  FIFTEENTH  CENTURY 

THE  student  of  English  literature,  and  the  student  of  the  history  of  our 
language,  will  naturally  take  very  different  views  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
For  the  former,  at  least  as  regards  poetry,  this  age  will  appear  one  of  the 
dreariest  in  our  annals — '  The  builders  were  with  want  of  genius  cursed' — 
and  from  the  conventional  dullness  of  Hoccleve  and  Lydgate  he  turns  to 
Scotland,  and  finds  something  to  cherish  in  the  very  genuine  poetic  gift 
of  the  versatile  and  humorous,  if  rather  sumptuous,  Dunbar.  In  prose 
there  are  competent  and  solid,  if  hardly  entertaining,  writers,  such  as 
Bishop  Pecok,  Sir  John  Fortescue,  and  Capgrave,  and  there  is  Sir  Thomas 
Malory,  the  glowing  pages  of  whose  Morte  d*  Arthur  redeem  the  century 
from  the  chill  dullness  which  generally  surrounds  its  literature.  This 
noble  work,  which  breathes  the  spirit  and  fragrance  of  Romance,  makes 
alive  the  Knights  and  Ladies  of  the  age  of  Chivalry  which  had  already 
faded,  and  by  the  side  of  this  world  of  heroes  and  champions,  the  figures 
of  the  earlier  romances  seem  mere  puppets  and  shadows.  Caxton,  the 
first  English  printer,  occupies  of  right  a  place  apart  in  the  literary  history 
of  his  day.  His  fame  rests  upon  his  activities  as  a  printer,  and  the 
sound  sense  which  he  showed  in  the  selection  of  books  to  print,  rather 
than  upon  his  productions  as  a  writer  and  translator,  though  these  are  by 
no  means  contemptible.  Much  nonsense  has  been  written  about  Caxton's 
creation  of  a  dialect,  and  still  more  about  his  creation  of  a  prose  style. 
After  what  has  been  said  in  the  former  chapter  it  is  unnecessary  to  explain 
here  that  Caxton  did  not  concoct  an  artificial  medley  of  dialects  in  which 
to  clothe  his  translations.  Language  does  not  grow  up  in  that  way.  As 
to  the  other  claim,  it  could  hardly  be  made  by  those  who  were  acquainted 
with  Caxton's  writings,  and  with  those  of  some  of  his  predecessors  and 
contemporaries.  In  point  of  beauty  and  dignity  of  style,  Malory  is  incom- 
parably Caxton's  superior,  while  in  ease  and  raciness  the  latter  is  at  least 
equalled  by  some  of  the  anonymous  writers  of  what  are  practically  official 
documents,  such  as  the  directions  for  the  funeral  of  an  English  king,  of 
which  we  give  a  specimen  below  (p.  89),  and  the  account  of  the  creation 
of  the  Duke  of  York  (afterwards  Henry  VIII)  a  Knight  of  the  Bath. 
Both  of  these  entertaining,  and  often  picturesque,  pieces  of  English  prose 
are  contained  in  Vol.  I  of  Letters  and  Papers,  &c.,  edited  by  Gairdner. 

We  shall  have  more  to  say  later  on  concerning  Caxton,  from  the  point 
of  view  which  more  immediately  concerns  us  here. 

For  the  student  of  the  development  of  the  English  language,  apart 
from  its  use  as  a  means  of  literary  expression,  the  fifteenth  century  is  one 
of  extraordinary  interest. 


LINGUISTIC   IMPORTANCE   OF   PERIOD  63 

The  reasons  for  this  are  chiefly  the  following : — 

(1)  There  is  a  large  increase  in  the  number  of  persons  who  can  write, 
and  therefore  in  the  number  of  purely  private  documents  which  have 
come  down  to  us.      As  a  result  of  writing  being  more  widespread,  and 
consequently,  freed  from  the  shackles  of  the  professional  scribe,  we  seem 
during  this  century,  almost  for  the  first  time,  to  overhear,  as  it  were,  real 
people  actually  speaking.    That  is  to  say,  we  find  a  great  variety  of  spell- 
ing, and,  what  is  more,  new  varieties  of  this,  which  often  show  such 
divergence  from  the  convention  of  the  scribes  that  it  becomes  plain  that 
what  we  are  accustomed  to  regard  as  the  Middle  English  system  of 
pronunciation  has  undergone,  or  is  undergoing,  very  remarkable  changes. 

(2)  On  account  of  the  sound  changes  whose  existence  is  indicated  by 
these  occasional  departures  from  the  old  spelling,  on  account  of  the  modi- 
fication in  the  inflexional  system  which  the  written  documents  show,  and 
by  reason  of  the  whole  complexion  of  the  sentence,  we  are  constantly 
forced   to   admit,  in  reading  fifteenth-century  documents,  that  Modern 
English  has  begun. 

(3)  During  this  century  the  use  of  Regional  dialect  in  writing,  both  in 
private  and  public  documents — official  and  purely  literary — gradually  dies 
out,  and  that  variety  of  English  whose  rise  we  discussed  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, comes  slowly  but  surely  into  practically  universal  currency.     This  is 
traceable  before  the  introduction  of  printing. 

(4)  Lastly,  printing  is  introduced,  and  a  new  era  opens,  bringing  con- 
ditions hitherto  unknown,  and  providing  facilities  for  the  spread  of  London 
English,  whose  predominance,  if  it  were  not  so  already,  is  henceforth 
absolutely  assured. 

These  are  important  points,  and  must  be  dealt  with  successively  in 
some  detail.  They  may  serve  us  as  headings  for  our  present  treatment 
of  the  subject  of  this  chapter.  We  must  first,  however,  say  something 
concerning  the  general  character  of  the  various  classes  of  documents  upon 
which  our  knowledge  of  fifteenth-century  English  is  based.  We  may  dis- 
tinguish (i)  official  documents;  (2)  works  which  have  some  pretensions 
to  be  literature ;  and  (3)  private  letters.  The  first  may  again  be  divided 
into  Public  documents — Records,  Instructions  to  Ministers,  &c.,  De- 
scriptions of  Historical  Events,  like  those  just  alluded  to  in  Gairdner's 
Letters  and  Papers,  &c. ;  and  Private  documents  such  as  Wills,  and 
Inventories  of  Property.  English  Rules  for  Monastic  Orders  and 
Monastic  Chartularies  should,  perhaps,  be  ranked  as  Private  Official 
Documents. 

In  works  of  literature  proper,  we  naturally  distinguish  between  com- 
position in  Prose  and  Verse.  Passing  to  the  Private  Letters,  which  in 
many  respects  are  the  most  valuable  of  all  for  our  purpose,  we  may 
distinguish  between  the  more  conventionally  written  missives  of  highly 
educated  persons,  such  as  Bishop  Bekinton,  Judge  Paston,  and  John 
Shillingford,  and  those  of  comparatively  uneducated  people  such  as  the 
Cely  family  (Cely  Papers),  Edmond  de  la  Pole,  Earl  of  Suffolk  (in  Ellis's 
Letters  Illustrative  of  Eng.  Hist.,  Ser.  Ill,  Vol.  I),  and  Margaret  Paston, 
the  judge's  daughter-in-law. 

It  is  rather  difficult  to  classify  Gregory's  Chronicle  (late  fifteenth 
century),  which  is  hardly  a  work  of  literature,  aed  not  quite  a  private 
diary. 


wa 


64      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

A  further  division  is  necessary  according  to  dialect.  From  this 
point  of  view  we  may  distinguish :  documents  written  in  the  London  or 
Literary  dialect ;  those,  at  the  other  extreme,  written  in  a  more  or  less 
pure  form  of  Regional  dialect ;  and  those  which  are,  in  the  main,  in  the 
London  dialect,  but  which  show  some  provincial  influence. 

A  classification  of  this  kind  cuts  right  across  the  other,  based  upon  the 
nature  of  the  documents.  It  would  be  easy  to  select  writings  of  each 
genre  in  all  of  the  three  dialectal  categories  just  given. 

The  poems  of  Hoccleve  and  the  prose  of  Caxton  represent  the  London 
dialect  among  works  of  literature  proper ;  so  do  not  only,  as  we  might 
expect,  the  official  documents  written  in  London,  but  also  many  from 
widely  separated  parts  of  the  country — e.g.  the  English  Registers  of  the 
Abbeys  of  Godstow  (1450)  and  Oseney  (1460),  both  near  Oxford  ; 
the  English  Wills  and  Charters  in  the  Chetwynd  Chartulary  (Staffs, 
c.  1440-90);  the  Coventry  Leet  Book  (from  1420);  the  Ordinances 
of  Worcester  (1467);  Ordinances  of  the  Gild  of  Tailors  of  Exeter 
(1466);  various  documents  of  an  official  nature,  written  in  Ireland  by 
Irish  Lords  to  Henry  VII  (1484-93).  All  these  appear  to  be  written 
in  a  form  of  English  hardly  distinguishable,  on  the  whole,  from  that  in  use 
in  London  at  this  period.  Among  private  letters  written  in  this  common 
form,  may  be  mentioned  those  of  Bishop  Bekinton  (1442),  of  Sir  William 
Paston  the  judge  (1425-30),  and  many  others  from  Kings,  Queens, 
Princes,  and  Ministers  of  State,  printed  by  Ellis.  Coming  to  writings  in 
various  more  or  less  pure  Regional  dialects,  we  may  mention  here  the 
Life  of  St.  Editha  (Wilts,  c.  1420,  in  verse),  the  English  version  of  Palla- 
dius  on  Husbandry  (Essex  c.  1420),  the  poems  of  Bokenam  (Suffolk 
c-  I443)>  Awdeley's  Poems  (Shropshire  c.  1420).  In  prose,  literary 
writings  in  pure  dialect  are  rare  in  this  century,  but  in  the  private  letters 
of  the  Cely  family  (1475-88),  a  wealthy  middle-class  family,  we 
apparently  have  a  pretty  pure  example  of  the  Essex  dialect ;  and  the 
fifteenth-century  Bury  Wills  are  in  many  cases  fairly  close  to  the  language 
of  Bokenam.  The  Letters  of  Margaret  Paston  (1440-70),  which  I  have 
examined  in  detail,  are  also,  on  the  whole,  in  the  dialect  of  Suffolk. 

Finally,  we  come  to  the  large  class  of  writings,  very  fully  represented  in 
fifteenth-century  English,  which  are,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  in 
Common  English,  as  we  may  perhaps  now  call  it,  but  which,  nevertheless, 
show  certain  deviations  from  it,  due  to  the  influence  of  Regional  dialect. 
This  influence  varies  very  much  in  extent,  and  some  of  the  works  men- 
tioned in  the  preceding  group  might  perhaps  be  included  here,  such  as 
the  Letters  of  Margaret  Paston  and  some  of  the  Bury  Wills. 

Among  poets  Lydgate,  'the  Monk  of  Bury',  though  undoubtedly 
a  highly  cultivated  person,  shows  distinct  E.  Midland,  we  might  say  East 
Coast,  influence.  This  Eastern  influence— from  Norfolk  and  Suffolk—is 
traceable  in  a  certain  number  of  prose  writers  of  this  period  who  belong 
by  birth  to  these  counties.  Thus  it  occurs  in  the  language  of  Capgrave 
(died  1464),  who  lived  most  of  his  life  at  Lynn,  and  in  Thomas  Gregory's 
Chronicle,  the  author  of  which  was  Lord  Mayor  of  London  in  1451-2, 
and  died  in  1467.  He  was  a  native  of  Mildenhall  in  Suffolk,  and  of  an 
armigerous  family.  In  the  language  of  Sir  John  Fortescue  (supposed  to 
have  died  1476)  we  may  perhaps  note  slight  traces  of  South- Western 


SURVEY   OF   THE   SOURCES  65 

influence.  Sir  John  was  the  son  of  a  gentleman  of  Devonshire,  and  was 
at  one  time  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England.  The  Regional  influence  in 
his  Governaunce  of  England'^  so  slight,  however,  that  he  would  perhaps  be 
more  suitably  included  among  the  writers  of  Common  Literary  English. 
Rather  more  definite  in  his  divergence  from  the  London  type  is  Bishop 
Pecok,  whose  Represser  (1449)  is  sometimes  said  to  represent  the  'Oxford 
type '  of  English.  Reginald  Pecok  was  a  Welshman  by  birth,  was 
a  Fellow  of  Oriel  in  1417,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  in  1444,  and  of 
Chichester  in  1450. 

Passing  to  private  letters,  the  most  remarkable  are  perhaps  those  of  John 
Shillingford,  Mayor  of  Exeter  in  1447-50.  He  fought  the  Bishop  and 
Chapter  of  Exeter  in  the  interests  of  his  city,  and  his  letters  are  written 
to  his  friends  at  home,  describing  his  fortunes  on  a  visit  which  he  paid  to 
London,  to  urge  his  case  with  the  Chancellor  in  person.  He  was  of  gentle 
birth,  had  evidently  received  an  excellent  education,  and  was  a  man  of 
self-possession  and  breeding.  He  was  able  to  crack  jokes  and  cap  Latin 
quotations  with  the  Chancellor,  and  he  writes  a  style  at  once  shrewd  and 
humorous.  His  letters  are  remarkable  as  showing  the  spread  of  the 
Literary  Standard  in  his  day  among  persons  of  education  and  standing, 
for  they  approach  very  closely  to  that  Standard,  and  exhibit  but  few 
provincialisms.  A  number  of  Lincolnshire  Wills  of  this  period  show 
strong  Regional  influence  in  vocabulary,  verbal  forms,  and  occasionally  also 
in  the  sounds,  so  far  as  these  can  be  inferred  from  the  spelling. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  sources  of  our  knowledge  of  the  various  forms  of 
English  current  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

We  now  pass  to  consider  in  order,  and  in  more  detail,  those  general 
characteristics  indicated  above,  of  the  language  of  the  period,  and  also 
the  documents  from  which  our  knowledge  of  it  is  based. 

(1)   Deviations  in  Spelling  from  the  Scribal  Tradition  which 
throw  light  upon  Pronunciation. 

The  comparative  frequency  with  which  these  occasional  spellings  occur 
in  the  fifteenth  century  is,  no  doubt,  primarily  due,  as  has  been  pointed 
out,  to  the  spread  of  the  art  of  writing  beyond  the  circle  of  the  profes- 
sional scribe,  and  the  increasing  habit  of  using  the  art  in  familiar  private 
correspondence.  On  the  other  hand,  while  these  '  lapses  '  in  spelling  are 
commoner  in  documents  of  this  latter  class,  where  the  writers  are  more  off 
their  guard  than  they  would  be  in  inditing  works  of  more  formal  and 
permanent  character,  these  occasional  '  phonetic '  spellings  are  by  no 
means  confined  to  private  letters,  but  occur  to  a  greater  or  less  degree  in 
writings  of  all  kinds — official  records,  wills,  and  even  in  literary  com- 
positions in  both  prose  and  verse. 

Even  in  the  printed  books  of  Caxton,  usually  so  conservative  and  con- 
ventional, certain  peculiarities  creep  in,  here  and  there,  which  are  certainly 
unconscious  adaptations  of  spelling  to  suit  the  sound. 

The  question  arises  how  far  these  indications  of  pronunciation  imply 
that  this,  which,  to  judge  from  the  ordinary  scribal  spelling,  has  shown  but 
little  sign  of  change  for  several  centuries,  has  just  begun  now  to  move  in 
the  direction  of  Modern  English.  How  far  are  we  entitled  to  regard  the 


66      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

fifteenth  century  as  a  great  landmark  in  our  linguistic  history,  a  period  of 
transition  and  change  ? 

This  question  needs  great  caution  in  answering.  A  very  large  number 
of  the  spellings  which  appear  to  herald  a  new  speech-era  can,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  be  shown  to  occur,  here  and  there,  several  centuries  earlier, 
in  the  full  M.E.  period,  though  they  are  far  rarer  and  much  harder  to 
find.  In  such  cases,  the  new  pronunciation  can  hardly  be  claimed  to 
have  only  just  begun  at  the  moment  when  we  first  find  frequent  instances 
of  its  expression,  in  the  spelling,  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

It  is  probable  that  a  more  thorough  and  minute  examination  of  the 
varieties  in  M.E.  spelling  would  reveal  stronger  proof  than  we  have  at 
present,  of  the  existence  in  this  period,  of  the  development  of  certain  sound 
changes  which  we  have  up  to  now  assumed  to  be  much  later. 

It  is  wiser,  therefore,  in  those  cases  where  we  are  not  sure,  to  leave  the 
question  of  the  period  at  which  the  change  began  open,  and  content  our- 
selves with  the  knowledge  that  it  is  at  least  as  early  as  the  date  at  which 
the  spelling  gives  sure  and  frequent  indication  that  such  and  such  a  new 
sound  is  intended. 

It  may,  of  course,  be  argued  quite  reasonably,  that  if  a  spelling  occurs 
only  once  or  twice  in  M.E.  records,  whereas  it  is  comparatively  common 
in  the  fifteenth  century,  this  shows  that  in  the  latter  period  the  sound 
change  had  been  completed,  and  a  definite  new  development  reached, 
while  in  the  former  period  the  change  was  only  beginning,  and  the  un- 
easiness shown  by  the  varieties  of  spelling  merely  indicates  that  the  old 
sound  had  begun  to  be  modified  in  the  new  direction,  so  that  the  scribe 
felt  that  the  old  spelling  was  no  longer  adequate. 

It  is  true  that  the  M.E.  scribal  vagaries  suggest  rather  a  more  or  less 
deliberate  and  tentative  groping  after  a  phonetic  rendering,  than  the 
unconscious  and  spontaneous  rendering  of  a  specific  sound  in  a  more  or* 
less  natural  way,  which  is  the  impression  very  often  made  by  the  fifteenth- 
century  departures  from  tradition. 

On  the  whole,  therefore,  it  is  probable  that  the  appearance  of  so  many 
graphic  expressions  of  a  new  form  of  pronunciation  in  the  fifteenth 
century  is  misleading  in  so  far  as  it  suggests  a  sudden  development. 
The  fifteenth  century  is  probably  no  more  an  age  of  transition  than  every 
age  is  such.  Many  sound  changes  had  already  come  about,  or  at  least 
had  begun  long  before.  By  the  fifteenth  century  the  new  sounds  were 
definitely  established,  their  incompatibility  with  the  old  spelling  was  obvious, 
and  the  fact  that  a  larger  number  of  writers  were  endeavouring  to  put  down 
their  thoughts  upon  paper  or  parchment,  writers  unshackled  by  tradition, 
leads  to  the  new  pronunciation  being  more  often  expressed  in  the  spelling 
than  heretofore. 

To  come  now  to  closer  quarters  with  the  facts,  we  may  say  generally, 
that  light  is  thrown  by  the  occasional  spellings  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and,  as  we  shall  see  later,  also  by  those  of  the  sixteenth  century,  upon  the 
following  points  of  pronunciation:—^)  (i)  the  quality,  and  (2)  quan- 
tity, of  vowel  sounds  in  stressed  ('  accented  ')  syllables ;  (B]  upon  the 
treatment  of  old  vowels  and  diphthongs  in  unstressed  syllables ;  (C)  upon 
the  loss  of  consonants  when  final,  or  before  other  consonants,  in  cases 
where  several  consonants  occur  in  a  group ;  (D)  upon  the  development 


WHAT   THE   SPELLING   TEACHES  67 

of  so-called  parasitic  consonants,  after  others,  chiefly  at  the  end  of  words; 
(E)  upon  many  other  consonant  pronunciations. 

We  shall  briefly  illustrate  each  of  these  points  here ;  the  fuller  treat- 
ment and  illustrations  will  come  in  their  proper  place  in  the  chapter 
which  deals  with  Changes  in  Pronunciation. 

A  (i)  Indications  as  to  the  Quality  of  Vowels. 

(a)  M.E.  tense  e  is  often  written  with  i  or  y,  which  had  the  sound  [i] 
of  Mod.  Eng.  <ee  'in  meet: — Shillingford :  myte  'meet',  dyme  'deem', 
&c. ;  Margaret  Paston  :  agryed  '  agreed  ',  symed  '  seemed ',  wypyng 
'  weeping ',  &c.,  &c. ;  Gregory's  Chron. :  slyves  '  sleeves ',  slypylle  *  steeple ', 
&c.  These  spellings  show  that  the  Mod.  sound  had  already  developed 
out  of  the  old  <?,  which  had  the  sound  of  French  /in  e'te. 

(6)  O.E.  tense  5  is  occasionally  written  u  or  ou,  implying  the  sound 
[u]  as  in  Mod.  boot: — Palladius:  must,  M.E.  moste\  Margaret  Paston: 
must,  Munday ;  Pecok :  muste ;  Bokenam  :  suthly  '  truly ',  forsuk,  stude 
'stood',  &c.;  Cely  Papers:  mwste,  tuk  'took'.  These  spellings  show 
that  [u],  or  this  sound  shortened,  was  already  pronounced. 

A  (2)  Indications  of  Quantity. 

Short  vowels  are  often  indicated  by  doubling  the  following  consonant 
symbol : — Bokenam  :  clennere  '  cleaner  '  compar. ;  St.  Editha  :  gretter 
'greater';  flodde  'flood',  delle  'part';  Palladius:  woddes  'woods', 
waiter  '  to  water ',  sonner  '  sooner  ' ;  Cely  Papers  :  breckefaste. 

B.  The  Treatment  of  Vowels  and  Diphthongs  in 
Unstressed  Syllables. 

This  is  a  rather  intricate  subject  and  will  demand  later  a  chapter  to 
itself.  The  habit  of  pronouncing  vowels  differently,  and  more  shortly, 
where  they  occur  in  unaccented  syllables  than  when  in  fully  stressed  sylla- 
bles is  firmly  engrained  in  English,  though  at  the  present  time  many 
people  are  in  favour  of  pronouncing  '  full '  vowels  in  unaccented  syllables. 
That  this  is  against  the  genius  of  English  is  shown  by  ordinary,  natural 
speech ;  that  the  habit  is  an  old  one  the  following  examples  will  show. 
To  pronounce  the  second  syllable  of  Oxford  like  the  word  ford,  and  the 
second  syllable  of porpoise  like  the  word  poise,  may  be  agreeable  or  the  re- 
verse, but  it  is  certainly  an  eccentric  novelty.  Already  in  very  Early  Middle 
English  we  find  that  O.E.  a,  u,  o,  e  were  all  pronounced  alike  when  not 
accented,  and  are  written  e.  O.E.  long  vowels  were  shortened  in  M.E. 
when  unstressed,  and  short  or  shortened  vowels  often  disappeared  from 
pronunciation  altogether.  Thus,  for  instance,  as  early  as  St.  Juliana 
(Prose,  thirteenth  century),  we  find  O.E.  *  J?ser  £fter  '  thereafter '  written 
prefter,  when  the  old  de  has  first  been  shortened  and  then  eliminated. 
This  process  of  'reduction'  of  the  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  con- 
tinued during  the  whole  M.E.  period,  and  in  the  fifteenth  century  we  find 
numerous  spellings  which  suggest  a  pronunciation  not  very  unlike  that  of 
the  present  day.  Indeed,  in  some  cases  a  form,  apparently  from  an 
unreduced  type,  is  now  pronounced  habitually,  through  the  influence  of 

F  2 


68      THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

the  desire  to  speak  '  correctly '  and  '  according  to  the  spelling '  so  common 
since  the  early  nineteenth  century.  The  M.E.  process  of  'reduction* 
whose  results  are  reflected  in  the  fifteenth-century  spellings  included 
the  unstressed  vowels  in  Scandinavian  and  Norman-French  words,  and 
affected  every  vowel  and  diphthong  in  this  position.  The  following  are 
a  few  examples  which  illustrate  (a)  mere  uncertainty  how  to  write  the 
vowel  of  the  unstressed  syllable,  (6)  more  or  less  definite  methods  of 
recording  a  specific  sound. 

(a)  The  following  examples  of  indecision  in  writing  the  vowel  in 
an  unstressed  syllable  are  all  taken  from  the  Cely  Papers,  but  the  same 
thing  is  found  more  or  less  in  all  the  fifteenth-century  texts. 

Middle  English  -en : — (i)  Written  -en '.—taken,  wretten  P.P.;  (2) 
Written  -yn  : — wryttyn,  lynyn  '  linen  ',gevyn  P.  P.,  hosyn,  Sec. ;  (3)  Written 
,on : — happon,  hofton  '  often '. 

Middle  English  -<?/:— (i)  Written  -el -.—fardel,  stapel\  (2)  Written 
-yl\ — myddyl,  saddyl,  cradyll,  stapyl\  Written  (3)  -al\ — stapal;  (4) 
Written  -ul : — stapuL 

Middle  English  -er : — (i)  Written  -er  : — better,  fader  '  father ',  mother, 
&c. ;  (2)  Written  -yr : — bettyr,  nwmbyr,  ovyr,  dowtyr,  &c.,  &c. ;  (3) 
Written  -or : — manner  '  manner  ',  sumor,  octobor,  &c. ;  (4)  Written  -ar  :  — 
dynar  '  dinner  ',  manar  '  manner ',  finar  '  finer  ' ;  (5)  Written  -ur  : — brocur 
'broker'. 

This  variety  and  hesitation  point  to  an  '  indeterminate  '  vowel,  as  it  is 
often  falsely  called ;  that  is,  the  sound  [9],  which  we  now  have  in  the 
second  syllable  of  father,  and  in  many  thousands  of  unstressed  syllables, 
whatever  is  written. 

(l>)  As  illustrations  of  the  treatment  of  unstressed  vowels  which  appears 
to  be  quite  clearly  and  definitely  expressed  by  occasional  spellings  from 
several  sources,  we  take  two  points. 

(1)  Rounded  Vowels  are  unrounded.     French  u  [y]  as  in  Mod.  French 
lune  is  written  i,  yt  or  e,  implying  probably  a  sound  closely  resembling 
our  vowel  in  the  second  syllable  of  pity.     Examples  : — Palladius  :  moister 
'  moisture  ' ;  Shillingfoi  d  :  commyne  '  common ',  fr.  commune ;  M.  Paston  : 
repetadon  '  reputation ' ;    Cely  Papers  :    aventer  '  adventure  ',   the   venter 
'  venture ',    condyte    <  conduit ',    by  skill    '  biscuit ' ;     Gregory  :     condytte, 
comyners,   comeners ;    Letters  and  Papers   (1501):    mynite   'minute'  in 
sense   of  a  '  note '.      The  above  spellings  represent   a   pronunciation 
pretty  much  the  same  as  our  own  in  the  words  conduit,  biscuit,  minute. 

M.E.  o  and  u  unstressed  written  a : — Cely  Papers :  abedyensses 
1  obedience  ',  sapose  '  suppose  ',  apon,  appon  '  upon ' ;  Shillingford :  apon 
(also  Letters  and  Papers,  Gregory,  Fortescue,  &c.). 

(2)  Diphthongs  are  simplified,     oi  and  ei  often  written  e,  y :   porpys 
'porpoise',    Gregory;    loorkes    'turquoise',    Bury   Wills   (1501);    Synt 
Stevyn,  Sent  Fault,  curtessy,  certyn,  Shillingford ;    M.E.  seinl,  curteisie, 
certein ;  Syn  Lenarde,  Syn  John,  w^wtayne,  M.E.  meynteyne,  &c. ;    Sent 
Stephin,  Rewle  of  Sustris  Menouresses. 

The  examples  are  enough  to  establish  the  reality  of  the  sound  changes 
suggested^  by  the  spellings,  and  in  the  following  century  indications 
pointing  in  the  same  direction  become  still  commoner  in  unstudied 
writing.  Present-day  pronunciation  confirms  the  indications  of  these 


CONSONANTAL   LOSS   AND   GAIN  69 

early  spellings  as  regards  et\  though  oi  is  sometimes  restored  in  unstressed 
syllables  through  the  influence  of  the  conventional  spelling  which  later 
became  fixed. 

C.    Occasional  Spellings  which  reveal  Losses  of  Consonants. 

(1)  Loss  of  final  consonant.      M.  Paston  : — nex  '  next ',  husbon  ( hus- 
band ',  hunder  '  hundred ' ;  Cely  Papers  : — My  Lor ;  Gregory  : — Braban  ; 
Official  account  of  entry  of  Catherine  of  Aragon  (1503): — uprigh. 

(2)  Loss  of  consonants  in  groups,  before  one  or  more  consonants.    Archbp. 
Chichele  (1418)  \-Lamhyth  '  Lambeth  ' ;  St.  Editha  \-twolthe  '  twelfth  ', 
twolmonth  '  twelvemonth  ',  bleynasse  '  blindness ',  whyssonweke ;  Shilling- 
ford  : — myssomer  '  midsummer ',  Crichurch  '  Christchurch  ' ;  M.  Paston : — 
Wensday,    morgage,    Quessontyde  '  Whitsuntide  ' ;    Gregory : —  Wanysday 
'  Wednesday  ',  halpeny,  sepukyr  '  sepulchre '. 

(3)  Loss  of  consonants  between  vowels.      St.  Editha  : — senty  (  seventy  ', 
swene  '  dream  ',  earlier  sweven,  pament '  pavement ' ;  Caxton  : — pament. 

D.    Addition  of  Consonants. 

(1)  Finally,  generally  after  1,  r,  n ;  also  after  s. 

Palladius  : — Spaniald  'Spaniard',  cf.  Fr.  Espagnol\  St.  Editha: — 
jaylardes  '  jailors ' ;  Margaret  Paston  : — wyld  '  will ' ;  Short  Eng.  Chron. 
(1464)  : — Lymoste  '  Lymehouse ' ;  Gregory  : — loste  '  loss  ' ;  Capgrave  : — 
ylde  '  isle ',  lynand  *  linen '. 

(2)  Development  of  parasitic  consonant  between  other  consonants.      St. 
Editha  : — sump  tyme  for  sum  tyme  '  some  time  ' ;  Cely  Papers  : — Mon- 
gwmbre  for  Mongumry  '  Montgomery  ',  rembnant '  remnant '. 

Some  of  the  tendencies  expressed  in  these  examples  have  left  survivals 
at  the  present  day  :  e.  g.  the  loss  of  final  -d  in  law «,  earlier  laund ;  accre- 
tion of  final  -/  after  -n,  margent,  a  poetical  variant  of  margin.  Both  loss 
and  addition  are  very  common  in  Vulgar  Speech  (Modified  Standard). 
We  shall  see  most  of  these  forms  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  in  use  in  the  English  of  the  politest  persons. 

The  loss  of  consonants  in  groups  still  belongs  to  the  best  speech ;  thus 
[wenzdi,  wsskat]  are  more  common  among  good  speakers  than  the 
rococco  [we/'stko#t,  wednzdz'J.  We  shall  find  many  examples  of  such 
losses  or  assimilations  of  consonants  in  groups  in  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, and  eighteenth  centuries. 

E.   Various  Consonant  Pronunciations. 

(1)  The  combination  written  -si-,  -sci-,  or  -ti-  pronounced  l  -sh- '  [J]  as 
at  present. 

Margaret  Paston  : — sesschons  '  sessions  *,  conschens  '  conscience  ;  Cely 
Papers  :—prosesschon  '  procession ',  fessychens  '  physicians  ',  restytuschon 
'restitution',  &c.,  &c. ;  Letters  and  Papers  (1501)  \-huisshers,  French 
huissiers  l  ushers  '.  In  the  last  instance  we  actually  retain  a  phonetic 
spelling  of  the  word. 

(2)  Final  -ing  pronounced  -in,  as  with  many  speakers  at  present. 
Margaret  Paston : — wrytyn  (Noun),  kepyn  (N.),  gidyn  l  guiding '  (N.), 


VQ      THE  ENGLISH   OF  THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

hangyn  (Pres.  Part.);  Gregory  \-blasyn  'blazing'  (Pres.  Part.),  hayryn 
1  herring '. 

(3)  Miscellaneous,  -b-  for  -p-  between  vowels  : — Jubiter,  Bk.  of  Quinte 
Essence  (1460-70);  jeberdy  'jeopardy',  Cely  Papers;  juberte,  Cr.  of 
Knt.  of  Bth. 

-/-  lost  before  -f- : — behaf '  behalf,  Bp.  Bekynton  (1442) ;  before  -k-  :— 
fawkyner  '  falconer 5,  Cely  Papers  ;  Fauconbryge,  Gregory. 

-r-  lost  in  combination  -rs- : — wosied  qwischons  l  worsted  cushions ',  Will 
of  Joan  Buckland  (Lines.  1440) ;  passe!/,  Cely  Papers. 

-gh-  not  pronounced  in  middle  of  word  before  -/-  or  finally  ;  this  is 
shown  in  Margaret  Paston's  omission  of  any  symbol  for  the  original 
sound  in  myt  '  might ',  kawt  '  caught ',  and  also  by  such  spellings  as 
howghe  '  how  ',  wright '  write ',  ought c  out ',  &c.,  &c.,  when  she  would  not 
have  written  the  letters  -gh-  if  they  had  represented  any  sound.  Further, 
smyht '  smite ',  Rle.  of  Sustris  Menouresses. 

h-  initially  where  it  does  not  historically  belong : — herand  '  errand ', 
hought  '  ought ',  hese  '  ease ',  Margaret  Paston  ;  hasche  '  ash  tree  ', 
Gregory.  (On  all  these  points  see  Ch.  VIII  below.) 

We  have  now  illustrated  some  of  the  principal  spellings  found  in 
fifteenth-century,  or  very  early  sixteenth-century  documents,  which  are 
new  departures,  and  suggest  a  different  pronunciation  from  that  usually 
held  to  be  normal  in  M.E.  These  spellings  are  scattered  through  dozens 
of  letters  and  other  documents,  and  some  of  them  might  pass  for  slips 
of  the  pen,  were  they  isolated.  Many  of  them  occur,  however,  in 
several  documents  of  this  period,  and  all  of  them  are  found  with  much 
greater  frequency  in  writings  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  are  further 
confirmed  much  later,  either  by  writers  on  pronunciation,  by  later 
(seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century)  spellings,  or  by  survivals  in  our 
own  day.  When  a  writer  departs  from  the  traditional  spelling  in  the 
manner  shown  by  the  above  examples,  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  this 
eccentricity  records  some  fact  of  pronunciation ;  when  we  get  confirmation 
of  the  kind  just  stated,  we  do  not  doubt  at  all. 

Many  of  the  pronunciations  thus  expressed  are  now  obsolete,  old- 
fashioned,  or  vulgar.  The  influence  of  the  archaic  system  of  spelling, 
insisted  upon  by  the  early  printers  and  by  their  successors,  has  been  too 
strong.  We  shall  have  occasion  to  see  later  how  comparatively  recent 
many  of  our  present-day  '  restored '  pronunciations  are.  Other  pro- 
nunciations again,  such  as  the  loss  of  -/-  before  certain  consonants,  as  in 
half,  walk,  &c.,  are  accepted  facts,  and  at  present  no  one  has  ventured 
upon  a  restoration ;  perhaps  the  lettered  democracy  of  the  future,  seeking 
'  the  genteel  thing ',  will  introduce  this,  among  other  novelties,  into  our 
speech. 

(2)  Modern  English  begins  at  least  as  early  as  the  second 
half  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

Nothing  is  more  difficult,  as  has  already  been  urged  repeatedly,  than 
to  fix  upon  a  date  for  the  beginning  of  a  new  era  in  speech ;  indeed  this 
can  only  be  done  approximately.  All  we  shall  endeavour  to  show  here 
is  that  although  some  of  the  points  of  development  adduced  in  support 
of  the  view  may  be  considerably  older,  the  net  result  of  an  examination 


BEGINNINGS   OF   MODERN   ENGLISH  71 

of  English  speech  as  a  whole  during  the  fifteenth  century  leads  us  to  the 
conclusion  that  before  the  close  of  that  century,  not  to  attempt  more 
particular  definition,  the  Modern  Period  of  our  language  had  begun. 
One  of  the  surprises  of  a  close  study  of  the  history  of  a  language  is  the 
early  date  at  which  certain  features  occur  in  the  texts — often  far  earlier 
than  we  should  expect.  Another  surprise  is  the  lateness  of  the  occur- 
rence of  certain  other  features,  which  survive,  here  and  there,  much 
longer  than  we  perhaps  thought  possible.  In  order  to  enjoy  both  kinds 
of  astonishment  it  is  clearly  necessary  to  make  not  only  a  fairly  minute 
study — since  what  is  new  in  speech  and  just  coming  in  is  but  infrequently, 
and  only  by  scattered  examples,  discoverable  in  the  written  records,  while 
the  obsolescent  is  often  equally  hard  to  come  by — but  we  must  also  take 
a  rather  wide  survey  in  point  of  time,  and  roam  over  the  written  records 
of  several  centuries.  The  rewards  of  such  a  labour  are  the  pleasant 
surprises  just  referred  to,  and  a  gradual  gain  of  a  sense  of  the  continuity 
between  the  earlier  and  later  periods.  For  the  purpose  which  we  have 
in  view — to  establish  the  modernity  of  fifteenth-century  English — it  is 
useful  to  take  present-day  English  as  a  point  of  comparison,  and  to 
inquire  how  far  some  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  our  actual 
language  are  found  already  in  the  century  we  are  now  considering.  It 
is  also  useful  to  indicate  the  points  in  which  present-day  English  differs 
from  that  of  the  fifteenth  century,  since  it  is  by  no  means  suggested  that 
the  two  forms  are  identical  in  all  respects.  In  our  brief  analysis  of  Early 
Modern  English,  we  confine  ourselves  primarily  to  London  writings,  and 
to  those  works  produced  either  in  the  East  Midlands  or  the  South  of 
England. 

Our  examination  will  deal  chiefly  with  the  Pronunciation ;  the  Acci- 
dence during  the  greater  part  of  the  century  is  still  rather  M.E.  in 
character,  and  only  a  few  points  are  here  dealt  with. 

English  Pronunciation  in  the  Fifteenth  Century. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  chief  differences  between  the  pronuncia- 
tion of  vowels  in  the  M.E.  period  and  that  of  the  present  day  : — 

(1)  M.E.  a,  in  bdke(n)  'to  ba.kz',/ame  'fame',  &c.,  &c.,  has  become 

[>']• 

(2)  M.E.  a  which  had  the  sound  of  French  a  mpatte,  &c.,  has  become 
[ae]  as  in  M.E.  bak,  present-day  back,  fat,  adj.,  &c.  &c. 

(3)  M.E.  el  =  [e]  tense  has  become  [i]  as  in  M.E.  felen—feel,  seed, 
sede — seed,  &c.,  &c. 

(4)  M.E.  e2  =  [s]  has  also  become  [i],  M.E.  hete — heat,  mete— meat, 
&c.,  &c. 

(5)  M.E.  I  has  been  diphthongized  to  \_ai\,  M.E.  wif- — wife,  blind — 
blind,  &c.,  &c. 

(6)  M.E.  u  has  been  diphthongized  to  [aw],  M.E.  hous  =  [hus] — house, 
M.E.  foule— foul,  &c.,  &c. 

(7)  M.E.  u  has  been  unrounded  to  [a]  as  in   M.E.  dust  =  [dwst] 
present-day  dust  =  [dast],  &c.,  &c. 

(8)  M.E.  o  tense  has  become  [u]  as  in  M.E.  mone — moon  =  [mun], 
M.E.  fode— food  =  [fad],  &c. 


72      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

(9)  M.E.  au,  which  was  a  genuine  diph thong  [au],  has  been  monoph- 
thongized to  [5]  written  au  or  aw,  as  in  cause,  hawk,  &c.,  &c. 

(10)  M.E.  at,  ei,  both  pronounced  [at]  in   the   later   period,   have 
become  first  [ae],  then  [i],  then  [e],  and  finally,  in  Standard  English  [e/] 
rain,  day,  vein,  &c.,  &c. 

(n)  M.E.  [y]  written  u  or  ui  has  become  [m,  ju],  e.g.  tune,  fume, 
suit',  after  /,  r,  the  older  [ju]  has  generally  become  [u],  e.g.  lute  (also 
[\jHi]),/rui/,  rude,  &c.,  &c. 

(12)  M.E.  [  y]  has  been  retracted  to  [u]  and  then  unrounded  like  other 
short  w-sounds  to  [a],  e.g.  judge,  bundle,  rush  (the  plant),  cudgel,  &c.,  &c. 

(13)  M.E.  -er  has  become  [fl(r)J,  M.E.  herte — heart,  M.E.  fer— far, 
&c.,  &c. 

(14)  M.E.  wa-  has  become  [w^-]  in  was,  swan,  swallow,  &c.,  &c. 
The  above  list  of  changes  is  formidable  enough,  but  it  makes  no 

pretence  at  completeness.  It  will,  however,  serve  our  turn  for  the 
moment. 

Of  the  above  changes,  Nos.  3,  8,  and  13  were  shown,  p.  67,  above, 
to  be  expressed  in  fifteenth-century  spellings.  In  3  and  8  it  seems 
certain  that  the  full  present-day  stage  had  already  been  reached.  As 
regards  14,  wosse  —  'was '  in  Cely  Papers  leaves  small  room  for  doubt. 
It  is  extremely  probable  that  the  same  may  be  said  of  Nos.  i,  2 — 
such  spellings  as  begen  for  began,  •&&&  fend  *  found  ',  M.E.  fand  (Paston 
Letters),  point  to  a  fronting  in  the  former  case,  while  credyl '  cradle '  in 
Bokenam,  teke  =  take,feder  M.TL. fader  'father'  in  Paston  Letters,  and 
ceme  '  came  '  in  Cely  Papers  seem  to  indicate  the  same  process  for  the 
long  vowel. 

The  process  involving  M.E.  e*  (No.  4)  began  very  shortly  the  shifting 
of  the  vowel  in  No.  3.  Cf.  p.  209,  below. 

The  spelYmg  gannes  '  guns  '  in  Paston  Letters  seems  to  show  that  short 
u,  No.  7,  had  at  least  started  upon  the  path  which  was  to  lead  to  the  present 
sound,  if  it  had  not  fully  attained  it ;  the  spelling  sadanly  '  suddenly '  in 
Fortescue  points  in  the  same  direction.  If  this  be  so,  then  No.  7  must 
have  taken  place  still  earlier.  No.  5,  the  diphthonging  of  long  i  is  more 
than  hinted  at  by  the  spellings  bleynd  '  blind  ',  myeld  (  mild  ',  in  St.  Editha, 
though  it  is  improbable  that  the  present  sound  had  been  reached. 

The  diphthonging  of  «,  No.  6,  is  suggested  by  the  spelling  sauthe '  south', 
Reg.  of  Godstow,  Zachrisson,  E.  St.  52.  309.  The  spelling  awffer  *  offer ' 
in  Cely  Papers  is  sometimes  regarded  as  an  inverted  spelling  showing 
that  aw  no  longer  necessarily  indicated  a  diphthong,  which  would  be 
impossible  in  this  word.  The  only  sound  apparently  which  it  could 
represent  here  is  [5].  If  this  is  so  then  No.  9  also  is  a  process  already 
complete  among  some  speakers  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The  monoph- 
thonging  of  ai  (No.  10)  is  suggested  in  an  undated  letter  of  Marg. 
Beaufort  (1443-1509),  who  writes  sa  for  say.  This  lady  was  the  mother 
of  Henry  VII.  Apart  from  spellings  in  regard  to  Nos.  5  and  6,  it  must 
further  be  pointed  out  that  if  we  once  admit  that  old  [e]  had  become 
[i],  and  that  [6]  had  become  [u],  we  must  perforce  assume  that  some 
change  had  affected  the  old  [i]  and  [u],  since  if  these  had  remained 
unaltered  down  to  the  period  by  which  the  new  [i,  u]  developed,  the 
latter  would  have  been  identical  with  them,  and  the  subsequent  history 


MODERN  VOWELS   AND   THE   EASTERN   DIALECTS  73 

of  both  would  have  been  the  same.  This,  however,  has  not  happened. 
Hence  we  must  suppose  that  the  change  of  [i  and  u]  was  actually  earlier 
than  the  change  of  [fed]  to  [fid]  and  of  [mone]  to  [mun(e)].  But 
while  this  is  certain,  we  have  no  definite  evidence  as  to  how  far  the 
diphthonging  had  gone,  nor  what  was  its  precise  character  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  The  certainty  is  merely  that  these  sounds  had  changed  from 
their  original  form  and  started  upon  their  new  career. 

Thus  of  the  fourteen  typical  vowel  changes  which  distinguish  present- 
day  English  from  that  of  the  M.E.  period,  all  but  one  are  shown,  by  the 
direct  evidence  of  occasional  spellings,  by  inference  drawn  from  other 
facts,  or  from  both  sources,  either  to  have  been  completed,  or  at  least  to 
have  begun,  before  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

The  change  in  No.  n,  so  far  as  our  evidence  goes  at  present,  cannot 
be  proved  to  have  started.  On  this  point  see  p.  244,  below. 

It  must  be  insisted  upon  that  it  is  by  no  means  proved,  because  a  pro- 
nunciation is  shown  with  considerable  probability,  or  in  some  cases  with 
certainty,  to  have  existed  at  a  given  period  among  certain  groups  of 
speakers,  that  this  pronunciation  was  universal.  On  the  contrary,  a 
change  generally  starts  in  one  area,  or  among  a  class  of  speakers,  and 
spreads  to  other  areas  and  classes.  Many  of  the  above  changes  had 
probably  not  yet  spread,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  to  the  Court  dialect, 
that  is,  to  the  ancestor  of  present-day  Received  Standard  ;  others  certainly 
had  not.  In  most  cases  the  novelties  of  pronunciation  are  made  probable 
by  forms  taken  from  the  Paston  Letters,  or  the  Cely  Papers,  and  though  this 
may  be  a  coincidence  due  to  our  possessing  in  these  documents  a  consider- 
able body  of  more  or  less  phonetically-written  English,  which  it  is  difficult 
to  match  in  documents  known  to  have  been  written  in  London,  the  fact 
remains  that  our  earliest  evidence  for  many  of  the  modern  sound  changes, 
or  their  inception,  comes  from  the  East  Midlands  or  South-East.  We 
shall  see,  however,  that  London  English  and  Standard  English  show 
increasingly  this  Eastern  influence,  and  we  are  entitled  to  say  that  in  the 
popular  speech  of  the  South-East  and  South-East  Midlands  we  find  in 
the  fifteenth  century  the  germ  of  those  changes  which  we  regard  as 
characteristic  of  Modern  English,  although,  in  some  respects,  the  best 
London  English  was  rather  more  archaic,  so  far  as  our  evidence  goes. 
This  may,  however,  be  illusory,  and  the  more  faithful  adherents  of  scribal 
tradition  who  are  the  writers  of  the  official  and  literary  documents  in 
London  English,  being  more  lettered  persons  than  the  Celys,  and  even 
than  most  of  the  Pastons,  may  conceal  beneath  their  conventional  spelling 
with  its  infrequent  lapses  into  phonetic  rendering,  changes  as  remarkable 
as  those  made  manifest  by  the  less  careful  writers  of  Essex  and  Suffolk, 
and  as  remarkable  as  some  of  those  which  they  themselves  do  reveal  to  us 
in  their  weaker  moments. 

It  is  significant  that,  in  discussing  the  above  changes,  we  are  forced  in 
each  case  to  use  a  phonetic  notation  in  order  to  make  the  sound  change 
clear.  In  all  the  cases  under  review  there  has  been  practically  no  change 
in  the  received  spelling  since  the  M.E.  period — none  at  any  rate  which 
records  the  very  considerable  changes  in  pronunciation  that  have 
occurred.  The  only  exceptions  to  this  are  a  few  words  like  far  where 
the  -ar-  spelling  has  been  fixed  in  place  of  M.E.fer.  But  even  this 


74      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

class  of  words  is  not  consistent,  and  we  write  Derby,  hearth,  &c.  When 
we  find  the  constant  individual  departures  from  the  convention,  in  favour 
of  a  more  phonetic  rendering,  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centu- 
ries, it  is  clear  that  the  English  persistence  in  clinging  to  an  outworn 
system  of  spelling,  one  which  private  writers  were  constantly  infringing, 
must  be  put  to  the  credit,  or  the  reverse,  of  the  printers.  For  about 
450  years  these  worthies  have  dictated  to  us  how  we  are  to  spell,  in  the 
same  way  that  fashionable  ladies  are  said  to  have  their  fashions  prescribed 
for  them  by  their  dressmakers,  who  allow  their  customers  small  voice  in 
the  matter.  Some  may  think  that  it  is  a  good  thing  to  have  a  thoroughly 
unphonetic  spelling  such  as  ours,  and  consider  that  any  attempt  to  alter 
it  would  be  a  mistake.  Others  have  an  uneasy  feeling  that  our  system 
is  inconsistent  and  misleading,  and  they  therefore  found  societies  for 
amending  it — according  to  principles  which  it  is  often  difficult  to  under- 
stand. It  is  impossible  to  say  at  present  whether  any  of  the  numerous 
groups  of  reformers  will  win,  or  whether  we  shall  insist  on  sticking  to  our 
old  and  familiar  muddle.  No  spelling  reformers  have  hitherto  succeeded 
in  this  country.  Those  of  us,  however,  who  prefer  our  present  system, 
bad  as  it  is,  because  we  know  it,  rather  than  a  new  system  which  is  only 
very  faintly  phonetic  in  character,  would  do  well  to  remember  that  our 
bad  old  spelling  is  chiefly  defensible  on  the  ground  of  custom,  and  not  for 
any  pretended  historical  merit.  We  should  remember  that  it  is  the 
printers  who  have  imposed  it  upon  us.  Had  Caxton  and  his  followers 
been  more  enterprising,  it  is  highly  probable  that  our  spelling  would  have 
been  less  widely  divorced  from  the  facts  of  pronunciation  than  is  actually 
the  case. 

The  Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

We  have  already  indicated  (p.  67,  &c.)  some  of  the  more  remarkable 
facts  under  this  head  which  are  observable  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
the  whole  subject  will  receive  a  fuller  treatment  later  on  (Chap.  VII). 
Enough  has  perhaps  been  said,  and  sufficient  examples  have  already  been 
adduced,  to  show  that  by  the  fifteenth  century  at  any  rate,  not  only  was 
the  habit  of  reducing  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  fully  developed,  but 
in  many  cases  it  seems  certain  that  the  results  were  already  practically 
identical  with  the  state  of  things  with  which  we  are  familiar  at  the  present 
time. 


Changes  in  Consonant  Sounds,  Isolative,  and  in  Combinations. 

The  changes  indicated  on  p.69,&c.,  above,  are  sufficiently  striking,  and  it 
is  unnecessary  here  to  enter  more  fully  into  this  matter,  as  the  Consonants 
will  be  discussed  in  detail  in  their  proper  place  (Chap.  VIII  below).  It  is 
enough  to  point  out  that  such  usages  as  the  '  dropping '  of  initial  aspirates, 
the  addition  of  these  where  they  do  not  belong,  the  interchange  of  initial 
w  and  vt  the  loss  of  /  before  -k,  &c.,  the  pronunciation  of  '  sh*  in  such 
words  as  procession,  the  loss  of  d  in  Wednesday,  the  addition  of  a  final 
consonant  in  such  forms  %s>  ylde  for  isle,  and  a  dozen  other  practices 
which  are  proved  by  abundant  evidence  to  have  existed  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  are  all  very  modern  in  character.  Some  of  these  are  now 


NOUNS   AND   PRONOUNS  75 

vulgarisms,  but  none  the  less  real  for  that ;  others  have  been  lost,  even 
among  vulgar  speakers,  through  the  influence  of  '  education ' ;  others  may 
now  be  regarded  as  slipshod,  though  not  vulgar,  by  the  precise ;  many 
are  part  and  parcel  of  the  natural  speech  of  the  most  meticulous. 

Points  in  English  Accidence  of  the  Fifteenth  Century. 

(1)  Nouns.     The  most  modern  feature  in  the  inflexion  of  Nouns  in 
this  period  is  the  use  of  such  a  construction  z.$—J>e  erle  of  Wyltones  wyf, 
which  is  found  already  in  St.  Editha,  instead  of  the  old  form  pe  erles  wyf 
of  Wylton,  which  survives  now  in  the  well-known  song  The  Bailiffs 
daughter  of  Islington.     The  '  group  inflexion ',  as  it  is  called,  is  by  no 
means  common  in  the  writings  of  the  fifteenth  century,  but  that  it  occurs 
at  all  proves  that  it  was  in  use,  though  probably  it  was  still  felt  as  collo- 
quial, and  it  is  usually  avoided,  often  by  omitting  the  possessive  inflexion 
altogether,  as  in  without  my  brother  Roof  assent  (Ld.  Hastings  in  Paston 
Letters,  iii,  p.  108,  c.  1470).     Even  in  the  middle  of  the  next  century 
many  writers  dodge  the  '  group  possessive '  in  one  way  or  another  (see 
p.  318).     There  is  a  very  modern-sounding  construction  in  the  Creation 
of  Duke  of  York  Knight  of  the  Bath  (1494) — sett  in  like  maner  as  therle 
of  Suffokis,  and  in  the  account  of  the  Reception  of  Catharine  of  Aragon 
(1501)  we  find  the  Archebishoppe  of  Cauntreburys  barge.     Other  par- 
ticulars of  the  Inflexion  of  Nouns  in  fifteenth-century  English  will  be 
recorded  in  due  course  (pp.  314-24).     They  are  rather  of  the  nature  of 
survivals  than  of  modernisms,  such   as   the   old  uninflected  Feminine 
Possessive  Singulars — ure  ladye  belle,  &c.  (Shillingford),  the  innumerable 
Pis.  in  -en  (or  -yn,  &c.),  and  such  a  mutated  PI.  as  geet '  goats '. 

(2)  Personal  Pronouns.    Whereas  Chaucer  and  those  of  his  con- 
temporaries who  write  London  English  still  adhere  to  the  old,  English  her, 
hem,  as  the  exclusive  forms  of  the  Possessive  and  Dative  PL,  the  fifteenth- 
century  literary  and  official  writings  in  this  dialect  show  an  increasing 
use  of  their,  ther  in  the  Possessive  and  theim,  them  in  the  Dative.     The 
former  her  is  practically  extinct  in  literary,  and  presumably  in  colloquial, 
use  by  the  end  of  the  century,  though  isolated  instances  occur  as  late  as 
the  middle  of  the  next  century.     Hem,  and  the  unstressed  em,  are  far 
commoner,  and  indeed  the  latter  under  the  disguise  of  'em  is  very  common 
indeed,  even  in  the  lofty  style,  far  into  the  eighteenth  century,  and  is  in 
frequent  colloquial  use  at  the  present  day.     The  form  hem  is  very  rarely 
found  with  the  initial  aspirate  after  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  except 
in  the  form  'hem,  and  it  is  pretty  clear,  as  the  subsequent  writing  with 
the  apostrophe  shows,  that  speakers  and  writers  using  em  thought  it  was 
a  reduced  form  of  them. 

Another  modernism  in  the  forms  of  Pronouns,  though  it  occurs  much 
earlier  here  and  there,  is  the  loss  of  the  initial  lip-consonant  in  who,  which 
is  found  written  ho  and  hoo  in  Siege  of  Rouen,  Letters  of  Mary  Paston, 
Gregory,  Creation  of  Duke  of  York,  &c. 

A  very  common  survival  from  M.E.  usage  in  the  fifteenth  century  is 
tho,  thoo,  the  old  PI.  Nom.  of  the  Def.  Art.  used  in  the  purely  demon- 
strative sense  '  those '. 

See,  on  all  these  and  other  points,  the  treatment  of  the  Pronouns  in 
Chap.  IX. 


76     THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

(3)  Verbal  Endings.  In  London  documents  of  all  kinds  the  3rd 
Pers.  S.  Pres.  Indie,  ends  in  -eth,  or  -ith,  almost  without  exception.  The 
PI.  usually  has  the  typical  Midland  -en  or  -/»,  -yn,  but  towards  the  end 
of  the  century  the  final  -n  becomes  more  and  more  rare,  so  that  we  get 
our  present  flexionless  form.  The  Southern  PI.  in  -eth,  -ith  crops  up 
with  fair  frequency  apart  from  purely  official  documents,  and  indeed 
continues  to  be  used  occasionally  far  into  the  following  century.  The 
Pres.  Part,  is  always  either  -ing,  -yng,  or  occasionally  -eng. 

The  Southern  prefix^-  or  i-  falls  into  desuetude  in  the  Past  Part.,  and 
the  Southern  endings  without,  and  the  Midland  ending  with,  the  final  -n 
both  occur  in  Strong  Vbs.  as  at  present,  though  the  distribution  of  these 
forms  is  not  fixed. 

The  distinction  between  Sing,  and  PI.  Pret.  of  Strong  Vbs.  of  certain 
classes  is  lost  towards  the  end  of  the  century,  and  whereas  Chaucer  has 
fond  '  I  found  ',  &c.,  -m&funden  '  we  found  ',  Caxton  uses  the  Sing,  type 
fond  for  both  numbers. 


(3)  The  Passing  of  Regional  Dialect  in  Written  English. 

We  have  seen  that  it  is  still  possible  during  the  fifteenth  century  to 
find,  both  in  works  of  literature  proper,  in  private  letters,  wills,  &c., 
and  even  in  official  documents,  the  influence  of  Regional  dialect. 

As  has  been  said,  there  are  still  a  certain  number  of  writings  of  this 
period  which  represent  a  more  or  less  pure  form  of  Regional  dialect, 
and  there  are  others  which  show  traces  of  the  author's  native  dialect 
while  being,  in  the  main,  according  to  the  London  type  of  English. 

We  must  be  careful  not  to  over-estimate  the  rapidity  of  the  spread 
of  a  common  form  of  Literary  English.  Many  dialect  features  may  still 
be  traced  in  works  written  in  nearly  pure  London  English,  such  as 
Shillingford's  letters.  Writers  on  Modern  English  dialects,  therefore,  will  do 
well  in  future  to  search  diligently  in  the  documents  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  even  later,  and  not  to  give  up  all  hope  of  finding,  after  the  fourteenth 
century,  ancestral  forms  of  the  dialect  which  they  are  describing.  This 
habit,  which  is  far  too  common,  has  the  unfortunate  result  of  leaving 
a  gap  in  the  history  of  the  dialect  of  some  five  hundred  years! 
It  is  true  that  by  the  fifteenth  century,  in  the  huge  area  covered  by 
the  Midlands  as  a  whole,  there  was  spoken,  or  at  least  written,  a  type 
of  English  which,  apart  from  certain  rather  minute  points,  often  rather 
scattered,  and  hard  to  discover  without  a  painful  examination  of  the  docu- 
ments, was  fairly  uniform.  This  Midland  type,  in  its  broad  outlines,  agreed 
pretty  much  with  London  English,  and  when  we  consider  more  par- 
ticularly the  very  large  body  of  documents  of  all  kinds  written  in  the 
East  Midlands,  the  differences  between  the  written  speech  of  this  area  and 
that  of  London  appear  at  first  sight  so  trifling,  that  some  recent  writers 
have  been,  rather  too  hastily  perhaps,  led  to  believe  and  to  teach  that 
dialectal  differences  had  disappeared  from  written  English,  at  least  by 
the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.  A  more  careful  examination  of  the 
sources,  however,  shows  that  this  is  far  from  being  the  case,  even  in  the 
East,  and  although  it  appears  that  the  language  of  most  of  the  documents 
which  we  possess  from  this  period  has  been,  to  some  degree  at  least, 


SURVEY   OF   PROVINCIAL   WRITINGS  77 

influenced  by  London  English,  a  considerable  amount  of  dialectal  diver- 
gence exists  in  points  of  detail. 

In  the  following  brief  survey  of  the  question,  we  shall  attempt  to 
show  both  the  survivals  of  Regional  dialect  and  the  influence  exerted  by 
the  London  dialect. 

In  considering  London  English  at  this  period,  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  the  distribution  of  the  competing  dialectal  elements  was 
not  yet  finally  fixed.  It  is  evident  that  many  Southern  features  now 
lost  co-existed  in  the  speech  of  the  metropolis  with  those  of  E.  Midland 
and  South-Eastern  type.  The  appearance  of  such  features  in  a  docu- 
ment therefore  does  not  necessarily  show  direct  regional  influence.  The 
precise  blend  of  the  various  dialect  elements  varies  within  certain  limits 
from  writer  to  writer,  and  each  of  these  blends  represents  an  existing 
mode  of  speech. 

Again,  in  examining  E.  Midland,  or  South-Eastern  texts,  we  come 
across  features  which  we  are  justified  in  considering  as  characteristic  of 
these  areas,  although  many  or  all  of  them  may  be  found  also  in 
London  English  of  the  period.  The  differences  between  E.  Midland 
and  London  English  in  the  fifteenth  century  are  comparatively  slight, 
since  the  latter  was  becoming  more  and  more  E.  Midland  in  character, 
and  at  this  time  was  distinguished  from  pure  E.  Midland  chiefly  by  the 
survival  of  certain  purely  Southern  features  which  did  not  normally 
occur  in  the  speech  of  Norfolk  or  Suffolk.  We  may  put  it  in  this 
way  : — there  were  few  typically  E.  Midland  features  which  did  not  occur 
in  London  speech,  but  this  contained  also  many  others  (Sthn.)  which 
were  unknown  to  the  E.  Midlands. 

We  begin  with  two  texts  in  which  the  Regional  dialect  is  pretty 
strongly  marked,  Bokenam's  Lives  of  Saints  (c.  1443),  which  the  author 
definitely  tells  us  is  written  in  the  speech  of  Suffolk,  and  the  Life  of 
St.  Editha,  written  in  the  monastery  of  Wilton  in  Wiltshire  about  1420. 

Bokenam's  is  naturally  a  typical  E.  Midland  text,  and,  as  in  other 
texts  from  this  area,  we  find  several  features  which,  absent  from  earlier 
London  documents,  gain  more  and  more  ground  during  the  century  in 
the  speech  of  the  capital. 

The  combination  -er-  is  generally  so  written,  but  a  certain  number  of 
-ar-  spellings  are  found,  more  than  occur  in  the  London  documents  of  this 
period  so  early  in  the  century :  marcyfully,  warkys,  garlondys.  O.E. 
slack  de  sometimes  rhymes  with  tense  e: — teche  with  seche,  dene  with  sene 
'  seen  ',  and  wene.  This  treatment  of  se2  is  regarded  as  typically  Kentish 
or  South-Eastern  in  O.  and  M.E.  It  is  interesting  to  note  its  spread  to 
Suffolk.  There  are  indications,  however,  already  in  M.E.  that  this  feature 
was  shared  by  E.  Midland.  It  is  apparently  still  alien  to  London  speech. 

Bokenam,  like  other  E.  Midland  writers,  often  has  e  for  old  i.  We 
must  distinguish  two  classes  of  words :  words  of  two  or  more  syllables, 
where  the  sound  occurs  in  '  open  syllables  ',  that  is  at  the  end  of  a  syllable, 
when  a  single  consonant  intervenes  between  the  following  syllable.  In 
this  class  it  is  possible  that  lengthening  has  taken  place,  and  that  we 
should  regard  the  vowel  as  <?,  e.  g.  pete  '  pity  ',  wretyn  '  written ',  queknyn, 
inf.  The  other  case  is  where  e  for  i  occurs  in  '  close  syllables ',  that  is 
before  double  consonants,  or  combinations  of  consonants,  or  in  words  of 


78      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

one  syllable  ending  in  a  consonant,  e.  g.  menstralsy,  smet,  &c.  The  first 
class  offers  some  difficulties  in  interpretation,  and  views  differ  as  to  the 
origin  of  the  change.  (See  discussion,  p.  226,  &c.,  below.)  On  the  whole, 
it  seems  at  present  more  likely  that  both  classes  can  be  brought  under 
one  heading — the  lowering  of  t  to  e.  If  this  view  be  accepted,  we  may 
add  flekerynge  (where  e  should  be  short  in  any  case),  and  merour  '  mirror ', 
a  common  form  in  Early  Mod.  Eng.  Both  types  of  words  occur  with 
e  frequently  in  E.  Midlands  in  M.E.,  and  become  increasingly  common 
in  London  English  in  the  fifteenth  and  following  centuries.  Those  words 
where  the  vowel  was  certainly  short  have  now  been  eliminated  from 
Standard  English.  Bokenam  shares  with  other  writers  from  Suffolk, 
Essex,  and  to  some  extent  from  Norfolk,  the  characteristic  use  of  e  for 
O.E.  j/,  generally  considered  South-Eastern,  to  which  frequent  reference  has 
been  made  (see  pp.  9,  41  (3),  &c.).  Examples  of  the  long  vowel  are  mende 
1  mind  ',  &c.,feer  '  fire  ' ;  and  of  the  short,  berth, '  birth ',  kechyn  '  kitchen ', 
werst '  worst '.  It  may  be  noted  that  the  spelling^™?  also  occurs,  but 
the  word  rhymes  with  chere,  thus  showing  the  pronunciation.  The  long  e- 
forms  are  not  common  in  London  English,  though  as  we  have  seen  the 
£-forms  are  very  frequent.  By  the  side  of  these,  other  spellings  with  i,y 
occur  in  Bokenam. 

The  Pronouns  do  not  differ  from  the  usage  of  London  English.  The 
P.  P.'s  of  Strong  Verbs  generally  end  in  -yn  (with  -n  according  to 
Midland  usage). 

Turning  to  St.  Editha,  we  find,  as  might  be  expected,  far  more 
differences  from  London  English.  The  very  characteristic  Western  u 
for  old  eo  is  frequent — vrthe  '  earth  ',  hulte  '  held ',  O.E.  heold,  dure 
1  dear  ',  O.E.  dear.  A  couple  of  examples  occur  of  the  typical  South- 
western unrounding  of  o  to  a — starm  for  '  storm  ',  and  crasse  for  '  cross '. 
This  South- Western  feature  penetrated  into  Received  Standard  English 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  became  for  a  time  a  fashionable  habit  in  the 
seventeenth  (see  p.  240);  it  has  left  a  few  survivals  in  Mod.  Eng.,  e.g. 
strap  by  the  side  of  strop,  &c.  We  find  non-South- Western  here  '  hear  ' 
instead  of  huire  as  we  might  expect,  but  this  need  not  be  attributed  to 
the  indirect  influence  of  London  English,  as  the  form  seems  to  have 
been  characteristic  of  the  South- West  Midland  speech  of  Oxfordshire, 
Worcestershire,  Herefordshire,  &c.  The  old  Southern  [§]  for  %?  has 
disappeared,  as  is  shown  by  the  rhymes pere—yfere,  bere  '  bier' — here,  &c. 
Short  e  (or  eT)  for  older  j-  in  open  syllables  is  fairly  common — leuynge, 
pety,  cete  '  city ',  weke  '  week ',  theke  '  thick  ',  &c.  It  is  doubtful  how  these 
forms  should  be  explained  (see  p.  207,  &c.).  Western  on,  om  for  an,  am 
occur  in  nomlyche  '  namely ',  mon  '  man ',  bonk  '  bank ',  thonk  '  thank '.  Past 
Participles  very  commonly  have  the  Southern  ending  without  -n,ybroke, 
ychbse,ycore,  &c.,  and,  as  we  see  from  these  examples,  the  Southern  prefix 
y-  was  frequently  preserved.  The  Southern  inf.  ending  in  -y  is  found  in 
to  correcty.  The  Pers.  Pronouns  preserve  the  old  Southern  formycfte 
'  I ',  and  the  archaic  Southern  forms  of  the  Fern,  he,  hee  for  '  she '.  The 
Midland  Nom.  ¥\.pey,  &c.  seems  the  only  form,  and  this  may  possibly 
be  attributable  to  the  influence  of  the  predominating  type,  but  in  the 
other  cases  of  the  3rd  Pers.  PI.  the  th-  or /-forms  are  unknown  in  this 
text.  The  unstressed  suffix  -es,  &c.,  often  appears  as  -us,  after  the  manner 


ESSEX   DOCUMENTS  79 

of  South- West  Midland,  by  the  side  of  -ys  and  -es.  In  the  Pres.  PI.  of 
Vbs.  -yth  occurs  by  the  side  of  the  Midland  -e. 

St.  Editha  still  retains  the  original  distinction  between  Sing,  and  PI. 
in  those  classes  of  Strong  Vbs.  where  this  existed :  dref — drevyn 
(earlier  drivon)  '  drove  ',  satte — seton  {  sat ',  borst — burst,  brake — brekon, 
&c.,  &c. 

These  two  texts  illustrate  respectively  the  Eastern  and  the  Western 
types  of  English. 

There  is  a  considerable  group  of  Eastern  documents  belonging  to  the 
fifteenth  century,  of  which  some  account  may  be  given. 

The  doggerel  translation  of  Palladius  on  Husbandry  possesses  the 
characteristics  of  the  Essex  dialect.  It  resembles  Kentish  on  the  one 
hand,  and  E.  Midland  on  the  other.  As  regards  the  treatment  of  O.E.  j>, 
this  dialect  normally  has  both  u  and  e  forms.  Thus,  in  Palladius  we 
find  curnels  '  kernels  ',  brustels  '  bristles ',  busely,  &c.,  also  bresid  '  bruised', 
wermes '  worms ',  bey  '  buy '.  By  the  side  of  these  this  text  has  many, 
perhaps  a  predominating  number,  of  the  /-forms,  after  the  manner  of  the 
London  dialect.  Here,  as  in  the  Suffolk  documents,  e  for  i  is  frequent.  Typi- 
cally South-Eastern  is  the  preservation  of  £  (O.E.  $e)  in  bledders  l  bladders', 
eddres  '  adders ',  wex  '  wax ',  sedness,  yerd.  The  Pres.  PI.  generally  has 
the  Southern  suffix  -eth,  and  the  prefix  j/-  occurs  generally  in  Past  Part. 
The  Cely  Papers,  from  which  various  examples  have  been  taken  to  illus- 
trate fifteenth-century  pronunciation,  are  also  written  by  Essex  people, 
but  about  fifty  years  later  than  Palladius.  They  are  chiefly  remarkable 
for  the  admirable  freedom  of  the  writers  from  scribal  tradition,  and  give, 
on  the  whole,  the  impression  of  being  the  work  of  very  uncultivated  persons, 
and  they  perhaps  illustrate  Class,  rather  than  a  Regional  dialect.  They 
have  several  features  which  become  increasingly  common  in  the  London 
dialect  as  the  fifteenth  century  advances,  and  in  the  following  century. 
Among  these  features,  in  addition  to  the  numerous  e  for  i  spellings — 
contenew,  sweffte  '  swift ',  wettnes,  medyll,  &c. — we  find  a  large  number  of 
-ar-  for  -<?r-forms — starlyng  '  sterling  ',  sarten  l  certain ',  desarve  '  deserve ', 
hard  '  heard  ',  &c. ;  wo-  for  wa-y  as  in  wos  '  was ',  &c. ;  loss  of  r-  before 
consonants,  passel  for  '  parcel '  (see  also  p.  70,  above)  ;  misplacing  of 
initial  h->  howllde  '  old ',  hayssched  *  asked ',  &c. 

For  the  rest,  the  final  -n  of  Strong  P.  P/s  is  often  omitted — wrete,  spoke, 
undoe,  &c. ;  and  the  prefix  y-  is  common— -y-wreten^y-yeuen^  &c.  The 
younger  Celys  constantly  use  -s  in  the  3rd  Singular  Present,  but  the 
father  and  uncle  have  -yth,  &c.,  far  more  commonly.  The  -s  suffix  is 
coming  in,  presumably  from  the  Midlands,  in  the  more  northerly  areas  of 
which  it  had  long  been  in  use. 

A  typical  letter  from  one  of  the  Cely  family  will  illustrate  the  general 
character  of  this  collection  of  papers. 

From  a  letter  of  Richard  Cely  the  younger  (1481).  Cely  Papers,  pp.  $8,  &c. 
Riught  uterly  whelbelovyd  brother,  I  recomend  me  hartely  onto  you 
thankyng  you  of  aull  good  brotherhod  that  ^e  have  scheuyd  to  me  at  all 
tymms.  ...  I  met  Roger  Wyxton  athysayd  Northehamton  and  he  desyryd 
me  to  do  so  myche  as  drynke  w*  hys  whyfe  at  Laysetter  and  after  that  I  met 
w*  Wylliam  Dalton  and  he  gave  me  a  tokyn  to  hys  mother,  and  at  Laysetter 
I  met  w*  Rafe  Daulton  and  he  brahut  me  to  hys  mother  and  ther  I  delyvyrd 


8o      THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

my  tokyn  and  sche  prayd  me  to  come  to  brekefast  on  the  morow  and  so 
I  ded,  and  Plomton  both ;  and  ther  whe  had  a  gret  whelfar,  and  ther  whos 
feyr  oste  and  I  pray  yow  thanke  them  for  me  Syr  and  ^e  be  remembyrd  whe 
thaulkyd  togydyr  in  hour  bed  of  Dawltonys  syster,  and  je  ferryd  the  con- 
dyscyons  of  father  and  brethyrn,  byt  je  neyd  not.  I  saw  hyr,  and  sche 
whos  at  brekefaste  w*  hyr  mother  and  ws  sche  ys  as  goodly  a  3eung 
whomane  as  fayr  as  whelbodyd  and  as  sad  as  I  se  hany  thys  vij  jeyr,  and 
a  good  haythe.  And  I  pray  God  that  hyt  may  be  impryntyd  in  yur 
mynd  to  sette  yovvr  harte  ther  Syr.  Hour  father  and  I  comende  togydyr 
in  new  orchard  on  Fryday  laste  and  a  askyd  me  many  qwestyonys  of 
gyu,  and  I  towlde  hym  aull  as  hyt  whos  .  .  .  and  of  the  good  whyll  that 
the  Whegystons  and  Dawltons  hows  (=  'use'?)  to  yow  and  how  I  lykyd 
the  jeunge  gentyllwhoman  and  he  comaunded  me  to  whryte  to  yow,  and 
he  whowlde  gladly  that  hyt  whor  brohut  abohut  and  that  je  laborde  hyt 
betymys.  .  .  .  No  mor  to  yow  at  thys  tyme.  Jhesu  kepe  you. 
Wrytyn  at  London  the  iiijthe  day  of  Juyn.  per  yur  brother. 

Rychard  Cely. 

Margaret  Fasten,  whose  letters  cover  the  period  from  1440  to  1470, 
thus  ending  about  the  time  the  Cely  Papers  begin,  is  a  Norfolk  lady,  socially 
far  above  the  Celys,  but  very  much  their  equal  in  education  ;  she  writes  a 
slip-shod  style,  and  evidently  sets  down  as  far  as  possible  the  forms  of  her 
ordinary  speech.  Her  language  has  a  curious  resemblance  to  that  of  the 
Celys.  One  feature  distinguishes  her  dialect  both  from  theirs  and  from 
that  of  London,  namely,  that  except  in  the  word  such,  she  seems  to  use 
no  ^-spellings  for  old  y,  writing  either  i\  y — lytil,  hyrdyllys,  gyrdill ;  or 
e — beryid,  bey,  mend  '  mind '.  A  very  large  number  of  cases  of  e  for  old 
i  are  found  in  this  lady's  letters— wete  'know',  wretyn  P.P.,  Trenyfe, 
chene  '  chin ',  Beshopys,  Welyam  '  William  ',  preson  '  prison ',  &c.,  &c.  The 
spelling  -ar-  for  old  -er-,  as  has  been  already  noted,  becomes  more  fre- 
quent after  the  year  1461.  These  spellings  are  less  frequent  on  the  whole 
in  the  letters  of  Mistress  Paston  than  in  those  of  the  Cely  family.  Margaret 
Paston  uses  -yn,  ~e  (Midi.),  and  occasionally  the  Southern  -yth  in  the 
Pres.  PL 

The  language  of  the  Suffolk  Wills  (Bury  Wills  and  Inventories)  of  the 
last  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  calls  for  little  remark  from  the  point 
of  view  of  Regional  dialect.  These  documents  present  the  typical 
E.  Midland  English  of  the  foregoing,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  that  any 
features  here  observable  are  alien  to  London. 

The  interesting  collection  of  fifteenth-century  Lincolnshire  Wills  and 
Vows  of  Celibacy  (Line.  Dioc.  Documents)  deserves  to  be  mentioned, 
and  demands  a  far  closer  study  than  is  practicable  here.  The  influence  of 
Official  London  English  is  seen  in  the  frequent  use  of  -yth  in  the  3rd 
Sing.  Present,  by  the  side  of  the  local  -ys  or  -es,  which  occurs  in  ligges 
(Will  of  Richard  Welby,  1465).  The  form/tint  with  u  '  first '  must  also 
be  due  to  this  influence  (W.  of  Sir  T.  Comberworth,  1451).  North 
Midland  features  are  seen  in  awes  '  owes  ',  sdwle  '  soul ',  the  use  of  giff 
'  give '  instead  of  geve  or  yeve,  the  spelling  qwhite  '  white '  and  such  ele- 
ments of  vocabulary  as  at  '  that ',  to  gar  pray  for,  kirk  '  church  ',  quye 
'  cow ',  all  from  Comberworth's  Will.  The  Agreement  between  Barlings 
Abbey,  Lines.,  and  the  Vicar  of  Reepham  (1509)  contains  the  Scandina- 
vian words  laithe  '  barn ',  thack  and  thackyng  '  thatch  ',  &c.  It  seems  that 


WRITERS  WITH  SLIGHT  TRACES  OF  PROVINCIALISM  81 

the  remoter  a  district  from  the  metropolis,  the  weaker  the  influence  of 
London  English  in  written  documents,  even  when  these  are  based  upon 
official  models.  The  Lines,  Wills  really  belong  to  that  large  class  of 
documents  surviving  from  this  period,  in  which  the  intention  is  clearly  to 
write  the  official  dialect  of  London,  but  in  which  the  lapses  into  the 
Regional  dialect  of  the  writer,  in  isolated  forms,  are  fairly  frequent. 

We  may  now  leave  the  consideration  of  writings  which  possess  a  con- 
siderable provincial  flavour,  and  pass  to  those  where  this  occurs  only  here 
and  there,  in  isolated  words  and  forms. 

In  the  Ordinances  of  Worcester  (1467)  the  lapses  are  very  rare,  and 
on  that  account  we  placed  them  in  our  general  enumeration  above  (p.  64) 
among  the  documents  in  pure  London  Official  English,  but  such  forms 
as/uyre  '  fire ',  putts  l  pits ',  brugge  '  bridge ',  huydes  '  hides,  skins  ' — all 
containing  original  O.E.  j/— call  for  mention  here,  and  we  may  perhaps 
regard  hur  '  their ',  O.E.  heora,  as  an  example  of  a  typical  Western  u  for 
O.E.  eo. 

Most  remarkable,  perhaps,  of  all  the  private  letters  of  this  period,  in 
the  fidelity  with  which  they  adhere  to  the  London  type,  are  those  of  John 
Shillingford  (1447-50).  Here,  if  anywhere,  we  might  expect  to  find  an 
almost  pure  Regional  dialect.  Shillingford  had  apparently  lived  in  his 
native  Devon  continuously ;  most  of  his  letters  were  not  official  reports, 
but  private  missives  written  to  his  friends  at  home,  and  yet,  on  the  whole, 
he  consistently  avoids  the  forms  of  his  local  dialect  and  writes  Standard 
English.  His  vowel  spellings,  his  verbal  forms,  and  his  Pers.  Pronouns 
are  generally  those  of  London  English.  Fortunately,  however,  for  our 
knowledge  of  his  native  speech,  that  is  the  Devonshire  dialect,  he  lifts 
the  veil  occasionally  and  drops  into  provincialisms.  The  following  are 
the  chief:  The  retention  of  the  old  South- Western  type  in  hurde  'heard', 
u  for  O.E.  eo  in  durer  '  dearer ',  the  shortened  form  of  West  Saxon  xl  in 
radde  '  read '  '  advised ',  unrounding  of  o  in  aftetymes  *  oft-times '  (see 
remarks  on  p.  78  in  connexion  with  St.  Editha),  and  the  very  frequent 
retention  of  the  prefix  y-  in  P.  P/s,  which,  though  common  in  Chaucer 
(see  p.  53),  was  by  this  time  dying  out  in  London.  The  points  noted 
concerning  the  vowels  (except  radde]  are  certainly  pretty  broad  provin- 
cialisms, judged  by  the  London  Standard,  and  they,  no  doubt,  indicate 
Shillingford's  natural  pronunciation,  not  only  in  the  words  quoted  but  in 
the  whole  of  the  classes  to  which  they  severally  belong.  We  have,  natur- 
ally, no  means  of  knowing  how  far  the  excellent  Mayor,  having  mastered 
another  manner  of  writing,  was  able  to  adhere,  in  speaking,  to  the  type 
which  he  records,  on  the  whole  so  faithfully,  on  paper.  We  may, 
perhaps,  conclude  from  the  above  forms  that  he  spoke  with  a  pretty 
strong  Devonshire  accent. 

Less  provincial  still,  as  we  might  expect,  is  the  language  of  Bishop 
Pecok's  Represser  for  over  much  blaming  for  the  Clergy  (c.  1449),  which, 
written  with  the  best  intentions,  led,  together  with  other  works  from  his 
pen,  to  its  author  being  very  much  blamed  by  the  clergy,  and  ultimately 
to  his  being  tried  and  condemned  for  heresy.  Pecok's  style  in  the  above 
book  is  clear  and  sound,  although  the  philosophical  argument  which 
pervades  it  makes  it  rather  tough  reading.  The  dialect  may  be  generally 
described  as  more  or  less  colourless,  and  contains  few  deviations  from  the 


82     THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

current  London  written  English  beyond  the  absence  of  the  more  character- 
istic Easternisms.  For  instance,  Pecok  has  practically  no  f-forms  (for 
O.E.  j/) — I  have  only  noted  ungerd  '  ungirt '  in  Vol.  I — he  uses  a  prepon- 
derance of  i- forms  in  this  class  of  words — wirche  '  to  work ',  girdele 
1  girdle ',  birthe,  biried,  kind,  and  a  few  w-forms  such  as  buried,  duller. 
The  Verbal  forms  are  the  normal  Midland  type:  he  uses  fill  (as  in 
Chaucer)  for  the  Pret.  of  fa/I;  he  still  distinguishes  between  the  Sing,  and 
PI.  in  Str.  Vbs. — brake — breken,  &c. ;  he  has  no^-  prefix  in  Past  Par- 
ticiples, and  these  in  Str.  Vbs.  sometimes  end  in  -en,  or  occasionally  -un — 
sungun,  foundun,  writun,  &c.,  though  more  commonly  in  -e.  The 
Pronoun  of  the  3rd  Person  in  the  PI.  is  thei,  her,  hem.  He  differs  from 
London  English  in  having  no  their,  them,  &c.  Among  provincialisms  we 
should  probably  reckon  diphthonging  before  -sch — waische  '  wash ',  aischis, 
fleisch  '  flesh', — and  the  interesting  form  swope '  soap  ',  O.E.  sdpe — waish- 
ing  with  oyle  and  swope.  The  form  swope  will  occupy  our  attention 
again  later  on  (p.  307). 

As  last  examples  of  the  class  of  writers  we  are  at  present  considering, 
that  is  those  who  use  what  is  practically  London  official  or  literary  English 
with  a  certain  provincial  flavouring,  we  will  take  the  Monk  of  Bury  (circa 
1370-1451)  and  a  letter  of  Edmond  de  la  Pole.  The  language  of 
Lydgate  is  indeed  hardly  distinguishable  from  his  contemporary  Hoccleve, 
or  from  the  official  London  Eng.  of  the  period,  except  for  the  occurrence 
of  rather  more  l-forms  for  O.E._y.  Thus  Lydgate,  by  the  side  of  fyres, 
mirth,  mynde,  kynde,  bysynesse,  and  fuyre  '  fire ',  writes  also  imkende 
'  unkind  \felthe  '  filth  ',  sterid  (  stirred  ',  besynesse.  He  also  has  a  certain 
number  of  e  for  i  spellings,  which,  as  we  have  seen  (pp.  77-78),  are  common 
in  the  Suffolk  dialect  of  Bokenam,  and  in  Essex — velenye,  merour,  gkmer- 
yng,  wedow.  Like  Chaucer,  he  uses  both  the  Southern  and  E.  Midland 
forms  of  O.E.  &  in  his  rhymes — breth — deth,  but  also  drede — spede  (Vb.). 
Seeing  the  unsettled  state  of  London  English  at  this  time,  in  the  first  and 
last  of  these  particulars,  it  is  rather  doubtful  whether  they  ought  to  be 
ascribed  in  Lydgate  to  special  E.  Midland  influence,  as  both  are  found  in 
Chaucer  and  other  London  writers — though  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
Southern  breth,  &c.,  with  [e]  predominates  in  Chaucer's  rhymes,  whereas 
it  is  rarer  in  Lydgate — and  they  were  clearly  current  in  London  speech. 
The  e  for  i  forms  are  more  doubtful  so  early  in  the  century,  and  they 
seem  to  be  absent  from  Chaucer's  English.  It  may,  perhaps,  be  said  that 
Lydgate  shows  Eastern  influence  more  by  the  absence  of  purely  Southern 
forms  which  at  this  period  still  abounded  in  London  English,  than  by 
the  use  of  any  typically  E.  Midland  forms  which  are  not  found  in  the 
latter. 

Bdmond  de  la  Pole,  Earl  of  Suffolk,  was  born  about  1473,  an(* exe- 
cuted  for  high  treason  in  1513.  This  ill-starred  and  illiterate  nobleman 
had  the  misfortune  to  spring  from  the  ( sceptred  race '  of  York,  his  mother 
being  the  sister  of  King  Edward  IV. 

The  following  letter,  written  from  the  Continent  to  an  unknown  corre- 
spondent, in  or  before  1505,  is  a  fitting  close  to  our  short  survey  of 
writers  who  depart  from  London  English  undefiled.  Such  definite 
dialectal  peculiarities  as  it  possesses  are  clearly  E.  Midland,  but  its  chief 
interest  lies  in  its  illustration  of  how  a  man  of  the  writer's  quality  might 


AN   ILLITERATE   NOBLEMAN  83 

write  his  mother  tongue  at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century.  If  the 
Earl  spoke  at  all  as  he  wrote,  his  must  have  been  a  queer  lingo,  due,  no 
doubt,  partly  to  a  residence  of  some  years  abroad,  away  from  English 
speakers. 

'  Cosen  I  deser  yov  to  chohove  (show)  to  my  lord  my  cosen  that  yt  void 
pies  hem  to  remember  I  kame  to  hem  for  the  lovef  and  strouste  (trust)  I  had 
to  hem  a  bovef  (above)  ale  hedder  (all  other)  prenses,  ver  for  I  povt  (put) 
my  boddy  yn  ys  hand,  ver  apone  he  gavef  me  ys  chavfcondet  to  com  ynto 
ys  land,  as  vane  I  spake  with  heme  he  promes  me  as  he  vas  a  nobovle  mane 
ys  land  chovld  be  free  fore  me,  and  noe  (now)  I  have  bein  here  one  yeer 
and  a  haalvf  and  hame  as  ner  nove  (now)  of  my  departeng  hennes  as  I  vas 
the  frerst  dae.  And  also  yov  came  to  me  and  desored  me  to  povt  my 
matter  yn  my  lord  my  cosen  hand,  and  he  void  point  me  a  dae  ef  he  .  .  . 
a  nend  be  teven  (between)  K.  H.  and  me,  vel  ef  nat  my  lord  my  Cosen 
promissed  me  be  ys  letters  be  sent  John  dae  last  passed  he  void  geevf  me 
lessens  (license)  to  de  parte  ys  land  ver  yt  plessed  me  ;  and  thest  have 
yov  promes  me  for  my  lord  my  cosen  wches  (wishes)  I  have  foufeled  at 
the  deser  of  my  lord  my  cosen.  Nove  my  day  ys  passed  and  a  cordeng 
to  my  lord  my  cosen  I  deser  of  yov  yovr  lesens  as  yov  be  come  of 
nobovele  boveld  (noble  blood)  and  as  yov  be  a  trove  jengtelman  I  deser 
yov  to  ch  .  .  .  yovr  s  .  .  .  fochet  to  let  me  depart  ascordeng  to  my  lord 
my  Coson  letters  and  to  yovr  promes  that  yov  have  mad  me.  I  strest 
(trust)  my  lord  my  Coson  vele  (will)  nat  beevef  my  her  yn  thest  danger 
ef  ys  Heines  come  heyder;  wches  I  thoke  vele  ef  I  vare  yn  ther  handes 
I  vare  bovt  as  a  mane  hone  done  (undone).  As  ale  (all)  for  be  kaves 
(because)  of  my  lord  my  Coson  yn  to  hem  for  schol  .  .  .  (shelter  ?)  ys  .  . . 
And  also  has  done  at  my  cosen  deser  that  I  void  nat  do  at  ther  der 
I  strest  my  lord  my  cosen  vele  remember  my  goot  hart  that  I  have  had 
and  vele  have  to  heme  as  nat  to  leev  me  her  as  a  man  leftf.  Also  ef  yt 
pies  hem  to  set  me  a  dae  of  to  ore  iij  monthes  so  I  be  yn  some  severte 
(surety)  ver  yt  pies  heme.  I  hame  conten  or  and  ef  yt  pies  my  lord  my 
Coson  that  1  mae  be  with  hem  and  be  at  my  lebertte  I  vel  be  glad  to  bed 
hes  pleser.  And  to  bed  ys  plas  a  yer  or  to  thake  chevf  fortovn  as  pies 
God  to  send  to  heme,  my  parte  I  hame  vele  content  to  thake  for  Affter 
thest  manner  as  I  ame  a  cerstene  man  I  vele  nott  bed  to  dee  for  yt,  ver 
for  Cossen  as  yov  be  a  trove  Jengtilmane  do  fore  me  as  I  hau  geve  yov 
kawes  and  thet  I  be  not  lost  thovrt  (through)  the  promes  and  chavef 
condded  (safeconduct)  of  my  lord  my  Coson  and  your  profer  for  my  good 
veil.'  (Ellis's  Letters,  Ser.  Ill,  Vol.  i,  pp.  127,  &c.) 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  Earl  must  have  been  a  very  tedious  corre- 
spondent, that  he  lacked  charm,  and  that  he  was  not  very  successful  in 
expressing  his  ideas  on  paper  with  complete  clearness.  The  style  and 
diction  of  the  above  is  typical  of  the  rest  of  his  correspondence  collected 
by  Ellis.  We  notice  e  for  O.E.  y,  e  for  *',  initial  v  for  w,  and  initial  h-  in- 
serted where  it  has  no  business,  features  which  are  fairly  common  in  the 
other  E.  Midland  writers  we  have  considered. 

All  these  things  are  common  in  London  English  before  the  end  of  the 
century,  and  increasingly  so  in  the  next  century.  They  are  found  among 
writers  of  all  classes,  but  some,  especially  the  misplacement  of  h-,  and  v 
for  w,  appear  to  be  more  frequent  among  the  less  cultivated  and  less 
highly  placed. 

It  must  be  admitted  with  regard  to  several  of  the  sources  considered 
above,  as  representing  what  we  may  call  Modified  London  English,  that 

G    2 


84     THE  ENGLISH    OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

not  a  little  doubt  arises  as  to  whether  we  should  not  be  better  advised  to 
regard  them  as  representing  a  definite  type  of  London  speech.  The 
difficulty  appears  mainly  in  respect  of  those  texts  and  documents  which 
have  a  distinct  E.  Midland  or  South-Eastern  tinge.  We  have  more 
than  once  emphasized  the  fact  that  these  elements  occur  in  undoubted 
London  English,  and  it  is  largely  the  degree  to  which  they  are 
present  which  inclines  us  to  classify  a  document  as  pure  London,  or  as 
Modified  London.  It  seems  likely  that  there  were  at  least  two  types  of 
English  actually  spoken  in  London,  one  strongly  tinged  with  E.  Midland 
and  South-Eastern  characteristics,  the  other  possessing  less  of  the  former, 
at  any  rate,  and  more  of  purely  Southern  features. 

If  this  view  were  accepted  we  could  regard  all  but  the  above  documents, 
apart  from  the  Western  traits  which  some  possess,  and  the  North-East 
Midland  of  others,  as  representing  actual  types  of  Spoken  London 
English,  and  group  them  as  under  the  Eastern  type  of  this  dialect.  The 
English  of  the  official  documents,  and  on  the  whole  of  Caxton,  would 
occupy  a  central  position  between  these  two  types,  possessing  several  of 
the  features  of  both,  but  in  different  relative  proportion. 

I  am  inclined  to  hazard  the  hypothesis  that  the  spoken  language  of  the 
Court  and  upper  classes  belonged  rather  to  the  Southern  type  of  London 
English,  that  of  the  lower,  and  to  a  slightly  less  extent  perhaps,  that  of 
the  middle  classes,  to  the  Eastern  type. 

We  turn  now  to  consider  some  of  the  poetry,  official  records,  and 
private  documents  actually  written  by  Londoners  in  London  during  the 
fifteenth  century,  among  which  we  include  the  writings  of  the  Kentish 
Caxton  who  definitely  adopted  London  speech  as  his  basis.  We  begin 
with  Hoccleve  or  Occleve,  supposed  to  have  been  born  about  1370  and  to 
have  died  about  1 450.  Hoccleve  was  a  merry  companion,  given,  according 
to  his  own  account,  to  haunting  ale-houses  and  frequenting  more  or  less 
disreputable  company.  He  was  a  clerk  in  the  office  of  the  Privy  Seal 
'for  his  sustinaunce',  and  the  money  so  earned  he  dispensed,  like  Villon, 
1  tout  aux  tavernes  et  aux  filles '.  As  a  poet  he  lacks  inspiration,  but 
is  not  without  a  versifying  skill  of  an  imitative  kind,  and  here  and 
there  a  robust  animal  vigour  of  character.  He  gives,  besides,  a  valuable 
picture  of  certain  phases  of  London  life.  But  his  best  claim  to  be 
remembered  is  his  piety  for  Chaucer's  memory,  and  the  fact  that  one  of 
the  MSS.  of  his  works  (Harleian  4866)  contains  what  is  considered  the 
best  portrait — a  kind  of  miniature — of  his  great  predecessor.  The  passages 
referring  to  Chaucer  which  are  quoted  below  are  not  without  a  certain 
dignity,  and  a  pathos  which  is  not  all  convention. 

The  spelling  of  the  Hoccleve  MSS.  is  very  conventional,  and  there  are 
but  few  spellings  which  indicate  a  change  from  the  M.E.  vowel  system, 
though  we  may  mention  the  form  mus/en,  which  points  to  the  important 
change  of  O.E.  d  to  u.  The  language  agrees  in  the  main  with  that 
London  type  seen  in  Chaucer's  writings,  though  there  appear  to  be  far 
fewer  oforms  for  O.E.^.  This  class  of  words  generally  has  the  z-type — 
bisynesse,  knytte  (Vb.),  filthe,  pities,  schitte  '  shut ',  fist ;  mankynde,  fyre, 
mynde,  dtye  (Vb.  Int.),  kyj>e  (Inf.),  Hide,  &c.  By  the  side  of  these  we 
have  unschete  (Inf.)  <  to  open ',  velthy  <  filthy ',  mery,  beried,  themd 
1  thimble '  O.E.  fiymel,  and  further  suche,  burden  cusse  (N.)  on  analogy 


LONDON  ENGLISH  85 

of  Vb.  cusse,  and  thursteth.  O.E.  xl,  to  judge  from  the  rhymes,  occurs 
both  in  the  Saxon  and  non- Saxon  types : — dede  '  deed  '  and  rede  '  coun- 
sel '  both  rhyming  with  heed  '  head ',  rede  (Vb.)  with  lede  (Vb.) ;  on  the 
other  hand,  street  and  weet '  wet '  rhyme  witn/fe/,  and  dede  and  rede  with 
forbede  (O.E.  forbeodan).  The  rhyme  speeche  and  /?«^  is  ambiguous, 
since  ix?  in  £riit/i  '  breadth '  also  rhymes  with  spede  '  speed  ',  the  vowel  of 
which  was  certainly  tense.  This  looks  as  if  Hoccleve  may  have  used  the 
Kentish-South-Eastern  tense  pronunciation  of  dez  (see  p.  41,  No.  2). 
The  E.  Midland  merour  and  wretyn,  lenage ' lineage*  occur.  M.E.  -er-  rarely 
occurs  with  the  spelling  -ar-.  Note,  however,  astarte  rhyming  with  herte, 
rnerte.  The  Pers.  Pronouns  in  the  PI.  are/^y,  thei,  here,  hir,  &c.,  and  hem 
usually,  though  I  have  noted  Miozselfe.  The  Pres.  Indie.  PI.  ends  in  -» 
(never  -th)  ;  the  P.  P/s  of  Strong  Vbs.  have  both  -e  and  -en — knowe,  and 
with  the  prefix^-,  i-,  itake,  ifalle;  but  standen,  wax  en  >  &c.  The  prefix 
i-  is  used  also  in  Wk.  Vbs. — ipynchid,  yput.  In  unstressed  syllables  -j- 
(-y-)  is  very  frequent  before  consonants — puttith,  tokyn,  synkyn  (Inf.), 
werkys  '  works  J  which  rhymes  with  derk  is,  felist,  &c.,  &c.  These  -i- 
spellings  become  more  and  more  common  as  the  century  advances. 

The  following  brief  specimens,  taken  from  the  Regement  of  Princes, 
illustrate  Hoccleve's  language  sufficiently,  and  contain  the  well-known 
references  to  Chaucer,  so  often  quoted  scrappily  at  second-hand. 

lines  1958-81. 

But  weylaway!  so  is  myn  herte  wo 
That  }>e  honour  of  englyssh  tonge  is  deed 
Of  which  I  wont  was  hav  consail  and  reed. 
O  maister  deere  and  fader  reuerent ! 
Mi  maister  Chaucer,  flour  of  eloquence 
Mirour  of  fructuous  entendement, 
O  vniuersel  fadir  in  science ! 
Alias !  J>at  )>ou  thyn  excellent  prudence 
In  \\  bed  mortal  myhtist  naght  by-quethe ; 
What  eyled  deth?   alias!   whi  wolde  he  sle  the? 

O  deth !   J>ou  didest  naght  harme  singuleer, 

In  slaghtere  of  him ;   but  al  )>is  land  it  smertith  ; 

But  nathelees,  yit  has  ]>ou  no  power 

His  name  sle ;  his  hy  vertu  astertith 

Vnslayn  fro  J)e,  which  ay  vs  lyfly  hertyth 

With  bookes  of  his  ornat  endytyng, 

That  is  to  al  J>is  land  enlumynyng. 

Hast  }>ou  nat  eeke  my  maister  Gower  slayn, 

Whos  vertu  I  am  insufficient 

ffor  to  descryue?   I  wote  wel  in  certayn, 

ffor  to  sleen  all  bis  world  )>ou  haust  yrnent ; 

But  syn  our  lorde  Crist  was  obedient 

To  J>e,  in  feith  I  can  no  ferther  seye ; 

His  creatures  mosten  j?e  obeye. 

4978  The  firste  fyndere  of  our  faire  langage 

4982  Alasse  my  fadir  fro  )>e  world  is  goo 


86      THE  ENGLISH  OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

On  Chaucer's  portrait.     (Harl.  MS.  4866  has  the 
best  portrait  according  to  Furnival.) 

Al-j>ogh  his  lyfe  be  queynt,1  )>e  resemblaunce 

Of  him  ha)>  in  me  so  fressh  lyflynesse, 

pat  to  put  othir  men  in  remembraunce 

Of  his  persone,  I  haue  heere  his  lyknesse 

Do2  make,  to  )>is  ende  in  soth  fastnesse 

pat  )>ei  )>at  haue  of  him  lest  Bought  and  mynde, 

By  )>is  peynture  may  ageyn  him  fynde. 

4992-8. 

The  language  of  Sir  John  Fortescue  would  appear  to  be  a  model  of 
propriety,  and  to  be  quite  free  from  those  occasional  provincialisms  which 
we  observed  in  his  fellow  Devonian,  Shillingford.  His  vowels  are  of 
the  normal  London  type,  and  call  for  very  little  remark.  O.E.  y  is  repre- 
sented by  both  i  and  u,  but  f-forms  are  very  scarce,  meryer  being  the 
only  one  there  noted.  On  the  other  hand,  he  has  a  few  examples  of  e 
for  i— week  '  which  ',  lemited,  openion,  contemially,  &c.  He  usually  retains 
the  old  spelling  -er-,  but  has  hartes,  warre.  He  occasionally  uses  the  old 
forms  of  the  Pers.  Pron.  her,  hem,  but  more  commonly  thair,  thaim,  and, 
of  course,  they  always.  In  the  Pres.  PI.  Indie,  of  Vbs.  he  has  never  -th, 
but  always  the  Midland  -en,  -yn,  or  -<?.  In  the  P.  P.  of  Strong  Vbs.  -<?«, 
&c.,  is  more  frequent  than  -e,  and  no  Vbs.  of  this  class  have  the  prefix  i- 
or y-,  though  I  have  noted  iblissed.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if  Fortescue 
had  deliberately  avoided  even  those  Southernisms  which  were  still  in  use 
in  London,  such  as  Pres.  Pis.  in  -/£,  and  affected  rather  the  Eastern  type 
of  London  English. 

A  more  Southern  type  is  found  in  the  Bewle  of  Sustris  Menouresses 
(circa  1450).  Here  we  find,  alongside  of  pretty  frequent  -yn,  &c.,  also 
very  commonly  -yth>  &c.,  in  the  Pres.  PI.,  and  the  prefix  i-  fairly  often 
retained,  though  not  generally  in  Str.  Vbs.  The  PI.  of  the  Pers.  Pro- 
nouns is  ]>ei  in  the  Nom.,  but  knows  only  her(e)  and  hem  in  the  Possess, 
and  Dat. 

We  pass  now  to  Caxton.  The  language  of  London  was  not  wholly 
natural  to  Caxton,  who  was  a  Kentishman.  Nor  was  he  of  the  knightly 
class  to  which,  in  the  previous  century,  the  Kentish  Gower  had  belonged, 
to  whom  the  speech  of  the  Court  and  its  denizens  was  familiar.  This  is 
why,  perhaps,  we  feel  in  reading  Caxton  a  certain  constraint  and  lack  of 
ease.  The  style  of  the  Prefaces  is  less  high-flown  than  that  of  the  trans- 
lations themselves,  but  it  is  wanting  in  fluency  and  elegance,  while  that  of 
the  latter  is  too  often  pompous  when  it  is  meant  to  be  courtly,  and  merely 
stodgy  where  it  should  be  magnificent.  Caxton  was  not  an  innovator. 
He  followed  entirely  the  scribal  tradition  in  spelling,  so  that  a  novice 
reading  him  and  comparing  his  writings  with  the  English  of,  say,  Margaret 
Paston  or  Gregory,  might  gain  the  impression  that  the  language  had 
jumped  back  into  Middle  English  again  as  regards  pronunciation.  Yet, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  these  writers  and  many  others,  earlier  and  contempo- 
raneous, the  development  of  several  new  features  since  the  M.E.  period, 
in  fact,  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  system  of  vowel  pronunciation, 

1  quenched.  2  Do  is  P.  P.  =  '  caused '. 


CAXTON'S  ENGLISH  87 

can  be  clearly  traced.  Of  this  Caxton  lets  us  see  next  to  nothing.  His 
spelling,  therefore,  gives  a  very  imperfect  guide  to  the  realities  of  English 
speech  in  his  day,  and  conveys  the  impression  that  English  was  still 
much  nearer  to  the  M.E.  stage  than  was  actually  the  case.  Even  in 
the  spelling  of  unstressed  syllables,  when  the  private  documents  of 
Shillingford — a  quarter  of  a  century  earlier — and  still  more  those  of  the 
Fastens  and  Celys,  prove  clearly  by  their  spellings,  that  reduction  of  full 
vowels — shortening  of  long  vowels,  unrounding  of  rounded  sounds, 
simplification  of  diphthongs — had  already  taken  place,  Caxton  tells  us 
practically  nothing  which  we  do  not  learn  already  from  M.E.  scribes, 
and  though  his  varying  spelling  suggests,  it  is  true,  a  hesitation  how  to  ex- 
press the  reduced  unaccented  vowel,  it  would  be  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  formulate  any  definite  laws  for  the  treatment  of  unstressed  syllables 
from  his  writings.  The  frequent  spellings  -id,  -is,  &c.,  in  flexional  sylla- 
bles may  be  noted. 

In  regard  to  inflexional  endings  Caxton  appears  to  be  very  much  at  the 
stage  of  Chaucer.  Like  Chaucer  and  other  M.E.  writers  he  has  the  Inf. 
in  -en,  though  he  omits  the  ending  more  often  than  is  common  in  the  full 
M.E.  period ;  he  has  the  Midland  -en  PI.  in  Pres.  Indie,  of  Verbs ;  he 
has  some  very  archaic  forms  of  the  Strong  Verbs :  e.  g.  bote,  Pret.  of  to 
bite,  and  the  P.P.  seten  of  to  sit\  he  retains  the  old  Pret.  of find,  fond 
(as  in  Chaucer),  though  he  does  not  appear  to  distinguish  any  longer 
between  the  Sing,  and  PI.  of  the  Pret.  in  Strong  Verbs  of  this  and  other 
classes ;  he  uses,  as  does  Chaucer,  the  archaic/iw^/  as  the  Pret.  ot  fight, 
which  represents  O.E.  f&ht,  Early  M.E.  faht,  as  distinct  from  the  P.  P. 
foughten  from  earlier  fohten ;  he  uses,  with  remarkable  consistency,  the 
suffix  -en  in  P.  P.'s  of  Strong  Verbs,  and  the  prefix  y-  hardly  occurs.  By 
the  side  of  gave  he  uses  also  the  older  gaf,  and  he  agrees  with  Chaucer  in 
using  the  difficult  fill  as  the  Pret.  of  fall.  By  the  side  of  their  and  them 
Caxton  has,  though  less  frequently  than  these,  her  and  hem  for  the  Possess, 
and  Dat.  PI.  of  the  Pers.  Pronoun. 

Coming  to  the  dialectal  characteristics  of  vowels  in  Caxton's  English, 
it  is  perhaps  surprising  that  well-marked  Kenticisms  are  not  more  fre- 
quent. The  most  characteristic  feature  of  Kentish  and  the  South- 
Eastern  dialects  is  the  appearance  of  e  for  O.E.  y.  Of  these  forms 
Caxton  has  not  more  than  are  commonly  found  in  London  speech,  and 
those  which  he  does  use  can  all  be  found  in  other  writers  of  Literary  or 
Court  English  of  this  period.  From  our  present  point  of  view,  among 
the  most  interesting  are  seche  'such',  knette  'knit',  and  shette  'shut'. 

Like  Chaucer,  Caxton,  and  many  writers  at  a  later  date,  use  the  South- 
western -on-  instead  of  the  Eastern  -an-  in  lond,  understond,  &c.  Among 
other  specifically  South-Western  forms,  which  earlier  were  more  common 
in  the  London  dialect,  and  many  of  which  survived  for  a  century  after 
Caxton,  we  may  note  silfe  '  self,  and  perhaps  under  this  head  would  come 
the  vowel  in  Inf.  gyue,  and  P.  P.  gyuen,  where  Chaucer  more  commonly 
has  the  non-W.  Saxon  yeue,yeuen.  There  was  a  long  hesitation  regarding 
the  forms  of  this  word,  the  ^-forms  being  perhaps  the  most  usual  during 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  lasting  even  into  the  early 
eighteenth  among  good  speakers.  The  E.  Midland  e  for  i  occurs  in 
Phelip)  wreion  (P.  P.),  1o  wete  '  to  know ',  euyll,  &c.  M.E.  -er-  is  generally 


88      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

so  written,  but  we  find  ivarres,  smarting,  parill l  peril '.  This  feature,  as 
has  been  said  (p.  n),  is  probably  S.E.  or  E.  Midland  in  origin,  and 
probably  got  into  London  at  this  period,  with  increasing  frequency,  from 
the  latter  area.  On  the  whole  Caxton's  English  is  distinctly  more  Midland 
in  character  than  Chaucer's.  We  have  unfortunately  no  means  of  testing 
whether  O.E.  x1  had  the  Southern  or  Midland  sound.  His  type  of 
London  English  is  distinctly  of  the  Eastern  brand,  and  nearer  to  that  of 
Norfolk  than  of  Kent  or  Essex,  and  still  farther  from  the  pure  Southern 
of  Surrey. 

With  regard  to  Caxton's  use  of  the  London  dialect,  there  are  two 
interesting  points  to  be  noted.  One  is  that  he  tells  us  in  one  of  his 
Prefaces  (to  his  translation  of  the  Aeneid,  1482)  that  he  hesitates,  he 
'  stands  abasshed '  what  form  to  use,  which  implies  two  things,  first  that 
Caxton  did  not  naturally  write  without  taking  thought,  as  Fortescue  or 
Shillingford  did,  in  London  English,  and  secondly,  (and  this  follows 
from  the  first)  that  he.  did  not  habitually  use  the  type  of  English  in 
ordinary  speech.  The  other  point  is  that  in  the  Preface  to  the  Histories 
of  Troy,  he  tells  us  that  when  he  had  finished  this  translation,  he  showed 
it  to  '  my  most  redoubted  Lady  My  Lady  Margaret '  Duchess  of  Bur- 
gundy, '  sister  unto  the  King  of  England  and  of  France,  my  sovereign 
lord '  (Edward  IV).  '  Her  good  grace '  having  seen  the  work  l  anon  she 
found  a  default  in  my  English  which  she  commanded  me  to  amend'.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  on  what  ground  this  '  right  high  excellent 
and  right  virtuous  princess '  found  fault.  Was  it  that  she  objected  to  the 
style  ?  (as  well  she  might  if  she  wanted  an  easy  and  flowing  narrative).  Or 
did  she  disapprove  of  Caxton's  dialect  ?  If  the  latter,  it  might  mean 
either  that  he  at  first  wrote  in  his  native  dialect,  or  that,  having  attempted 
the  Court  form  of  English,  there  were  still  too  many  broad  provincialisms 
for  a  'woman  of  her  fashion*.  This  may  well  have  been  so,  for  in  the 
same  Preface  Caxton  says  that  he  was  born  and  learnt  his  English  in 
Kent,  in  the  Weald,  '  where  I  doubt  not  is  spoken  as  broad  and  rude 
English  as  in  any  place  of  England '.  Another  statement  of  Caxton's 
(Preface  to  Transl.  of  Aeneid]  is  worth  recording.  It  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  English  used — he  does  not  say  where — when  he  wrote,  was  very 
different  from  that  in  use  when  he  was  born.  Does  this  mean  that 
English  as  a  whole  underwent  a  somewhat  rapid  change  between  1422 
or  so  and  1475  or  so  ?  Or  does  it  refer  only  to  the  London  dialect,  and 
mean  that  the  dialectal  elements  had  come  to  be  differently  distributed, 
and  in  different  relative  proportion,  during  that  period?  We  have  no 
proof  of  the  former  ;  in  fact,  there  is  every  reason  to  think  that  English 
was  developing  then,  as  always,  gradually  and  normally.  As  for  the  latter 
possibility,  we  do  know  that  the  E.  Midland  elements  were  gaining  ground 
to  the  suppression  of  the  Southern  elements. 

The  following  dialogue  from  Jason  is  typical  of  the  kind  of  talk  which 
fills  the  volume.  It  is  '  genteel '  to  a  fault,  and  so  frigid  and  remote  from 
reality,  that  it  is  quite  unconvincing  as  a  specimen  of  real  colloquial 
English.  It  is  certain  that  people  did  not  speak  to  each  other  in  this 
strain,  even  in  the  fifteenth  century.  Compare  it  with  much  of  the 
dialogue  in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  and  the  artificiality  is  felt  to  be  not  of 
an  age  only,  but  of  all  time.  Caxton's  style,  when  he  tries  the  grand 


CAXTON'S  STYLE  :    OFFICIAL  ENGLISH  89 

manner,  is  as  bad  as  Euphues  at  its  worst,  except  that  Lyly  sometimes  drops 
his  mannerisms,  and  makes  his  characters  talk  like  human  beings,  which 
Caxton  never  does.  Poor  illiterate,  stammering  Edmond  de  la  Pole,  with 
his  '  I  strest  my  lord  my  cosen  vele  remember  my  goot  hart  that  I  have 
had — as  not  to  leev  me  her  as  a  man  leftf',  touches  us  far  more  than 
the  icy  and  mincing  heroics  of  Caxton. 

From  Caxton' s  History  of  Jason,  from  the  French  of  Raoul  Le  Fevre,  p.  82 
(Furnival's  Ed.),  line  24,  &c. 

Whan  thenne  she  apperceyuyd  that  Jason  retorned  vn  to  his  logyyng 
at  this  time  she  wente  agaynst  him  and  toke  him  by  the  hand  and  lad 
him  into  one  of  her  chambres.  where  she  shewd  to  him  grete  partie  of 
her  richesses  and  tresours.  And  after  she  saide  to  him  in  this  manere 
Right  noble  and  valiant  knight  all  thise  richesses  ben  alle  onely  at  your 
commandement  and  also  my  body  wyth  all.  wherof  I  make  now  to  you 
the  ghifte  and  present  Ander  furthermore  I  haue  nothing  of  valeur  but 
that  ye  shal  haue  at  your  abandon  and  will  to  thende  that  I  may  deserue 
honourably  your  grace.  Thenne  when  the  preu  lason  had  vpderstande 
this  that  sayd  is.  he  ansuerde  to  the  lady  sayng  My  dere  lady  I  thanke 
you  right  humbly  of  your  curtoysye  And  I  declare  vnto  you  that  in  no 
facion  I  haue  deseruyd  the  hye  honour  that  ye  presente  to  me.  Ha  a 
gentill  knight  saide  thenne  the  lady,  hit  is  well  in  your  power  for  to 
deserue  all  if  it  be  your  plaisir.  In  goode  trouble  madame  ansuerde  thenne 
lason  if  ther  be  ony  seruice  or  plaisire  that  I  may  do  vnto  you  I  com- 
mande  ye  it  and  I  shal  accomplisshe  hit  frely  and  with  goode  herte. 
'  How  fair  sire '  sayd  she  thenne.  '  wil  ye  accomplisshe  my  commande- 
ment.' '  Certes  madame  *  sayd  he  '  I  shal  not  faile  in  no  point  if  hit  be 
to  me  possible.  And  ther  fore  declare  ye  to  me  your  good  playsyr  and 
desire.  And  after  that  ye  shall  parceyue  howe  I  shall  employe  my  self 
therto. 

But  enough  of  this. 

The  next  document  of  which  we  give  a  specimen  is  an  account  of  the 
way  to  carry  an  English  king  to  his  tomb.  Its  meaning  is  clear  and 
unambiguous,  and  its  style  perfectly  business-like.  It  is  an  admirable 
example  of  an  official  document  of  the  period  and  of  the  type  of  London 
English  in  which  these  were  written.  The  phonology  and  accidence  are 
curiously  like  our  own,  and  almost  the  only  form  which  calls  for  remark 
is  skilde  '  shield ',  which  represents  a  Southern  type  as  distinct  from  the 
Midland  M.E.  sheelde,  from  which  our  present  form  is  derived.  It  will 
be  noted  that  the  -n  of  the  Pres.  PI.  and  of  the  Inf.  of  Verbs  is  entirely 
absent. 

Funeral  of  Edward  the  Fourth  (1483). 

Here  foloith  the  Ordenances  which  shalbe  done  in  the  observaunce  at  the 
deth  and  buryall  of  a  annoynted  king. 

When  that  a  king  annoynted  ys  deceassed,  after  his  body  spurged,  it 
most  be  washed  and  clensed  by  a  bishop  for  his  holy  annoyntment.  Then 
the  body  must  be  bamed  if  it  may  be  goton,  and  wrapped  in  lawne  or 
raynes,  then  hosen,  shertes,  and  a  pair  of  shone  of  redde  lether,  and  do 
over  hym  his  surcote  of  clothe,  his  cap  of  estate  over  his  hede,  and  then 
laie  hym  on  a  faire  burde  covered  with  clothe  of  gold,  his  one  hand  upon 
his  bely,  and  a  septur  in  the  other  hand,  and  on  his  face  a  kerchief  and  so 
shewid  to  his  nobles  by  the  space  of  ij  dayes  and  more  if  the  weder  will 
it  sufFre.  And  when  he  may  not  goodly  lenger  endure,  take  hym  away, 


90     THE    ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

and  bowell  hym  and  then  eftsones  bame  hym,  wrappe  hym  in  raynes 
well  trameled  in  cordis  of  silke,  then  in  tartryne  trameled,  and  then  in 
velvet,  and  then  in  clothe  of  gold  well  trameled;  and  then  lede  hym1 
and  coffre  hym,  and  in  his  lede  with  hym  a  plait  of  his  still,  name 
and  date  of  our,  &c.  And  if  ye  care2  hym,  make  a  ymage  like  hym, 
clothed  in  a  surcote  with  mantil  of  estat,  the  laices  goodly  lyeng  on  his 
bely,  his  septur  in  his  hand  and  his  crown  on  his  hede,  and  so  carry  him 
in  a  chair  opon,  with  lightes  and  baners,  accompanyed  with  lordys  and 
estates  as  the  counsaill  can  best  devyse,  havyng  the  horse  of  that  chair 
traped  with  dyvers  trapers,  or  els  with  blacke  trapers  with  scochons 
richely  beten  and  his  officers  of  armes  abowt  hym  in  his  cottes  of 
armes. 

And  then  a  lord  or  a  knyght  with  a  courser  traped  of  his  armes  upon 
hym,  his  salet  or  basnet  on  his  hede  crowned,  a  shilde,  and  a  spere,  tyll 
he  come  to  his  place  of  his  entring.3  And  at  masse  the  same  to  be  offered 
by  noble  princes. 

[The  rest  of  this  very  interesting  document  consists  of  an  account  of 
the  rites  observed  at  the  funeral  of  King  Edward  IV.] 

Naturally,  so  brief  an  extract  does  not  give  quite  a  complete  picture  of 
the  language  of  the  period,  and  we  will  therefore  conclude  our  examina- 
tion of  official  London  English  with  some  particulars  of  two  documents 
already  mentioned — (i)  the  Creation  of  Henry  Duke  of  York  a  Knight 
of  the  Bath  (1494),  and  (2)  the  Reception  of  Catherine  of  Aragon 
(1501).  In  the  following  account  notice  is  chiefly  taken  of  points  in  which 
the  above  documents  differ  from  present-day  usage,  or  of  those  in  which, 
while  agreement  exists  wilh  our  present  speech,  it  is  interesting  to  find  so 
early.  As  regards  vowel  sounds,  M.E.  -er-  generally  survives  as  such, 
even  in  cases  where  we  now  have  the  -ar-  or  some  other  type ;  thus 
No.  i  has  sergent,  swerde,  Served,  kerver  ' carved ',  &c.,  werke,  but  No.  2 
has,  on  the  other  hand,  Barmondsey,  warning.  O.E.  j?  is  represented  on 
the  whole  as  at  the  present  time,  excepty^rj/ '  first '  (i),  bruge  '  bridge  '  (2), 
and  lift '  left '  (hand)  (i).  e  for  i  is  found  in  shreven  P.  P.  (i).  The  early 
fronting  of  M.E.  a  to  [ae]  is  perhaps  indicated  by  the  spellings  iveshed 
'  washed '  (i),  and  es  for  'as  for '(2).  The  rounding  of  a  after  w-  is 
shown  in  the  spelling  wos  *  was'  (i).  Initial  M.E.  e  [e]  appears  2&ye-  in 
yest  'east'  (i).  The  name  of  our  country  was  pronounced  as  at  the 
present  time,  as  is  seen  by  the  spelling  Ingland  (2),  where  e  becomes 
i  before  -ng.  M.E.  tense  e  was  probably  already  pronounced  as  at 
present,  as  is  shown  by  the  spellings  sien  ( seen ',  indied  '  indeed ',  both 
in  (i). 

In  the  combination  -ns-  n  is  dropped  as  in  Westmester  (i);  -d  is  added 
finally  after  -l-tfelde  '  fell '  (i).  Initial  wh-  was  pronounced  as  at  present 
all  over  the  South  of  England — wiche  'which',  weroff  'whereof',  wen 
'when'  (i).  The  Pron.  who  was  pronounced  without  w-,  as  at  present, 
and  is  written  hoo  (i).  One  example  of  Group  Possessives  has  already 
been  quoted  (p.  75),  and  another,  the  abbot  of  Westminsters  barge,  occurs 
in  2.  The  Possessive  is  found  used  absolutely— j*//  in  like  maner  as 
therle  of  Suffolkis  (i).  The  PI.  forms  of  the  Pers.  Pronouns  are  theit 
thaire^  thaim.  Pres.  Pis.  in  -th,  geuythe,  hathe,  are  found.  The  P.  P.'s  of 
Strong  Verbs  usually  end  in  -#,  and  the  prefix  i-,y-  is  not  used.  The 

1  i.  e.  put  him  in  a  casket  of  lead.  2  carry.  3  internment. 


SKELTON'S   ENGLISH  91 

P.  P.  of  'be '  is  been,  and  be,  and  the  same  forms  also  occur  in  the  Pres. 
PI.  Inflexional  syllables  very  constantly  have  i  or  j/ — kyngis  (Possess.), 
actis  (PL),  purposithe,  fairyst  (Superl.),  brokyn  (P.  P.).  The  consonant  r 
was  probably  still  strongly  trilled  in  the  middle  of  words  before  consonants, 
to  judge  by  the  spelling  therell  =  '  the  earl ',  which  suggests  a  pronuncia- 
tion like  that  heard  from  Scotchmen  at  the  present  day. 

Such  are  the  main  points  which  call  for  remark  in  these  typical  docu- 
ments, and  we  see  that  the  distribution  of  dialect  elements  is  approaching 
that  of  our  own  day. 

A  few  words  should  perhaps  be  said  upon  the  language  of  literature 
proper  at  the  close  of  the  century,  and  we  may  take  John  Skelton's 
Magnyfycence  as  typical.  Although  Skelton  lived  until  1529,  he  must 
be  regarded  as  a  fifteenth-century  poet.  No  one  reads  Skelton  nowa- 
days except  Professors  of  Literature,  not  even  those  who  attend  their 
lectures,  nor  probably  ever  will  again  ;  and  they  will  be  right.  '  Beastly 
Skelton  Heads  of  Houses  quote',  said  Pope,  and  this  line— probably 
untrue  in  Pope's  day,  and  an  absurdity  in  our  own — perhaps  alone 
preserves  the  poet's  very  name  from  decent  oblivion,  though  the  curious 
may  have  noted,  tucked  away  in  histories  of  English  poetry,  the  couplet 

For  though  the  dayes  be  nevir  so  long 
At  last  the  belles  ringeth  to  evensong, 

which  is  worth  remembering  as  expressing  a  thought  that  has  been  ex- 
pressed a  hundred  times  in  as  many  different  ways,  and  also  because  it 
contains  a  Pres.  PL  in  -th.  Skelton's  English  as  represented  by  Magny- 
fycence, written  about  1516,  is  by  no  means  uninteresting  from  our  present 
point  of  view.  It  is  of  the  Southern  type  of  London  English  of  the 
period,  and  exhibits  that  individuality  in  the  use  of  dialectal  elements 
which  characterized  the  speech  of  cultivated  persons,  who  were  yet  not 
provincials,  at  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  and  much  later.  While  in 
the  main  the  language  conforms  pretty  closely  to  the  official  London 
dialect,  we  find  occasional  divergencies  from  this.  Thus  praiy  '  pretty  ' 
preserves  the  Southern  form  of  O.E.  xl,  shortened  to  £,  and  then  becom- 
ing a,  instead  of  the  Midland  of  South-East  £,  the  Southern  wokys  'weeks' 
(W.  Sax.  wucu,  fr.  weocu),  the  Southern  herdely  '  hardly '  with  e,  fr.  O.E. 
heard,  hzerd,  which  in  Midland  became  hard  (cf.  p.  33,  No.  i) ;  the 
archaic  Southern  iche  for  'I'  Pers.  Pron. ;  the  Southern  prefix^-  in  the 
P.  ¥.ywet,  storm  ybeten,  and  the  Pres.  PL  in  -th—your  clokes  smelly  th  musty. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  typical  present-day  distribution  of  i  and  e  in  mery, 
mirth,  bysy  (also  besy),  and  i  also  in  lyther  O.E.  lyj?er  '  bad ' ;  the  Eastern 
e  for  i  in  glettering,  and  the  occasional  use  of  E.  Midland  -ys  in  the  3rd 
Sing.  Pres.— lokys  'looks',  reeky s  'reeks',  by  the  side  of  the  usual  -yth, 
&c.  These  -s  forms,  which  were  all  but  unknown  among  the  best 
London  writers — and  speakers — for  nearly  another  hundred  years, 
except  when  used  in  mid-sixteenth  century  and  after,  to  save  a  syllable  in 
verse,  may  have  got  into  the  poet's  language  at  Cambridge.  Skelton  has, 
for  the  time,  a  fair  number  of  -ar-  spellings  for  M.E.  -er-,  and  rhymes 
which  indicate  that  he  pronounced  -ar-  sometimes  when  he  does  not 
write  it — harde  '  heard '  P.  P.,  harte,  swarue  '  swerve  ',  dark,  barke  Vb., 
but  also  herde,ferther,  herke  *  hark  ' ;  further  enferre  '  infer '  rhyming  with 


92      THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

debarre,  and  herk  rhyming  with  clarke.  This  peculiarity,  already  frequently 
alluded  to  as  occurring  in  other  writers,  becomes  more  and  more  common 
in  London  English  from  the  beginning  of  the  second  half  of  the  century, 
and  probably  started  in  Kent  and  Essex.  An  interesting  example  of  it  in 
Magnyfycence  occurs  in  the  phrase — All  is  out  ofharre,  where  the  last  word 
is  from  O.E.  heorra  '  hinge ',  M.E.  herre.  The  phrase  means  '  the  times 
are  out  of  joint ',  and  the  idiom  is  exactly  equivalent  to  the  French  hors 
des  gonds.  In  inflexional  syllables  Skelton  makes  frequent  use  of  -ys, 
-yth,  -yd,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  were  before  this  time  becoming 
characteristic  of  London  English,  as  they  have  remained  so  of  the 
Received  Standard  type  of  pronunciation  to  the  present  time. 

We  shall  conclude  this  survey  of  fifteenth-century  English  with  an 
account  of  the  language  of  Gregory's  Chronicle.  Some  few  particulars 
have  already  been  given  of  William  Gregory  (p.  64).  As  to  the  work 
itself,  it  may  have  been  completed  somewhere  about  1470,  since  it  was 
continued  after  Gregory's  death  in  1467.  The  MS.,  according  to 
Mr.  Gairdner,  is  all  in  one  hand,  and  that  certainly  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  In  some  ways  this  work  is  the  most  interesting  for  our  purpose 
of  all  those  referred  to  in  this  chapter.  It  has  an  air  of  unstudied  natural- 
ness about  its  forms  and  style,  and  we  may  take  it  to  represent  pretty 
faithfully  the  ordinary  everyday  speech  of  the  better  Middle  Classes  of 
London,  comparable  to  that  of  Machyn  about  a  hundred  years  later,  but 
representing  probably  the  English  of  a  social  couche  superior  to  his,  if 
distinctly  below  the  standard  of  the  Court.  It  is  the  most  considerable 
document  of  its  kind  belonging  to  this  age,  and  gives  an  extensive  picture 
of  colloquial  speech  in  the  Metropolis. 

The  vowel  system  agrees  on  the  whole  with  that  of  other  London 
documents  of  the  period,  but  certain  features  are  more  strongly  marked 
than  in  other  London  documents.  While  from  Gregory's  origin  we  might 
expect  the  E.  Midland  elements  to  be  very  strongly  represented,  to  the 
exclusion  of  most  of  the  typically  Southern,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  although 
the  former  element  is  quite  definitely  present,  some  very  interesting 
Southern  features  also  occur.  This  rather  leads  one  to  the  opinion  that 
the  presence  of  the  Eastern  characteristics  is  not  primarily  due  to 
Gregory's  Suffolk  birth,  but  to  the  fact  that  they  were  in  use  in  the 
Middle  Class  London  speech  of  the  time,  rather  more  frequently  than  in 
that  of  the  superior  ranks.  In  other  words,  Gregory  wrote  the  genuine 
London  English  of  the  class  among  whom  he  lived,  and  not  a  form 
modified  by  Suffolk  dialect.  Had  he  done  the  latter,  he  would  hardly 
have  made  use  of  Southernisms  which  he  could  not  have  known  from  his 
native  dialect,  but  which  were  in  use  in  London. 

To  begin  with  O.E.  j>,  Gregory  has  comparatively  few  ^-forms,  and 
these  are  all  known  to  have  been  in  use  in  genuine  London  English — 
berriyd,  steryd  'stirred',  besely,  and  evylle,  which,  however,  may  be 
differently  explained  (p.  207).  The  *-forms  greatly  predominate — 
first,  bylde,  lyfte  '  left '  (hand),  byryd,  syche  '  such ',  schytte  (Pret.)  '  shut ', 
lytylle.  There  are  but  few  w-forms — buryd,  suche,  muche,  brusyd  '  bruised  '. 
The  M.E.  combination  -er-  is  written  -ar-  more  frequently  than  in  any 
other  London  text  of  this  time,  that  I  have  examined — warre  'war', 
Barkeky,  sfarre,  sargent,  clargy,  ?narcy,  sartayne  '  certain ',  sarmon, 


GREGORY'S  PRONUNCIATION  93 

sarvyce',  but,  on  the  other  hand,  -er-  is  also  well  represented — werre 
war ',  ferme  '  farm  ',  sterre,  erthe,  derke,  herte,  Clerkynwelle,  ferther, 
kervyr  '  carver ',  Colde  Herborowe,  person  =  '  parson '.  We  know  that  the 
-ar-  forms  were  coming  into  official  London  English  about  the  middle  of 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  that  nearly  all  writers  have  some,  but  even  at 
the  end  of  the  century  they  are  not  so  frequent  in  any  other  document, 
official  or  literary,  as  here,  and  the  Suffolk  Wills  of  the  third  quarter  of 
the  century  have  but  few,  which  is  evidently  due  to  the  influence  of  official 
London  English.  We  find  more  in  the  Paston  Letters  and  the  Cely 
Papers,  and  we  are  justified,  I  think,  in  regarding  sarmon^  &c.,  as  having 
started  in  the  South-East  and  E.  Midlands,  and  having  passed  into  London 
through  Lower  and  Middle  Class  English,  of  which  they  became  a 
characteristic  feature.  Another  feature  found  in  nearly  all  London  docu- 
ments to  some  extent,  but  peculiarly  typical  of  the  East  (see  Bokenam, 
Marg.  Paston,  Cely  Papers,  &c.),  is  e  for  /,  but  probably  no  other  London 
document  has  so  many  of  these  spellings  as  Gregory.  Of  those  which 
may  be  long  we  have — preson,  levyd  '  lived ',  wete  '  know  ',  lemytyd,  levyn 
(Inf.)  '  live  ',  letany,  leverays  '  liveries ',  wedowe,  petefullyste,  rever  '  river ' ; 
almost  certainly  short  are  schelyngys  '  shillings ',  pejon  '  pigeon ',  pelory, 
denyr.  Chekyns  may  come  under  this  group,  but  may  also  be  differently 
explained.  The  following  interesting  Southern  forms  occur : — dradde 
(P.  P.),  radde  (Pret.),  which  are  both  found  in  Chaucer,  praty  '  pretty ', 
where  a  is  a  shortened  O.E.  xl  (cf.  p.  29  (i);  33  (2)).  Further  : — schylde 
'  shield  \yldyste  '  eldest ',  sylle  '  to  sell ',  where  we  have  the  representations 
of  Southern  scield,  ieldest,  siellan  (cf.  p.  35  (7)).  Before  -ng  and  -nch  e 
becomes  z: — Inglond,  Kyngs  Bynche,  both  of  which  words,  however,  also 
occur  written  with  the  traditional  e.  A  curious  Westernism  occurs  in 
schute  '  shoot'  O.E.  sceolan,  which  is  found  at  least  twice  (cf.  p.  34  (4)). 
The  typical  Eastern  form  is  found  in  Scheter  Hylle '  Shooter's  Hill '.  The 
combination  -an-  is  often  written  -on-,  not  only  before  nd,  mb,  ng,  which 
lengthenedt  he  vowel — lond,  stonde,  lombe  '  lamb  ',  stronge,  hongyd,  longage 
i  language ',  but  also  in  thonke  '  thanks  ',  thonkyd  '  thanked '.  The  -an- 
spellings  are  also  found — hanggyd,  lambe,  and  land.  The  new  pronuncia- 
tion of  M.E.  e  is  expressed  by  i  and  y : — hire  '  hear  ',  hirde  '  heard ',  dyre 
'  dear ',  stypylle  '  steeple  '  (which  may  possibly  be  a  Southernism  for  O.E. 
y  (te)),  slyvys  '  sleeves '.  It  is  possible  that  the  spellings  becheler  'bachelor', 
iesper  'jasper  ',  fefhem  '  fathom  ',  indicate  that  M.E.  a  had  already  under- 
gone the  modern  shifting. 

Passing  to  consonants,  we  find  loss  of  consonants  in  Braban  for 
'  Brabant ',  Edwar  the  iiij  for  *  Edward ',  Wanysday  '  Wednesday ', 
halpeny,  sowdyer  '  soldier ',  Raffe  '  Ralph ',  Fauconbrygge,  sepukyr 
'  sepulchre ',  and  Westmyster,  a  very  common  form  here,  and  in  other 
documents.  A  final  consonant  is  added  in  patent  '  paten  ',  losste  '  loss  ' ; 
n  is  intercalated  in  massynger,  earlier  messager,  where  we  have  kept 
the  n.  Old  -hi-  has  become  -ft-  in  unsojfethe  '  unsought '.  Initial  wh 
is  written  w-  in  were/ore,  wete  (  wheat ',  wile  '  while '.  Final  -th  is  once 
written/"  in  Lambeffe  '  Lambeth '.  The  sound  r  was  evidently  lost  before 
-J-,  as  is  shown  by  the  spellings  mosselle  '  morsel ',  Ferys  of  Groby  = 
'  Ferrers '.  Final  -ng  appears  as  -n  in  blasyn  sterre  '  comet ',  hayryn 
1  herring  '.  Interchange  of  v  and  w  occurs  in  wery  '  very ',  and  Prynce 


94      THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

of  Valys  =  '  Wales '.  The  Southern  initial  v-  for/"-  occurs  in  a  valle 
'  a  fall '. 

-/-  between  vowels  is  sometimes  written  -d- : — radyfyde,  depudyd,  dal- 
madyke.  This  records  a  genuine  pronunciation  which  we  later  find  de- 
scribed by  writers  on  pronunciation,  and  regarded  as  a  Cockney  vulgar- 
ism. Other  instances  of  the  same  process — voicing  between  vowels — 
are  given  (pp.  312-13).  Rounding  of  a  after  v  occurs  in  Syn  Volantynys. 

In  unstressed  syllables  Gregory  shows  the  same  tendency  to  put 
i  Q\  y  in  flexional  syllables  which  we  have  noted  in  all  the  London 
writings  of  this  period,  and  in  many  others  as  well.  He  also  reduces 
vowels  and  diphthongs  generally  in  this  position.  Thus,  for  M.E.  ei 
in  seint  he  writes  Syn  before  a  personal  name — Syn  Lenarde,  Syn 
John,  where  the  stress  falls  on  the  name.  He  writes  e  in  the  second 
syllable  of  M.E.  felow  '  fellow  '  in  felechype.  Unstressed  syllables  are 
sometimes  lost  altogether — cytsyns  '  citizens ',  unt  hym  '  unto  him  '. 
French  u  or  ui  [j/J  is  unrounded  when  unstressed : — comeners,  corny  ners, 
condyitt  '  conduit ',  contymacy  '  contumacy  '. 

Turning  to  the  Accidence,  Strong  Nouns  either  take  the  PI.  suffix 
-ys — namys,  howsys,  eggys,  treys^  &c.,  or  merely  -s — strangers ;  the  only 
Wk.  Pis.  I  have  noted  are  oxyn  and  schone  '  shoes '.  Irregulars  are  kyne 
'  cows  ',  wemmen,  bretheryn ;  mutated  forms— -fete,  tethe.  Nouns  expressing 
measure  in  time  and  space  are  frequently  unaltered  in  the  PI. — viij yere, 
iij  fote,  iiij fethem  ;  also  some  old  Neuters — hors,  swyne,  alle  thynge,  schippe, 
sheppe  '  sheep'.  The  Possessive  Sing,  of  Nouns  is  commonly  formed  with 
the  suffix  -ys — kyngys,  &c.,  or  with  -s  alone — waterberers ;  another  very 
common  form  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  very  frequent  in 
Gregory,  is  the  addition  of  the  separate  particle  ys  after  the  Noun — Synt 
Edmonde  ys  Bury,  &c.  This  was  doubtless  the  ordinary  Possessive  suffix  in 
origin,  but  was  frequently  (or  always)  identified  with  the  weak  (unstressed) 
form  of  the  Possessive  Pronoun,  and  indeed  is  often  written  hys<  his  just  as 
we  still  have  it  in  our  Prayer  Book— for  Jesus  Christ  his  sake,  &c.  That 
this  is  a  new  formation,  based  upon  the  absolute  identity  in  sound  of  the 
unstressed  Possessive  of  the  Pres.  Pronoun  (h}ys,  and  the  Possessive 
suffix,  is  shown  by  such  phrases — very  common  in  all  colloquial  writings — 
as  the  queene  ys  moder,  side  by  side  with  the  Queenys  party.  In  group 
constructions  this  detached  ys  is  often  used  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
Gregory  has  my  lorde  of  Warwycke  ys  brother.  Note  the  phrase  no  schoo 
apon  no  manys  fote.  When  we  should  now  inflect  the  group  by  adding 
the  Possessive  's  to  the  last  word,  e.  g.  the  Duke  of  Norfolk's  daughter, 
Gregory  uses  such  constructions  as  the  dukys  doughter  of  Northefolke,  or 
the  lordys  wyffe  Nevyle  '  Lord  Nevil's  wife '.  The  Possessive  in  -ys  can 
be  used  absolutely — a  cepture  in  hys  hond  of  the  quenys. 

Finally,  we  may  mention  the  uninflected  Possessives — on  which  see  at 
length  p.  316-18 — which  may  be  old  Feminines  such  as  Mary  Mavdelyn 
Evyn,  or  old  weak  Pis.  in  -n  as  in  Alle  Halowt  day.  A  frequent  con- 
struction at  this  period  is  the  expression  of  quantity  without  either 
inflexion  or  preposition  between  the  two  nouns,  as  every  sacke  wolle, 
which  is  like  the  German  ein  sack  wolle,  ein  glas  wasser,  &c« 

The  following  forms  of  the  Pers.  Pronouns  may  be  mentioned.  The 
Possess.  Sing,  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Masc.  is  very  commonly  written  ys 


GRAMMATICAL   FEATURES   IN   GREGORY  95 

when  unstressed — the  Prynce  was  jugge  (judge)  ys  owne  sylfe,  which 
is  the  natural  pronunciation  to-day,  and  is  found  recorded  as  early  as  the 
thirteenth  century  at  least.  The  Neut.  Sing,  is  generally  hit.  The  3rd 
PI.  is  Nom.  }>ey,  they,  and  the  unstressed  form  the]  Possess,  hir,  hyr, 
here,  and  (rarely)  there ;  the  Dat.  and  Ace.  is  generally  -hem,  with  the 
weak  form  em — ax  of  em  that  felde  (felt)  the  strokys,  and,  rarely,  them. 
In  the  PI.  of  the  2nd  Pers.jye  and  you  are  kept  distinct,  the  former  being 
kept  for  the  Nom.,  the  latter  for  the  oblique  cases.  The  Relative  Pronoun 
'  who '  is  occasionally  written  hoo,  and  the  Dat.  and  Ace.  home,  showing 
that  w  was  not  pronounced ;  the  Gen.,  however,  is  written  whos  according 
to  the  traditional  spelling.  There  is  in  Gregory,  as  in  several  other  fifteenth- 
century  texts,  a  Dat.  wham  which  must  be  an  unstressed  form  with  early 
shortening  of  the  vowel  in  O.E.  hwdm.  The  now  extinct  PI.  Demonstr. 
thoo  '  those ',  fr.  O.E.  pa  the  PI.  of  Def.  Art.,  is  frequent,  also  thosse. 
The  Indef.  Art.  is  a,  which  is  often  used  in  this  century  and  later  before 
words  beginning  with  vowels — a  Englyssche  squyer.  The  emphatic  oon, 
and,  before  cons.,  oo  '  a  single,  one ',  are  used  as  in  M.E.  The  M.E. 
form  everychone  '  every  one '  occurs,  divided  every  chone.  The  now 
obsolete  or  vulgar  who  som  evyr  still  survives. 

The  Pres.  Sing,  of  Vbs.  ends  in  -yth\  the  PI.  has  commonly  -yn, 
belevyn,  deputyn,folowyn,  &c.,  occasionally  -e  as  behote  'they  promise', 
and  at  least  once  -yth(e),  longythe.  The  Inf.  very  commonly  retains  the 
ending  -en,  or  more  usually  -yn — procedyn,  ben,  beryn,  setten,  settynne,  &c., 
sometimes  loses  the  -n  as  in  to  saye,  to  speke,  &c.  The  forms  answery, 
ymageny  look  rather  like  survivals  of  the  old  Southern  Inf.  (see  p.  37  (16)). 
The  prefix  t-  is  occasionally  used  both  in  Weak  and  Strong  P.  P.'s — 
i-callyd,  i-halowyde,  igeve  '  given  ',  i-knowe  (  known ',  &c.  The  ending 
of  the  P.  P.  in  Strong  Vbs.  has  both  -yn  and  -e,  the  latter  being  perhaps 
more  frequent — drawe  and  drawyn,  geve  and  gevyn,  smete  and  smetyn, 
founde  and/oundyn,  &c.,  &c.  At  least  one  use  of  the  prefix  t-  occurs 
in  the  Pret.  isong  '  sang '.  The  old  distinction  between  Pret.  Sing,  and 
PI.  seems  to  have  vanished  with  the  exception  offauht  (Sing.)  '  fought ', 
PI.  fought.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  type  of  the  Piet.  used  in  both  Sing, 
and  PI.  is  that  of  the  Singular,  even  more  generally  than  at  the  present 
day,  and  not  that  of  the  P.  P.,  so  that  Gregory  and  his  contemporaries 
use  bare,  brake,  bote  '  bit ',  and  not  bore,  broke,  bit,  on  the  model  of  the 
P.  P.  As  regards  Auxiliary  and  Irregular  Vbs.,  drust  (with  metathesis) 
is  the  Pret.  of  dare,  '  shall '  has  schalle  in  Sing.,  and  both  shulle  and 
shalle  in  the  PI. ;  ar  is  used  as  well  as  ben(e)  in  the  PL  Pres.  of  '  to  be ' ; 
may  retains  the  old  PL  mowen  as  in  Chaucer ;  the  Pret.  of  can  is  still 
couthe,  the  /  not  yet  occurring  in  the  spelling.  The  Pret.  of '  to  go '  is 
the  archaic yede  znAydde  (O.E.  ge-eode). 

A  few  phrases  and  constructions  may  be  noted.  '  On  the  morning  of 
Candlemas  day '  is  rendered  on  Candylmasday  in  the  mornynge,  which 
to  us  is  strongly  reminiscent  of  the  Christmas  carol  *  There  were  three 
ships  came  sailing  by '. 

The  old  habit  of  putting  one  adjective  before  a  noun  and  the  other 
after,  where  used  predicatively,  which  with  us  survives  only  in  a  few 
fossilized  phrases — '  a  good  man  and  true ' — is  seen  in  a  pesabylle yere  and 
a  plentefulle. 


96      THE   ENGLISH   OF   THE   FIFTEENTH  CENTURY 

I  have  gone  thus  into  detail  concerning  the  language  of  Gregory, 
because  his  Chronicle  appears  to  be  a  very  genuine  record  of  how  people 
actually  spoke  in  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  more  so  than  any 
other  London  document  we  possess.  The  picture  gives  rise  in  our 
minds  to  both  kinds  of  surprise  referred  to  on  p.  71.  We  are  alternately 
astonished  at  finding  certain  pronunciations  and  forms  so  early  in  use, 
and  amazed  at  the  survival  of  so  many  archaisms.  Gregory  may  well 
be  said  to  stand  at  the  parting  of  the  ways  between  the  new  and  the  old. 
In  some  ways  he  is  more  archaic  than  the  classical  language  of  Literature 
or  of  official  writings,  and  in  others  he  appears  more  modern.  It  is 
probable  that  the  latter  impression  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  his 
unstudied  spelling  and  style  reveal  more  of  the  truth  regarding  con- 
temporary speech.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  remembered  that  he 
represents  a  different  social  class  than  any  we  have  hitherto  examined 
except  the  Celys,  who  are  definitely  provincials.  It  is  often  urged  as 
a  merit  of  popular  and  dialect  speech  at  the  present  day  by  its  votaries, 
that  it  is  more  conservative  of  ancient  forms  than  Received  Standard 
English,  but  this  is  a  one-sided  view.  Vulgar,  popular,  and  Regional 
speech  may  each  and  all  preserve  certain  ancient  features  which  Good 
English  has  lost,  but  that  is  not  the  whole  truth.  They  have  also  lost 
other  features  which  the  latter  has  preserved.  The  fact  is  that  innovations 
are  found  in  all  forms  of  English,  but  they  are  not  the  same  innovations; 
all  forms  of  English  likewise  preserve  certain  old  features,  but  they  have 
not  all  preserved  the  same  features.  Gregory's  value  for  us  is  none  the 
less  that  he  is  the  chief  example,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  of  the  Middle 
Class  English  of  the  capital.  Doubtless  the  'redoubted  princess'  who 
found  fault  with  Caxton's  parts  of  speech  would  have  been  equally  down 
on  Gregory ;  but  whereas  Caxton  '  amended '  his  English,  Gregory  did 
not,  for  which  we  may  be  duly  thankful.  Caxton's  English  is  a  less  true 
picture  of  the  speech  of  his  time  than  Gregory's  because  he  slavishly 
copied  the  scribes,  and  apparently  the  scribes  of  an  earlier  day  than  his 
own.  The  result  is  that  Caxton  is  in  many  important  respects  farther 
from  the  Spoken  English  of  to-day  than  Gregory.  Many  of  the  latter' s 
vulgarisms  have  become  current  even  in  the  politest  form  of  English, 
while  much  of  Caxton's  '  correctness '  was  obsolete  in  his  own  day  in 
any  form  of  English  whatsoever. 

We  have  now  surveyed  Literary  English  and  London  English  from 
Chaucer  to  Skelton,  and  have  glanced  at  some  of  the  provincial  forms 
during  the  same  period. 

We  may  draw  this  long  chapter  to  a  close  with  an  attempt  to  sum- 
marize the  main  general  results  which  emerge  from  our  examination. 

Already  fairly  early  in  the  century,  it  is  evident  from  the  occasional 
spellings  of  the  less  conventional  writers  that  the  Middle  English 
accented  vowels  have  started  upon  that  series  of  changes  which  has 
led  to  our  present-day  pronunciation.  The  'vowels  of  unstressed 
syllables  have  been  still  further  '  reduced '  since  the  weakenings  which 
took  place  in  Late  O.E.  and  Early  Middle  English.  We  notice,  on  the 
one  hand,  a  variety  of  tentative  methods  of  expressing  these  vowels,  which 
points  at  least  to  an  obscuration  of  the  earlier  sound,  and  on  the  other 
a  certain  consistency,  which  points  to  '  reduction '  in  a  definite  direction. 


TWO   TYPES  OF  LONDON  ENGLISH  97 

Certain  typical  Modern  alterations  in  the  pronunciation  of  consonants 
are  observable.  Turning  to  the  question  of  Regional  dialect  and  the 
Standard  Language,  it  is  clear  from  many  indications  that  Regional 
dialect  was  still  spoken,  more  or  less  by  all  classes.  In  the  written 
language,  we  find  an  extended  use  of  the  London  dialect  in  both  private 
and  official  documents ;  but  during  the  first  three  quarters  of  the  century 
at  least,  the  local  and  natural  dialect  of  the  writer  breaks  out  here  and 
there,  in  documents  which  conform  on  the  whole  to  the  London  type. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  room  for  surprise  that  a  quarter  of  a  century 
before  the  introduction  of  printing,  the  Devonian  Shillingford  should 
allow  his  native  speech  to  show  itself  so  little  in  his  letters,  while  the 
other  and  more  important  Devonian  Sir  John  Fortescue  has  broken 
away  completely  from  Regional  dialect.  In  the  early  part  of  the 
century  several  works  of  Literature  proper,  both  in  prose  and  verse, 
preserve  with  very  fair  consistency  the  Regional  dialect  of  the  writers. 

As  regards  the  character  of  the  London  dialect,  fast  becoming  the 
recognized  vehicle  for  all  English  which  was  written  down,  the  South- 
Eastern,  and  especially  the  E.  Midland,  elements  gain  an  increasing 
ascendancy,  though  many  typically  Southern  features,  or  scattered  forms 
derived  from  the  purely  Southern  type  of  English,  still  linger.  It  seems 
that  we  can  distinguish  among  the  documents  written  in  London  at 
least  two  types  of  dialect — an  Easterly  and  a  more  Southerly  type.  It 
is  evident  that  both  types  were  accepted  and  recognized  in  the  speech  of 
London  itself,  and  poets  (e.  g.  Skelton)  found  it  convenient  to  avail  them- 
selves of  a  latitude  in  the  distribution  of  forms  from  both  of  these  types, 
fully  as  great  as  that  enjoyed  by  Chaucer.  This  latitude  makes  it 
difficult  to  assert  that  a  given  form  which  is  clearly  E.  Midland  in  origin 
was  not  current  in  some  type  of  London  speech,  and  it  is  probable  that 
few  of  the  typical  Easternisms  which  we  find  in  Lydgate  would  strike 
a  Londoner  of  the  period  as  strange. 

Thus  the  precise  Regional  dialect  constituents  of  London  English  were 
not  finally  fixed  in  their  present  proportion  and  distribution  during  the 
fifteenth  century,  nor  indeed  for  some  time  after  the  beginning  of  the 
following  century. 

As  regards  social  dialect,  while  it  is  pretty  certain  that  an  upper  and 
a  lower  class  type  of  English  were  recognized,  it  is  very  difficult  to  be 
sure  exactly  where  to  draw  the  line.  Some  of  the  peculiarities  of  Gregory's 
English  are  undoubtedly  described  as  London  vulgarisms  at  a  later  date, 
but  we  cannot  be  quite  sure  that  they  were  so  felt  at  the  time  in  which 
he  wrote,  since  most,  if  not  all  of  them,  can  be  paralleled  from  the 
writings  of  persons  far  more  highly  placed  than  he.  It  may  be  said, 
however,  that  in  Gregory  we  have  a  combination  of  peculiarities,  which 
probably  do  not  occur  in  the  same  mass,  and  with  the  same  frequency, 
in  writers  of  higher  social  status.  The  letters  of  Edmond  de  la  Pole 
are  not  a  fair  sample  of  the  speech  of  the  higher  English  Nobility  of  his 
age,  since  they  produce  the  impression  of  being  written  not  only  by  a 
very  ignorant  man,  but  by  one  who  has  largely  forgotten  his  native 
tongue,  at  any  rate  any  decent  method  of  putting  it  down  on  paper. 

Finally,  we  recognize  the  unsettled  state  of  Literary  and  Standard 
Spoken  English  in  the  curious  individualism  which  makes  it  necessary 


98      THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE  FIFTEENTH   CENTURY 

to  describe  the  peculiarities  of  so  many  separate  writers.  It  is  this,  more 
than  anything  else,  which  makes  us  hesitate  to  claim  for  this  century  the 
existence  of  a  definite  Standard  of  Speech,  or  to  say  definitely  where  it  is 
to  be  found.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  the  conception  of 
vulgarism  in  speech  already  existed,  and  if  so,  what  particular  vagaries 
were  brought  under  this  head,  and  by  whom.  No  doubt  there  was 
a  certain  standard  of  '  correctness ',  but  this  is  quite  different  from  the 
existence  of  an  upper  class  dialect  as  distinct  from  a  lower.  We  have 
quoted  the  rather  vague  statement  of  Caxton  concerning  the  opinion 
which  the  Duchess  of  Burgundy  took  of  his  English,  and  have  indicated 
that  we  may  here  have  a  hint  of  a  social  differentiation  of  speech,  but  this 
is  quite  uncertain.  We  have  to  wait  till  the  following  century  for  more 
definite  evidence.  After  all,  Gregory  is  our  best  hope  if  we  ever  expect 
to  establish  the  existence  of  Class  dialect  at  this  period,  meaning  by  the 
term  a  variety  of  London  English,  which  may  indeed  have  been  partly 
Regional  in  origin,  but  which  had  come  to  be  felt  as  an  inferior  variant 
of  the  language  in  vogue  at  the  Court. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII 
TO  JAMES  I 

THE  sixteenth  century  is  memorable  for  the  student  of  the  history  of 
the  language,  not  least,  among  many  other  reasons,  because  he  now  finds 
for  the  first  time  undoubted  evidence,  in  specific  statement,  of  the  exis- 
tence of  a  standard  of  speech.  The  dialect  of  the  Court  is  definitely 
stated  to  be  the  '  best '  form  of  English,  the  one  to  be  acquired,  and  as 
far  as  possible  to  be  used  in  the  writing  of  poetry,  that  is,  for  the  highest 
possible  purpose  to  which  language  can  be  put. 

During  this  century,  too,  English  people  began  to  think  and  write 
about  their  native  language  as  a  vehicle  for  literary  creation.  They  dis- 
cussed at  great  length  such  questions  as  the  fitness  of  English  to  be  used 
for  poetry ;  the  proper  kind  of  vocabulary  for  a  writer  to  use — whether 
'  old  and  homely  '  native  terms,  or  words  derived  from  Latin — they  dis- 
coursed much,  and  often  tediously,  upon  the  principles  of  English 
prosody  ;  they  tried  many  experiments,  some  fortunate,  such  as  those  of 
Wyatt  and  Tusser,  some  dismal  failures,  such  as  those  of  Phaer  or 
Stanyhurst,  and  some  other  '  painful  furtherers  of  learning ' ;  they  thought 
much  of  prose  style  and  played  some  strange  pranks  therewith ;  they 
tried  hard  to  amend  and  fix  English  spelling,  and  practically  succeeded  in 
the  latter  effort ;  lastly,  they  examined  and  attempted  to  describe  the 
sounds  of  English  speech. 

The  accounts  of  English  pronunciation  which  begin  in  this  century 
open  a  new  chapter  in  our  investigations  of  the  past  history  of  our 
language,  and  one  which  from  this  time  onward  has  to  be  taken  into 
account.  For  the  present  writer  it  is  a  question  open  to  discussion, 
though  many  will  think  this  an  impiety,  whether  this  new  source  of  in- 
formation has  not  been  rather  a  curse  than  a  blessing  to  English  Philology, 
and  whether  we  have  not  been  bamboozled  for  the  last  thirty  or  forty 
years  by  these  early  writers  on  English  pronunciation,  into  all  sorts  of 
wrong  ideas.  But  of  this  more  later. 

We  have  said  that  definite  references  exist  to  a  standard  of  English 
speech,  to  varieties,  one  of  which  is  the  best,  while  the  others  are  to  be 
avoided ;  but  this  is  not  all,  for  it  is  distinctly  suggested  that  there  exist, 
and  are  recognized,  not  only  Regional,  but  also  Social  varieties.  And 
we  are  not  left  with  mere  statements  of  this  fact ;  we  have  a  long  docu- 
ment, the  Diary  of  Henry  Machyn,  which  is  of  priceless  value  in  that  it 
enshrines,  not  a  counterfeit  presentment,  such  as  we  might  find  in 
comedies,  of  lower  class  speech,  but  the  genuine  thing,  naturally  and  un- 
consciously set  down  by  a  man  who  is  obviously  putting  his  own  English 
on  paper.  We  are  fortunate  in  possessing  many  familiar  letters  of  the 

H  2 


ioo  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

sixteenth  century,  which  give  a  picture  of  colloquial  speech  so  far  as  this 
is  possible  in  a  written  document,  but  none  is  perhaps  so  individual,  or 
so  abundant  in  revelations  of  the  habits  of  speech  of  the  writer  and  his 
class,  as  Machyn's  Diary.  It  is  true  that  many,  perhaps  most  of  the 
occasional  spellings  which  we  find  so  instructive  in  the  writings  of  the 
diarist,  can  be  matched  from  the  letters  of  this  period  of  persons  of  far 
higher  rank,  but  the  most  characteristic  peculiarities  occur  nowhere  else 
so  frequently,  and  some  are  not  found  at  all  among  persons  of  more 
refinement  and  breeding.  At  any  rate,  the  cumulative  effect  is  consider- 
able, and  leaves  the  impression  of  a  distinct  social  dialect.  We  have 
plenty  of  material  from  which  to  establish  a  comparison — letters  from 
Henry  VIII,  Edward  VI,  Queens  Mary  and  Elizabeth  ;  from  great  nobles 
such  as  Norfolk  and  Somerset;  from  statesmen  like  Cromwell  and 
Burghley;  ecclesiastics  such  as  Wolsey,  Latimer,  Cranmer,  Warham, 
Lee,  and  many  others ;  from  courtier  scholars  like  More,  Ascham,  and 
Sir  Thomas  Smith;  from  great  merchants  and  men  of  affairs  like 
Gresham ;  from  admirals  and  soldiers  whose  very  names  are  enough  to 
make  any  age  illustrious,  and  whose  deeds  are  among  the  chief  glories  of 
our  race,  such  as  Howard  and  Drake,  Sydney  and  Raleigh.  All  these 
famous  persons  reveal  in  their  letters  certain  individualities  of  origin, 
while  conforming,  in  the  main  features,  to  the  common  well-bred  English 
of  the  time.  They  all  had  opportunities,  in  varying  degree  it  is  true,  of 
acquiring  the  Court  form  of  English  of  their  age,  and  many  of  their 
varieties  are  due,  doubtless,  to  the  different  native  dialects  upon  which 
the  Court  English  was  grafted.  Machyn,  however,  is  in  a  class  apart ; 
his  English  is  almost  as  different  from  that  of  the  Courtiers  as  is  the  dialect 
of  Robert  of  Brunne  from  that  of  Trevisa. 

To  come  to  closer  quarters,  we  may  ask,  What  are  the  chief  general 
characteristics  of  sixteenth-century  English  ? 

The  first  point  to  be  mentioned  is  that  Regional  dialect  disappears 
completely  from  the  written  language  of  the  South  and  Midlands ;  both 
from  Literature  proper,  and  from  private  letters  and  documents.  We 
shall  look  in  vain  in  poetry  for  such  distinctive  Regional  character  as  we 
saw  in  Bokenam  in  the  preceding  century,  or  in  private  letters,  for  even 
such  slight  traces  of  Regional  influence  as  we  found  in  Shillingford's 
letters.  We  are  able  at  most  to  point  here  and  there  to  a  feature — 
generally  connected  with  grammatical  forms — which  we  may  attribute  to 
the  writer's  native  county. 

On  the  other  hand,  while  the  literary  dialect  is  in  a  fair  way  to  being 
fixed,  and  while  in  private  documents  which  reflect  more  faithfully  the 
colloquial  conditions,  and  in  works  of  literature,  both  prose  and  verse, 
where  the  language  is  more  studied  and  deliberate,  considerable,  though 
by  no  means  absolute,  uniformity  in  the  distribution  of  dialect  elements  is 
found,  we  discover  a  host  of  those  revealing  occasional  spellings  which, 
as  we  saw,  were  fairly  common  in  the  fifteenth-century  documents. 

Evidence  of  the  sort  which  we  exhibited  in  the  previous  chapter,  for  the 
occurrence  of  certain  sound  changes  in  the  fifteenth  century,  is  confirmed 
abundantly,  and  is  much  larger  in  quantity  in  the  age  of  Henry  VIII  and 
Elizabeth.  Almost  every  private  letter,  and  many  literary  works,  contain 
a  certain  number  of  spellings  which  throw  light  upon  pronunciation,  and 


UNITY  OF   SPOKEN  AND   OF  LITERARY   ENGLISH    101 

it  is  evident  that  even  at  the  Court  such  tendencies  as  that  which  added 
an  '  excrescent '  consonant  at  the  end  of  words,  e.  g.  for  the  nonnest 
(  nonce  ',  orphant '  orphan  ',  vilde  '  vile  ',  and  so  on,  were  certainly  current 
among  all  speakers,  from  Queen  Elizabeth  herself  downwards.  It  is 
rather  important  to  point  out  that  the  same  variety  of  spellings,  by  which 
is  meant  spellings  which  throw  light  on  actual  pronunciation,  the  same  kind 
of  fluctuation  in  the  distribution  of  dialect  types,  and  the  same  diversity 
in  grammatical  forms  are  found  in  printed  books,  whether  prose  or 
poetry,  and  that  in  the  works  by  the  most  accomplished  writers,  as  are  to 
be  noted  in  private,  familiar,  and  more  or  less  hastily  written  letters.  We 
might  attribute  these  '  slips '  in  the  latter  class  of  documents  to  the  care- 
lessness of  individual  writers,  but  when  the  same  kind  of  '  slip '  occurs 
again  and  again  in  letters  written  by  very  different  kinds  of  persons,  we 
are  bound  to  infer  that  these  '  slips '  in  writing  represent  realities  in 
uttered  speech,  and  linguistic  habits  that  were  very  widespread.  When 
we  further  meet  with  the  same  peculiarities,  both  in  spelling  and  in  gram- 
matical forms,  again  and  again  in  printed  books,  we  must  be  convinced 
that  the  literary  language  is  not  a  phenomenon  apart,  having  an  exis- 
tence independent  of  the  spoken  language,  but  that  the  former  is  in  very 
deed  identical  with  the  latter,  and  reflects  its  various  and  changing 
character. 

This  intimate  relation  between  the  highest  type  of  colloquial  English 
and  the  English  of  literature  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted  upon.  The 
*  tongue  which  Shakespeare  spake '  was  the  tongue  which  he  wrote  ;  the 
makers  of  Elizabethan  English  as  we  know  it  in  the  imperishable  literature 
of  the  period,  were  the  men,  illustrious  and  obscure,  who  were  also 
making  English  history,  that  is,  who  were  living  and  fighting;  sailing 
strange  seas,  and  discovering  new  worlds ;  ruffling  at  Court,  or  deliberating 
in  the  councils  of  Church  and  of  the  State ;  conferring  and  negotiating 
abroad  with  princes  and  prelates,  and  often,  at  the  last,  going  '  darkling 
down  the  torrent  of  their  fate',  and  dying  joyfully  and  gaily,  like 
Christian  gentlemen,  on  the  battle-field  or  '  the  deck,  which  was  their 
field  of  fame',  or,  by  some  strange  reverse  of  fortune,  by  a  no  less 
splendid  death  upon  the  scaffold  or  at  the  stake. 

This  unity  of  the  colloquial  language  and  the  language  of  literature 
will  be  illustrated  later  on,  but  as  immediate  proof  that  features  which  we 
should  now  consider  '  vulgarisms ',  or  too  slipshod  even  for  colloquial 
use,  were  in  the  sixteenth  century  current  in  Court  English,  and  that  they 
find  ttteir  way  into  works  of  first-rate  literary  importance,  we  may  mention 
that  such  features  occur  in  Lord  Berners'  translation  of  Froissart,  in 
Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  Gouernour,  in  Bp.  Larimer's  Sermons  before  Edward  VI, 
in  Edward  VI's  First  Prayer  Book,  in  the  works  of  Roger  Ascham,  in 
Lyly,  both  in  his  dramas  and  in  Euphues,  that  model  of  propriety  in 
language,  and  in  the  First  Folio  of  Shakespeare.  These  are  the  works 
of  only  a  few  writers  from  among  the  many  that  might  be  mentioned,  but 
between  them  they  cover  practically  the  whole  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
the  authors  must  all  be  assumed  to  have  been  conversant  with  the  English 
of  the  Court.  These  writers  were  all  scholars  as  well  as  courtiers,  but  they 
are  no  less  prone  to  introduce  into  their  books,  colloquialisms  of  the  type  of 
sarmont  and  orphant,  and  many  others,  than  are  the  less  bookish  admirals 


102   ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

and  men  of  business  of  the  period  to  put  these  things  into  their  private 
letters. 

It  is  thus  clear  that  the  standards  of  refinement  which  in  a  later  day 
forbade  such  forms  to  speech  and  writing  alike,  were  unknown  to  some 
of  the  best  scholars  well  acquainted,  between  them,  with  the  standards  of 
speech  at  every  Court  from  Henry  VIII  to  Elizabeth. 

The  English  of  the  sixteenth  century,  both  in  the  printed  works  and 
in  private  letters,  still  shows  considerable  dialectal  individualism.  The 
Standard,  as  we  have  said,  is  not  yet  completely  fixed.  While  the  more 
pronounced  features  of  Regional  dialect  are  absent,  there  remains  con- 
siderable variety  of  usage  among  writers  belonging  approximately  to  the 
same  social  stratum.  Since  this  variety  is  found  both  in  published  works 
of  Literature  and  in  private  correspondence,  we  are  entitled  to  argue  that 
a  rather  large  degree  of  latitude  existed  in  the  Standard  Spoken  English 
of  the  period,  and  that  if  we  assume  that  the  unstudied  language  of 
private  letters  gives  a  true  picture  of  the  actual  speech  of  the  writers,  the 
variety  in  forms  found  in  literary  works  is  also  an  indication  of  the 
variety  existing  in  speech,  since  the  kind  of  variety  found  in  Literary 
English  is  identical  with  that  found  in  the  private  letters.  When  we  are 
able  to  compare  the  private  letters  with  the  literary  compositions  of  the 
same  writer,  as  for  instance  is  possible  in  the  case  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
herself,  we  find  that  the  distinctive  features  are  the  same  in  both.  This 
circumstance  is  a  further  proof  of  the  identity  of  the  English  of  Literature 
with  the  Spoken  Standard  of  the  Court.  Considerable  latitude  of  usage, 
we  have  said,  is  tolerated  in  both,  and  the  same  kind  of  latitude.  We 
shall  later  study  in  more  detail,  the  variety  upon  \vhich  we  are  insisting, 
but  we  may  briefly  indicate  some  of  the  points  at  once. 

First,  there  are  different  types  of  pronunciation  in  the  same  words : — 
e.g.  bisie,  besie;  than  and  then]  whan  and  when",  geve  and  giv(e] ;  sowne 
and  sound;  bankette  and  banquet ';  fader  and  father ;  moder  and  mother  ; 
stop  and  stap ;  hott,  hoate,  and  whot  'hot';  which  spellings  show  (i)  a 
pronunciation  similar  to  that  of  the  present  day,  (2)  one  with  a  long 
vowel,  (3)  one  with  a  short  vowel  but  with  an  initial  w  or  wh ;  one  (pro- 
nounced as  now  in  0#-ly);  wone  (pronounced,  as  one  is  now,  with  an 
initial^-);  othew\&wolhe\  other  and  wother ;  earth  zn&y  earth.  Finally, 
we  may  mention  the  remarkable  variety  in  the  distribution  of-er-  and  -ar- 
forms  in  hert  and  hart,  service  and  sarvice,  swerve  and  swarve,  ferm  and 
farm,  and  all  the  other  words  of  this  group. 

In  the  realm  of  accidence,  we  begin  with  Nouns.  Weak  Pis.  occur  by 
the  side  of  the  more  usual  Strong  Pis.  (and  that  in  writers  like  Wilson  and 
Ascham),  e.  g.  housen  for  houses,  peason  for  peas,  shoon  for  shoes,  sisterne 
by  the  side  of  the  more  usual  sisters.  In  Possessives  of  words  ending  in 
~f  we  often  find  v  before  the  suffix,  as  in  the  PI.,  e.  g.  wolves,  wives,  by 
the  side  of  forms  with  f  as  at  present — my  wife's  father,  &c.  It  is  still 
permissible  to  use  the  old  uninflected  Possessive  of  Feminine  Nouns : — 
the  Scotish  Quene  lettres  (Lord  Burghley) ;  my  ladye  Elizabethe  grace,  but 
my  ladye  Maryes  grace  (both  in  Latimer). 

The  Neuter  Pronoun  is  still  written  hit  as  well  as  it.  The  Indefinite 
Article  occurs  without  the  final  -n  before  vowels — a  opinion,  &c. 

The  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  of  Verbs  ends  in  -s  in  some  writers,  with 


COURT  ENGLISH  AND   PROVINCIAL  ENGLISH      103 

considerable  frequency,  at  a  point  in  the  century  when  others  use  it 
but  rarely,  and  others  not  at  all. 

These  are  but  a  few  samples  of  variety  taken  from  a  large  number,  but 
they  are  enough  to  establish  our  point. 

It  is  evident  that  these  differences  of  usage  are  more  considerable 
in  character  than  those  at  present  tolerated  in  Received  Standard 
Spoken  English,  while  in  written  English,  except  in  poetry,  there  is  now 
practically  no  latitude  of  this  kind  at  all. 

If  we  consider  the  possible  variations  in  pronunciation  which  would 
pass  muster  at  the  present  day  in  Received  Standard,  we  shall  find  that 
they  are  very  few  in  number.  They  consist  chiefly  in  a  few  classes  of 
words  which  admit  of  two  types,  such  as  [L?f,  kof]  '  cough ',  [pu9,  po] 
'poor',  &c. 

The  deduction  from  the  above  is  that  in  the  sixteenth  century  the 
relation  between  Standard  Spoken  and  Literary  English  was  more 
intimate  than  at  present,  and  that  the  greater  allowable  latitude  of  usage 
which  existed  in  the  former  was  reflected  in  the  latter.  While  we  insist 
upon  the  existence  of  a  standard  of  speech  at  least  as  early  as  Henry  VIII, 
and  probably  earlier  (see  p.  5  above),  it  is  not  suggested  that  this  had 
anything  like  the  currency  which  Received  Standard  has  at  the  present 
day,  nor  can  the  general  diffusion  of  this  among  the  higher  classes  be 
assumed  much  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  there  is  good  reason  for  thinking  that  the 
Standard  was  practically  confined  to  those  persons  who  frequented  the 
Court,  or  who  came  directly  or  indirectly  under  the  influence  of  Court 
speech.  The  various  Regional  dialects,  more  or  less  modified  doubtless 
by  the  habits  in  vogue  at  Court,  as  these  filtered  through  the  Universities, 
and  some  of  the  clergy,  were  still  spoken  by  all  classes  in  country  districts. 
That  many  members  of  the  country  squire  class  still  spoke  Regional  dialect 
well  into  the  eighteenth  century,  and,  in  isolated  instances,  much  later,  is  evi- 
dent from  various  sources.  (See,  however,  pp.  163,  166-7,  below.)  Putten- 
ham,  or  whoever  wrote  The  Arte  of  English  Poesie  (1580),  recommends  as 
the  best  type  of  English  '  the  vsual  speach  of  the  Court,  and  that  of  London 
and  the  shires  lying  about  London  within  IX  myles  and  not  much  aboue '. 
He  remarks  that  '  Northern-men  .  .  .  whether  they  be  noblemen  or 
gentlemen,  or  of  their  best  clarkes ',  use  a  type  of  English  which  is  '  not 
so  Courtly  nor  so  currant  as  our  Southerne  English  is '.  That  is  to  say, 
the  upper  classes,  and  educated  persons  generally,  in  the  provinces,  do 
not  speak  Standard  English,  but  their  own  Regional  dialect.  It  is 
recorded  that  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  spoke  with  a  strong  Devonshire  accent. 

Already  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII  people  paid  attention  to  the  '  proper ' 
pronunciation  of  English,  and  we  find  Palsgrave  (1530  and  1532)  (see 
p.  198,  below)  referring  with  disapproval  to  a  current  pronunciation 
of  the  old  short  a,  other  than  the  '  true '  one.  In  a  letter  to  '  his  right 
honorable  maister  Mr.  Thomas  Crumwell  chief  Secretary  vnto  the  Kings 
Maiestie ',  Henry  Dowes,  the  tutor  of  Gregory  Cromwell,  reports  con- 
cerning that  young  gentleman's  education,  and  refers  to  a  certain  Mr. 
Southwell  '  dailie  heringe  hime  to  reade  sumwhatt  in  thenglishe  tongue, 
and  advertisenge  hime  of  the  naturell  and  true  kynde  of  pronuntiacon 
thereof.  Now  this  talk  of  'true  pronunciation'  as  distinct  from  some 


io4  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

other  kind,  is  a  new  thing  in  English,  and  implies  a  definite  recognition 
of  a  Standard  form. 

Sir  Thomas  Elyot  writes  in  his  Gouernour : — 

Hit  shall  be  expedient  that  a  noblemanes  sonne  in  his  infancie,  haue  with 
hym  continually  onely  suche  as  may  accustome  hym  by  litle  and  litle  to 
speake  pure  and  elegant  latin.  Semblably  the  nourishes  and  other  women 
aboute  hym,  if  it  be  possible,  to  do  the  same;  or,  at  the  leste  way  that 
they  speke  none  englisshe  but  that  which  is  cleane,  polite,  perfectly  and 
articulately  pronounced,  omittinge  no  lettre  or  sillable,  as  folisshe  women 
oftentimes  do  of  a  wantonnesse,  wherby  diuers  noble  men  and  gentilmennes 
chyldren,  (as  I  do  at  this  daye  knowej  haue  attained  corrupte  and  foule 
pronuntiation. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Henry  VIII  and  of  his  children  that  they  loved 
learning  and  that  their  Courts  were  the  resort  of  scholars.  Henry,  whose 
most  absorbing  interests  were  matrimony  and  theology,  was  himself  no 
mean  scholar.  Writing  in  1550,  Ascham  says  of  King  Edward  VI  (I  use 
Giles's  translation  of  the  Latin,  see  Ascham's  Works,  vol.  i,  pp.  Ixii  and 
Ixiii),  '  Our  illustrious  King  Edward  surpasses  all  men,  as  well  as  his  own 
years,  and  every  one's  expectations,  in  talent,  industry,  perseverance,  and 
learning '.  Of  Princess  Elizabeth,  then  sixteen  years  of  age,  he  says  in 
the  same  letter — '  There  are  many  honourable  ladies  now  who  surpass 
Thomas  More's  daughters  in  all  kinds  of  learning,  but  among  all  of  them 
the  brightest  star  is  my  illustrious  Lady  Elizabeth  the  King's  sister :  .  .  . 
she  had  me  for  her  tutor  in  Greek  and  Latin  for  two  years.  .  .  .  She  talks 
French  and  Italian  as  well  as  English;  she  has  often  talked  with  me 
readily  and  well  in  Latin,  and  moderately  so  in  Greek.  When  she 
writes  Greek  and  Latin,  nothing  is  more  beautiful  than  her  hand- 
writing', and  so  on.  In  view  of  Elizabeth's  later  tastes  in  dress,  it  is 
interesting  to  find  Ascham  saying,  '  In  adornment  she  is  elegant  rather 
than  showy,  and  by  her  contempt  of  gold  and  head-dresses,  she  reminds 
one  of  Hippolite  rather  than  of  Phaedra'.  Ascham's  account,  in  his 
Scholemaster,  of  his  visit  to  Lady  Jane  Grey  at  Leicester  is  well  known, 
but  a  briefer  reference  to  this  event  occurs  in  a  letter  to  Sturm  in  1550. 
'I  found  the  noble  damsel — Oh  ye  gods! — reading  Plato's  Phaedo  in 
Greek,  and  so  thoroughly  understanding  it,  that  she  caused  me  the 
greatest  astonishment '  (Giles,  vol.  i,  p.  Ixxi).  In  the  same  letter  he 
refers  to  another  learned  lady,  Mildred,  daughter  of  Antony  Cook  (or 
Coke)  and  wife  of  William  Cecil,  who,  he  says,  '  understands  and  talks 
Greek  as  well  as  English '. 

Harrison,  in  his  Description  of  England,  says  of  Elizabeth's  Court : 
'  The  stranger  that  entereth  in  the  court  of  England  upon  the  sudden, 
shall  rather  imagine  himselfe  to  come  into  some  publike  schoole  of  the  uni- 
versities, where  manie  giue  eare  to  one  that  readeth,  than  into  a  princes 
palace,  if  you  conferre  the  same  with  those  of  other  nations/  Holinshed, 
Vol.  I,  p.  196,  Ed.  of  1586. 

It  is  remarkable  what  a  number  of  those  who  under  the  Tudors  held 
great  offices  of  State,  were  employed  in  some  more  or  less  responsible 
position  about  the  Court,  or  who  were  sent  on  embassies  abroad,  were 
also  distinguished  in  learning  and  literature.  The  gentle,  saintly,  and 
learned  Sir  Thomas  More  (1478-1535),  the  author  of  Utopia,  was  a  sue- 


SCHOLARS,   SOLDIERS,   AND   STATESMEN          105 

cessful  barrister,  a  member  of  Parliament ;  he  served  on  various  embassies 
abroad,  was  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  Lord  Chancellor  of 
England.  John  Bourchier,  second  Baron  Berners  (1467-1 533),  who  in  his 
noble  translation  of  Froissart  approaches  nearer  than  any  other  writer  of  his 
age  to  the  grand  style  in  prose,  was  a  soldier,  a  diplomatist,  and  Chancellor  of 
the  Exchequer ;  he  accompanied  Henry  at  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold. 
Sir  Thomas  Elyot  (c.  1499-1546),  author  of  the  Gouernour,  and  friend  of 
More,  was  Clerk  to  the  Privy  Council,  M.P.  for  Cambridge,  and  was  sent 
as  ambassador  to  Charles  V.  Roger  Ascham  (1515-68),  whose  name 
is  best  remembered  by  his  Toxophilus,  a  treatise  on  archery,  and  by  the 
Schokmaster p,  after  being  for  many  years  a  Cambridge  don,  was  appointed 
tutor  to  Princess  Elizabeth,  was  secretary  to  the  English  Ambassador  to 
Charles  V,  Latin  secretary  to  Queen  Mary,  and  later  on  secretary  to 
Queen  Elizabeth.  Sir  John  Cheke  (1514-57),  who  very  literally  'taught 
Cambridge  and  King  Edward  Greek',  since  he  was  Professor  of  that 
language  in  the  University,  and  tutor  to  Edward  VI,  was  Clerk  of  the 
Privy  Council  and  a  Secretary  of  State.  Thomas  Wilson  (1525-81), 
author  of  the  Arte  of  Rhetorique  and  the  Rule  of  Reason,  a  writer  of  pure 
and  unaffected  English  prose,  was  M.P.,  served  on  several  foreign 
missions,  and  was  a  Secretary  of  State.  Sir  Thomas  Smith  (1513-77), 
author,  in  Latin,  of  a  treatise  De  Recta  et  Emendala  Linguae  Anglicae 
Scriptione  Dialogus,  and,  in  English,  of  an  admirable  account  of  the 
English  Constitution,  De  Republica  Anglorum,  was  Regius  Professor  of 
Civil  Law  at  Cambridge,  Vice-Chancellor  of  the  University,  and  Provost 
of  Eton,  was  employed  on  foreign  missions,  and  was  ambassador  in 
France  in  1562.  He  left  several  entertaining  private  letters  concerning 
his  experiences  abroad.  Lastly,  in  considering  the  roll  of  scholar- 
statesmen,  we  may  recall  that  Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Verulam  (1561-1626), 
was  M.P.  for  Liverpool  and  other  boroughs,  was  Attorney-General, 
Lord  Keeper,  and  Lord  Chancellor  of  England. 

But  if  the  number  of  scholars  and  authors  who  took  an  active  part  in 
politics  and  the  affairs  of  State  is  large,  no  less  striking  is  the  roll  of  those 
who,  being  of  high  birth,  and  courtiers,  politicians,  or  soldiers  by  tradition 
and  circumstances,  also  cultivated  literature  with  enthusiasm  and  often 
with  distinction.  Of  these  it  is  sufficient  to  mention  a  few.  Henry 
Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey  (c.  1517-47),  one  of  the  chief  contributors  to 
Tottel's  Miscellany  of  Songes  and  Sonnet tes  (1557),  the  translator  of 
Books  II  and  III  of  the  Aeneid  into  blank  verse,  which  does  not,  it  is 
true,  strike  a  very  high  poetic  note : — 

They  whisted  all,  with  fixed  face  attent, 
When  prince  ^Eneas  from  the  royal  seat 
Thus  gan  to  speak:    O  Queen,  it  is  thy  will 
I  should  renew  a  woe  cannot  be  told, 

and  so  on.  Surrey  wrote  many  poems  besides  those  in  Tottel,  including 
paraphrases  of  Scripture  and  love  poems,  but  his  chief  claim  to  be 
remembered  as  an  author  rests  upon  his  introduction  (along  with  Wyatt) 
of  the  sonnet  into  English.  Perhaps  the  sonnet  of  Surrey's  best  worth 
remembering  is  that  beginning : — 

The  soote  season  that  bud  and  blome  furth  bringes. 


106  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Like  the  work  of  nearly  all  the  poets  of  the  late  fifteenth  and  early 
sixteenth  century  many  of  Surrey's  lines  appear  to  halt  through  uncer- 
tainty of  accentuation,  and  of  the  number  of  syllables.  The  above  line, 
for  instance,  requires  the  accent  to  be  placed  upon  the  second  syllable  of 
season,  and,  in  the  same  sonnet,  the  line — The  swift  swalow  pursueth  the 
fiyes  smale,  requires  a  strong  stress  on  the  second  syllable  of  swalow,  needs 
that  pursueth  should  have  only  two  syllables,  and  that  in  fiyes  the  flexional 
syllable  (long  lost  in  natural  speech)  should  be  pronounced. 

Such  apparent  anomalies  are  no  doubt  due  to  the  fact  that  poets  were 
torn  between  the  old  M.E.  tradition  of  Chaucer,  which  preserved  the 
unstressed  flexional  endings  as  separate  syllables  and  often  accented 
words  like  nature,  sesoun,  after  the  French  method,  upon  the  second 
syllable,  and  the  modern  colloquial  usage  in  which  the  English  manner 
of  accentuation,  upon  the  first  syllable,  was  rapidly  becoming  the  exclusive 
method,  while  the  endings  -ed,  -es,  &c.,  except  in  certain  specific  circum- 
stances, as  at  present  had  lost  the  vowel,  and  were  no  longer  pronounced 
as  separate  syllables.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  -es,  the  Possessive  of 
Nouns,  survived  longer  as  a  separate  syllable  than  the  same  ending  as 
a  Plural  (see  pp.  314-15,  319,  below). 

This  accomplished  and  gallant  gentleman  fell  a  victim  to  the  jealousy 
of  '  that  majestic  lord  ',  Henry  VIII.  His  romantic  and  unfortunate  love 
for  the  fair  Geraldine  inspired  Scott  with  one  of  his  most  moving  ballads, 
while  his  genius,  his  valour,  and  his  misfortunes  called  forth  from  the 
chivalrous  poet  that  noble  tribute  which  few  now  will  care  to  challenge : — 

The  gentle  Surrey  loved  his  lyre—- 
Who has  not  heard  of  Surrey's  fame? 
His  was  the  hero's  soul  of  fire, 
And  his  the  bard's  immortal  name, 
And  his  was  love,  exalted  high 
By  all  the  glow  of  chivalry. 

Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  (1503-42),  the  reputed  lover  of  Anne  Boleyn,  also 
contributed  to  Tottel  many  love  poems.  To  him  perhaps  belongs,  rather 
than  to  Surrey,  the  honour  of  having  written  actually  the  first  English 
sonnet,  but  he  will  be  longest  remembered  by  the  lovely  little  song  The 
louer  complayneth  the  vnkmdnes  of  his  loue,  of  which  we  may  quote  the  best 
verses,  that  is,  the  first  and  the  three  last : — 

My  lute  awake  performe  the  last 
Labour  that  thou  and  I  shall  waste; 
And  end  that  I  haue  now  begonne : 
And  when  this  song  is  song  and  past : 
My  lute  be  styll  for  I  haue  done. 


May  chance  thee  lie  witherd  and  olde, 
In  winter  nightes  that  are  so  colde, 
Playning  in  vaine  vnto  the  mone : 
Thy  wishes  then  dare  not  be  tolde. 
Care  then  who  lest,  for  I  haue  done. 


COURTIERS   AND   SOLDIERS  AS   POETS  107 

And  then  may  chance  thee  to  repent 
The  time  that  them  hast  lost  and  spent 
To  cause  thy  louers  sigh  and  swowne. 
Then  shalt  thou  know  beaute  but  lent, 
And  wish  and  want  as  I  haue  done. 

Now  cease  my  lute  this  is  the  last 
Labour  that  thou  and  I  shall  wast, 
And  ended  is  that  we  begonne. 
Now  is  this  song  both  song  and  past, 
My  lute  be  still  for  I  haue  done. 

Thomas  Sackville,  Lord  Buckhurst  and  first  Earl  of  Dorset  (1536- 
1608),  a  cousin  of  Anne  Boleyn,  and  the  ancestor  of  the  Dukes  of 
Dorset,  among  many  other  offices,  was  M.P.  before  being  raised  to  the 
peerage,  a  privy  councillor,  an  ambassador,  a  commissioner  at  State 
trials,  and  to  him  fell  the  duty  of  announcing  the  death  sentence  to  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots.  He  planned  a  great  work,  The  Mir  our  for  Magistrates, 
the  object  of  which  was  to  show  '  by  examples  passed  in  this  Realme, 
with  how  greevous  plagues  Vices  are  punished  in  great  Princes  and  Magis- 
trates, and  how  frayle  and  unstable  worldly  prosperitie  is  found,  where 
Fortune  seemeth  most  highly  to  favour ',  of  which,  unfortunately,  he  only 
had  leisure  to  write  the  Introduction,  or,  as  he  calls  it,  the  Induction, 
and  the  Complaint  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham.  The  work  shows 
genuine  poetic  feeling  and  a  fine  facility  for  verse,  as  may  be  judged  from 
the  single  stanza  here  quoted : 

And  sorrowing  I  to  see  the  summer  flowers, 

The  lively  green,  the  lusty  leas  forlorn, 

The  sturdy  trees  so  shattered  with  the  showers, 

The  fields  so  fade  that  flourished  so  beforn, 

It  taught  me  well,  all  earthly  things  be  born 

To  die  the  death,  -for  nought  long  time  may  last ; 

The  summer's  beauty  yields  to  winter's  blast. 

Sackville's  position  in  the  history  of  English  literature  is  chiefly  due, 
howeyer,  to  his  being  the  part  author  of  Gorboduc,  the  first  English 
tragedy  in  blank  verse,  which  was  acted  in  1561.  Of  this  work  it  may 
be  said  that  the  last  t«vo  acts,  which  critics  attribute  to  Sackville,  have 
considerably  more  poetic  quality  than  the  earlier  ones  by  Thomas  Norton  ; 
the  diction  of  the  former  is  in  the  grand  manner,  and  the  ideas  and 
images  both  noble  and  striking.  The  verse,  however,  though  generally 
musical  enough,  has  an  air  of  strangeness,  as  of  a  first  attempt,  and 
rather  suggests  to  the  ear  the  effect  of  couplets  with  the  rhymes  left  out. 

Of  all  the  brilliant  and  memorable  figures  which  made  illustrious  the 
age  of  Elizabeth,  none  is  more  romantic  and  attaching  than  that  of  the 
accomplished,  the  gallant,  the  chivalrous  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  whose  name, 
indeed,  and  the  splendid  qualities  of  character  and  genius  of  which  it  has 
become  the  symbol,  would  lend  a  special  dignity  to  any  age  and  any 
country. 

Of  all  the  writers  of  his  class,  traditions,  and  habitual  occupations,  his 
contribution  to  literature  is,  with  the  exception  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's, 
the  most  considerable  in  extent,  and  it  is  certainly  among  the  most 
remarkable  in  quality.  His  Defense  of  Poesie  is  a  classic,  though,  as 
Mr.  Gosse  excellently  says,  it  '  labours  under  but  one  disadvantage, 


io8  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

namely,  that  when  it  was  composed  in  1581,  there  was  scarcely  any  poesy 
in  England  to  be  defended '.  His  gigantic,  and  to  us  perhaps  somewhat 
tedious,  pageantries  of  poems,  Asfrop/iel  and  S/e//a,and  those  in  \ht  Arcadia, 
are  nevertheless  remarkable  in  the  variety  of  their  experiments  in  metre,  and 
remain  gorgeous,  if  somewhat  unwieldy,  relics  of  an  age  when  even 
courtiers  and  captains  took  poetry  seriously.  Sidney's  poetical  industry 
was  untiring — he  was  indeed,  as  he  says,  '  admitted  into  the  company  of 
the  paper-blurrers ' — he  attained  a  wonderful  mastery  of  technique,  and  if 
none  of  his  sonnets  are  among  the  best  in  the  language,  there  is  certainly 
no  other  writer,  outside  the  great  masters,  who  has  produced  so  many 
of  such  a  high  degree  of  excellence.  But  Sidney  is,  above  all  things, 
a  great  English  gentleman — '  I  say  that  my  chiefest  honour  is  to  be 
a  Dudley ' — and  our  immediate  point  is  that  being  this,  and  all  that  it 
implied  in  his  age,  he  loved  poetry  and  practised  it  assiduously.  Were 
it  only  for  the  manner  of  his  death  it  would  be  '  vain  to  praise,  and  use- 
less to  blame  him '. 

Nor  had  '  the  noble  and  valorous  Sir  Walter  Raleigh ',  as  Spenser  calls 
him,  a  career  less  romantic  and  picturesque  than  Sidney's,  though  less 
happy  in  the  manner  of  his  death.  As  a  writer  he  was  far  more  volumi- 
nous. The  son  of  a  Devonshire  gentleman,  born  about  1552,  he  was  at 
Oriel  College,  sailed  with  his  half-brother,  the  famous  Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert,  was  at  Court,  in  high  favour  with  the  Queen,  from  whom  he 
obtained  several  grants  of  land,  married  Elizabeth  Throckmorton,  went 
in  search  of  treasure  in  the  New  World  and  failed  to  find  it,  fought  at 
Cadiz  and  at  the  Azores  with  distinction,  was  tried  for  high  treason  under 
James  I,  found  guilty  on  the  flimsiest  evidence,  sentenced  to  death  with 
all  the  hideous  circumstances  associated  at  that  time  with  such  a  sen- 
tence and  such  a  crime  ;  was  reprieved,  and  after  living  for  thirteen  years 
with  his  wife,  in  the  Tower,  was  at  last  set  free.  His  insatiable  spirit  of 
adventure  led  him  once  more  to  make  a  voyage  to  Orinoco,  lured  by 
dreams  of  fabulous  wealth  to  be  found  in  the  mines  of  El  Dorado.  This 
expedition  was  equipped  by  Raleigh  himself,  who  realized  all  his  own 
and  his  wife's  property  for  the  purpose.  It  was  largely  manned  by 
gentlemen  adventurers,  most  of  whom  were  Sir  Walter's  kinsmen. 
Disaster  by  storm  and  sickness  dogged  his  steps,  and  while  he  was  ill 
from  fever  his  captain,  Kemis.  to  whom  the  command  of  the  expedition 
passed,  destroyed  the  Spanish  settlement  of  San  Tome,  thus  breaking 
Raleigh's  solemn  agreement  with  James  to  engage  in  no  hostilities  with 
the  Spaniards.  In  this  assault,  his  eldest  son  '  having ',  as  he  says,  '  more 
desire  of  honor  then  of  safety  was  slaine,  with  whome  (to  say  the 
truth)  all  respect  of  the  world  hath  taken  end  in  me '.  After  this  the 
crews  became  demoralized  and  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  return  to 
England.  He  was  soon  arrested ;  he  had  failed  to  find  the  treasure,  and 
he  had,  through  his  lieutenant's  action,  broken  faith.  After  spending 
a  short  period  in  the  Tower,  the  once  gay  and  splendid  Raleigh  died 
on  the  scaffold  by  virtue  of  his  former  sentence,  in  1 6 1 8. 

Raleigh  left  some  poems  of  great  merit,  though  many  have  been  lost ; 
among  those  which  survive  a  few  may  be  recalled  :  the  fine  sonnet  begin- 
ning Methought  I  saw  the  grave  where  Laura  lay,  and  the  Farewell, 
a  poem  of  thirteen  verses,  of  which  the  first  runs — 


SIR   WALTER   RALEIGH  109 

Go,  soul,  the  body's  guest 
Upon  a  thankless  errand ; ' 
Fear  not  to  touch  the  best ; 
The  truth  shall  be  thy  warrant. 
Go,  since  I  needs  must  die, 
And  give  them  all  the  lie. 

Equally  memorable  is  the  short  poem  supposed  to  have  been  written 
on  the  night  before  his  execution  : — 

Even  such  is  time  that  takes  on  trust 
Our  youth,  our  joys,  our  all  we  have, 
And  pays  us  but  with  age  and  dust; 
Who  in  the  dark  and  silent  grave, 
When  we  have  wandered  all  our  ways, 
Shuts  up  the  story  of  our  days  ! 
But  from  this  earth,  this  grave,  this  dust, 
My  God  shall  raise  me  up  I  trust. 

These,  if  indeed  they  are  by  Raleigh,  show  the  touch  of  a  true  poet 
and  craftsman. 

But  Raleigh  is  chiefly  known  to  us  as  a  writer  of  prose,  and  of  this 
he  was  a  consummate  master.  Besides  the  ambitious  History  of  the 
Worl^  which  occupies  six  large  volumes  in  the  Oxford  Edition  of 
Raleigh's  works  of  1829,  Sir  Walter  wrote  many  other  essays  upon 
historical,  political,  constitutional,  and  geographical  subjects,  as  well  as 
a  Discourse  upon  the  invention  of  ships,  and  Observations  on  the  Navy  and 
Sea  Service. 

We  cannot  forbear  giving  a  short  example  of  his  prose  style.  The 
magnificent  passage  '  O  eloquent,  just,  and  mighty  Death  !'  which  closes 
the  History  of  the  World,  is  commonly  quoted  and  well  known.  We 
select,  therefore,  from  that  most  fascinating  of  travellers'  tales,  the  Dis- 
covery of  Guiana,  a  passage  in  a  very  different  key. 

'  That  cassique  that  was  a  stranger  had  his  wife  staying  at  the  port  where 
we  anchored  ;  and  in  all  my  life  I  have  seldom  seen  a  better  favoured 
woman :  she  was  of  good  stature,  with  black  eyes,  fat  of  body,  of  an 
excellent  countenence,  her  hair  almost  as  long  as  herself,  tied  up  again  in 
pretty  knots ;  and  it  seemed  she  stood  not  in  that  awe  of  her  husband 
as  the  rest ;  for  she  spake  and  discoursed,  and  drank  among  the  gentle- 
men and  captains,  and  was  very  pleasant,  knowing  her  own  comeliness, 
and  taking  great  pride  therein.  I  have  seen  a  lady  in  England  so  like 
her,  as  but  for  the  difference  of  colour  I  would  have  sworn  might  have 
been  the  same.' 

Aubrey  said  of  Raleigh  that  he  was  '  a  tall,  handsome,  and  bold  man, 
but  damnable  proud'.  The  same  authority  states  that  he  heard  from 
Sir  Thomas  Malet,  one  of  the  justices  of  the  King's  Bench,  who  had 
known  Sir  Walter,  '  that  notwithstanding  his  so  great  mastership  in  style, 
and  his  conversation  with  the  learnedest  and  politest  persons,  yet  he 
spoke  broad  Devonshire  to  his  dyeing  day.  His  voice  was  small,  as 
likewise  were  my  schoolfellows  his  gr.  nephews.' 

Such  were  some  of  the  figures  that  distinguished  the  Court  of  Elizabeth 
and  her  immediate  predecessors.  They  have  been  dwelt  upon  here  thus 
far  because  the  intimate  union  of  learning  and  literature  with  action,  in  the 
field,  upon  the  high  seas,  or  in  the  council  chamber,  is  of  vital  importance 


no   ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

for  our  present  study.  The  Greek  professor  in  the  University  is  no  musty 
pedant  living  immersed  in  books  and  remote  from  life.  He  stands  before 
kings  and  is  not  ashamed ;  he  conducts  delicate  negotiations  at  his  own 
and  in  foreign  Courts.  The  professor  of  Civil  Law  knows  at  first  hand 
the  working  of  the  Law  which  he  expounds,  he  is  in  touch  with  living 
problems  of  the  constitution,  and  sees  history  and  legislation  in  the 
making.  He  must  cultivate  those  graces  of  manner  and  speech  which 
alone  can  commend  learning  to  the  truly  discerning  and  polite.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  courtier,  and  the  statesman  by  profession,  the  gallant 
soldier,  and  the  adventurous  sea-rover,  are  not  mere  fops,  cut-throats,  or 
quarter-deck  desperadoes.  They  can  turn  a  sonnet  as  easily  as  a  compli- 
ment, they  discuss  a  trope  as  eagerly  as  a  treaty,  they  play  pranks  with 
metres  with  as  much  zest  as  with  the  Spaniards ;  the  future  of  Poesie 
interests  them  as  keenly  as  the  fate  of  nations,  and  they  handle  a  pen  as 
deftly  as  they  do  the  lance  or  the  tiller.  Literature  is  not  the  property 
of  a  tribe  of  helots  living  in  obscure  corners  and  speaking  a  strange 
jargon,  but  the  common  heritage  and  patrimony  of  those  who  are  living 
and  doing,  and  who  speak  a  tongue  that  all  men  use.  The  scholar  and 
the  great  writer  appeal  not  merely  to  a  few  choice  souls  in  garrets  or  in 
pothouses ;  they  know  that  the  men  of  action,  who  are  themselves 
writers,  will  hear  them,  understand  their  '  great  language  '  and  cherish  it ; 
for  are  not  these  same  men  of  action  also  craftsmen  and  explorers,  not  in 
strange  lands  and  seas  only,  but  in  prose  and  verse  as  well  ? 

Ascham  can  write  to  Sir  William  Cecil  in  1548  :  'I  hope  you  will  devote 
some  of  your  time  to  cultivate  the  English  tongue,  so  that  men  might 
understand  that  even  our  language  allows  a  man  to  write  in  it  with 
beauty  and  eloquence.'  To  what  purpose  the  writing  of  English  was 
cultivated  by  several  of  Cecil's  sort  we  know.  It  is  not  without  signifi- 
cance that  Ascham  was  reputed  to  be  addicted  to  cock-fighting,  which  he 
says  is  '  of  all  kinds  of  pastime,  fit  for  a  gentleman '.  Here  was  the  kind 
of  man  whom  a  gentleman  might  trust  in  graver  matters  ! 

Now  it  is  not  for  nothing  that  matters  stood  thus  between  the  men  of 
letters  and  the  courtiers  and  explorers  in  the  age  when  Literary  English 
was  being  made,  or  rather,  let  us  say,  when  English  speech  was  being  put 
to  new  uses,  and  made  to  express  in  all  its  fullness  the  amazing  life  of 
a  wonderful  age,  with  all  its  fresh  experiences,  thoughts,  and  dreams. 

If  any  one  doubts  whether  the  language  of  Elizabethan  literature  was 
actually  identical  with  that  of  everyday  life,  or  whether  it  was  not  rather 
an  artful  concoction,  divorced  from  the  real  life  of  the  age,  let  him,  after 
reading  something  of  the  lives  and  opinions  of  a  few  of  the  great  men  we 
have  briefly  referred  to,  ask  himself  whether  the  picture  of  Ascham, 
Wilson,  Sidney,  or  Raleigh  posturing  and  mouthing  like  the  Delia 
Cru scans  of  a  later  age,  is  a  conceivable  one. 

Better  still,  let  him  compare  the  colloquial  language  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  as  it  is  found  in  the  private  letters  of  men  and  women  of  all  ranks 
and  occupations,  with  that  of  the  works  of  literature  of  the  same  period. 
The  more  the  colloquial  and  literary  types  of  the  sixteenth  century  are 
studied  side  by  side,  the  more  clearly  does  the  essential  unity  of  the 
language  appear. 

When  we  consider  the  various  kinds  of  eminence  collected  together  at 


DIFFERING   STANDARDS   OF   CORRECTNESS         in 

Queen  Elizabeth's  Court,  the  mental  and  literary  attainments  of  many  of 
the  foremost  men,  and  the  general  standard  of  taste  and  refinement 
among  the  courtiers  of  that  age,  we  shall  assert  that  the  English  which 
they  spoke  was  not  merely  reputed  the  best  type,  but  that  it  actually  was 
the  best  attainable.  We  shall  not  assent  to  the  view  that  certain  habits 
in  this  politest  form  of  Elizabethan  speech,  the  outcome  of  natural  lingu- 
istic tendencies,  which  are  different  from  those  now  prevalent  among  the 
best  speakers,  are  '  slipshod  ',  merely  because  a  later  age,  wishing  to  be 
more  '  correct ',  has  discarded  them.  If  the  speech  of  the  great  men  we 
have  been  considering  was  unaffected  and  natural,  it  certainly  was  not 
vulgar.  If  it  be  vulgar  to  say  whot  for  hot,  stap  for  stop,  offen  for  often, 
sarvice  for  service,  venter  for  venture ;  if  it  be  slipshod  to  say  Wensday  for 
Wednesday,  beseechin  for  beseeching,  stricly  for  strictly,  sounded  for  swooned, 
aitemps  for  attempts,  and  so  on ;  then  it  is  certain  that  the  Queen  herself,  and 
the  greater  part  of  her  Court,  must  plead  guilty  to  these  imputations  in 
some  or  all  of  the  above  instances.  The  absurdity  of  such  a  contention 
is  manifest,  and  it  will  not  be  seriously  made  by  those  who  are  properly 
informed  of  the  facts. 

Before  we  examine  in  some  detail  the  peculiarities  in  the  writings  of 
some  typical  authors  of  this  age,  there  are  one  or  two  general  questions 
which  fall  to  be  discussed. 

We  have  seen  that  the  language  of  the  Court  was  recognized  by 
Puttenham  as  the  best  type  of  spoken  English,  and  that  that  type  is  also 
recommended  for  the  use  of  writers.  We  have  contended  in  the  fore- 
going pages  that  the  colloquial  Court  English  was  as  a  matter  of  fact 
used  by  writers,  whether  learnt  from  books  or  by  actual  personal  ex- 
perience and  usage.  The  existence  of  a  Standard,  both  in  speaking  and 
writing,  and  that  the  same  Standard,  has  been  assumed  as  established 
beyond  cavil.  This  Standard  was  used,  as  far  as  possible,  in  writing, 
even  by  those  who  did  not  conform  to  it  in  speech.  The  more  oppor- 
tunities the  writer  had  for  being  acquainted  with  Court  English  the  nearer 
was  the  English  of  his  literary  works  to  that  Standard.  The  individualism 
in  spelling  which  still  to  a  certain  extent  prevailed  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
enables  us  to  collect  from  written  works,  to  a  far  higher  degree  than  at 
present,  the  individual  habits  of  speech  which  the  writer  possessed.  The 
result  of  an  examination  of  the  writings,  both  private  and  published,  of 
this  age,  from  this  point  of  view,  is  that  we  see  that  there  existed  there 
a  greater  degree  of  variety  in  speech — both  in  pronunciation  and  in  gram- 
matical forms — than  exists  now.  Such  variety  is  found  among  persons  of 
the  same  kind  of  education  and  social  standing,  possessing  equal  opportu- 
nities of  hearing  and  using  the  Court  dialect.  This  shows  that  Court 
English  was  by  no  means  so  uniform  as  present-day  Received  Standard, 
and,  since  the  relation  between  a  man's  mode  of  speech  and  his  manner  of 
writing  was  extremely  intimate,  the  language  of  literature  also  was  still 
liable  to  variation.  Such  is  a  brief  summary  of  what  we  have  so  far  arrived  at. 

The  question  arises,  How  far  are  the  apparent  varieties  the  result  of 
Regional,  and  how  far  of  Social,  speech  habits?  It  is  admitted  that 
varieties  of  the  former  kind  are  not  very  common  or  numerous.  But  if 
they  are  due  to  social  causes,  may  they  not,  in  the  printed  works  of  the 
period  at  least,  be  the  work  of  the  printer  ?  An  interesting  investigation 


ii2  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

would  be  to  show  how  far  the  printer  of  this  period  followed,  in  the  main  at 
any  rate,  the  author's  manuscript,  and  how  far  he  departed  from  it  and 
introduced  his  own  spelling.  Perhaps  some  day,  when  research  in  these 
questions  of  the  history  of  our  native  language  is  properly  organized  in 
this  country,  some  one  will  carry  out  such  an  investigation  among 
many  others.  In  the  meantime  we  can  only  argue  from  what  we  know. 

It  might  be  contended  that  while  a  polite  and  fastidious  Court  would 
tolerate  a  rustic  mode  of  speech — as  indeed  it  must  have  borne  with 
Raleigh's  Devonshire  accent — it  would  reprobate  and  ostracize  persons 
who  spoke  with  the  accent,  or  otherwise  after  the  fashion,  of  a  lower 
social  stratum.  It  is  one  thing  to  listen  to  a  gentleman  using  the  dialect, 
or  a  modified  form  of  it,  from  his  native  county ;  it  is  quite  another  thing, 
and  far  less  bearable,  to  hear  the  eccentricities  of  the  Custard  Makers' 
wives,  and  Sunday  Citizens  of  London  Town.  But  is  it  not  more  likely 
therefore,  it  may  be  asked,  that  those  varieties  found  in  printed  books,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  not  of  Regional  origin,  are  in  reality  not  those  of  the 
writers'  own  speech,  when  these  were  in  a  position  to  know  how  people 
spoke  at  Court,  but  mere  vulgarisms  of  the  printers  ?  Are  we  justified  in 
attributing  to  the  writers  many  of  the  peculiarities  of  pronunciation,  &c., 
that  occur  in  printed  works,  and  in  drawing  conclusions  from  them  as  to 
the  speech  of  the  author  himself? 

It  certainly  makes  an  enormous  difference  whether  we  are  being 
let  into  the  secrets  of  the  habits  of  speech  of  Latimer,  Wilson,  and 
Ascham,  or  only  into  those  of  some  unknown  and  humble  compositor. 

In  this  work  it  is  assumed  that  we  are  entitled  to  take  the  printed 
books  as  reflecting  the  actual  speech  of  the  authors  themselves,  and  that 
for  the  following  reasons : 

(1)  The  varieties  referred  to,  while  as  a  rule  they  do  not  suggest  any 
specifically  Regional  origin,  are  not,  so  far  as  can  be  judged,  of  the  nature 
of  vulgarisms.     For  the  most  part  they  consist  merely  in  differences  of 
distribution  of  elements  which  we  know  to  have  existed  originally  in  the 
dialect  of  London. 

(2)  If  the  varieties  in  the  language  of  printed  works  were  solely  or 
chiefly  the  work  of  the  printers,  we  should  expect  definite  vulgarisms  such 
as  are  found  habitually  used  in  Machyn's  Diary. 

(3)  The  same  varieties  are  found  in  private  letters  of  the  period  which 
were  not  printed  at  all  for  hundreds  of  years  afterwards. 

(4)  The  same,  or  similar,  diversities  in  pronunciation  may  be  inferred 
from   the   statements  of  writers  upon   English   pronunciation   such  as 
Palsgrave,  Salesbury,  and  Smith. 

(5)  The  printers  are  unlikely  to  introduce,  of  themselves,  any  con- 
siderable novelties  in  spelling.     They  are  conservative  and  conventional, 
and  follow  the  main  lines  of  the  old  scribal  tradition.     It  is  more  likely 
that  they  would  eliminate  the  '  incorrect '  spellings  of  the  authors'  manu- 
script than  introduce  these  themselves. 

(6)  The  individualities  found  in  the  printed  works,  as  in  the  private 
letters,   are    not   all   concerned   with   pronunciation,    but   include   also 
differences  in  the  use  of  grammatical  forms.     These  the  printer  would 
hardly  alter. 

From  these  considerations,  and  also^  from   the  impression  of  con- 


DIVERSITY  IN   SPELLING  113 

sistency  and  genuineness  produced  by  the  perusal  of  a  large  number  of 
sixteenth-century  published  books,  an  effect  which  it  is  very  difficult  to 
analyse,  the  present  writer  is  convinced  that  we  are  justified  in  regarding 
the  outstanding  linguistic  features  in  printed  literature  of  this  period  as 
really  reflecting  the  individualities  of  the  authors,  and  not  of  the  printers. 
If  the  language  of  books  is  less  individual  than  that  of  private  letters,  it  is 
because  in  writing  a  serious  literary  work,  destined  for  the  public,  the 
author  was  less  unrestrained  and  followed  the  conventional  spelling  of 
the  day — rather  an  elastic  one  at  the  best,  or  the  worst— more  rigidly 
than  in  familiar  correspondence. 

Writers  vary,  even  in  their  letters,  in  the  degree  and  frequency  of  their 
departures  from  the  normal  spelling,  and  it  is  true,  on  the  whole,  that 
academic  writers  and  ecclesiastics  adhere  more  rigidly  to  a  conventional, 
and  therefore  an  unenlightening  spelling  than  the  pure  man  of  action  or 
the  courtier.  But  even  within  these  classes  there  are  persons  who  are  more 
precise  than  others.  Thus  the  sermons  of  Latimer,  though  preached 
before  the  King,  are  much  less  orthodox,  and  therefore  more  interesting, 
in  spelling,  style,  and  thought,  than  those  of  John  Fisher,  Bishop  of 
Rochester.  Ascham  is  less  conventional  than  More  or  Sir  Thomas 
Smith ;  Wolsey,  Cromwell,  Cranmer,  Burghley,  and  Bacon  are  more  so 
in  their  letters  than  Henry  VIII,  Anne  Boleyn,  Admiral  Lord  Seymour,  or 
Queen  Elizabeth.  The  letters  of  women,  as  we  saw  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  shall  see  again  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  are  far  less 
carefully  spelt  as  a  rule  than  those  of  men,  and  tell  us  more  concerning 
their  actual  mode  of  speech. 

The  next  point  is,  granting  that  the  occasional  spellings  really  mean 
something,  and  that  they  really  express  the  writers'  own  speech,  how  far 
we  shall  go  in  the  inferences  we  draw  in  regard  to  this.  It  must  be 
made  clear  that  the  phonetic  spellings,  which  we  advisedly  call  occasional 
spellings,  are  rarely  consistently  used  by  the  same  writer,  even  for  the 
same  word.  Now  if  we  find  the  spelling  sarvts,  &c.,  we  may  quite  safely 
assume  that  the  writer  pronounced  in  the  first  syllable  a  vowel  which, 
whatever  its  precise  nature,  was  better  expressed  in  that  way  than  by  the 
spelling  -er-.  But  supposing,  as  often  happens,  the  same  writer  also  puts 
down  servis  in  the  same  letter  or  document.  Are  we  to  assume  that  he, 
or  she,  used  two  pronunciations  of  the  same  word  ?  I  think  not,  and 
should  conclude  that  a  single  such  departure  from  the  traditional  spelling  of 
a  word  would  show  that  this  was  the  type  of  pronunciation  employed  by 
that  writer.  If  not,  and  if  the  traditional  spelling  expressed  his  pronuncia- 
tion best,  why  should  he  ever  depart  from  it?  A  much  more  difficult 
question  is  this.  Suppose  a  writer  spells  sarvt's,  hard  'heard',  dark, 
szvarve,  dark,  &c.,  each  of  them  once,  or  many  times,  whence  we  conclude 
that,  in  those  particular  words,  he  certainly  pronounced  -ar-,  but  always 
werk  '  work ',  swerd  '  sword ',  ferm  ' farm ',  sermon,  never  writing  -ar-  in 
these  words,  are  we  to  extend  the  -ar-  pronunciation  to  these  and  all  the 
other  words  belonging  to  the  old  -er-  group,  and  assume  that  this  writer 
pronounced  -ar-  here  as  well,  although  he  never  happens  to  lapse  from 
the  traditional  spelling  in  their  case  ? 

If  London  polite  English  had  ever  hitherto  been  a  uniform  dialect,  or 
had  become  so  by  the  sixteenth  century,  we  should  certainly  answer  this 


n4  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

question  in  the  affirmative.  But  we  know  that  this  was  very  far  from 
being  so.  The  axiom  of  philological  method  that  in  the  same  dialect,  at 
a  given  time,  the  same  sound  or  combination  of  sounds,  under  the  same 
conditions,  changes  everywhere  in  the  same  direction,  cannot  be  applied 
to  such  a  dialect  as  Standard  English  without  many  reserves  and  qualifica- 
tions. It  is  enough  to  point  out  that  at  the  present  time,  although  we 
pronounce  -ar-  in  clerk,  hearth,  heart,  &c.,  we  do  not  do  so  in  earth, 
service,  heard,  &c.  We  have  here,  as  in  so  many  other  instances,  a  double 
usage  within  what  was  originally  a  single  class  of  words.  This  duality  may 
have  existed,  and  almost  certainly  did  exist  in  the  sixteenth  century  in  the 
clerk,  learn,  heart  class,  as  it  did  in  many  other  classes  of  words  having 
originally  the  same  sound.  There  is  no  doubt  that  by  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century  a  very  large  proportion  of  words  of  the  old  -er-  class 
were  pronounced  with  -ar-  by  good  speakers.  On  the  other  hand,  this 
is  probably  one  of  the  cases  in  which  latitude  was  allowed,  and  it  is 
perhaps  safer  to  assume  an  -ar-  pronunciation  only  for  those  words  in 
which  it  is  actually  proved  by  occasional  or  consistent  spellings.  We  may 
think  it  highly  probable  that  a  speaker  said  -ar-  in  many  words  in  which 
he  only  writes  -er indeed  the  rhymes  in  this  and  the  succeeding  cen- 
turies go  far  to  prove  that  this  was  so, but  in  the  absence  of  either  spelling  or 
rhyme  it  is  perhaps  temerarious  to  assert  it  as  a  fact  for  a  given  writer 
or  speaker.  We  shall  give  later  a  list  of  all  the  words  for  which  the  -ar- 
pronunciation  is  proved,  in  one  or  other  of  these  two  ways,  and  it  will  be 
seen  that  almost  every  word  of  the  class  was  so  pronounced,  at  one 
time  or  another,  by  at  least  some  speakers. 

The  principles  which  are  advocated  in  regard  to  the  interpretation  of 
such  occasional  spellings  as  sarvis,  &c.,  should  be  applied  to  all  classes 
of  words  of  which  such  spellings  are  found.  If  we  content  ourselves  with 
saying  that  some  undoubted  speakers  of  Court  or  Standard  English,  at 
a  given  time,  pronounced  such  and  such  words  in  this  or  that  way, 
because  their  occasional  spellings  show  this,  we  are  safe,  and  are  not 
going  beyond  what  can  be  proved.  But  even  this  moderate  statement 
involves  the  further  conclusion  that  such  isolated  pronunciations,  as  they 
may  appear  to  be,  were  at  least  tolerated  among  speakers  of  Standard, 
and  that  therefore  they  cannot  have  been  mere  eccentric  individual 
vagaries.  They  must  have  been  shared  by  a  large  number  of  speakers 
of  the  same  social  position,  that  is,  they  were  current  among  these 
speakers,  though  not  necessarily  to  the  exclusion  of  other  types  of  pro- 
nunciation. We  have  remarked  above  that  even  at  the  present  time, 
when  the  degree  of  latitude  in  Received  Standard  is  comparatively  limited, 
we  have  two  types  of  pronunciation  equally  current  in  certain  cases, 
sometimes  in  isolated  words,  such  as  girl,  when  both  [geal]  and  [gAl] 
are  equally  *  good ',  the  former  being  perhaps  rather  old-fashioned  now, 
sometimes  in  a  whole  class  of  words,  e.  g.  those  which  have  an  old 
short  o  before  s,f,  th,  where  both  [/]  and  the  lengthened  [5]  are  equally 
current— [bs— 15s,  s^ft — soft,  kb]>— k!5J>]. 

The  sources  of  such  divergence  may  be  either  Social  or  Regional 
dialect,  or  the  coexistence  at  the  same  time  of  an  older  and  a  younger 
type  of  pronunciation  within  the  same  period. 

In  the  above  remarks  we  have  stated  the  weight  to  be  attached  to  the 


THE   OLD   GRAMMARIANS  115 

occasional  spellings  at  a  minimum,  as  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  urge 
evidence  of  this  kind  too  far,  or  to  attempt  to  construct  too  much  upon 
it.  It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  the  testimony  of  these  spellings  is 
cumulative,  and  the  effect  of  a  considerable  collection  of  them,  drawn  from 
all  kinds  of  sources,  is  impressive,  and  gives  a  consistent  picture  of  the 
average  speech  of  the  time,  one  which  is  supported  by  the  statements 
of  the  more  intelligible  writers  upon  pronunciation,  and  by  the  known 
facts  of  English  pronunciation  in  its  later  developments. 

This  is  a  convenient  occasion  to  say  something  concerning  the 
Orthoepists,  as  they  are  called,  of  this  and  later  times.  Since  the  pioneer 
work  of  Ellis  and  Sweet  in  the  last  century,  writers  upon  the  history  of 
English  have  attached  enormous  weight  to  the  statements  of  the  writers 
upon  English  pronunciation  from  the  sixteenth  century  downwards,  and 
to  within  the  last  few  years  these  statements,  together  with  the  evidence  of 
rhymes,  were  almost  the  sole,  certainly  the  principal,  basis  upon  which 
conclusions  as  to  the  character  of  English  pronunciation  in  past  ages  were 
built.  The  opinion  of  the  majority  of  students  of  English  would  probably 
still  approve  this  method.  From  this  starting-point  Ellis  and  Sweet  had 
constructed  a  very  definite  picture  of  the  sounds  of  our  language  in  the 
past,  and  later  investigators  have  worked  on  precisely  the  same  lines. 
Quite  recently,  however,  Zachrisson  has  appealed  also  to  the  testimony 
of  the  occasional  spellings,  with  the  result  that  the  views  handed  on  by  the 
great  pioneers  have  been  to  some  extent  modified.  The  works  of  the 
Orthoepists  themselves  have  been  reprinted  and  subjected  to  a  fresh 
scrutiny  and  critical  analysis.  It  is,  however,  true  that  hitherto  writers 
upon  the  history  of  Modern  English  have  relied  mainly  upon  the 
Orthoepists,  and  have  only  used  comparatively  slight  collections  of  actual 
forms  taken  from  contemporary  literature  as  a  kind  of  secondary  luxury. 
Now  the  view  which  we  hold  regarding  the  relative  importance  of  the 
two  sources  of  information  is  likely  to  vary  according  to  the  amount  of 
first-hand  information  which  we  have  of  each  or  both. 

After  considerable  study,  on  the  one  hand,  of  the  writings  of  the  old 
Orthoepists,  of  the  exhaustive,  and  often  very  tedious,  disquisitions  which 
have  been  written  upon  them,  and,  on  the  other,  of  a  large  number  of 
works  of  all  kinds  written  during  the  fifteenth  and  following  centuries, 
the  present  writer  confesses  that  he  now  leans  definitely  to  the  view  that  the 
path  of  progress  lies  in  the  minute  study  of  the  letters  and  books  written 
in  the  periods  under  consideration,  rather  than  in  that  of  reiterated  tor- 
turing and  weighing  of  the  descriptions  given  by  the  writers  on  pronun- 
ciation. When  we  find  that  these  writers  invariably  start  from  the 
'  letters '  and  proceed  to  discuss  the  '  powers '  of  these,  that  their  descrip- 
tions of  the  sounds  are,  for  the  most  part,  entirely  dominated  by  the 
relation,  real  or  fancied,  of  these  to  the  letters,  and  are  almost  always 
most  vague  and  indefinite,  so  that,  for  instance,  we  can  rarely  be  sure, 
when  a  writer  speaks  of  a  diphthong,  whether  he  means  simply  a 
combination  of  two  letters,  or  whether  he  is  really  thinking  of  a  combina- 
tion of  two  sounds,  we  are  filled  with  something  like  despair  of  ever 
arriving  at  any  clear  ideas  at  all,  if  these  writers  are  to  be  our  principal 
guides. 

When  we  turn  from  what  these  men  have  written  to  what  other  men 

I  2 


u6  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

have  written  about  them,  the  effect  is,  if  possible,  even  more  dismal.  The 
essential  inadequacy  of  most  of  the  old  would-be  describers  of  English 
sounds  for  their  task  is  most  painfully  brought  out  by  the  extreme 
ambiguity  which  the  commentators  discover  in  their  writings.  The 
simplest  fact  of  pronunciation  is  usually  so  darkly  and  mysteriously  set 
forth,  that  the  explanation  is  frequently  far  longer  than  the  original  state- 
ment ;  the  critic  has  to  turn  and  twist  this  in  many  directions  to  make 
it  mean  anything  definite,  and  often  to  perform  prodigies  of  legerdemain 
to  make  it  mean  what  he  thinks  it  ought  to  mean.  Then  again,  some 
critics  are  anxious  to  square  all  the  contemporary  statements  regarding 
a  particular  vowel,  so  that  they  shall  all  mean  the  same  thing,  regardless 
of  the  fact  that  writers  of  the  same  period  often  appear  to  be  describing 
quite  different  sounds  in  the  same  word.  Other  editors  of,  and  writers 
upon,  particular  Orthoepists  are  so  carried  away  by  the  supposed  claim  of 
their  pet  author  to  be  authoritative,  that  they  set  his  particular  bundle  of 
ambiguities,  or  rather  their  own  interpretation  of  them,  up  as  the  standard 
for  the  period,  although  other  contemporary  writers,  no  less  obscure, 
appear  to  say  something  directly  opposed.  As  a  rule,  it  is  impossible  to 
assert  with  confidence  that  such  and  such  an  old  writer  definitely  says 
that  such  and  such  a  vowel  had  a  particular  sound ;  all  we  can  be  sure  of 
is  that  his  editor  or  commentator  thinks  that  he  says  so.  The  seeds  of 
madness  lie  in  all  this. 

I  believe  we  shall  have  to  change  our  views  of  the  importance  of  the 
old  writers,  and  put  the  study  of  the  private  letters  and  the  books  written 
and  printed  in  the  period  which  we  are  studying  first,  and  that  we  should 
only  apply  to  the  writers  on  pronunciation  after  we  have  extracted  all  the 
information  we  can  get  from  the  former  source.  When  we  find  the  state- 
ments of  the  old  grammarians  in  opposition  (in  so  far  as  we  understand 
them)  to  the  plain  facts,  as  revealed  again  and  again  by  the  occasional 
spellings,  we  shall,  I  believe,  do  well  to  disregard  the  former,  and  be 
guided  by  the  latter. 

No  one  who  has  studied  the  English  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  in  the  texts  of  this  period,  rather  than  in  the  pages  of  the  gram- 
marians, will  doubt  that  these  writers  have  grievously  misled  those  who 
trusted  them  so  implicitly,  with  regard  to  the  chronology  of  the  vowel 
changes,  while  they  leave  us  almost  entirely  in  the  lurch  with  regard  to 
the  pronunciation  of  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables,  and  to  that  of  many 
important  consonant  combinations. 

We  hasten  to  say  that  there  is  a  great  variety  of  merit,  or  demerit, 
among  the  old  Orthoepists ;  some  are  fairly  intelligent  in  their  method, 
really  seem  to  know  the  difference  between  sounds  and  letters,  and  to 
have  some  capacity  for  discriminating  and  describing  the  former ;  some 
are  almost  worthless  from  these  points  of  view ;  all  are  disappointing  in 
some  particular. 

Nor  is  this  to  be  wondered  at.  At  the  present  time  in  England,  after 
several  generations  of  scientific  Phonetics,  the  number  of  men  who  could 
give  a  complete  and  intelligible  description  of  the  sounds  of  our  native 
language  is  extremely  small.  Every  year  books  upon  English  Grammar 
are  still  published  in  which  the  accounts  given  of  actual  English  pronuncia- 
tion are  useless  to  every  one,  from  the  complete  ignorance  of  the  writers 


ORTHOEPISTS'   MISLEADING   STATEMENTS         117 

regarding  the  nature,  mode  of  production,  the  principles  of  classification, 
and  transcription  of  sound. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  between  three  and  four  hundred  years  ago 
there  were  writers  equally  ignorant  of  the  elements  of  phonetic  descrip- 
tion, nor  that,  given  such  ignorance,  their  efforts  should  have  been 
failures  as  dismal  as  those  of  their  modern  fellow-craftsmen. 

The  most  that  the  best  of  the  old  writers  do,  is  to  put  us  on  the 
track  of  changes  that  have  taken  place,  and  are  well  established  before 
their  time,  but  they  are  nearly  always  reluctant  to  admit  any  great  diver- 
gence between  actual  pronunciation  and  the  supposed  legitimate 
1  powers  of  the  letters ' — a  phrase  we  get  positively  sick  of  in  the  seven- 
teenth century.  The  result  is  that  the  descriptions  are  always  some  way 
behind  the  facts,  or  made  to  square  with  the  traditional  spelling  so  that 
they  are  quite  misleading.  Thus,  although  it  is  fairly  certain  that  M.E. 
short  a  had  developed  into  its  present  sound  in  some  parts  of  England 
before  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  that  the  new  sound  was  used 
among  good  speakers  long  before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  it 
took  the  Orthoepists  about  [a  ^hundred  years  to  find  this  out  and  to 
describe  the  sound  as  it  really  was.  Again,  while  long  a  (as  in  bake, 
&c.)  was  well  on  the  way  to  its  present  sound  before  the  beginning  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  Gill,  in  1621,  ridicules  those  who  use  the  new 
sound  as  vulgar  and  affected  innovators,  maintaining  that  the  real  sound 
was  still  old  long  a.  Perhaps  the  most  useful  part  of  the  work  of  most 
of  the  writers  on  pronunciation  is  the  lists  which  they  give  of  words 
having  the  same  sound,  which  at  least  enable  us  to  ascertain  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  sound,  even  if  they  give  us  no  very  definite  idea  of  what 
the  sound  was. 

These  remarks  apply  especially  to  sixteenth-century  writers,  and  to  those 
of  the  first  quarter  or  so  of  the  seventeenth.  After  that  date  the  Orthoepists 
are  more  helpful,  though  they  still  leave  much  to  be  desired.  See  Ch.  V 
on  some  later  writers. 

We  shall  now  give  a  short  account  of  the  language  of  a  few  typical  per- 
sonages of  the  sixteenth  century.  We  base  our  present  observations  for  the 
most  part  upon  published  works,  since  these  being  more  extensive  than 
letters  afford  more  copious  material  for  a  general  survey  of  the  language , 
although  they  may  not  be  so  fruitful  in  the  occasional  spellings.  The 
account  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  language  is  based  upon  several  collections 
of  her  letters,  and  upon  her  translations  from  the  classics — a  work  of  no 
great  literary  merit,  however  praiseworthy  it  may  be  as  showing  industry 
and  a  love  of  learning.  The  private  letters  of  the  sixteenth  century  will 
be  referred  to  later  in  our  systematic  general  survey  of  the  development 
of  sounds  and  grammatical  forms  from  the  fifteenth  century  onwards. 

We  begin  here  with  Lord  Berners'  translation  of  Froissart,  using 
Vol.  I  of  Professor  Ker's  edition  of  this  great  work. 

Pronunciation. 

(a)  Vowels.  O.E.  jp  occurs  with  all  three  types : — hylles,  hyrdell, 
stirr  '  stir ',  shitte  '  shut ' ;  yvel  '  evil ' ;  businesse,  buryed,  brused  (long  j), 
moche  l  much  ' ;  t>esynes(se)  (very  frequent),  sterre  '  stir  '. 

e  for  z'is  found  \njebet '  gibbet ',  suspeciously,  hedeouse  '  hideous ',  mengled 


u8  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

'  mingled '.  M.E.  -er-  occurs  both  as  -er-  and  -ar-.  We  give  here  only 
the  more  remarkable  words,  as  the  complete  list  will  be  given  later  (p.  2 1 7). 
With  -er-  : — clerkes,  herte  (also  harte),  swerd  '  sword  ',  ferr  (and  farr 
1  far ',  clergy  ;  with  -ar-  : — harte  (also  herte),  harde  (  heard ',  farr  (and 
ferr),  wark,  defarre  '  defer  ',  armyns  '  ermines  ',  darth  '  dearth  ',  swarved 
'  swerved '.  The  Southern  form  (fr.  O.E.  £)  occurs  in  drad  P.  P. 

*  dreaded ',  but  spredde  P.  P.      M.E.  a  has  apparently  been  fronted  in 
renk  '  rank '  (twice).     M.E.  e  has  been  raised  to  *,  as  is  shown  by  the 
occasional  spellings  achyved,  relyve,  belyved  '  believed '. 

M.E.  o  is  unrounded  in  yander  '  yonder '.  The  common  sixteenth- 
century  Busshoppe,  with  rounding  after  b,  occurs.  Earlier  e  before  ng 
becomes  I : — Ingland.  The  old  short  form  survives  in  wyckes  '  weeks ', 
M.E.  wike. 

M.E.  eu  is  monophthongized  to  e  before  a  following  lip-consonant : — 
Beamond  '  Beaumont ',  M.E.  Beumont ;  Beachame.  Initial  e  in  erthe 
appears  j;£-  myerih,  a  common  sixteenth-century  spelling. 

(b)  Consonants.  Addition  of  a  final  parasitic  Cons,  occurs  in  *  the 
quene  kneld  downed '.  Loss  of  a  final  Cons,  occurs  in  Beamon  (by  the 
side  of  Beamond)  ;  loss  of  /  in  an  unstressed  syllable  occurs  in  hosieries. 

(f)  Unstressed  Syllables.  There  are  not  so  many  spellings  indi- 
cating the  treatment  of  unstressed  syllables  as  in  many  other  works,  but 
the  following  may  be  noted : — the  diphthongs  at,  et,  monophthongized  in — 
battel  (by  the  side  of  batayle\  certenly  (by  the  side  of  cerfeinly),  appareled 
(by  the  side  of  aparailed),  travell  and  traveled  (by  side  of  travailed  with 
same  meaning),  rascalle  (and  rascaille),  counsele  (and  counsaile),  burgesses. 
The  form  mentayne  ( maintain '  shows  weakening  of  the  unstressed  first 
syllable. 

The  old  suffix  -es  in  the  PI.  of  Nouns  is  often  written  -is — -feaiis, 
changis,frendis,  &c.,  sometimes  -es — lordes,  clerkes,  and  the  vowel  is  often 
omitted — barouns,  archers,  &c.  The  Superl.  suffix  is  sometimes  written 
-yst — wekyst.  In  the  P.  P.  of  Wk.  Vbs.  both  -yd  and  -ed  occur,  but  the 
vowel  may  be  omitted  as  at  present  in  unharnest. 

Old  ui (=  [y])  is  unrounded  as  in  btsket,  bisquet ' biscuit'. 

Examples  of  confusion  of  vowels,  showing  reduction  in  the  unstressed 
syllable,  are  discomfe/ure,  comen  '  common ',  but  commonly,  astate,  aspeciall, 
ascaped.  y  is  very  common  in  final  syllables  before  all  Cons. — helmyttes, 
opyn  '  open '  passim,  sadyls. 

Initially  an  unstressed  vowel  is  lost  in  poyntment  l  appointment ',  '  great 
rayne  and  a  clyps '.  Of  occurs  as  a  in  men  a  warre,  and  the  Auxil.  have 
in  wolde  a  bene. 

The   suffixes   -ier,   -eour  become  ~er,   -our    respectively   in  fronters 

*  frontiers  ',  barrers  '  barriers ',  currers  '  couriers  ',  behauour  *  behaviour '. 

Inflexion  of  Nouns. 

The  suffix  of  the  PI.  often  loses  its  vowel  when  the  Noun  ends  in  -n  or 
-r — barouns,  strangers,  susters. 

On  the  variants  -es  and  -*>,  see  under  Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  Wk.  Pls.^«  and  eyen  '  eyes  ',  kyen  '  cows  '. 

Irregular  : — brethern,  womenne,  children. 

Invariables : — xxui  Englisshe  myle,  a  thousand  horse  =  horsemen, 


LORD   BERNERS— ELYOT  119 

Pis.  with  voicing  of/ — lyves,  wyves,  but  wifes  is  also  found. 

Fossessives. — Note  the  construction — frendis  of  the  erle  of  Arundels. 

The  following  uninflected : — old  Feminines — Mary  Maudlyn  day,  our 
lady  day  ;  when  the  second  noun  begins  with  s by  ^&  father  syde. 

Group  Possessives : — the  kynge  of  Englandes  homage,  the  lorde  of 
Mannes  quarrell,  Sir  Gaultier  of  Mannes  fader,  the  kyng  of  Englandes 
doughter.  The  older  construction,  the  kynges  doughter  of  Englande,  also 
occurs. 

Adjectives.     The  French  PI.  in  -s  occurs  in  letters  patentes. 

Mutated  Comparatives : — lengar,  strenger. 

Superlative  suffix  contracted  after  s- : — outragyoust,  ungracyoust. 

Comparative  suffix  preceded  by  more: — more  stronger,  the  more 
fressher. 

Superlative  suffix  preceded  by  most : — moost  neweste  and  secrettest,  the 
moost  outragyouste  people,  the  moost  ungracyoust  of  all. 

Adverbs  : — a  foote,  a  horse  backe  (a  =  earlier  on). 

Pronouns.  The  srd  Pers.  PI.  seems  to  have  only  the  th-  forms — they, 
theyr,  theym,  them.  In  the  2nd  PI.  Berners  always  distinguishes  between 
Nom.^  and  Possess,  and  Da.t.you.  The  Possess,  of  2nd  PI.  has  -s  in  final 
position — the  noble  and  gentyl  kyng  of  yours.  The  Neuter  Pron.  is 
commonly  it,  but  hit  is  also  found. 

The  Def.  Art.  elides  the  vowel  before  words  beginning  with  another 
vowel — thentent,  t hot  her,  &c.  &c. 

Verbal  Endings.    The  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  Indie,  always  ends  in  -th. 

The  Pres.  PI.  often  has  the  Southern  -th  suffix : — other  thynges  lyeth 
at  my  hert,  your  knightes  abideth  for  you  to  wasshe,  what  weneth  the 
Frenchmen  ?,  their  husbandes  payeth.  The  P.  P.  of  Strong  Vbs.  gene- 
rally ends  in  -en,  but  gotte,  won,  fought,  occur ;  the  Pres.  Part,  ends 
in  -yng. 

The  Strong  Vbs.  call  for  little  remark.  The  following  forms  may  be 
noted  : — gyve,  gave,  gyven  ;  the  Prets. — strake,  spake,  brake,  drave  (analogy 
of  gave,  &c.),  fyll  '  fell '  (as  in  Chaucer),  though  fell  is  commoner, 
sirave1  strove  ',flang  '  flung  ',  gatte. 

Auxiliaries.  The  PI.  of  be  is  ben,  are,  ar,  &c.  Will  is  always  wol. 
Have  becomes  a  when  unstressed : — ther  might  a  ben  sene  ;  the  kyng 
wolde  nat  a  consented. 

Constructions  and  Phrases.  The  following  may  be  noted : — I  can 
you  good  thanke ;  we  knowe  at  this  day,  no  persone  in  the  worlde  that 
we  lovethe  preferment  of,  so  much  as  yours. 

The  old  double  negative  is  still  used : — ther  needeth  nat  to  make  no 
provisyon  for  their  hoost. 

Characteristics  of  the  Language  of  Sir  Thomas 
Elyot's  *  Gouernour '. 

Vowels. 

M.E.  -er-  so  written  in  erthe,  hertes,  serue,  ferre,  lernyng,  herbes, 
kerumge,  herde  'heard',  derke,  sterres  'stars',  ferme  (fr.  Elyot's  Will), 
swerde. 

M.E.  er  appears  as  -ar-  in  hartes,  warres  '  wars ',  warke,  stare  '  starling ', 
darke,  parson  '  person '  (Elyot's  Will). 


120  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

O.E.  y  appears  as  e  in  ketchyn,  stereth  l  stirs ',  stere  Inf.,  kendled '  kindled ', 
euil]  the  u-  type  is  found  in  sue  he,  buyldynge,  thursty,  ihurst ;  the  only  i- 
form  appears  to  be  iuel. 

O.E.  3el  shows  the  Southern  type  (shortened)  in  lasse  ' less  ',  praty 
'  pretty ',  radde  passim  '  advised  ',  &c.,  dradde  Adj.  and  P.  P. ;  the  non- 
Southern  type  appears  in  lesse,  redde,  drede  (Noun). 

M.E.  /written  e  in  sens  '  since  ' ;  Early  M.E.  i  lengthened  in  open  sylla- 
ble : — weete  '  to  know ' ;  short  i  retained  in  wike  '  week '. 

The  combination  -and-  appears  as  -ond-  : — londes  (Will),  hondes  (Will). 

The  Northern  form  of  O.E.  a  apparently  occurs  in  drane  '  drone  '. 

Before  -r  a  glide  was  pronounced  after  a  long  vowel  or  diphthong  as 
at  present : — hiare  '  hire  '.  The  inverted  spelling  man/ton  '  mention  ' 
probably  points  to  M.E.  short  a  having  a  fronted  pronunciation  as  at 
present  day. 

Consonants. 

Omission  of  Cons,  occurs  in  : — chylhode  '  childhood ',  shud  '  should  '. 

ng  becomes  n  before  -th- : — strenthe  '  strength '. 

Addition  of  final  consonant  in  fesaunt. 

Sound  expressed  by  gh  lost  before  -/ — lyte  '  light '.  The  same  fact  is 
proved  by  the  spellings  dought  *  doubt ',  and  cloughtes  '  clouts ',  where  no 
sound  could  have  been  intended  to  be  expressed  by  gh. 

Unvoicing  of  b  before  /  is  seen  in  optaine  ( obtain '. 

Unstressed  Syllables. 

Flexional  suffixes  constantly  written  -*- : — the  Pis.  her  sis  t  versis, 
princts,  menaces,  si'ckenessis,  &c. 

Other  endings  : — askidist '  askedst ',  causid  P.  P.,  haruist '  harvest '. 

The  diphthong  ei  simplified — police  '  palace  ',  M.E.  paleis. 

Hesitation,  pointing  to  a  '  neutral '  vowel  in  the  unstressed  syllable,  is 
seen  in  : — writars  '  writers  ',  redar  '  reader  ',  Italions  '  Italians ',  burgine 
'  burgeon ',  profest '  provost '  (this,  however,  is  a  M.E.  spelling). 

Loss  of  syllable  is  seen  in  robbry  '  robbery '. 

Nouns. 

In  words  ending  in  -/  this  often  remains  before  the  Plural  suffix : — 
wolfesj  lyfes,  our  self es,  wifes  (Will). 

On  the  other  hand,  the  PI.  of  hoof  is  hoeues. 

Weak  Pis.  eien  'eyes'  (also  eies\  All  Soulen  College  (Will),  shone 
'  shoes '. 

Irregular  Pis.     chyldren,  bretherne^  bredern  (Will),  wemen  and  women. 

The  old  Neuter  thing  remains  invariable — to  loue  god  ofwhome  wehaue 
all  thinge. 

Adjectives. 

The  Adjective  follows  the  Noun  occasionally,  as  in  French : — beastes 
sauage,  actes  martially  spirites  vitall 

The  Adjective  takes  -s  in  PI.  in  the  legal  phrase — heires  males  (Will). 
Most  is  used  as  an  Adjective  in — her  mooste  discomforte. 


SIR   THOMAS   ELYOT  121 

Pronouns. 

These  are  as  at  the  present  time,  except  that  hit  is  still  used  occasion- 
ally, the  Possess.  Neuter  is  his ;  ye  Nom,,  and  you  Ace.  and  Dat,  are 
distinguished. 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  3rd  Pers.  Pres.  Sing,  always  ends  in  -th.  The  Pres.  PI.  generally 
ends  in  e,  that  is,  has  no  ending,  but  the  Southern  -th  forms  are  not  in- 
frequent : — harts  lepeth,  people  takethe  comforte,  after  exploitures  hapneth 
occasions,  &c.  The  Sing,  of  the  Vb.  is  used  after  both — bothe  the  body  and 
the  soul  is  deformed.  In  Strong  Vbs.  the  -n  of  the  P.  P.  ending  seems 
almost  invariably  to  be  retained — -founden  (also  founde\  yoten  '  poured ', 
comen,  songen  '  sung ',  holpen,  &c.  The  old  E.  Midland  forms  chese  and 
lese  '  choose,  lose '  are  kept ;  the  Pret.  of  the  former  is  chase ;  that  of 
fight  isfaughte,  fr.  the  old  Sing.  Pret.  type  fauht  (O.E.  feaht,  fiekf),  not 
from  the  old  P.  P.  fouhten-  type  as  at  present.  The  archaic  P.  P. 
yolden  '  yielded,  payed ',  and  the  new  aboden  '  abode  ',  instead  of  -biden, 
may  be  noted. 

Among  the  forms  of  Auxiliaries  we  may  recall  mought  instead  of 
might  (also  used  by  Queen  Elizabeth),  the  P.  P.  kanned  in  the  sense  of 
'  known ',  the  Pret.  darte  of  the  Pret.  Pres.  dare.  The  form  shud  occurs 
as  well  as  shulde. 

The  curious  '  Ablative  Absolute '  construction  of  which  I  have  two 
examples  is  worth  mentioning : — After  a  little  good  meates  and  drinkes 
taken ;  /  take  her  not  my  father  liuynge. 

We  pass  now  to  the  Life  of  Cardinal  Wolsey  by  George  Cavendish 
(1500-61),  who  from  his  long  residence  in  Wolsey's  household  had  every 
opportunity  of  being  acquainted  with  the  speech  of  the  Court.  Cavendish, 
who  loved  the  Cardinal  '  on  this  side  of  idolatry ',  has  left  a  wonderful 
picture  of  the  great  prelate  and  statesman  at  the  height  of  his  power  and 
splendour,  a  glowing  description  of  the  magnificence  of  his  personal 
surroundings  and  his  princely  hospitality,  and  a  pathetic  account  of  his 
fall  and  death.  The  following  account  of  this  interesting  book  is  based 
upon  the  unmodernized  reprint  from  the  Kelmscot  Press. 

Vowels. 

M.E.  er  is  so  spelt  in  ferther,  Herre  '  Harry  ',  ferre  *  far ',  kervers 
1  carvers  ',  sterre  (chamber),  ferme  '  farm  ',  herd  '  hard  '.  It  is  written  -ar- 
in  warres,  darknes,  hard  '  heard '  (more  frequent  than  herd],  harold 
1  herald  ',  marre,  parells  '  perils  '. 

Southern  er  for  O.E.  -eard,  &c.,  appears  in  (wood)j>erd,  smert (  smart '. 
O.E.  y  appears  in  all  forms : — myche,  kychen,  myrtle ;  stick,  busynes, 
busylie ;  stere  '  stir ',  shet '  shut '.  The  old  combination  -and  or  -ond  has 
the  latter  form  in  Eylond,  londed,  londyng. 

e  for  i  occurs  in  open  syllables : — in  suspecyon,  prevye,  shreven  P.  P., 
delygence  •  in  a  close  syllable  : — in  sence  '  since '. 

The  following  words,  to  judge  by  the  spelling,  show  shortening  of 
the  vowel  before  two  consonants  in  Bridwell,  Flet  Street,  backhowse 
'bakehouse';  and  in  close  syllables  before  /,  in  strett  'street',  botts 


122  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

'  boats ',  swett.  Among  isolated  forms  may  be  noted  wyry  for  '  wherry  ' 
(see  similar  form  as  regards  vowel,  in  Latimer),  laft '  left ',  thether,  whan, 
than,  '  when,  then ',  yearthely  '  earthly ',  a  common  form  in  the  period 
(cf.  the  ist  and  2nd  Prayer  Books  of  Edward  VI,  &c.),  and  the  interesting 
spelling  Guees  for  Guise,  which  shows  that  ee  stood  for  the  same  sound  as 
at  present.  The  spelling  strayngers  (very  common)  may  either  indicate 
a  real  diphthong  surviving  from  M.E.  before  -ng-  [ndz]  or  that  ay  and  a 
both  had  the  same  sound,  which  is  more  probable. 

Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  inflexional  endings  have  very  commonly  -i- : — horssis,  crossis ; 
extendyth',  commendyd,  providyd]  hosyn,  rysyn  'risen',  &c.  •«,  ai 
become  e  or  i\ — chapplens,  councell,  certyn,  ther  'their',  palice.  The 
'jnurmur  vowel '  for  ei  is  probably  indicated  by  the  spelling  curtosye. 
Old  oi  appears  as  -a-  in  turkkas  '  turquoise '.  A  pronunciation  identical 
with  that  of  the  present  day  is  indicated  in  orrynge  '  orange '. 

Unstressed  -a-  is  written  i  in  ambassiter  ;  French  u  is  i  or  e,  cf.  volup- 
tious,  somptious,  sumptiously,  commynicacioun,  commen  Vb.  '  commune '. 

The  endings  -en,  -on,  -in  are  evidently  levelled  under  a  single  sound  to 
judge  by  the  varying  spellings — opeyn  '  open  ',  tokyn  '  token  ',  cusshons, 
cusshens,  latten  '  Latin ',  waggans  '  wagons '.  These  spellings  rather 
suggest  a  '  syllabic  -« ',  as  in  present-day  button,  in  all  these  words — that 
is,  for  all  vowels  +  n  finally. 

Consonants. 

gh  before  t  had  no  longer  any  sound,  or  it  could  not  have  been  written, 
as  we  have  already  seen  in  these  or  similar  words,  in  whight  *  white ', 
therabought,  to  wright '  write  '. 

wh-  had  the  sound  of  w-  as  at  present  in  the  South  of  England,  and 
the  spelling  is  confused  in  wye  l  why  ',  where  '  wear  '. 

The  '  fronted '  or  '  palatalized '  type  of  O.E.  c  occurs  in  archebysshop- 
riche,  bisshopriche. 

French  -qu-  is  pronounced  k  in  banketts. 

The  metathesized  form  axed  (  asked '  is  used. 

The  old  form  Putnethe  occurs  twice  on  the  same  page,  but  Putney  two 
pages  earlier. 

The  spelling  Pumfrett '  Pontefract '  shows  a  pronunciation  which  still 
survives,  though  perhaps  now  obsolescent. 

Hankyng  '  hanging '  suggests  a  pronunciation  still  heard  in  provincial 
English. 

/  is  lost  before  /  in  vaughtyng  '  vaulting  ',  which  form  also  shows  the 
'  gh  '  had  no  sound. 

k  is  lost  in  combination  with  other  consonants  in  Worsopp  '  Worksop ' ; 
b  is  lost  after  /  in  tremlyng  '  trembling  '. 

On  the  other  hand,  d  is  already  added  after  -n  in  roundyng  in  the  eare, 
earlier  rowne-. 

Initial  h-  is  omitted  in  the  French-Latin  word  armonye  '  harmony  '. 
Initial  h-  is  never  written  wh-  (apparently)  as  by  many  writers  of  this 
period  :— hole  '  whole  '. 


GEORGE   CAVENDISH  123 

Nouns. 

Nouns  ending  in  ^generally  keep  this  before  the  Possessive  suffix  in 
the  Singular: — selfs.  Before  the  PI.  suffix  -f-  sometimes  remains,  as 
in  lyfs,  beafes ;  but  sometimes  becomes  v  : — staves.  The  reforms  some- 
times occur  in  the  uninflected  cases — love  l  loaf ',  on  hys  lyve. 

Weak  Pis. : — hosyn  '  hose',  Allhallon  day  (twice). 

Invariable  Pis.  : — xvfoote  thyke  ;  vi  of  the  beste  horse. 

Irregular  Pis.  : — childerne,  brethern. 

Uninflected  Possess.  Sing.  : — Our  lady  mattens  (old  Fern.) ;  my 
hart  blode. 

Group  Possessives  : — Kyng  Herre  the  VHlths  sister ;  Ayenst  the 
Kyng  and  my  lords  commyng ;  my  lord  of  Shrewsbury s  servaunts ; 
therle  of  Shrew  sburyes  (absolute)  ;  but  the  abbots  of  Westminster  (absolute). 

Pronouns. 

The  Neuter  Sing.  3rd  Pers.  is  hyt.     The  2nd  Pers.j#  and  j/w  ar 
used  indifferently  for  the  Nom.,  especially  in  addressing  one  person. 
The  Def.  Art.  elides  the  vowel  before  a  following  vowel : — therle,  &c. 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Present  is  almost  universally  -yth  or  ~itht  but  me 
semys  occurs. 

The  PL  generally  has  no  ending,  but  the  Southern  ~th  occurs  in  them 
that  hath. 

The  Weak  P.  P.  pact '  packed '  may  be  noted. 

Among  Strong  Verbal  forms  we  may  note  geve  instead  of  give,  P.  P. 
gevyn.  The  M.E.  Prets.  hild  '  held ',  fill  '  fell ',  as  in  Chaucer,  survive. 
The  Prets.  spake  and  spoke,  sang,  strak  '  struck ',  stale  '  stole  ',  drove,  and 
shew  '  showed '  (analogy  of  knew}  may  be  noted,  and  the  P.  P.  lyen  '  lain ' 
(as  in  the  Prayer  Book)  and  shreven  '  shriven '. 

Auxiliaries. 

The  only  points  which  call  for  mention  are : — the  P.  P.  byn ;  was 
used  in  PL,  walls  whiche  was ;  wol '  will '  by  the  side  of  wylL 

We  now  pass  to  consider  the  language  of  a  far  better  known  writer, 
namely  Hugh  Latimer  (c.  1491-1555),  so  far  as  this  can  be  gauged 
accurately  from  the  versions  of  his  sermons  that  have  come  down  to  us. 
The  style  is  much  more  colloquial,  and  more  touched  with  provincialisms 
than  the  other  works  we  have  hitherto  dealt  with,  and  this  albeit  these 
sermons  were  preached  before  King  Edward  VI.  Latimer  was  the  son 
of  a  yeoman  farmer  in  Leicestershire,  who,  as  he  tells  us, '  had  no  landes 
of  his  owne,  onely  he  had  a  farme  of  iii  or  iiii  pound  by  the  yere  at  the 
vttermost,  and  here  vpon  he  tilled  so  much  as  kepte  halfe  a  dosen  men. 
J3e  had  a  walke  for  a  hundred  shepe,  and  my  mother  mylked  xxx  kyne. 
...  He  kept  me  to  schole,  or  elles  I  had  not  bene  able  to  haue  preached 
before  the  kinges  maiestie  nowe.'  At  the  age  of  14  Latimer  went  to 
Clare  Hall,  Cambridge,  and  graduated  B.A.  at  18,  having  been  elected 
a  Fellow  of  his  College  while  still  an  undergraduate.  He  became  M.A. 


i24  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

at  22,  and  at  24  (1514)  was  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University,  being 
ordained  priest  the  same  year.  In  1530  he  preached  before  Henry  VIII 
at  Windsor,  '  when  his  maiestie  after  ye  sermon  was  done,  did  most 
familiarly  taulke  with  me  in  the  gallery '.  When  Cranmer  became  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  in  1533,  Latimer  gained  a  powerful  friend  at 
Court ;  the  following  year  he  preached  before  the  King  every  Wednesday 
in  Lent,  and  in  1535  he  was  consecrated  Bishop  of  Worcester.  In  1539, 
however,  unable  to  swallow  the  Six  Articles,  he  resigned  his  See.  After 
being  imprisoned,  and  apparently  only  escaping  death  for  heresy  by  the 
King's  death,  he  was  offered  for  a  second  time,  but  declined,  the  See  of 
Worcester.  During  this  and  the  following  year  he  preached  before  King 
Edward  at  Whitehall  and  at  '  Paules '.  He  retired  to  Lincolnshire  in 
1550,  where  he  remained,  preaching  much,  until,  early  in  Mary's  reign 
'  a  pursiuant  was  sente  downe  into  the  countrey  to  call  him  vp  '.  As  he 
passed  through  Smithfield  he  remarked  that  'Smithefield  had  long  groaned 
for  him',  but  his  death  was  destined  for  another  place.  In  1555  he  was 
burnt  at  the  stake  in  Oxford,  as  Foxe  says  '  upon  the  Northe  syde  of 
the  Towne,  in  the  Dytch  over  agaynst  Baily  College '.  Such,  in  brief, 
was  the  life  and  '  dolorous  death  '  of  Bishop  Latimer,  whom  some  will 
venerate  as  a  saint  and  apostle,  and  others  detest  as  a  wrong-headed  and 
dangerous  heretic,  whose  teaching  was  wellnigh  fatal  to  the  Catholic 
faith  in  the  Church  of  England.  His  worst  enemies,  however,  must 
admit  his  sincerity,  and  his  cheerfulness  and  courage  at  the  last;  and 
few  will  deny  that  he  possessed  a  copious  flow  of  invective,  and  a  ready, 
if  a  rude  and  coarse  eloquence. 

The  following  notes  are  based  upon  Arber's  Reprints  (i)  of  the  Seven 
Sermons  before  Edward  VI,  and  (2)  from  the  Sermon  known  as  '  the 
Ploughers '. 

Vowels. 

O.  and  Early  M.E.  01,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  probably  became  [u] 
in  Late  M.E.,  is  frequently  written  u  and  ou : — must,  blud,  shutyng ;  blonde, 
gould  '  gold ',  boune  (N.  Fr.  ban)  '  boon '. 

The  u  of  must  was  probably  short  in  the  unstressed  position,  and  that 
of  blud  had  been  shortened  before  a  final  consonant. 

M.E.  o2  initially  is  sometimes  written  wo-,  and  ho  becomes  who- : — 
such  a  worn  '  such  an  one ',  whomlye  '  homely ',  whore,  whoredome ;  on  the 
other  hand,  we  also  find  holsome  '  wholesome ',  horynge. 

M.E.  -er-  is  far  more  often  so  written,  but  there  are  some  important 
-ar-  forms  : — swaruing  '  swerving ',  parson  ( clergyman ',  harde  *  heard  ' 
(also  herd],  clarke,  maruel  (and  meruet),  clargy  (and  cleargy),  faruentlie 
(sindferuenttt'e)  '  fervently  '.  On  the  other  hand  we  have  hertes  '  hearts  ', 
mercie,  herken,  sterue  '  starve ',  swerd,  sweard  '  sword ',  learne,  ferme 
1  farm ',  sermon,  Personage  '  parsonage  '. 

O.E. y  appears  in  all  three  forms,  sometimes  in  the  same  word: — 
sturred — sterryng — styrred  'stir';  the  words  which  so  far  as  I  have  noted 
have  only  u  are : — busie,  suche,  burden,  buyldynge  ;  those  which  have  i  or 
y  are  : — synne,  sinners,  myntes,  myniyng,  fyrst,  gilty,  hyl  ( hill '.  Both 
listed  and  luste  ( list '  Vb.  occur.  The  latter  may  be  influenced  by  the 
Noun  lust. 


BISHOP   LATIMER  125 

M.E.  i  appears  as  e — in  close  syllables — sence  (very  common)  '  since  ' 
(also  since),  Chechester ;  in  open  syllables— -preuie  ( privy  ',  preson  (oftener 
pryson),  thether  '  thither '. 

M.E.  e  is  written  ye,  which  may  indicate  an  [i]  sound  in  : — thyefe 
( thief  *,fryendes,pryeste  'priest*.  The  word  devil  is  written  both  deuyl 
and  diuyl,  the  latter  indicating  a  pronunciation  with  short  i  which  we 
know  to  have  existed  later. 

The  spelling preaty  'pretty'  apparently  stands  for  the  Southern  form. 

i  for  e  occurs  in  opprision  '  oppression ',  trimble  '  tremble ',  and  whirry 
'  wherry '. 

The  spelling  clausset ( closet '  implies  a  lengthened  vowel,  and  shows 
that  au  no  longer  expressed  a  diphthong.  Diphthonging  of  o  before  -Id, 
which  we  know  occurred,  is  expressed  in  toulde,  soulde,  oulde. 

The  consonantal  y-  is  developed  before  initial  I  in  y earth  '  earth  \yer 
1  ere '. 

A  long  vowel  is  suggested  by  the  spellings  wourse  ( worse ',  Loordes 
(supper),  woorde  '  word  '. 

A  short  vowel  is  shown  in  waiter  '  water '. 

Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  interesting  form  unscripterlye  shows  the  treatment  of  -ure  when 
unstressed,  which  is  vouched  for  later  by  the  writers  on  pronunciation 
and  so  often  expressed  by  the  spelling  at  this  time,  before,  and  after. 
The  spelling  righteous  may  owe  its  u  to  virtuous.  The  endings  -es,  -eth, 
-el,  -en,  &c.,  are  nearly  always  so  written,  but  deuil ( devil '  alternates  with 
deuel,  euyl  with  euel.  Loss  of  an  unstressed  vowel  occurs,  initially,  in 
poticaries,  leauen  '  eleven ' ;  medially,  in  Deanry. 

Consonants. 

Omissions,  d  is  lost  before  -ns-  in  (asshe)  Wensdaye  ;  after  n-  before 
-sh-  infremheppe',  p  after  m  before  /,  temted',  /"after  /  before  p — halpeny. 

Hoise  '  hoist'  has  not  yet  acquired  the  final  -/;  faut  'fault'  has  not 
yet  restored  the  /  through  the  influence  of  a  supposed  etymology  direct 
from  Latin ;  the  /  is,  however,  inserted  mfaulse.  b  is  not  yet  added  in 
defter  f  debtor'. 

h-  is  lost  in  the  unstressed  syllable  of  shepard. 

Addition  of  consonant.  The  only  case  noted  in  Latimer's  Sermons  is 
myxt '  mix  '  Imperat. 

Entirely  bogus  spellings  are  accoumpt '  account '  and  depntely  '  daintily '. 
Nearly  as  bad  is  victalles,  where  again  a  Latin  etymology  has  introduced 
c  where  it  was  not  pronounced. 

Banquet,  as  so  frequently  at  this  period  and  much  later,  is  spelt  banket '; 
the  form  banketers  is  also  found. 

Final  -/  is  written  -th  in  comforth. 

Nouns. 

A  woman's  name  is  sometimes  inflected  in  the  Possessive — my  Ladye 
Maryes  grace,  sometimes  uninflected  according  to  the  M.E.  method — 
my  Ladye  Elizabethe  grace. 


126  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Nouns  ending  in/  sometimes  change  this  to  v  before  the  PI.  suffix — 
wyues,  theaues;  sometimes  retain  it — wouljfes. 

The  PI.  suffix  is  generally  -s,  mi  betters,  or  -es,  egges,  but  the  curious 
wayeys  is  also  found.  There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  this  suffix, 
however  written,  was  syllabic,  except  under  the  same  conditions  as  at 
present. 

The  word  newes  is  used  as  a  PI. — these  be  the  newes,  I  fear  they  be  true. 

Both  elements  are  inflected  in  the  PI. — Lordes  Presidentes. 

In  the  phrase — The  Parliamente  house  are  wyser,  &c.,  the  collective 
Noun  is  treated  as  a  PL 

Pounde  with  a  number  before  it  is,  as  usual  at  this  period,  uninflected. 

An  interesting  Group-Possessive  occurs — oure  holy  e father  of  Rome  s  eares. 

Adjectives. 

The  Comparative  suffix  is  used  where  we  should  now  use  more  with 
the  Positive — greuouser. 

The  double  Comp.  more  diligences  so  common  in  the  sixteenth  century 
is  found. 

The  old  mutated  Comp.  hnger  '  longer '  is  used. 

The  old  form  bedred  '  bedridden  '  survives. 

The  Adj.  in  -lye,  byshoplye  dutyes  and  orders  i  unscripterlye  may  be 
noted. 

The  Adv.  vpsydowne  '  upside  down '  shows  a  more  primitive  form  than 
our  own. 

Pronouns. 

The  ist  Pers.  Possessive  seems  to  distinguish  between  my  and  mi,  the 
latter  shorter  and  unstressed. 

The  form  me  is  used  Reflexively — one  kneleth  me  downe.  The  un- 
stressed a  is  used  for  he — here  was  a  not  gyltye. 

Ye  and  you  are  used  indifferently  in  the  Nom.  PI. 

In  the  3rd  PI.  only  the  //fc-forms  are  used  in  all  Cases. 

The  Absolute  Possessive  forms  theyres,  heres  *  hers '  occur. 

The  Def.  Art.  is  written  both  the  and_>><f,  the y  standing  for  old  /. 

The  old  Neuter  survives  in  the  tother. 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  most  striking  point  in  Latimer's  grammar  is  the  exceedingly 
frequent  use  of  the  -s  forms  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  of  Vbs.  I  have 
noted  about  sixty-three  examples  in  the  Sermons.  No  one  acquainted 
with  the  writings  of  the  sixteenth  century  can  fail  to  be  struck  by  the 
frequency  of  these  forms  at  this  date.  Perhaps  it  may  be  attributed  to 
Latimer's  residence  in  Lincolnshire ;  perhaps  these  forms  were  acquired 
by  him  at  Cambridge. 

The  -/^-forms  also  occur,  and  are  perhaps  rather  more  numerous 
than  the  others.  The  ending  in  this  case  in  almost  invariably  -eth. 

The  PI.  Pres.  generally  has  no  ending,  but  the  Southern  -th  occurs  at 
least  three  times,  and  a  few  -es  Pis.  are  also  found,  especially  after  some — 
some  that  Hues,  there  be  some  writers  that  sates,  some  sayes,  &c.  The 
extraordinary  form  we  mustes  also  occurs.  Note  also  is  with  a  PI. 
subject — greate  reformadons  is,  &c. 


LATIMER— ROGER  ASCHAM  127 

The  2nd  Pers.  Sing,  is  usually  -«/,  but  the  Northern  -es  occurs : — 
thou  pules,  polles  .  .  .  oppresses.  A  strange  use  is  you  measures/,  with  the 
Sing.  Vb.  in  spite  of  the  PI.  Pron. — here  used  of  one  person  only.  Note 
also  the  construction  thou  which  doth. 

In  the  P.  P/s  of  Strong  Vbs.  the  distribution  of  -en  endings  is  the  same 
as  at  present. 

Among  other  Strong  forms  we  may  note  chose  Inf.  (not  the  older  chese\ 
geue  by  the  side  of  gyue.  Of  Prets.,  brake  and  bracke,  spake  and  spak, 
quod  (he)  and  quode,  strooke  *  struck  ',  stacke  '  stuck ',  wrot  and  wrote. 

Auxiliaries. 

The  PI.  Pres.  of  be  is  both  are  and  be. 
Doth  seems  to  be  used  as  an  Auxiliary ;  otherwise  doeth. 
Will  has  a  negative  form  nil! — wil  thei,  nill  thei. 
The  form  we  mustes  is  noted  above. 

Oughte  is  used  as  the  Pret.  of  owe — as  if  I  oughte  another  man  xx  M. 
poundes. 

Worth  is  still  used  in  the  sense  of  happen — what  wyl  worth  ? 

Constructions  and  Phrases. 

The  following  idiomatic  phrases  are  worth  noting — some  of  them 
strikingly  modern  in  flavour,  some  remarkably  colloquial  for  a  bishop  to 
use  in  a  sermon  preached  before  his  sovereign. 

He  thought  all  cocke  sure  ;  when  all  came  to  all  =  '  when  all  was  said 
and  done  ' ;  the  diuel  and  all ;  Feyne  and  put  case  our  sauyour  Christe  had 
committed  al  the  sinnes  of  the  worlde ;  wo  worth  the  0  Deuyll ;  another 
day  =  '  some  day ' ;  I  here  saye  he  redeth  much  Sayncte  Ierom.es  workes  and 
is  wel  sene  in  theim. 

A  very  ancient  use  of  '  abide ',  in  the  sense  of  '  to  go  through,  ex- 
perience', is  seen  in  what  terror  and  distresse  abode  he.  Notice  the 
archaic  use  of  at  in — the  Byshoppe  of  Rome  shoulde  haue  learned  that 
at  him. 

We  turn  now  to  another  Cambridge  man  to  whom  we  have  already 
referred  several  times — Roger  Ascham.  Our  survey  is  based  upon 
Arber's  Reprints  of  (a)  Toxophilus  (1545)  and  (Z>)  The  Scholemaster, 
posthumously  published  in  1563. 

Vowels. 

Ascham  does  not  differ  greatly  from  Latimer  in  his  vowel  spellings, 
and  his  spellings  do  not  teach  us  very  much  with  regard  to  the  pro- 
nunciation. 

The  M.E.  ~er-  words  show  the  usual  variety.  The  only  -ar-  form 
which  we  do  not  still  keep  is  hard  '  heard  '.  By  the  side  of  this,  Ascham 
has  also  herd;  further  hert  and  hart,  sweord  and  sword. 

O.E. y  appears  to  have  the  same  forms  and  in  the  same  words  as  at 
present,  except  rishe  '  rush  '  (the  plant). 

The  Southern  form  of  O.E.  xl  appears  in  drad  '  dread ',  Adj. 

In  open  syllables  i  appears  as  e  in  preuie  and  weeke.  In  a  close  syllable 
i  is  written  e  in  splettyd. 


128  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  r 

The  diphthonging  of  o  before  /  is  expressed  in  the  spellings  oulde,  boulde, 
coulde  '  cold ',  houldyng,  bouling,  route  (Noun).  It  is  doubtful  whether  this 
was  still  pronounced  as  a  diphthong.  The  spelling  wount  '  accustomed ' 
rather  suggests  that  ou  expresses  length. 

The  diphthonging  of  a  before  /  is  occasionally  expressed : — taulke, 
caulme,faul  'fall'. 

M.E.  e  is  written  i,y  mpiuyshlye,  lipe  '  leap  ',  style  *  steel ' ;  but  e  becomes 
\{\  before  nch  in  wrynchynge. 

Vowel  quantity  is  often  expressed  by  doubling  the  vowel,  or  writing 
ou,  for  long  vowels  : — moos/,  woordes,  woorke,  boorde  ( board  ',  also  bourde, 
thoumbe  '  thumb ',  seeldomer  '  seldomer ',  hoote  '  hot '. 

Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  flexional  syllables  are  generally  written  -es,  &c. 

Both  ay  and  e  are  written  for  at  when  unstressed  : — battayle  and  battel, 
trauayle.  Possibly  the  -ayl  spellings  represent  actually  surviving  variants 
with  the  stress  on  the  second  syllable.  The  form  maynteners  shows  weak 
stress  on  the  second  syllable.  Persever  Vb.  no  doubt  was  accentuated 
on  the  second  syllable,  a  mode  of  pronunciation  which  survived  well  into 
the  eighteenth  century  at  least. 

French  -our-  becomes  simply  -er-  in  unsauery.  Initially,  unstressed 
syllables  are  sometimes  lost  as  in  spence  for  '  dispense ',  '  expenditure '. 
The  common  sixteenth-century  form  emonges  '  among '  is  found  in 
Ascham. 

Note  what  would  now  be  an  illiterate  form — barbariousties,  due  to 
confusion  of  suffixes  -ious  and  -ous. 

Consonants. 

Omissions.  /  is  lost  before  /  in  mouted  '  moulted ',  Matravers,  family 
name,  for  Maltravers,  f antes  '  faults '.  f  is  lost  between  /  and  p  in 
halpeny ;  /  is  lost  finally  after  -mp-,  prompe  ( prompt ' ;  d  is  lost  after  -n 
before  s,  unhansome.  b  is  lost,  finally,  in  dame  ( climbed  '. 

Addition.  /  is  developed  finally,  after  -f,  grafte  Vb.,  earlier  graffe 
'  engraft ' ;  also  finally  after  s  in  amongest,  old  form  amonges,  which  also 
occurs ;  after  older  -ks  (spelt  x)  betwixt. 

The  form  optaine  shows  unvoicing  of  b  before  the  following  -/-. 

d  is  still  written  in  moder  by  the  side  of  mother,  in  wedder  by  the  side 
of  wether  '  weather '. 

y  is  often  written  for  old/  my  at,  ye,  also  that,  the. 

Initial  wh-  for  h-  occurs  in  wholie,  by  the  side  of  the  Noun  hole '  whole '. 
In  ones,  onse  '  once '  we  have  the  only  form ;  the  won-  spellings  do  not 
occur. 

Nouns. 

The  Pronoun  his  constantly  occurs  after  a  Noun,  instead  of  the  Pos- 
sessive suffix.  It  is  always  written  his,  never,  apparently,  is— on  a  man 
his  tiptoes,  the  kinge  his  wisdome,  another  his  heeles,  the  king  hisfoole. 

The  suffix  -.r  is  omitted  when  the  next  word  begins  with  s- : — Robin 
Hood  seruant,for  his  country  sake,  for  conscience  sake  •  also  when  the  word 
in  the  Possessive  case-relation  ends  in  -s : — horse  feete. 


ASCHAM'S    GRAMMAR  129 

The  Weak  PI.  housen  '  houses '  is  found,  but  eyes  occurs  instead  of  the 
older  eyne,  &c.  The  PI.  of  woman  is  wemen  and  woomen.  The  PL  of 
child  has  both  chyldren  and  chylderne. 

Yere  is  invariable  mfourtene  yere  olde. 

Adjectives  and  Adverbs. 

The  mutated  Comparative  lenger  is  used,  but  also  longer  and  stronger. 
The  Comp.  willinger  and  the  Superl.formest  may  be  noted. 

Throwlye  occurs  for  '  thoroughly ',  'and  the  Adverb  hedlynge  '  headlong ' 
is  interesting  as  preserving  the  old  adverbial  ending,  seen  also  in  our 
present  darkling.  The  suffix  was  much  commoner  in  the  sixteenth 
century  than  it  is  now. 

Pronouns. 

You  and^  are  used  indifferently  in  the  Nom.,  both  in  addressing  one 
or  several  persons.  On  one  occasion  ye  is  used  as  if  for  variety  in 
a  sentence  in  which  j>0#  has  already  occurred  three  times. 

The  Masc.  he,  hym  are  used  instead  of  /'/,  of  a  bow. 

The  words  fewe  and  none  used  as  Pronouns  take  a  Singular  Verb— 
fewe  or  none  hath  yet  atteyned,  &c.,  unless  hath  here  as  a  PL,  which  is 
possible.  (Cf.  below,  under  Verbal  Endings.) 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  3rd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres.  generally  ends,  in  -elk,  but  Ascham  has  an 
unusually  large  number  of  -s  endings,  though  not  so  many  as  Latimer. 
These  often  occur  in  the  same  sentence  as  the  -^-forms. 

The  PL  Pers.  generally  has  no  ending,  but  some  -j-forms  are  found, 
e.g. : — the  ends  haue  nothyng  to  stop  them,  but  whippes  so  far  back,  &c.  The 
-,r-forms  both  in  3rd  Sing,  and  in  the  PL  may  be  due  to  Ascham's  native 
Yorkshire  dialect,  or  the  former  perhaps  to  Cambridge  influence. 

The  Auxiliaries  doth  and  hath  are  used  fairly  often  with  a  PL  subject— - 
as  wild  horses  doth  race ;  where  one  hath  learned  to  singe,  vi  hath  not. 

Weak  P.  P.'s,  such  as  mard  '  marred  ',  cocker  de,  show  the  loss,  as  in 
present-day  English,  of  the  vowel  of  the  suffix. 

The  P.  P.'s  of  Strong  Verbs  have  -n  in  those  words  where  we  now  have 
the  ending,  otherwise  apparently  not,  except  in  gotten  and  foughten. 

Strong  Verbs. 

In  the  Pres.  both  gyueth  and  geueth  are  found,  and  both  forms  occur 
also  in  the  P.  P.,  where,  however,  the  gyu-forms  are  overwhelmingly  more 
frequent. 

The  Prets.  quod  (and  quoth),  dame  '  climbed ',  draue  '  drove ',  and  the 
P.  P.'s  gotten,  holpen,  foughten,  clouen  may  be  noted. 

The  old  (Eastern)  form  Uese  and  lease  '  lose '  occurs  in  the  Inf.  and 
Pres. 

Auxiliary  Forms. 

The  chief  points  are  that  be  is  more  frequent  than  are  in  the  PL,  and 
that  the  P.  P.  form  be  is  used  by  the  side  of  the  usual  ben,  dene. 

The  use  of  ts  with  a  PL  subject  must  be  due  to  the  writer's  native 
dialect: — howe  many  kindes  there  is  of  it. 

K 


1 3o  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Idioms  and  Constructions. 

We  may  note  the  peculiar  use  of  certain  prepositions  in  the  following : — 
to  shoote  in  a  bow  (=  with  a  bow);  to  playe  of  instruments  (cf.  French 
jouer  or  toucher  du  piano). 

The  idioms  as  weake  as  wafer  and  winked  at  (in  the  modern  sense). 

A  curious  phrase  from  the  Modern  point  of  view  is  all  man  seeth  it 
=  '  every  man '.  The  expression  put  case  '  supposing '  is  used  by  Ascham 
as  by  Latimer. 

We  next  turn  to  another  academic  writer,  also  a  Cambridge  man,  and 
contemporary  and  friend  of  Ascham — Thomas  Wilson,  author  of  the 
Arte  of  Rhetor  ique,  from  which  the  following  forms  are  taken.  This  work 
was  published  in  1560,  again  in  1567,  and  in  1585. 

Vowels. 

M.E.  er  appears  as  -ar-  with  some  frequency : — -farre,  starres,  swarue, 
darth  '  dearth ',  farmer \  clarkes,  but  also  clerkes^  verlet '  varlet ',  ierre  '  jar, 
discord ',  &c. 

O.E. y  seems  to  have  the  same  distribution  of  the  various  forms  as  at 
present. 

The  common  e  for  /'  occurs,  apparently,  only  in  grenning  '  grinning '. 
In  open  syllables  we  find  Hue,  giue  instead  of  the  geue  or  yme  forms  so 
common  at  this  period. 

Woorke  '  work '  has  evidently  a  long  vowel. 

Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  forms  is  mannering  '  manuring ',  where 
the  weakened  vowel  of  the  second  syllable  shows  that  Wilson  accentuated 
the  word  on  the  first  syllable. 

The  form  volupteous  is  due  either  to  the  normal  unrounding  of  French 
u  in  the  suffix  -uous^  or  to  a  substitution  for  this  of  -eous,  as  in  righteous. 
The  spelling  spanell '  spaniel ',  the  dog,  shows  an  assimilation  of  French 
-ni-  or  -nj-  (for  -gn-}  in  espagnol^  which  still  survives  in  uneducated  speech 
in  this  word.  A  precisely  similar  pronunciation  is  the  now  vulgar  Dannel 
for  Daniel,  which  is  recorded  as  '  correct '  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Wilson  adheres  to  the  old  spelling  of  -ail,  -ain,  in  battail^  baraine 
'  barren '.  On  the  other  hand,  -01-  is  simplified  in  turcasse  '  turquoise '. 

Consonants. 

wh-  for  initial  ho-  appears  in  whoredom,  wholy. 

An  interesting  assimilation  of  -nf-  to  -mf-  with  -mph-  is  seen  in  imphants 
'infants'. 

A  final  -d  is  added  after  -n  in  gallands  '  gallons '. 

The  excrescent  -/  after  -f  which  we  saw  in  Ascham's  form  grafte,  which 
we  still  retain,  is  not  yet  added  in  Wilson's  graffe  Vb.  He  writes 
banqueting  as  at  present,  and  not  with  -k  as  so  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries do. 


THOMAS   WILSON— LYLY  131 

Nouns. 

Wilson  uses  the  Weak  Pis.  peason,  sisterne  'sisters',  bretherne,  shone 
'shoes'.  He  has  the  old  Possess.  Sing,  in  wiues  (v  instead  of  f  as  at 
present).  He  uses  Invariable  Pis.  after  numbers— this  thirty  winter,  three 
thousand  pounde. 

Verbal  Endings. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Wilson's  grammar  that  he  uses  the  -j-endings  in 
3rd  Pers.  Pres.  Sing,  with  great  frequency,  more  often  indeed  than  Ascham, 
especially  in  less  solemn  and  stately  passages.  This  peculiarity  is  also 
found  in  a  letter  of  his  of  1602  published  in  Ellis  (2.  3.  201).  It  is  true 
that  towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  these  forms  are  fairly 
frequent  generally,  but  the  group  of  Cambridge  men  whose  language  we 
have  been  studying  are  distinctly  ahead  of  most  good  writers  in  this 
respect.  Wilson  makes  use  of  the  Northern  and  N.E.  Midland  -s  in  the 
2nd  Pers.  Sing.  Pres. — thou  sleepes,  places,  waites,  &c.,  alongside  of  the 
-est  form.  After  some  we  find  -s — some  speakes,  some  sprites,  &c.  (I  have 
noted  sixteen  forms  in  -s  after  some  on  one  page,  220.) 

Strong  Verbs. 

The  chief  forms  to  note  are : — Inf.  chase ;  Prets.  forgot,  begot,  gotie, 
quoth,  rz#(also  rode),  and  the  P.P.'s  ouerloden  and  stroken  'struck'. 

A  typical  writer  of  the  later  sixteenth  century,  who  enjoyed  among  his 
contemporaries  a  fame  which  we  may  think  disproportional  to  his  merits, 
and  who  by  his  vogue  and  influence  is  of  great  historical  importance,  is 
John  Lyly.  We  have  only  the  most  shadowy  notions  of  the  facts  of  his 
life.  He  must  have  been  born  about  1554,  and  Anthony  a  Wood  says  that 
he  was  a  Kentish  man  born,  and  entered  at  Magdalen  College,  where, 
according  to  the  Oxford  Register,  being  then  described  as  plebeii filius , 
he  matriculated  in  1571  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  He  took  his  M.A.  in 
1575,  'at  which  time',  says  Wood,  'as  he  was  esteemed  in  the  University 
a  noted  wit,  so  afterwards  was  he  in  the  Court  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  where 
he  was  also  reputed  a  rare  poet,  witty,  comical,  and  facetious'.  He 
obtained  a  post  of  some  sort  in  Burghley's  household,  had  plays  acted  at 
Court,  and  aspired  to  the  post  of  Master  of  the  Revels,  in  which  ambition 
he  was  unsuccessful.  In  the  latter  part  of  his  life  he  sat  in  the  House  of 
Commons  for  various  boroughs.  Lyly  left  at  least  eight  plays,  and  a  tract 
taking  the  side  of  the  bishops  in  the  Marprelate  Controversy,  but  his 
fame  and  influence  rest  mainly,  the  former  perhaps  exclusively,  at  the 
present  time  upon  the  two  works  Euphues  Anatomy  of  Wit,  1579,  and 
Euphues  and  his  England,  1580. 

His  relations  with  Burghley  do  not  seem  to  have  been  altogether 
happy,  and  a  rather  servile  and  long-winded  letter  to  the  latter  exists,  in 
which,  with  much  characteristic  verbiage,  Lyly  appears  to  repudiate  some 
sort  of  accusation  brought  against  him.  For  some  reason  Lyly  did  not 
find  favour  with  Elizabeth,  whom  he  petitioned  on  at  least  two  occasions, 
asking  for  reward,  or,  'If  your  sacred  Matie  thinke  me  unworthy,  and 
that  after  x  yeares  tempest,  I  must  att  the  Court  suffer  shipwrack  of  my 

K    2 


132  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

tyme,  my  wittes,  my  hopes,  vouchsafe  in  yor  neuer-erring  judgment, 
some  planck  or  rafter  to  wafte  me  into  a  country,  where  in  my  sadd  and 
settled  devocion  I  may,  in  euery  corner  of  a  thatcht  cottage,  write  praiers 
instead  of  plaies',  &c.  'I  feare ',  he  says,  'to  comitt  the  error  I  dis- 
comende,  tediousness.'  And  much  more  in  the  same  strain.  Possibly 
the  Queen  thought  that  he  had  committed  this  error ;  at  any  rate  she  seems 
to  have  taken  no  notice  of  this  or  of  a  later  petition,  and,  as  has  been 
said,  he  received  neither  the  office  he  coveted  nor  other  preferment  at  her 
hands. 

At  the  present  time  probably  many  will  find  the  wit  of  Euphues 
laboured  and  far- fetched,  its  eloquence  turgid  and  vapid,  the  moral 
reflections  lacking  in  profundity,  the  dialogue  unreal  and  stilted,  the  style 
with  its  elaborate  antithesis  and  balance,  its  ceaseless  flow  of  images 
drawn  from  a  more  than  dubious  Natural  History,  its  ever-recurring  and 
often  intricate  alliteration,  insufferably  tedious,  the  portrayal  of  human 
character  unnatural,  and  the  situations  devoid  of  verisimilitude.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  rebut  any  of  these  strictures,  and  yet  there  are  passages  here 
and  there  where  the  blemishes  disappear  for  a  moment,  where  the  thought 
is  filled  with  good  sense,  and  in  which  the  style  attains  real  grace  and 
freedom  of  movement.  To  say  this  is  not,  however,  to  admit  the 
extravagant  claims  made  for  the  author.  Lyly  brought  to  a  greater  pitch, 
and  employed  more  systematically  than  his  predecessors,  a  manner,  the 
beginnings  of  which  at  its  worst  may  be  seen  in  Caxton,  and  which  at 
its  best  exists  already  in  Lord  Berners.  It  is  preposterous  to  assert  that 
Lyly  gave  to  English  prose  style  any  graces  of  which  it  was  incapable 
before.  Neither  the  illustrious  translator  of  Froissart,  nor  Cranmer,  or 
whoever  composed  the  English  of  the  incomparable  prayers  and  exhorta- 
tions of  the  two  first  Prayer  Books  (1549  and  1552),  would  have  had 
anything  to  learn  from  the  author  of  Euphues.  But,  though  we  may 
dissent  from,  we  cannot  afford  to  ignore  the  judgement  of  Lyly's  con- 
temporaries upon  his  work.  As,  for  example,  the  encomium  of  Webbe 
(not  perhaps  a  very  discriminating  critic  of  English  Prose  or  Poetry),  in 
his  Discourse  of  English  Poetrie  (1586),  where  he  says  that  '  Master  lohn 
Lilly  hath  deserued  moste  high  commendations,  as  he  which  hath  stept 
one  steppe  further  therein  then  any  either  before  or  since  he  first  began 
the  wyttie  discourse  of  his  Euphues^  Whose  workes,  surely  in  respecte 
of  his  singuler  eloquence  and  braue  composition  of  apt  words  and  sen- 
tences, let  the  learned  examine  and  make  tryall  thereof  thorough  all  the 
partes  of  Rethoricke,  in  fitte  phrases,  in  pithy  sentences,  in  gallant  tropes, 
in  flowing  speeche,  in  plaine  sence,  and  surely  in  my  Judgment,  I  thinke 
he  wyll  yeelde  him  that  verdict,  which  Quintilian  giueth  of  bothe  the  best 
Orators  Demosthenes  and  Tully,  that  from  the  one,  nothing  may  be  taken 
away,  to  the  other,  nothing  may  be  added '  (D.  of  E.  P.,  Arber's  Ed., 
p.  46). 

With  Lyly  the  saying  le  style  c'est  Thomme  seems  completely  verified. 
We  find  the  same  absurdities  and  affectations  in  his  plays,  even  in  his 
private  letters,  as  in  Euphues.  We  feel  that  in  ordinary  life  he  must  have 
talked  like  that  at  last,  and  if  he  ever  spoke  in  the  House  the  country 
gentlemen  must  have  writhed  under  him.  We  open  the  plays  at  random 
and  we  light  on  such  a  passage  as  this,  in  Sapho  and  Phao :  (  Of  acornes 


LYLY'S   STYLE  133 

comes  oakes,  of  drops  flouds,  of  sparkes  flames,  of  atomies  elements. 
But  alas  it  fareth  with  me  as  waspes,  who  feeding  on  serpents,  make  their 
stings  more  venomous :  for  glutting  myself  on  the  face  of  Phao,  I  have 
made  my  desire  more  desperate.  Into  the  neast  of  an  Alcyon,  no  bird 
can  enter  but  the  Alcyon ;  and  into  the  hart  of  so  great  a  ladie,  can  any 
creepe  but  a  great  lord  ? '  That  might  have  come  straight  out  of  Euphues. 
And  yet  with  all  Lyly's  absurdities  in  prose,  it  would  be  foolish  to  deny 
that  the  man  was  a  true  poet  who  wrote  such  songs  as  *  Cupid  and  my 
Campaspe ;,  or  that  (also  in  Campaspe)  in  which  occur  the  lines  : — 

who  is't  now  we  heare 
None  but  the  larke  so  shrill  and  cleare; 
How  at  heavens  gates  she  claps  her  wings, 
The  morne  not  waking  till  she  sings, 

or  that  in  Sap  ho  and  Phao  beginning  : — 

O  cruell  Love !   on  thee  I  lay 
My  curse,  which  shall  strike  blinde  the  day  ; 
Never  may  sleepe  with  velvet  hand 
Charme  thine  eyes  with  sacred  wand,  &c. 

Nor  should  we  forget  'that  Shakespeare,  .though  he  made  fun  of  Lyly's 
prose,  condescended  to  copy  his  lyrics,  while  Polonius's  advice  to  his  son 
is  more  than  slightly  reminiscent  of  Euphues. 

We  must  now  address  ourselves  to  the  more  prosaic  task  of  examining 
in  some  detail  the  forms  of  English  employed  by  this  writer.  The  follow- 
ing account  is  chiefly  based  on  the  two  parts  of  Euphues,  with  some 
additional  forms  from  the  Plays. 

Vowels. 

M.E.  er.  The  ar  spellings  are  not  very  numerous,  and  several  words 
appear  both  with  er  or  ear,  and  ar : — hart  and  heart  (the  phrase  neither 
art  nor  heart  leaves  no  doubt  of  the  pronunciation  intended);  deserts  and 
desarts ;  warre,  farre,  farther,  harken,  quarrellous ;  on  the  other  hand, 
vertue,  swerue,  clearkes.  The  spelling  furre  '  far '  is  curious. 

O.E.  y  has  the  three  forms  distributed  as  now,  so  far  as  they  occur, 
except  creple,  creaple  '  cripple ',  which  in  view  of  the  author's  origin  we 
are  tempted  to  regard  as  a  survival  of  Kentish  dialect,  though  the  form 
occurs  in  fourteenth-century  London  documents. 

The  spelling  e  for  i  only  occurs  in  sheltering  '  shivering '.  The  e  in 
hether,  hetherto  'hither',  &c.,  is  to  be  otherwise  explained.  (Cf.  p.  226, 
&c.) 

Instead  of  e,  a  appears  in  dragges  '  dregs ',  and  hauenly  '  heavenly ', 
which  may  point  to  a  front  pronunciation  of  old  a. 

M.E.  01  is  written  ou  in  bloud  '  blood '. 

The  M.E.  spelling  -aun-  is  largely  preserved — aunswered,  graunt, 
chaungyd,  glaunces,  graundfather,  daunger,  straunge,  graunge. 

The  new  diphthonging  of  o  before  /  is  expressed  in  mould,  souldiours, 
rowle  '  roll '. 

Vowel  Lengthenings,  &c.  These  are  shown  in  the  following 
spellings  : — woorth,  woord,  retourne,  toossed  ( tossed  ',foorth,  woont  'wont' ; 
old  length  is  preserved  in  doath,  threede,  ihreade,  hoat '  hot ',  insteed(e]. 


i34  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Vowel  Shortenings.  Hotte  '  hot ',  beheaddest.  The  following  show 
shortenings  after  raising  of  e  to  i : — sillye,  thrid  ( thread '  (N.),  diuell, 
deuilks  l  devil ',  M.E.  devel. 

Unstressed  Vowels.  Confusion  of  original  sound  is  shown  in 
destany,  musition,  Italionated,  dyot <  diet '. 

Old  01  is  written  ey  in  torteyse,  also  tortuse  (in  Mother  Bombie).  French 
u  is  written  e  in  the  second  syllable  of  venterous. 

Consonants. 

Addition  of  a  final  -d  after  -n  occurs  in  sound-ed  '  swooned  ',  round-'mg 
1  whispering ' ;  after  -r  in  visard ';  of  /  after  -n  in  margant,  margenl 
1  margin ' ;  of  b  after  -m  in  lombe  '  loom ' ;  of  p  after  -m  in  mushrompe. 

Loss  of  final  consonant  is  seen  in  yron  Mowle,  io  clyme  '  climb  ', 
strick-\y. 

Final  -d  is  lost  before  an  initial  d  in  next  word  in  ole  drudge  =  '  old  '. 

Final  -/  is  not  yet  added  to  the  old  hoise  '  hoist '  (cf.  the  P.  P.  hoised). 

Initial  qu-  [kw]  becomes  c  [k]  before  o  in  from  coting  of  ye  scriptures 
— '  quoting '. 

The  older  banket  is  found,  by  the  side  of  banqueted. 

Intrusive  -«-  is  seen  in  messanger. 

The  artificial  learned  spellings  dampnable,  to  condempne,  accompt,  solempn 
may  be  noted. 

A  few  isolated  archaisms  are  worth  recording  : — retchless  '  reckless '  (as 
in  Article  XVII  of  the  Prayer  Book,  where  it  is  spelt  wrelchlessness),  euets 
1  newts ',  O.E.  efete,  still  heard  in  provincial  dialects,  chekin  (  chicken '. 

Nouns. 

Possessive  Singulars  without  a  suffix,  when  the  Noun  ends  in  -s : — 
Appolos  Musicke,  Euphues  feature.  The  use  of  his  after  the  Noun  instead 
of  the  suffix — Philautus  his  faith,  Fidus  his  hue.  This  usage  is  extended 
to  the  Fern.,  which  takes  hir,  in  Juno  hir  bedde,  by  the  side  of  Junes 
brauerif. 

The  Plurals  are,  on  the  whole,  as  at  present,  but  the  Invariable  apple. — 
to  bring  forth  apple ^  evidently  in  a  collective  sense,  is  noteworthy. 

The  word  neives  is  used  with  a  Singular  Vb. — Other  newes  here  is 
none. 

The  form  sheeve  'sheaf  is  derived  from  the  Oblique  case  type. 

Adjectives. 

Double  Comparatives,  as  is  typical  of  this  period,  occur,  e.  g.  : — the 
more  fitter,  more  swifter,  more  sweeter,  &c.  The  Elizabethans  had  no 
compunction  in  adding  the  Superlative  suffix  to  words  of  three  syllables — 
delicatest.  The  irregular  Comparative  badder  occurs  in  a  sentence  where 
it  is  contrasted  with  better.  In  this  case,  worse  would  have  spoilt  the 
alliteration. 

The  old  mutated  elder  is  used  as  the  ordinary  Comparative  of  old — You 
are  too  young  .  .  .  and  were  you  elder,  &c. 


GRAMMAR  OF   <  EUPHUES  '  135 

Pronouns. 

The  forms  of  the  Personal  Pronouns  are  pretty  much  as  at  present, 
and  only  the  following  remarks  fall  to  be  made.  You  is  used  for  all 
cases,  both  Sing,  and  PL,  but  thou,  thee,  thy  (thine  before  vowels)  are  used 
in  affectionate  address  in  the  Sing.  Ye  also  occurs  in  Nom.  PI. 

The  Possessive  Sing,  of  the  Neuter  is  his — then  shall  learning  haue  his 
hire,  whose  b'oud  t's  in  his  chief est  heate,  &c. 

The  Indefinite  Pron.  any  takes  a  Possessive  suffix  when  used  abso- 
lutely— my  fortune  should  be  as  ill  as  antes.  One,  in  the  sense  of  '  one 
man',  is  also  inflected—  ones  loynes  —  'one  man's'.  The  Indef.  one  is 
used  as  at  present — to  cut  ones  meate. 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  3rd  Pers.  Sing,  in  Euphues  hardly  ever  ends  in  -s,  apparently, 
but  nearly  always  in  -eth,  except  the  irregular  forms  dares  (Pret.  Pres.) 
and  giues.  The  PI.  as  a  rule  has  no  ending,  that  is,  it  represents  the 
old  Midland  type,  the  final  -n  being  lost.  There  is,  however,  at  least 
one  example  of  the  retention  of  the  latter — they  loaden.  I  have  noted  two 
examples  of  the  old  Southern  PI. — 'pleasaunt  sirroppes  doth  chiefliest 
impart  a  delicate  taste ',  and  whose  backes  seemeth.  In  the  Plays,  while  the 
3rd  Sing,  in  -th  is  the  normal  form,  especially  in  the  more  solemn 
passages,  -s  is  quite  frequent  in  the  songs  and  blank  verse  portions,  for 
the  sake  of  the  metre,  and  in  the  more  colloquial  parts  of  Mother 
Bombie — e.g.  This  happens  pat,  &c.  Plurals  in  -s  also  occur  in  the 
Plays,  as  in  the  passage  quoted  above  from  Sapho  and  Phao—of  acornes 
comes  oakes. 

Strong  Verbs. 

These,  on  the  whole,  are  as  at  present,  but  the  following  forms  may  be 
noted : — 

The  old  Inf.  leese  '  lose ',  by  the  side  of  loose,  and  to  strick,  by  the  side 
of  strike.  The  Prets.  stroke  '  struck  ',  wan  (and  wonne),  quoth,  ws\&flang. 
The  Vb.  give  has  only  give,  given,  in  Inf.,  Pres.,  and  P.  P.,  no  geue 
forms.  Among  P.  P.'s,/orlorne  (Adj.)  occurs  by  the  side  of  lost,  the  real 
P.  P.,  strooke,  stroken,  and  stricken,  striken ;  meaten  '  measured ',  and 
melten  'melted '. 

The  Auxiliaries  call  for  no  special  remark,  except  to  point  out  the  use 
of  art  with  you  in  the  Sing. — art  not  you  instead  of  art  not  thou.  This  is 
the  same  kind  of  tendency  which  later  produces  the  construction  you  was, 
so  common  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Constructions  and  Idioms. 

We  may  note  the  use  of  was  after  there  in  Impersonal  constructions  — 
there  was  all  things  necessary.  The  Negative  follows  the  Verb  imme- 
diately inlmeane  not  to  follow  them.  The  still-familiar  expression  straight- 
laced  occurs,  and  the  phrase  Philautus  came  in  with  his  spoake  (i.  e.  in  the 
conversation),  equivalent  to  our  '  put  his  oar  in '.  The  expression  Euphues 
whom  thou  laydst  by  the  wals  (=  'shelved',  'gave  up')  recalls  at  once 


136  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

our  phrase  to  go  to  the  wall,  and  the  very  old  expression  which  occurs  in 
O.E.  poetry — e.g.  dugud eall gecrong — wlonc  bi  wealle  in  the  Wanderer. 

We  may  fittingly  conclude  these  brief  studies  of  the  language  of 
typical  writers  and  speakers  of  Court  English  during  the  sixteenth  century 
with  an  account  of  the  English  of  Queen  Elizabeth  herself.  The  materials 
for  the  following  statement  are  drawn  from  various  sources,  of  which 
the  chief  are  letters  of  the  Queen,  from  the  third  quarter  of  the 
century  onwards,  written  to  various  people,  and  published  in  different 
collections  (see  Bibliography),  and  the  volume  of  Translations  made  by 
the  Queen  in  1593,  from  classical  authors,  published  by  the  Early 
English  Text  Society,  under  the  quaint  title  of  Englishings.  A  few  early 
letters  from  Ellis's  collection  have  also  been  used.  In  collecting  forms  to 
illustrate  the  Queen's  English,  I  have  avoided  all  letters  not  reprinted 
from  the  originals  in  her  own  handwriting  ;  and,  as  regards  the  '  English- 
ings  ',  have  taken  forms  only  from  the  Metres  of  Boethius,  and  the  trans- 
lations of  Plutarch  and  Horace  which  are  all  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  own 
hand. 

A  very  characteristic  habit  of  the  Queen's  is  the  frequent  use  of  i  for 
M.E.  e,  and  this  is  seen  in  her  letters  as  early  as  1549.  So  persistent  is 
this  mode  of  spelling  that  any  document  purporting  to  be  written  by 
Elizabeth  which  shows  no  example  of  it  might  safely  be  rejected  as 
spurious. 

Vowels. 

The  -ar-  spellings.  These  are  very  common  in  the  Queen's  writings, 
and  are  found  already  in  the  early  letters.  The  following  is  a  com- 
plete list  of  those  I  have  noted  from  all  sources  : — disarued,  desarue, 
hartiest,  hartely,  hart,  desart,  sarued,  the  Cars  (the  Kers  of  Fernyhurst), 
swarue,  justice-clarke,  hard  '  heard  ',  marcy,  darkness,  stars,  wark  '  work ' 
(also  work),  defar  '  defer ',  parson  '  person '.  On  the  other  hand,  -er- 
spellings  occur  also,  chiefly  in  the  early  letters: — servant,serues,preserue, 
deserued,  herde  '  heard '.  The  spelling  /earning  is  ambiguous. 

O.E.  y.  With  i\ — litel,  gilty,  bisy,  styrring.  The  spelling  ivel  may 
come  under  this  head,  or  it  may  be  the  Queen's  way  of  writing  the  type 
evil. 

With  u  we  have  much,  stur  '  stir  ',  sturred put '  stirred  pit ',  furst,  busy, 
businis. 

Only  one  e-  form  seems  to  occur,  and  that  is  dubious  in  origin — ivesh- 
ing  '  wishing ',  and  should  perhaps  be  placed  in  the  following  group. 

e  for  i.  The  only  forms  are  bellowes  '  billows ',  rechis  '  riches  '.  I  am 
doubtful  whether  to  include  weshing  here  or  to  take  it  as  representing  the 
Kentish  form  of  O.E.  wyscan. 

Unrounding  of  M.E.  6. 

The  form  stap  occurs — I  pray  you  stap  the  mouthes.  It  is  interesting  to  find 
this  form  at  this  period.  As  noted  above  (p.  78  (St.  Editha))  the  unround- 
ing of  o  is  characteristic  of  the  South- West,  where  it  is  found  in  the  first 
quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century.  These  forms  became  current  in  fashion- 
able speech  in  the  seventeenth  century,  when  they  are  ridiculed  by 
Vanbrugh  in  the  well-known  character  of  Lord  Foppington  with  his 


QUEEN   ELIZABETH'S    PRONUNCIATION  137 

often-quoted  cliche*  stap  my  vitals,  and  many  other  forms  of  the  same 
class.  In  Standard  English  a  few  of  these  forms  have  gained  permanent 
footing,  such  as  strap  by  the  side  of  strop,  plat  (in  Biblical  language)  by 
the  side  of  the  now  usual  plot  (of  land).  It  seems  at  the  first  blush 
a  plausible  surmise  that  the  gallant  and  accomplished  Raleigh,  with  his 
broad  Devon  speech,  may  have  helped  to  make  such  forms  fashionable  at 
Court.  In  any  case,  this  is  one  of  the  few  examples  of  the  influence  of 
Regional  dialect  upon  Standard  Spoken  English,  dating  from  the  Modern 
Period.  (See,  however,  p.  240,  below.) 

The  Raising  of  M.E.  e1. 

We  have  already  seen  plenty  of  examples  of  the  spelling  i  for  e  from 
the  fifteenth  century  onwards,  and  the  writers  on  pronunciation  make  it 
clear  that  old  [e]  was  pronounced  [l]  in  Standard  English  as  early  as  the 
first  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century.  It  is  desirable,  however,  to  give 
fairly  numerous  examples  from  the  writings  of  so  important  a  speaker  as 
the  Queen,  and,  indeed,  I  know  of  no  other  writer  in  whose  works  so  many 
of  these  spellings  can  be  found.  The  following  are  instructive  : — 

hiresay  '  hear-  ',  kiping,  briding  *  breeding ',  fried  '  freed ',  besiche, 
spidye  '  speedy ',  hire  Inf.  '  hear  ',  dides  '  deeds  ',  spick  '  speech  ',  shipe 
'sheep',  &c. 

All  these  represent  M.E.  tense  [e].  It  should  be  noted  that  the  same 
spelling  also  occurs  in  spike  Vb.  '  speak ',  and  bequived  '  bequeathed ', 
where  i  stands  for  M.E.  [i]  from  O.E.  e  lengthened  in  the  open 
syllables. 

The  Queen  is  not  perfectly  consistent,  however,  for  she  also  writes 
deapest,  seake  '  seek ',  deleaved  '  believed ',  which  all  have  M.E.  [e],  and 
sead  and  sede  '  seed ',  which"  may  represent  either  the  Southern  type  with 
M.E.  [i]  or  the  E.  Midland  type  with  [e]. 

The  spelling  shild  probably  stands  for  [Jild],  from  the  E.  Midland 
M.E.  scheld,  and  not  for  the  Southern  M.E.  schlld.  The  spelling  whir 
1  where '  establishes  an  [i]-sound  in  this  word,  which  is  described  later 
also  by  writers  on  pronunciation.  The  explanation  of  this  sound  in 
this  word  is,  doubtless,  that  it  has  been  influenced  by  here,  which  has  e1. 

Monophthonging  of  M.E.  Diphthong  ai. 

This,  I  think,  is  proved  by  the  spelling  agane  *  again '  in  a  letter  of 
J553>  by  ganesays,  pant,  panter  '  paint',  '  painter',  in  the  Translations, 
and  by  the  '  inverted  spellings  '  maid  Vb. '  made ',  and  maike  Vb.  'make '. 

The  spellings  dainger,  daingerous  to  my  mind  point  in  the  same  direc- 
tion and  probably  indicate  a  pronunciation  with  [i].  The  Queen  also 
occasionally  retains  the  M.E.  spelling  daunger. 

Murmur  Vowel  between  Long  Vowel,  or  Diphthong 
and  following  -r. 

This  seems  to  be  shown  by  such  spellings  as  /  desiar  '  desire  ',  fiars 
1  fires ',  hiar  '  hear  '.  Such  spellings  are  not  uncommon  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  curiously  enough  desiar  occurs  in  a  letter  written  by  the 
Queen's  mother,  Anne  Boleyn. 


138  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Other  Vowel  Spellings. 

We  are  not  surprised  to  find  a  diphthongal  spelling  in  fauk  '  fall ', 
fauleth,  and  stauke  '  stalk ',  since  we  saw  these  spellings  in  the  former 
century.  Whether  this  was  still  pronounced  as  a  diphthong  is  very 
doubtful.  (See  pp.  251-3.) 

The  spelling  ou  and  u  for  O.E.  and  Early  M.E.  o,  as  we  shall 
see,  is  found  several  centuries  earlier  (cf.  p.  234).  Queen  Elizabeth  has 
several  examples : — bloud,  floude,  louke  '  look ',  boutes  '  boots ',  boukes, 
houke,  '  hook '.  The  form  must  is  probably  short,  and  arose  in  the 
unstressed  position. 

We  must  not  omit  to  mention  the  spelling  fortiune  with  iu  for  the 
earlier  French  u  [y].  I  regard  this  form  as  representing  M.E.  fortune 
with  the  original  French  accentuation,  on  the  second  syllable.  The 
other  type,  accented  on  the  first  syllable,  had  become  fortin  by  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century. 

Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  suffixes  -edt  -es,  -est,  -ness  are  constantly  written  -id,  -is,  &c. : — 

preventid,  acquainiid,  &c. ;  -ed  is  rarer  ; 

scusis  '  excuses ',  practisis ; 

expertist,  largist,fullist,  hottist,  &c. ; 

kindnis,  wekenis,  happinis,  darkenis ;  also  witnis ; 

bestoith,  burnith. 

The  ending  -er  is  often  written  -ar,  implying  probably  the  pronuncia- 
tion [ar] : — sistar,  bdtar,  bordars,  murdar. 

The  ending  -en  is  written  -in  in  heauin. 

Where  we  now  have  the  ending  -tour,  -or  is  written,  in  behavor. 

The  M.E.  diphthong  ei  is  written  a  in  vilanous,  and  e  in  the  for  *  they ', 
a  very  common  spelling  with  Queen  Elizabeth. 

The  tendency  to  join  a  consonant  after  a  weak  syllable  to  the  following 
syllable,  when  this  is  stressed,  is  shown  in  my  none  witte  =  '  mine  own '. 

The  vowel  of  the  Superlative  suffix  is  lost  in  carefulsf,  thankfulst. 

The  unstressed  forms  the  and  ther  'they,  their'  are  frequent  in  all 
Elizabeth's  writings. 

Consonants. 

Loss  of  Consonants.  /  is  lost  after  another  Cons,  before  -s  in  attempt, 
accident;  after/"  before  n  in  of  en  'often*. 

b  is  lost  between  m-  and  -/-  in  nimlest '  nimblest '. 

/  is  lost  before  -k  in  stauke  '  stalk '. 

Addition  of  Consonants.  A  parasitic  /  is  developed  finally  in  in 
middest  (cf.  also  Amidz  //),  and/br  the  nones/. 

The  parasitic  nasal  is  seen  in  messanger,  earlier  messager. 

Other  Consonant  Changes.  The  nasal  [n]  '  ng '  in  the  suffix  -ing 
occurs  once  written  -n — besichen  '  beseeching '.  The  same  sound  at  the 
end  of  a  stressed  syllable  occurs  twice  written  -nk—brinkinge  of  me  up,  our 
brinkers  up. 

The  old  voiceless  w,  formerly  written  hw,  and  then  wh,  was  apparently 
not  pronounced  in  the  Queen's  English,  since  she  writes  wich  '  which ', 


QUEEN   ELIZABETH'S   GRAMMAR  139 

and  evidently  used  the  voiced  sound  in  this  and  other  words  beginning 
with  this  consonant,  as  all  Southern  speakers  do  at  present,  unless  they 
have  been  subjected  to  Scotch  or  Irish  influence. 

M.E.  o*  (from  O.E.  d)  when  initial  is  written  wo-  in  won,  wons  '  one, 
once ',  and  ho-  is  written  who-  in  wholy  '  wholly '.  The  former  is  the 
ancestor  of  the  type  now  in  use,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  won 
occurs  also  in  a  letter  in  the  handwriting  of  Henry  VIII,  written  in  1544, 
which  shows  that  this  type  was  current  in  Court  English  at  this  period, 
although  the  other  type,  pronounced  as  in  on-lyt  seems  also  to  have 
survived  much  later  in  good  English  (see  pp.  306-7).  The  arbitrary 
character  of  present-day  spelling  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  we  write  one 
and  pronounce  [wan],  while  although  we  do  not  pronounce  wh-  in  whole 
we  yet  write  it  thus.  Queen  Elizabeth  also  writes  hole  by  the  side  of  the 
wh-  spelling. 

To  pronounce  [v]  for  voiced  '  -th- '  [tS]  is  to  this  day  an  individual 
peculiarity  which  is  heard  here  and  there,  and  Queen  Elizabeth  apparently 
had  it,  and  betrays  it  in  the  spelling  bequived  for  bequeathed. 

The  metathesized  form  of  old  -sc-  occurs  in  axed  '  asked '. 

Flexional  -st  both  as  a  PI.  and  as  a  Possessive  ending,  is  often  written 
-2,  generally  after  voiced  consonants,  as  in  quarelz,  equate,  Russelz 
(Possess.),  Godz  tuition,  lordz,  &c. 

The  spelling  -iz  for  -ts  is  also  commoner  in  the  Letters  and  the  Trans- 
lations— -fitz  Vb.,  hartz,  dartz. 

The  old  (English)  type  with y-  instead  of  the  Scandinavian  type  with 
g-  survives  \nforyetfullness. 

Nouns. 

The  traditional  change  of  -f-  to  -v-  between  vowels  still  survives  in 
hues,  a  typical  Possess.  Sing,  of  this  period. 

A  '  group-possessive '  occurs  in  '  I  shulde  .  .  .  long  sithens  have 
appeased  my  lorde  of  Bedfords  mynde  therm  '  (1553). 

Among  noteworthy  PI.  forms  we  may  note  oxe — a  hundred  oxet  and 
thanke — '  the  two  gentilmen  I  trust  shal  receaue  your  thanke '. 

News  is  used  as  a  Sing,  in  This  last  newes ;  as  a  PI.  in  how  grate  ful 
such  newes  were. 

A  curious  construction  with  sort  is  seen  in  *  a  few  sort  of  outlawes  fils 
up  his  traine '. 

Adjectives. 

The  only  point  I  have  noted  is  the  inflected  PI.  in  clirristz  days 
(clearest). 

Personal  Pronouns. 

There  is  not  much  to  note  beyond  the  fact  that  the  Queen  never  uses 
thou,  &c.,  in  the  Sing. — always you(e),  and  that  by  the  side  of  yt  the  old 
spelling  hit  is  extremely  frequent — I  have  counted  twenty-eight  examples 
in  twenty-one  letters,  and  the  form  is  also  found  in  the  Translations. 

The  unstressed  forms  of  the  PI.  Pronouns  of  the  3rd  Pers.  have  already 
been  mentioned. 


i4o  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

The  Indefinite  Article. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  a  before  a  word  beginning  with  a  vowel  occurs 
three  times  in  a  letter  of  1549  —  'a  encreasinge  of  ther  ivel  tonges,  a 
bridinge  of  a  ivel  name,  so  ivel  a  opinion  '. 

Verbal  Endings. 

The  chief  points  of  interest  are  the  endings  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Sing. 
Present,  and  of  the  PI.  Present.  Concerning  the  former  it  must  be 
recorded  that  the  ending  -s  is  very  common  in  the  later  letters,  and  in 
the  Translations.  In  the  latter,  indeed,  this  is  the  most  frequent  form, 
the  -th  ending  being  comparatively  rare.  In  the  early  letters  the  -j-  forms 
also  occur,  but  in  nothing  like  the  same  proportion  as  in  the  later  ones 
and  the  Translations. 

The  Auxiliaries  hath  and  doth  seem  only  to  occur  in  this  form,  and 
hardly  ever  with  -s,  though  I  have  noted  your  Grace  has  —  in  a  letter 
of  1549. 

As  regards  the  Pres.  PI.  we  find,  besides  forms  with  no  ending,  others 
in  both  ~th  and  -s  :  e.  g.  the  ('  =they  ')  ar  most  deceued  that  trusteth  most  in 
themselves  ;  the  (they)  breakith,  &c.  ;  all  our  subjectes  lokes  after  ;  small 
flies  stiks  fast  for  wekenis;  your  commissionars  telz  me;  sild(=  seldom) 
recouers  kings  ther  dominion  ;  as  the  hunters  rates  ther  houndz,  and 
)  &c.,  &c.  See  also  pp.  339-41,  below. 


Strong  Verbs. 

There  is  little  to  note  under  this  head  except  that  although  geue  '  give  ' 
occurs,  the  usual  type  is  giue,  gyut.  The  P.  P.  is  geuen  and  gtuen,  and 
the  curious  and  archaic  typeyeouen  is  found  in  a  letter  of  1595. 

We  have  now  examined,  in  some  detail,  the  English  of  some  typical  per- 
sonages of  the  sixteenth  century,  who  between  them  cover  the  whole  century. 
They  spring  from  various  classes  and  were  engaged  in  different  pursuits, 
but  all  of  them,  from  the  circumstances  of  their  birth,  their  fortunes,  and 
their  occupations  were  brought  into  contact,  in  varying  degrees,  with  the 
Court,  and  with  the  highest  and  most  distinguished  society  of  their  age  ; 
all  of  them  by  virtue  of  their  opportunities  and  their  education  were 
certainly  acquainted  with  the  best  type  of  Spoken  English  of  the  day,  and 
in  spite  of  occasional  lapses  into  a  native  form  here  and  there,  they  may 
be  taken  as  individually  and  collectively  exhibiting  the  Standard  English 
of  daily  life  and  of  literature. 

From  our  brief  survey  we  learn  the  existence  of  a  certain  latitude  in 
the  choice  of  type,  both  in  pronunciation  and  in  the  use  of  grammatical 
forms. 

It  seemed  worth  while  to  make,  on  this  account,  this  study  of  the 
speech  of  individuals,  which  brings  home  to  us  how  considerably  greater 
then  than  now  was  the  possible  variety  in  the  speech  of  persons  of 
approximately  the  same  social  entourage. 

We  learn  also  from  the  occasional  spellings  cited  above,  many  impor- 
tant and  interesting  facts  concerning  the  development  of  sound  change 
in  English,  and  concerning  the  distribution  of  varieties  due  to  dialect  of 
one  kind  or  another. 


AN  ELIZABETHAN   COCKNEY  141 

We  now  turn  to  consider  the  English  of  an  entirely  different  social 
stratum  from  that  whose  language  we  have  hitherto  examined  in  this 
century.  Henry  Machyn,  the  Diarist,  seems  from  his  own  words  to 
have  been  a  simple  tradesman,  possibly  an  undertaker,  with  a  taste  for 
pageants — especially  for  funerals  (as  was  natural) — and  for  gossip.  Of  the 
great  persons  whom  he  mentions,  he  knew  no  more  than  their  names 
and  faces,  scanned  as  they  rode  past  him  in  some  procession,  and  an 
occasional  piece  of  gossip  picked  up,  one  is  inclined  to  think,  from  some 
other  spectator  among  the  crowd. 

Machyn's  work  is  a  priceless  monument  of  the  English  of  the  Middle 
Class  Londoner  with  no  particular  education  or  refinement.  We  shall 
find  therein,  naturally,  much  that  is  common  to  the  speech  of  the  higher 
orders,  but  also  certain  marked  features  which  distinguish  his  English 
from  theirs ;  certain  things,  also,  which  are  definitely  stated  to  be 
Cockneyisms  at  a  later  date,  although  they  have  now  passed  away  ;  and 
other  things  which  we  know  from  personal  experience,  or  from  compara- 
tively recently  extinct  tradition,  to  have  been  typical  vulgarisms  fifty  or 
so  years  ago. 

The  English  of  Henry  Machyn,  Citizen  and  Merchant 
Taylor  of  London. 

Vowels. 

M.E.  er.  The  following  occur  with  ~ar- : — clarkes  (passim),  Harfford 
(Hereford),  sarvand,  the  yerle  of  Darbe,  fardyng  'farthing',  harold, 
armyn  '  ermine ',  hard  '  heard ',  hart,  sarmon,  parson,  Garnsey,  farm, 
Barmsey  '  Bermondsey ',  sward  *  sword  '.  The  -er-  spell  ings  include  the 
following  : — clerk,  serten,  Bernard  castyll,  servandes,  serjanfs,  lernyd, 
(Co\e)herber. 

M.E.  i  is  written  e  (a)  in  the  following  two-syllabled  words,  in  open 
syllables  : — denner,  also  deener  '  dinner ',  cete  '  city ',  pressun  '  prison ', 
vetell '  victuals ',  pelers  '  pillars  ',  pete  '  pity  ',  wedew,  wedow  '  widow ',  jebett 
'  gibbet ',  leved  { lived  ',  veker  '  vicar  ',  velyns  l  villains ',  vesitars,  consperacy, 
sterope. 

(b)  In  the  following  words  of  three  or  more  syllables: — lever  ay  'livery', 
pelere  '  pillory ',  Necolas,  prevelegys^  menyster. 

(c)  In  the  following  the  vowel  is  certainly  short : — deleverd  '  delivered ', 
chelderyn,    Recherd,    essue   '  issue ',   Eslyngton  '  Islington ',    prensepulles, 
selver,  red  =  rid  '  rode  ',  belleis,  hes  '  is ',  ennes  of  the  cowrtt. 

The  list  under  group  (a)  is  larger  than  in  most  if  not  all  other  London 
writers  or  writers  of  Literary  English  whose  language  we  have  considered ; 
group  (c)  is  considerable,  and  if,  as  is  probable,  we  are  entitled  to  put 
(b)  under  the  same  head,  i.  e.  of  short  I  lowered  to  e,  the  list  becomes  very 
large.  The  list  in  group  (a)  probably  illustrates  the  lengthening  and 
lowering  of  i-  in  open  syllables,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  Northern 
dialects  of  M.E.  and  is  also  found  in  E.  Midland — Robt.  of  Brunne,  &c. 

O.E.  j/  occurs  in  all  three  types,  the  distribution  of  which  is  not 
precisely  as  at  present : — 

(a)  With  i : — myche  '  much ',  ymberyng  days  '  Ember  days ',  first^  gylded 
Vb.,  ryssfs  '  rushes '  (plant). 


i42  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VLII  TO  JAMES  I 

(b)  With  u  .—furst,  buryall. 

(c)  With  e  : — bered  '  buried  '  (very  frequent),  fastness,  mere  '  merry ', 
Crepulgate,  beldyd  l  built ',  kechens. 

M.E.  d  unrounded  : — the  marow  '  morrow  ',  caffen  '  coffin  ',  Dasset 
'  Dorset '. 

M.E.  au  appears  to  be  monophthongized  : — ontt  '  aunt ',  a  node  =  an 
aulb  'alb',  commondyd  (M.E.  commaund-),  hopene  'halfpenny*  (earlier 
haul/-),  agmenlyd  '  augmented '.  That  au  had  already  become  [5]  is 
further  made  probable  by  the  spelling  caumplet '  complete ',  which  shows 
that  the  writer  could  not  have  considered  au  to  represent  a  diphthongal 
sound. 

This  [5]  resulting  from  earlier  au  appears  also  to  have  been  unrounded 
in  drane  f  drawn ',  straberries  '  strawberries ',  agmentyd  f  augmented  '. 
Note  the  spelling  sarter  '  salter ',  which  shows  monophthonging  of  sault, 
then  unrounding,  the  loss  of  /  before  /,  and  the  use  of  -r-  after  a  vowel  to 
express  mere  quantity. 

The  spelling  Crenmer  '  Cranmer '  shows  the  fronting  of  M.E.  a.  The 
spelling  prast  for  *  pressed  '  points  in  the  same  direction. 

y  is  written  for  M.E.  e  in  Qwyne,  prych,  fryndes^  spykyng,  brykyng, 
brykefast.  By  the  side  of  weke  *  week ',  wike  is  also  found.  The  form  is, 
however,  ambiguous. 

Early  Modern  u  from  u  from  M.E.  0,  or  from  M.E.  u,  is  written  a  in 
Chamley '  Cholmondeley ',  Samerset '  Somerset ',  and  suggests  that  the  un- 
rounding of  u  had  already  taken  place.  The  form  Watton  for  '  Wotton ' 
appears  to  indicate  that  this  change  had  come  about,  in  the  speech  of 
Machyn,  also  after  w-. 

The  old  diphthong  ai  can  hardly  have  retained  its  diphthongal  pro- 
nunciation. Such  spellings  as  mayde  '  made ',  stayffes  '  staves ',  show  that 
this  combination  of  letters  could  be  used  without  any  idea  of  a  diphthongal 
value,  and  the  word  mayor,  which  formerly  certainly  had  a  diphthong,  is 
found  written  mere  as  well  as  may  re. 

The  spelling  oy  for  M.E.  <?a,  O.E.  <z,  is  curious  and  occurs  several 
times  : — cloyth  '  cloth ',  boyth  '  both '  (passim),  hoyth  '  oath '. 

Initially  this  vowel  is  still  written  in  one,  oon  '  one ',  but  the  form  won 
also  occurs. 

The  Southern  type,  from  an  old  x,  is  preserved  in  prate  '  pretty '. 

The  combination  -ench  appears  as  -ynch  in  Kyngbynche  (twice). 

The  combination  wa-  becomes  wo-  in  wosse  '  wash  '. 

Vowel  Shortenings. 

These  are  evidently  expressed  by  the  doubling  of  the  final  consonant  in 
the  following  words  :— goli  'goat  \fottman  '  footman  ',  swett l  sweat',  also 
swell '  sweet ',  grett '  great ',  heddes  '  heads  ',  mett '  meet '  (passim). 

Vowel  Lengthening. 

This  has  already  taken  place  in  gaard,  where  the  doubled  vowel  can 
have  no  other  meaning.  In  this  case,  either  the  r  has  already  been 
weakened,  or  the  lengthening  occurred  earlier  than  the  loss  of  r.  It  is 
pretty  certain  that  aa  here  does  not  imply  [a]  but  [ae]. 


MACHYN'S   GRAMMAR  143 

Unstressed  Syllables. 

There  is  the  evidence  so  common  since  the  fifteenth  century  of  the 
levelling  of  the  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  under  an  indeterminate 
sound  which  the  writer  found  it  hard  to  express  : — 

Rochester,  Wynch^ster,  but  Lnnk0ster ;  Justws  a  pesse,  Cheyffe  Justus  ; 
prograsse,  company,  Crystynmws,  secretary,  where  the  italicized  letters 
probably  all  stand  for  [9].  The  family  name  Seymour  is  written  Semer 
=  [slma(r)]. 

Initially  where  unstressed  u  is  written  a  in  apone  '  upon  ',  o  is  written  in 
the  same  way  in  apinions,  e  in  aronyous  '  erroneous '. 

The  ending  -y  is  often  written  e,  e.  g.  lade  '  lady ',  Darbe  '  Derby ', 
pete  '  pity ',  galere  '  gallery '. 

French  u  is  written  e  in  mysseforten  '  misfortune  \y  in  nevys '  nephews ', 
venterer  '  venturer  ',  also  written  ventorer. 

Old  long  vowels  are  shortened  in  unstressed  syllables — this  is  probably 
a  survival  of  the  normal  M.E.  shortening  in  wyldfulle  —  f  -fowl ',  grey- 
hond  'greyhound',  M.E.  -hund. 

The  diphthong  oi  is  written  y  in  Gaskyn  *  Gascoigne  ' ;  at  is  written  e 
in  palles,  M.E.  pallais  or  pallets. 

Loss  of  Syllable. 

Initial  vowels  are  lost  in  postyll '  apostle ',  salt  '  assault '. 
An  unstressed  syllable  immediately  following  that  with  the  chief  stress 
is  lost  in  Barmsey,  i.  e.  Beorkmundesey  '  Bermondsey '. 

The  Consonants. 

A  peculiarity  of  frequent  occurrence  in  Machyn  is  the  confusion  of  »- 
and  w-,  so  that  the  former  is  used  for  the  latter  and  vice  versa. 

Examples  of  w-  for  v- : — wacabondes  '  vagabonds ',  wergers,  waluw 
'  value  ',  wue  '  view ',  welvet '  velvet ',  wettelh  '  victuals ',  walans  '  valance ', 
woyce '  voice '. 

Examples  of  v-  for  w- : — voman,  vomen,  veyver  f  weaver ',  Volsake 
'  Woolsack ',  Vestmynster,  Vetyngton  '  Whittington  ',  Vosseter  '  Worcester ', 
Voderof  (Pr.  N.),  also  written  Woodroffe. 

Loss  of  Consonants. 

(a)  Finally  \-blyne  '  blind ',  Egype. 

(b)  Initially ',  w  before  o  =  [u]: — Odam  for  Woodham. 

(c)  Medially y  in  combinations : — /  4-  s  becomes  -s Wyssun  \Whitsun ', 

d  lost  after  -/-  before  j  [dz] — Oil  Jury  =  *  Old   Jewry  '.     d  +  s  is 

lost : —  Wostreet  '  Woodstreet ',  Lumbarslrett ;  ndf  becomes  -nf-  — gram- 

father ;  -nds-  becomes  -ns granser ;  -mm  becomes  -rm Yrmongers. 

The  combination  -pb-  is  simplified  to  -b cubard  ' cupboard';    -nkt- 

becomes  -nt santtuary. 

Loss  of  -1-  before  consonants : — This  occurs  before  -n-  in  swone  P.  P. 
'swollen';  before  -m-  in  reme,  ream  'realm';  before  -k-  in  Northfoke\ 
before  -p-  in  hopene '  halfpenny ' ;  before  -fm  Raff1  Ralph '  (this  is  perhaps 


i44  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

from  a  French  form  Rauf,  as  safe  from  sauf) ;  before  g  [dz]  in  sawgears 
'  soldiers '. 

Loss  of  -r  in  combination  with  -s : —  Woseter,  Vosseter  '  Worcester ', 
Dasset '  Dorset ',  Masse/say  '  Marshalsea  ',  Cosseletts. 

Loss  of  -\-  between  vowels  : — Denshyre '  Devonshire '.  In  an  unstressed 
syllable,  before  another  cons.,  -n-  is  lost  in  sune  elaw  '  son-in-law '. 

Addition  of  Consonants. 

Final  -d-  after  -1  -.—Sake/eld  for  Sackville.  This  may,  however,  be 
partly  suggested  by  the  suffix  -field. 

Development  of  a  parasitic  -n-  before  [dz]  is  seen  in  messenger,  Selenger 
from  Se(nt]  Leger. 

The  Misplacement  of  an  Initial  Aspirate. 

This  is  dropped  in  the  following  words  :—alffe,  alff  'half,  alpeny 
1  halfpenny ',  Amton  courte,  elmet '  helmet '  (frequently),  arnesse  '  harness ', 
alters  'halters',  ard  'hard',  yt  'hit'  Vb.,  At/allows,  ede  'head'.  In 
Cornnyll  ( Cornhill '  the  loss  is  normal  in  the  unstressed  element  of 
a  compound,  and  the  same  is  true  of  Lussam  for  *  Lewisham  '.  h  is  im- 
properly added  initially  in  : — hanswered,  haskyd^  Sant  Andrews  hunder  shaft, 
Halesander  '  Alexander ',  harme  '  arm '  (of  the  body),  harmes  (in  heraldry), 
here  '  ear ',  hoathe,  herth  f  earth  ',  hetten  '  eaten ',  hevere  *  every ',  Hambrose. 
This  addition,  as  in  present-day  vulgar  speech,  only  occurs  in  stressed 
words  ;  thus  we  find  hat  for  at,  at  the  end  of  a  sentence — a  grett  dener  as 
I  have  be  hat,  and  has  for  as  when  this  stands  in  a  stressed  position  at 
the  beginning  of  a  sentence. 

The  above  is  the  largest  list  of  '  dropped  aspirates '  in  words  of 
English,  not  Norman-French,  origin  which  I  have  found  in  any  document 
as  early  as  this.  The  addition  of  h-  is  commoner,  but  nowhere,  I  believe, 
so  frequent  as  in  Machyn. 

Initial  wh-  was  evidently  pronounced  simply  as  w-  by  Machyn,  as  is 
shown  by  the  spellings  wyped,  wypyd  (  whipped ',  wyche  '  which ',  watt 
'  what ',  war/  '  wharf',  and  the  inverted  spelling  whent  for  went. 

Old  -gh-  =  [Y]  is  written  -th-  in  Luthborow  '  Loughborough '. 

Initial  th-  [}> J  appears  as  f-  in  frust  '  thrust ',  Frogmorton  '  Throg- 
morton '. 

Final  ng  in  the  suffix  -ing  is  written  -yn  in  standyn — The  Queen  grace 
standyn  in  the  galere,  also  syttyn,  rydyn,  syngyne ;  on  the  other  hand  we 
get  evyngsong  '  evensong \ymberyng  days  —  ymberen  '  Ember  days'. 

The  combination  -rth-  [r$]  is  occasionally  written  -rd-—fardyngli2x- 
thing'. 

The  initial  lip-glide  is  expressed  by  w-  in  won  '  one ',  by  the  side  of 
one,  oon.  The  phrase  good  ons  occurs,  which  suggests  our  '  good  'uns '. 

An  initial  front-glide  before  a  front  vowel  occurs  vnyerle  '  earl '.  This 
may  possibly  be  a  Kentish  form  (cf.  p.  41  (4)). 

Voicing  of  Consonants. 

This  occurs  finally  (before  the  PI.  suffix)  in  drynges  *  drinks ' ;  medially 
before  suffix  -yd  in  hundyd  *  hunted ' ;  further  as  a  combinative  change 


MACHYN'S   GRAMMAR  145 

before  -b  in  sagbottes  'sackbuts';  medially,  between  vowels  in  elevant 
'  elephant '. 

Nouns. 

The  Possessive  Singular  is  fairly  frequent  without  any  suffix — e.  g.  the 
Kyng  grace,  his  brodur  horse,  my  lord  cardenall  commyng,  a  hossear  sune 
'usher's  son  *,ynys  father  stede.  Some  of  the  above  have  a  normal  loss 
of  -s  before  a  word  beginning  in  s-. 

The  following  uninflected  Possessives  may  be  regarded  as  old  Femi- 
nines  : — Lade  Mare  grace,  my  lady  grasys,  &c.,  '  my  lady's  grace ',  &c., 
the  quen  syster,  though  in  the  last  instance  the  loss  of  suffix  may  be  due 
to  the  following  s-.  The  use  ofys  instead  of  the  regular  Possessive  suffix 
after  a  noun  is  seen  in  the  penter ys  nam. 

The  following  Group  Possessives  are  found,  showing  omission  of  the 
suffix  : — the  bishop  of  London  palles ;  the  duke  of  Somerset  dowther. 

The  following  instance  occurs  of  Group  Possessives  in  which  ys  'his' 
is  used  instead  of  the  Possessive  suffix  after  the  last  noun : — the  nuw 
byshope  of  Lychffeld  and  Coventreys  wyff. 

The  older  construction  instead  of  the  Group  Possessive  occurs : — 
master  Godderyke  sune  the  goldsmith.  The  -s  is  omitted  of  Godderyke 
before  following  s-. 

As  regards  Plurals,  the  only  noteworthy  points  are  the  use  of  the 
invariables — sturgeon  and  C  gret  horsse,  and  a  curious  collection  of  names 
of  animals : — mottuns  '  sheep ',  velles  '  calves ',  swines,  samons.  The  voice- 
less/" before  the  PI.  suffix  occurs  in  beyffes  '  beeves',  and  wyeffes  'wives'. 
Similarly  we  find  fin  the  old  Dat.  Sing,  a-lyffe  *  alive '  from  on  life. 

Pronouns. 

There  is  not  much  of  note  to  record  regarding  the  Pers.  Pronouns. 
The  weak  form^  of  Possess.  Sing.  3rd  Pers.  Masc.  is  very  frequent.  In 
the  2nd  Pers.  ¥\.youe  seems  the  only  form  in  the  Nom.  The  form  hytt 
'  it '  is  still  found,  but  is  rare.  It  does  not  seem  to  be  determined  by 
strong  stress.  Yt  is  the  usual  form. 

Emphatic  Pronouns.  The  yonge  French  Kyng  has  proclaymed 
ynseyllff  Kyng  of  Skotland.  Isjm-  written  iwym-,  or  is  it  by  any  chance 
a  late  survival  of  the  O.E.  hme,  rare  already  in  Early  M.E.  ? 

She  lepyd  into  a  welle  and  drownydyr  seyllff. 

Relative  Pronouns.  '  Who '  is  spelt  wo,  a  curious  form,  as  we 
should  have  expected  ho.  Can  there  have  been  a  real  pronunciation  with 
w-  at  this  period  ? 

We  find  as  used  as  a  Relative  : — the  goodly est  collars  as  ever youe  saw. 

A  fairly  frequent  construction  with  the  wyche,  followed  by  a  Pers.  Pron. 
or  a  Noun,  recalls  a  modern  Cockney  vulgarism  with  which  : — the  funeral 
of  my  lade  Browne  the  wyche  she  ded  ('  died ')  in  chyld-bed ;  the  wyche  he 
dwelt  in  Lumbar strett  •  the  wyche  the  Quen  grace  was  ther. 

An  interesting  example  of  the  omission  of  the  Relative  is  found : — 
This  ij  day  of  March  was  consecratyd  at  the  byshope  of  London  palles  master 
Young  e  byshope  of  Yorke,  was  byshope  of  San  Davids. 

Impersonal  Pronoun.  The  Possess,  of  one  is  found  in  the  form 
oneys  ere  '  one's  ear '. 


1 46   ENGLISH  LANGUAGE  FROM  HENRY  VIII  TO  JAMES  I 

Indefinite  Article. 

The  form  without  the  nasal  is  sometimes  used  before  a  vowel :— a  arme, 
a  or  ay  son,  a  elevant  ('  elephant '). 

Definite  Article. 

The  forms  her  thuder  '  her  other ',  her  thodur  ere  cut,  &c.,  presumably 
stand  for  the  with  the  elision  of  the  vowel  before  a  following  vowel,  which 
is  very  common  at  this  period  and  much  later.  It  is  curious  to  find  the 
Article  used  after  a  Possess.  Pron. 

Verbal  Endings. 

I  have  few  examples  of  Machyn's  form  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Pres.  Sing. 
From  the  form  of  his  work  this  part  of  the  Verb  would  naturally  be  rare. 
But  cf.  specimen,  and  p.  333,  below.  There  are,  however,  a  few  examples 
of  Pres.  Pis.  in  -s : — comys,  lys  '  lie '. 

There  is  little  to  note  concerning  Auxiliary  Verbs.  Ar  is  used  in 
Pres.  PI. ;  the  P.  P.  is  be,  as  well  as  bene,  byne,  and  the  shortened  byn. 

In  unstressed  positions  weak  forms  of  have  without  the  aspirate  occur : 
'  If  my  lord  mer,  and  my  lord  Cortenay  ad  not  ben  ther ';  and  a  shortened 
form  of  the  Inf.  occurs  in  *  he  told  them  that  he  wold  not  a  savyd ',  &c. 

Do  is  used  as  now  in  negative  sentences — '  the  chyld  dyd  not  spyke.' 

Strong  Verbs. 

The  following  forms  are  worth  notice : — Preterites — gayf  (where  y 
apparently  expresses  length),  begane  (with  long  vowel  on  analogy  of  Pret. 
of  give  ?),  /  say  '  I  saw '  (corresponding  to  Chaucer's  sey),  sluw  ( slew ', 
druw  '  drew '  (apparently  phonetic  renderings  of  the  normal  descendants  of 
the  O.E.  forms  slog  and  drog\  red  '  rode '  (from  the  P.  P.  type,  with  the 
characteristic  lowering  of  i  to  *);  the  P.  P.'s  gyffen,  drane  (with  mono- 
phthonging  followed  by  unrounding  from  draun\  swone  '  swollen ',  sene 
1  seen ',  and  the  phonetically-written  syne. 

The  word  choose  appears  in  two  varieties — chuysse  (Inf.)  and  chusse. 
It  is  probable  that  these  both  represent  the  same  form  with  [y],  which 
must  perhaps  be  regarded  as  a  descendant  of  the  Western  type  with  [y] 
spelt  u.  On  the  other  hand,  since  y  in  Machyn's  spelling  seems  to  be 
used  occasionally  as  a  sign  of  length,  these  spellings  may  both  stand  for 
[tjuz]  from  M.E.  chosen^  O.E.  c(f)6san.  The  spelling  loysse  '  lose '  may 
represent  the  ancestor  of  our  present  type  with  [u]  from  old  tense  o. 

The  great  value  of  Machyn's  Diary  is  that  it  lets  us  into  more  secrets 
of  contemporary  speech  than  does  any  other  work  of  the  period — indeed 
we  have  to  go  back  a  hundred  years,  to  Gregory,  to  find  a  collection  of 
spellings  and  forms  which  throw  such  light  upon  pronunciation.  Machyn 
is  obviously  inferior  to  his  predecessor  both  in  social  standing  and  in 
education.  The  latter  fact  has  turned  out  to  be  of  inestimable  advantage 
to  students  of  English,  since  the  Diarist  is  marvellously  emancipated  from 
traditional  spelling.  The  former  circumstance  makes  him  a  priceless 
guide  to  the  lower  type  of  London  English  of  his  day.  His  lack  of 
literary  education,  combined  with  the  absence  of  views  regarding  elegance 
and  refinement,  make  him  a  high  authority  upon  the  ways  of  natural 
unstudied  speech  in  the  sixteenth  century. 


EXAMPLE   OF  MACHYN'S   STYLE  147 

Among  the  chief  features  of  Machyn's  Class  dialect  we  may  men- 
tion : — the  large  number  of  cases  of  lowering  of  t  to  e, ;  the  cases  of 
unrounding  of  short  o,  which  are  rather  in  excess  of  those  found  in 
writers  of  higher  standing;  the  misplacement,  by  omission  and  wrong 
insertion,  of  initial  h-\  the  interchange  of  v-  and  w-\  the  excessive 
number  of  combinative  changes  in  the  consonants,  which,  although 
they  may  all  be  paralleled  from  the  writings  of  persons  of  a  higher  class, 
do  not  occur  in  their  written  documents  in  such  profusion  as  here ; 
the  peculiar  use  of  which  noted  above,  and  the  use  of  as  as  a  Relative 
Pronoun. 

We  conclude  this  chapter  with  a  short  specimen  of  Machyn's  style. 

p.  139,  1557.  The  xvj  day  of  June  my  yong  duke  of  Norfoke  rod  abrod 
and  at  Stamford-hylle  my  lord  havying  a  dage  hangyng  on  ys  Sadylle  bow, 
and  by  mysse-fortune  dyd  shutt  y t,  and  1  yt  on  of  ys  men  that  ryd  afor,  and  so 
by  myssforten  ys  horse  dyd  flyng  and  so  he  hangyd  on  by  vn  of  ys  sterope, 
and  so  thatt  the  horse  knokyd  ys  brayns  owt  with  flyngyng  owt  with  ys  leges. 

p.  146,  last  day  of  June.  The  sam  day  the  Kyng  grace  rod 2  on  untyng  into 
the  forest  and  kyllyd  a  grett  stage  with  gones. 

The  iiij  of  August  was  the  masse  of  requiem  for  my  lade  prenses  of  Cleyff 
.  .  .  and  ther  my  lord  abbott  of  Westmynster  mad  a  godly  sermon  as  ever 
was  mad,  and  the  byshope  of  London  song  masse  in  ys  myter,  (and  after) 
masse  my  lord  byshope  and  my  lord  abbott  mytered  dyd  (cense)  the  corsse, 
and  afterward  she  was  caried  to  her  tomb  (where)  she  leys  with  a  herse-cloth 
of  gold  the  wych  lyys  (over  her) ;  and  ther  alle  her  hed  offerers  brake  ther 
stayffes,  her  8hussears  brake  ther  rodes,  and  all  they  cast  them  into  her 
tombe ;  the  wyche  was  covered  her  co(rrse)  with  blake,  and  all  the  lordes 
and  lades  and  knyghtes  and  gentyllmen  and  gentill-vomen  dyd  offer,  and 
after  masse  a  grett  (dener)  at  my  lord  abbots,  and  my  lade  of  Winchester 
was  the  cheyff  (mourner)  and  my  lord  admeroll  and  my  lord  Dacre  wher 
of  ether  syde  of  my  lade  of  Wynchester  and  so  they  whent  in  order  to 
dinner. 

1  hit.  3  a  hunting.  3  ushers. 


L  2 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

'MEN  of  the  renascence',  says  Mr.  Swinburne,  in  his  tract  on 
Shakespeare,  '  could  no  more  be  expected  to  talk  like  men  of  the 
middle  ages — whether  contemporaries  of  Dante,  of  Chaucer,  or  of 
Villon — than  like  men  of  our  own  age.  Each  century  or  so,  if  we  accept 
the  convenient  and  casual  division  of  manners  and  of  styles  by  the  rough 
and  ready  reckoning  of  successive  dates,  has  its  own  natural  conventions 
of  life  and  art,  from  which  none  can  entirely  escape  but  by  servile  affecta- 
tion of  an  obsolete  manner,  or  fatuous  affectation  of  an  unnatural  style/ 

The  student  of  English,  who  has  some  vital  feeling  for  the  genius  of 
English  speech  as  it  was  in  the  age  just  following  Chaucer,  and  in  the 
age  of  Elizabeth,  discovers,  when  he  continues  his  studies  into  the  seven- 
teenth century,  that  he  is  gradually  emerging  as  the  century  advances 
into  a  new  world  of  language,  and  one  more  different  from  that  which  he 
is  leaving  behind  him,  than  was  this,  at  least  to  his  perceptions,  from  those 
earlier  periods  through  which  his  studies  have  led  him.  The  ordinary 
reader  has  not  time  or  occasion  to  saturate  himself  thoroughly  in  the 
style  of  the  successive  periods  of  Hoccleve  and  Lydgate  and  Skelton,  of 
the  Fastens  and  Celys ;  of  More,  Elyot,  and  Lord  Berners ;  of  Surrey, 
Wyatt,  Latimer,  and  Fisher ;  of  Sackville,  Sidney,  Spenser,  and  Raleigh  ; 
of  Machyn,  Ascham,  Gabriel  Harvey,  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  Lyly ;  of  Bacon, 
•Shakespeare,  and  Jonson.  He  is  conscious,  indeed,  that  where  all  is 
more  or  less  remote  and  unfamiliar  as  regards  turns  of  phrase,  cadence, 
and  the  general  movement  of  sentences,  the  style  of  the  three  last  is 
nearer  to  him  than  that  of  the  writers  whose  names  come  earlier  in  the 
list,  but  he  feels  that  in  numerous  ways  theirs  is  not  the  English  of  his 
own  day.  It  is  difficult,  perhaps,  to  be  fully  alive  to  the  gradual  changes 
which  are  coming  over  the  modes  of  expression  during  a  couple  of 
centuries,  when  everything  is  more  or  less  strange.  It  is  different  as  we 
proceed  into  the  heart  of  the  seventeenth  century.  We  begin  to  feel  that 
we  are  getting  into  our  own  time  as  we  leave  behind  us  the  great  writers 
who  were  born,  and  did  most  of  their  work,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
with  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Carew  and  Walton,  we  lose  more  and  more 
the  feeling  that  we  are  reading  the  '  old  writers '.  Putting  aside  Milton, 
whose  *  soul  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart ',  and  perhaps  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  whose  style,  in  spite  of  its  opulence  and  magnificence,  never 
attains  the  easy  familiarity  of  Suckling,  we  feel,  when  we  read  the  prose 
of  the  men  born  during  the  first  and  second  decades  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  in  some  cases  of  those  born  in  the  nineties  of  the  sixteenth, 
that  all,  though  in  varying  degrees,  speak  like  the  people  of  our  own  age. 
This  is  specially  true  of  Suckling  (1609-42)  and  Cowley  (1618-67). 


THE   CHANGING  ATMOSPHERE    OF   STYLE         149 

After  these  men  there  can  be  no  question  that  however  much  it  may  be 
possible  to  indicate  here  and  there  certain  characteristic  habits  of  style, 
tricks,  mannerisms,  or  whatever  we  may  call  them,  which  adorn  or  dis- 
figure the  prose  writings  of  a  particular  generation,  we  have  reached  our 
own  English  in  very  spirit  and  substance. 

In  order  to  bring  home  this  gradual  passage  from  something  different 
to  something  which  is  the  English  of  our  own  age  in  all  its  essentials,  we 
must  examine,  side  by  side,  a  few  passages  from  writers  born  between 
the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the  end  of  the  second  decade  of 
the  next.  We  may  take  as  a  typical  piece  of  late  sixteenth-century  prose 
a  passage  from  A  View  of  the  Present  State  of  Ireland,  by  Edmund 
Spenser  (i552(?)~99)- 

'  And  yet  the  rebellion  of  Thomas  Fitz  Gerrald  did  well-nygh  stretch  itself 
into  all  partes  of  Ireland.  But  that,  which  was  in  the  time  of  the  government 
of  the  Lord  Gray,  was  surely  noe  less  generall  then  all  those  ;  for  there  was 
no  part  free  from  the  contagion,  but  all  conspired  in  one  to  cast  of  theyr 
subjection  to  the  crowne  of  England.  Nevertheless,  through  the  most  wise 
and  valiaunt  handling  of  that  right  noble  Lord,  it  gott  not  that  head  which 
the  former  evills  found ;  for  in  them  the  realme  was  left,  like  a  shippe  in 
a  storme  amiddest  all  the  raging  surges,  unruled,  and  undirected  of  any : 
for  they  to  whom  she  was  comitted  either  faynted  in  theyr  labour,  or  forsooke 
theyre  charge.  But  he  (like  a  most  wise  pilote)  kept  her  course  carefully, 
and  held  her  moste  strongly  even  agaynst  those  roring  billowes,  that  he 
brought  her  safely  out  of  all ;  soe  as  long  after,  even  by  the  space  of  twelve 
or  thirtene  yeares,  she  rode  in  peace,  through  his  only  paynes  and  excellent 
enduraunce,  how  ever  envye  list  to  bluster  agaynst  him.' 

The  next  example  is  from  Bacon's  Essay  on  Friendship.  Bacon  was 
born  in  1561  and  died  in  1626. 

'  How  many  things  are  there  which  a  man  cannot,  with  any  face  or  comeli- 
ness, say  or  do  himself?  A  man  cannot  alledge  his  own  merits  with  modesty, 
much  less  extol  them :  a  man  cannot  sometimes  brook  to  supplicate  or  beg ; 
and  a  number  of  the  like.  But  all  these  things  are  graceful  in  a  friend's 
mouth,  which  are  blushing  in  a  man's  own.  So  again,  a  man's  person 
hath  many  proper  relations,  which  he  cannot  put  off.  A  man  cannot  speak 
to  his  son  but  as  a  father  ;  to  his  wife,  but  as  a  husband  ;  to  his  enemy  but 
upon  terms  ;  whereas  a  friend  may  speak  as  the  case  requires,  and  not  as  it 
sorteth  with  the  person.  But  to  enumerate  these  things  were  endless  ;  I  have 
given  the  rule,  where  a  man  cannot  fitly  play  his  own  part ;  if  he  have  not 
a  friend  he  may  quit  the  stage.' 

The  gentle  Izaak  Walton  is  a  good  representative  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Born  in  1593,  six  years  before  the  death  of  Spenser,  he  lived 
well  into  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century,  dying  in  1683.  ^ 
his  style  lacks  the  brilliancy  and  sparkle  that  belong  to  the  later 
generation  which  grew  up  and  matured  long  before  the  end  of  his  life, 
Walton  is  endeared  to  us  by  his  genuine  goodness  of  character,  his  love 
of  the  country,  and  the  simplicity  and  sincerity  of  his  writing.  His 
failings,  if  they  were  such,  certainly  '  leaned  to  virtue's  side '.  Besides 
his  enthusiasm,  which  we  need  not  further  refer  to,  for  fishing,  he  was 
deeply  attached  to  the  Church  of  England,  and  had  a  distinct  penchant  for 
dignitaries.  The  following  passage  from  the  Life  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton 
exhibits  the  simple  and  unaffected  graces  of  Walton's  style : 


1 50  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

'  He  (Sir  Henry)  returned  out  of  Italy  into  England  about  the  thirtieth  year 
of  his  age,  being  then  noted  by  many  both  for  his  person  and  comportment ; 
for  indeed  he  was  of  a  choice  shape,  tall  of  stature  and  of  a  most  persuasive 
behaviour ;  which  was  so  mixed  with  sweet  discourse  and  civilities,  as  gained 
him  much  love  from  all  persons  with  whom  he  entered  into  an  acquaintance. 
And  whereas  he  was  noted  in  his  youth  to  have  a  sharp  wit  and  apt  to  jest ; 
that,  by  time,  travel,  and  conversation,  was  so  polished,  and  made  so  useful, 
that  his  company  seemed  to  be  one  of  the  delights  of  mankind ;  insomuch 
as  Robert  Earl  of  Essex — then  one  of  the  Darlings  of  Fortune,  and  in  greatest 
favour  with  Queen  Elizabeth — invited  him  first  into  a  friendship,  and,  after 
a  knowledge  of  his  great  abilities,  to  be  one  of  his  Secretaries  ;  the  other 
being  Mr.  Henry  Cuffe,  sometime  of  Merton  College  in  Oxford, — and  there 
also  the  acquaintance  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton  in  his  youth, — Mr.  Cuffe  being 
then  a  man  of  no  common  note  in  the  University  for  his  learning ;  nor  after 
his  removal  from  that  place,  for  the  great  abilities  of  his  mind,  nor  indeed  for 
the  fatalness  of  his  end.' 

We  pass  now  to  the  prose  of  perhaps  the  greatest  Englishman  born 
during  the  seventeenth  century,  John  Milton.  When  Milton  was  born,  in 
1608,  Spenser  had  only  been  dead  nine  years,  Shakespeare  had  still  eight 
more  years  to  live,  Donne  was  a  young  man  of  35,  Marston  and  Fletcher 
were  33,  and  Beaumont  nine  years  younger.  Bacon  was  47,  Waller  was 
a  child  of  three.  It  is  almost  impious  to  say  so,  but  it  must  be  said  that 
Milton's  prose  is  not  in  the  direct  line  of  descent  from  the  great  writers 
his  predecessors,  nor  do  those  of  the  following  ages  derive  from  him.  In 
spite  of  its  many  splendours,  and  its  massive  weight,  this  style  does  not 
reflect  the  age,  however  much  it  may  express  the  personality  of  Milton. 
It  is  magnificent  and  memorable,  but  it  exists  in  solitary  state,  remote, 
and  unrelated  to  the  general  current  of  English  speech. 

Against  Prelatry,  Book  II  (vol.  i,  p.  221)  : 

*  For  although  a  Poet,  soaring  in  the  high  Region  of  his  Fancies,  with  his 
Garland  and  singing  Robes  about  him,  might,  without  apology,  speak  more 
of  himself  than  I  mean  to  do ;  yet  for  me  sitting  here  below  in  the  cool 
Element  of  Prose,  a  mortal  thing  among  many  Readers  of  no  Empyreal 
Conceit,  to  venture  and  divulge  unusual  things  of  my  self,  I  shall  petition 
to  the  gentler  sort,  it  may  not  be  envy  to  me.  I  must  say  therefore,  that 
after  I  had  from  my  first  years,  by  the  ceaseless  diligence  and  care  of  my 
Father,  whom  God  recompence,  been  exercis'd  to  the  Tongues,  and  some 
Sciences,  as  my  Age  would  suffer,  by  sundry  Masters  and  Teachers  both  at 
home  and  at  the  schools,  it  was  found,  that  when  ought  was  impos'd  me  by 
them  that  had  the  overlooking,  or  betak'n  to  of  mine  own  choise  in  English, 
or  other  Tongue,  prosing  or  versing,  but  chiefly  this  latter,  the  stile  by  certain 

_   *j i     r*l *A.     i i      _. 1*1 l__      A_     i* T*   _  j_      __    .       i        i     .     i  •  •  .1 


the  manner  is,  that  every  one  must  give  some  proof  of  his  wit  and  reading 
there)  met  with  acceptance  above  what  was  lookt  for,  and  other  things 
which  I  had  shifted  in  scarcity  of  Books  and  Conveniences  to  patch  up 
amongst  them,  were  receiv'd  with  written  Encomiums,  which  the  Italian  is 
not  forward  to  bestow  on  men  of  this  side  the  Alps,  I  began  thus  far  to 
assent  both  to  them  and  divers  of  my  friends  here  at  home  ;  and  not  less 
to  an  inward  prompting  which  now  grew  daily  upon  me,  that  by  labour 
and  intent  study,  (which  I  take  to  be  my  portion  in  this  Life)  joyn'd  with 
the  strong  propensity  of  Nature,  I  might  perhaps  leave  something  so  written 
to  after-times,  as  they  should  not  wilingly  let  it  die.' 


SIR  THOMAS   BROWNE  151 

This  is  Milton  speaking  in  prose, '  with  his  Garland  and  singing  Robes 
about  him ' ;  it  is  not  the  speech  of  ordinary  life,  nor  of  ordinary  people 
in  any  age.  But  even  when  Milton  descends  to  a  very  different  level  and 
expresses  such  human  feelings  and  passions  as  personal  hatred,  prejudice, 
and  intolerance,  his  style  is  never  that  of  the  common  man ;  like  his  own 
hero,  he  is  never  '  less  than  Archangel  ruined  '. 

No  less  remarkable  than  Milton  in  possessing  a  prose  style  aloof  from, 
and  unrelated  to,  that  which  is  typical  of  the  age,  is  his  near  contempo- 
rary Sir  Thomas  Browne,  from  whom  we  quote  three  passages. 

Religio  Medici,  Pt.  II,  Sec.  n  (Ed.  of  1659): 

'  Now  for  my  life,  it  is  a  miracle  of  thirty  years  which  to  relate,  were  not 
a  history  but  a  piece  of  Poetry,  and  would  sound  to  common  eares  like  a 
fable ;  for  the  world  I  count  it  not  an  Inne,  but  an  Hospital,  and  a  place, 
not  to  live,  but  to  dye  in.  The  world  that  I  regard  is  my  selfe,  it  is  the 
Microcosme  of  mine  own  frame,  that  I  cast  mine  eye  on  ;  for  the  other, 
I  use  it  but  like  my  Globe,  and  turne  it  round  sometimes  for  my  recreation. 
Men  that  looke  upon  my  outside,  perusing  only  my  condition,  and  fortunes, 
doe  erre  in  my  altitude;  for  I  am  above  Atlas  his  shoulders.  The  earth 
is  a  point  not  onely  in  respect  of  the  heavens  above  us,  but  of  that  heavenly 
and  celestiall  part  within  us :  that  masse  of  flesh  that  circumscribes  mee, 
limits  not  my  minde;  that  surface  that  tels  the  heavens  it  hath  an  end, 
cannot  perswade  mee  I  have  any;  I  take  my  circle  to  bee  above  three 
hundred  and  sixty,  though  the  number  of  the  Arte  doe  measure  my  body, 
it  comprehendeth  not  my  mind:  whilst  I  study  to  find  how  I  am  a 
Microcosme  or  little  world,  I  find  my  self  something  more  than  the  great.' 

From  Vulgar  Errors,  Book  III,  chap,  xxii : 

*  As  for  its  possibility  we  shall  not  at  present  dispute ;  nor  will  we  affirm 
that  Iron  ingested,  receiveth  in  the  stomack  of  the  Oestridge  no  alteration  at 
all ;  but  if  any  such  there  be,  we  suspect  this  effect  rather  from  some  way 
of  corrosion,  then  any  of  digestion ;  not  any  liquid  reduction  or  tendance 
to  chilification  by  the  power  of  natural  heat,  but  rather  some  attrition 
from  an  acide  and  vitriolous  humidity  in  the  stomack,  which  may  absterse 
and  shave  the  scorious  parts  thereof.' 

From  Hydriotaphia,  chap,  v  : 

4  There  is  nothing  strictly  immortall,  but  immortality ;  whatever  hath  no 
beginning  may  be  confident  of  no  end.  All  others  have  a  dependent 
being,  and  within  the  reach  of  destruction,  which  is  the  peculiar  of  that 
necessary  essence  that  cannot  destroy  it  self;  And  the  highest  strain  of 
omnipotency  to  be  so  powerfully  constituted  as  not  to  suffer  even  from  the 
power  of  itself.  But  the  sufficiency  of  Christian  Immortality  frustrates  all 
earthly  glory,  and  the  quality  of  either  state  after  death,  makes  a  folly  of 
posthumous  memory.  God  who  can  onely  destroy  our  souls,  and  hath 
assured  our  resurrection,  either  of  our  bodies  or  names  hath  directly 
promised  no  duration.  Wherein  there  is  so  much  chance  that  the  boldest 
Expectants  have  found  unhappy  frustration;  and  to  hold  long  subsistence, 
seems  but  to  scape  in  oblivion.  But  man  is  a  Noble  Animal,  splendid  in 
ashes,  and  pompous  in  the  grave,  solemnizing  Nativities  and  Deaths, 
with  equall  lustre,  nor  omitting  Ceremonies  of  bravery,  in  the  infamy  of 
his  nature.' 

The  first  passage  above  quoted,  and  much  of  the  work  from  which  it 
comes,  is  the  nearest  approach  which  Sir  Thomas  Browne  makes  to 
a  natural  style  in  his  great  works  themselves.  The  Epistles  to  Thomas 


152  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

Le  Gros,  and  to  Nicholas  Bacon,  and  the  Preface,  to  the  Reader,  of 
Religio  Medici  are,  on  the  whole,  free  from  the  author's  peculiar  manner- 
isms, and  while  they  lack  the  qualities  which  distinguish  the  best  writing 
of  the  age,  are  not  very  different  from  the  general  run  of  such  productions. 

Every  element  in  this  author's  characteristic  style  is  intensely  individual : 
the  vocabulary — a  marvellous  assemblage  of  costly  incrustations — the 
word  order,  the  whole  structure  and  cadence  of  the  sentence.  The  last 
chapter  of Hydriotaphia  is  a  veritable  tour  deforce',  it  soars  to  an  almost 
incredible  pitch  of  sustained  eloquence,  which  never  falters  nor  declines 
in  intensity  and  volume,  from  the  opening  to  the  closing  words. 

It  is  probable  that  whether  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  contemporaries 
enjoyed  his  style  or  not,  it  appeared  to  them  nearly  as  bizarre  as  it  does  to 
us.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know,  for  instance,  what  Dryden,  who  was 
born  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  later  than  Browne,  and  outlived  him 
by  eighteen  years,  thought  of  the  style  of  Hydriotaphia. 

We  may  now  with  advantage  pass  to  Sir  John  Suckling  and  Cowley, 
both  of  whom  are  contrasted  by  Dryden  with  the  writers  of  the  former 
age — Shakespeare,  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher — as  exhibiting 
the  best  qualities  of  his  own,  qualities  to  which  the  older  writers  had  not 
yet  attained.  '  Shakespeare's  language  is  likewise  a  little  obsolete ',  says 
Dryden  in  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy  (p.  81),  and  again,  '  they '  (the  writers 
of  the  former  age)  '  can  produce  nothing  so  courtly  writ,  or  which  ex- 
presses so  much  the  conversation  of  a  gentleman,  as  Sir  John  Suckling  ; 
nothing  so  even,  sweet,  and  flowing,  as  Mr.  Waller ;  nothing  so  majestic, 
so  correct,  as  Sir  John  Denham ;  nothing  so  elevated,  so  copious,  and 
full  of  spirit,  as  Mr.  Cowley '  (ibid.,  pp.  34—5). 

We  are  not  immediately  concerned  with  the  ultimate  justness  of  this 
appraisement  of  relative  literary  values,  but  merely  with  the  fact  that 
Dryden  wishes  to  emphasize  the  difference  of  language  which  separates 
the  older  writers  from  those  of  his  own  day.  '  That  an  alteration  is  lately 
made  in  ours  (our  language),  or  since  the  writers  of  the  last  age  (in 
which  I  include  Shakespeare,  Fletcher,  and  Jonson),  is  manifest ' 
(Dramatic  Poetry  of  the  Last  Age,  p.  164).  This  will  be  manifest  also 
to  the  reader  who  has  studied  the  various  specimens  given  above  when 
he  compares  them  with  the  short  quotations  from  Dryden,  and  still  more 
so  when  he  considers  longer  passages  of  this  great  man.  But,  not  to 
anticipate,  let  us  first  see  how  Sir  John  Suckling  '  expresses  the  conversa- 
tion of  a  gentleman '.  I  take  this  to  refer  not  merely  to  the  dialogue  of 
his  plays,  but  to  his  writing  as  a  whole,  to  the  ease,  the  lack  of  stiffness, 
and  the  well-bred  self-possession  and  naturalness  which  pervade  all  he 
wrote. 

Here  is  one  of  his  letters  to  '  Aglaura ' : 

'  My  dear  Dear, — Think  I  have  kissed  your  letter  to  nothing  and  now 
know  not  what  to  answer;  or  that,  now  I  am  answering,  I  am  kissing 
you  to  nothing,  and  know  not  how  to  go  on !  For,  you  must  pardon, 
I  must  hate  all  I  send  you  here,  because  it  expresses  nothing  in  respect 
of  what  it  leaves  behind  with  me.  And  O !  why  should  I  write  then  ? 
Why  should  I  not  come  myself?  Those  tyrants,  business,  honour,  and 
necessity,  what  have  they  to  do  with  you  and  I  ?  Why  should  we  not  do 
love's  commands  before  theirs,  whose  sovereignty  is  but  usurped  upon  us  ? 
Shall  we  not  smell  roses  'cause  others  do  look  on,  or  gather  them 


EASE   OF   SUCKLING  AND   COWLEY  153 

'cause  there  are  prickles,  and  something  that  would  hinder  us  ?  Dear, 
I  fain  would,  and  know  no  hindrance  but  what  must  come  from  you; 
and  why  should  any  come  ?  Since  'tis  not  I  but  you,  must  be  sensible 
how  much  time  we  lose,  it  being  long  time  since  I  was  not  myself  but 
yours'  (Works,  ii,  pp.  197-8). 

The  following  is  in  a  very  different  strain,  and  is  taken  from  the  Dis- 
course of  Religion  (Works,  ii,  pp.  245-6) : 

'  The  strangest,  though  most  epidemical,  disease  of  all  religions  has  been 
an  imagination  men  have  had  that  the  imposing  painful  and  difficult  things 
upon  themselves  was  the  best  way  to  appease  the  Deity,  grossly  thinking 
the  chief  service  and  delight  of  the  Creator  to  consist  in  the  tortures  and 
sufferings  of  the  creature.  How  laden  with  changeable  and  unnecessary 
ceremonies  the  Jews  were,  their  feasts,  circumcisions,  sacrifices,  great  Sab- 
baths and  little  Sabbaths,  fasts,  burials,  indeed  almost  all  worship  sufficiently 
declare ;  and  that  the  Mahometans  are  much  more  infected  appears  by  ... 
lancing  themselves  with  knives,  putting  out  their  eyes  upon  the  sight  of 
their  prophet's  tomb,  and  the  like.  .  .  .  Our  religion  teaches  us  to  bear 
afflictions  patiently  when  they  fall  upon  us,  but  not  to  force  them  upon 
ourselves;  for  we  believe  the  God  we  serve  wise  enough  to  choose  his 
own  service,  and  therefore  presume  not  to  add  to  His  commands.' 

It  is  hardly  temerarious  to  date  the  beginning  of  typical  seventeenth- 
century  prose  from  Suckling. 

In  him  we  find,  almost  for  the  first  time,  the  accents  of  that  age  which 
has  given  to  succeeding  generations  the  models  of  clarity,  elegance,  and 
urbanity.  Dying  in  1642,  Suckling  was  '  ta*ken  away  from  the  evil  to 
come  ' ;  but  if  he  was  spared  the  mortification  of  seeing  the  triumph  of  the 
usurper  and  the  martyrdom  of  the  King,  neither  did  he  enjoy  the  frolics 
of  the  Restoration,  nor  know  the  later  perfections  of  English  speech  in 
literature  and  in  its  colloquial  forms. 

From  Suckling  we  naturally  pass  to  Cowley,  and  consider  a  passage 
from  an  Essay. 

Of  my  Self. 

'  It  is  a  hard  and  nice  Subject  for  a  man  to  write  of  himself ;  it  grates  his 
own  heart  to  say  any  thing  of  disparagement,  and  the  Readers  Ears  to  hear 
any  thing  of  praise  from  him.  There  is  no  danger  from  me  of  offending  him 
in  this  kind  ;  neither  my  Mind,  nor  my  Body,  nor  my  Fortune,  allow  me  any 
materials  for  that  Vanity.  It  is  sufficient,  for  my  own  contentment,  that 
they  have  preserved  me  from  being  scandalous,  or  remarkable  on  the 
defective  side.  But  besides  that,  I  shall  here  speak  of  my  self,  only  in 
relation  to  the  subject  of  these  precedent  discourses,  and  shall  be  likelier 
thereby  to  fall  into  the  contempt,  than  rise  up  to  the  estimation  of  most 
people.  As  far  as  my  memory  can  return  back  into  my  past  Life,  before 
I  knew,  or  was  capable  of  guessing  what  the  World,  or  Glories,  or  Business 
of  it  were,  the  natural  affections  of  my  Soul  gave  a  secret  bent  of  aversion 
from  them,  as  some  Plants  are  said  to  turn  away  from  others,  by  an 
Antipathy  imperceptible  to  themselves,  and  inscrutable  to  Mans  under- 
standing. Even  when  I  was  a  very  young  Boy  at  School,  instead  of 
running  about  on  Holydays,  and  playing  with  my  Fellows,  I  was  wont 
to  steal  from  them  and  walk  into  the  Fields,  either  alone  with  a  Book,  or 
with  some  one  Companion,  if  I  could  find  any  of  the  same  Temper.  I  was 
then  too  so  much  an  Enemy  to  constraint,  that  my  Masters  could  never 
prevail  on  me,  by  any  perswasions,  or  encouragements,  to  learn  without 
Book  the  common  Rules  of  Grammar,  in  which  they  dispenced  with  me 


154  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

alone,  because  they  found  I  made  a  shift  to  do  the  usual  exercise  out  of 
my  own  reading  and  observation.' 

With  Cowley  the  new  era  is  well  on  its  way.  This  is  no  longer  the 
diction  of  the  '  last  age '.  It  has  all  the  grace  of  the  seventeenth  century 
in  its  middle  period,  none  of  the  eccentricities  of  Browne,  none  of  the  soaring 
above  human  life  and  common  modes  of  expression  that  is  felt  in  the  prose 
of  Milton,  none  of  the  frigid  didactics  or  haughty  aloofness  of  Bacon. 
The  style  of  Cowley 's  prose  Essays  has  given  to  these  works  a  perma- 
nence which  their  intrinsic  interest  alone  would  hardly  have  secured.  It 
is  familiar  without  overstepping  the  bounds  of  good  manners,  easy  without 
lapsing  into  slovenliness,  and  it  preserves  stateliness  without  sacrificing 
intimacy.  It  is  colloquial  in  the  best  sense.  What  Dr.  Spratt  affirms 
of  his  conversation  is  true  of  his  writings — '  In  his  Speech  neither  the 
pleasantness  excluded  gravity,  nor  was  the  sobriety  of  it  inconsistent  with 
delight/ 

In  Cowley  are  found  neither  the  lofty  eloquence  of  Dryden's  noblest 
passages,  nor  the  pointed  brilliancy  of  Congreve.  The  former  was  alien 
to  the  altogether  slighter  character  of  the  elder  poet,  while  the  latter 
belongs  peculiarly  to  the  Restoration. 

And  this  brings  us  to  Dryden,  whose  style  in  '  the  other  harmony  of 
prose '  we  shall  observe  as  he  acts  as  our  guide  to  the  matter  in  hand — 
the  development  of  English  literary  and  colloquial  style  after  the  age  of 
Elizabeth. 

In  the  Essay  on  the  Dramatic  Poetry  of  the  Last  Age  (Essays,  vol.  i, 
p.  174,  &c.)  Dryden  says  : 

'  I  have  always  acknowledged  the  wit  of  our  predecessors,  with  all  the 
veneration  which  becomes  me ;  but  I  am  sure  their  wit  was  not  that  of 
gentlemen ;  there  was  ever  somewhat  that  was  ill-bred  and  clownish  in  it, 
and  which  confessed  the  conversation  of  the  authors. 

'  And  this  leads  me  to  the  last  and  greatest  advantage  of  our  writing, 
which  proceeds  from  conversation.  In  the  age  wherein  these  poets  lived, 
there  was  less  of  gallantry  than  in  ours ;  neither  did  they  keep  the  best 
company  of  theirs.  Their  fortune  has  been  much  like  that  of  Epicurus, 
in  the  retirement  of  his  gardens;  to  live  almost  unknown,  and  to  be 
celebrated  after  their  decease.  I  cannot  find  that  any  of  them  had  been 
conversant  in  courts,  except  Ben  Jonson ;  and  his  genius  lay  not  so  much 
that  way,  as  to  make  an  improvement  by  it.  Greatness  was  not  then  so  easy 
of  access,  nor  conversation  so  free,  as  now  it  is.  I  cannot,  therefore, 
conceive  it  any  insolence  to  affirm,  that,  by  the  knowledge  and  pattern  of 
their  wit  who  writ  before  us,  and  by  the  advantage  of  our  own  conversation, 
the  discourse  and  raillery  of  our  comedies  excel  what  has  been  written 
by  them.' 

It  is  necessary  to  note  that,  as  Mr.  Ker  points  out  in  the  Preface  to  his 
edition  of  the  Essays,  Dryden  uses  Wit  in  the  larger  sense  of  propriety  of 
language,  and  also  in  the  narrower  and  stricter  sense  of  sharpness  of  con- 
ceit. In  the  above  passage  it  appears  to  be  used  in  the  former  sense. 

Dryden  here  advances  several  important  propositions.  The  dramatic 
writers  his  predecessors  did  exhibit  in  their  plays  the  actual  speech  of 
their  age — the  style  *  confessed  the  conversation  of  the  authors ' ;  but  it 
was  not  the  conversation  of  gentlemen,  not  the  best  example  of  the 
speech  of  their  age  therefore,  but  that  of  clownish  and  ill-bred  persons  ; 


DRYDEN'S   TRIBUTE   TO   KING  CHARLES  155 

the  dramatic  writing  of  his  own  age  also  expresses  the  {  conversation '  of 
the  time,  but  now,  being  based  upon  a  more  refined  and  polished  type 
of  this,  '  the  discourse  and  raillery  of  our  comedies  excel '  those  of  his 
predecessors. 

Dryden  proceeds : 

'  Now,  if  they  ask  me,  whence  it  is  that  our  conversation  is  so  much 
refined  ?  I  must  freely,  and  without  flattery,  ascribe  it  to  the  Court ;  and 
in  it,  particularly  to  the  King,  whose  example  gives  a  law  to  it.  His  own 
misfortunes,  and  the  nation's,  afforded  him  an  opportunity  which  is  rarely 
allowed  to  sovereign  princes,  I  mean  of  travelling,  and  being  conversant 
in  the  most  polished  courts  of  Europe  ;  and  thereby  cultivating  a  spirit 
which  was  formed  by  nature  to  receive  the  impressions  of  a  gallant  and 
generous  education.  At  his  return,  he  found  a  nation  lost  as  much  in 
barbarism  as  in  rebellion;  and  as  the  excellency  of  his  nature  forgave 
the  one,  so  the  excellency  of  his  manners  reformed  the  other.  The 
desire  of  imitating  so  great  a  pattern  first  awakened  the  dull  and  heavy 
spirits  of  the  English  from  their  natural  reservedness ;  loosened  them 
from  their  stiff  forms  of  conversation,  and  made  them  easy  and  pliant  to 
each  other  in  discourse.  Thus,  insensibly,  our  way  of  living  became  more 
free  ;  and  the  fire  of  English  wit,  which  was  before  stifled  under  a  con- 
strained melancholy  way  of  breeding,  began  first  to  display  its  force,  by 
mixing  the  solidity  of  our  nation  with  the  air  and  gaiety  of  our  neighbours. 
This  being  granted  to  be  true,  it  would  be  a  wonder  if  the  poets,  whose 
work  is  imitation,  should  be  the  only  persons  in  three  kingdoms  who 
should  not  receive  advantage  by  it  ;  or  if  they  should  not  more  easily 
imitate  the  wit  and  conversation  of  the  present  age  than  of  the  past.' 

It  results  from  the  various  remarks  quoted  from  Dryden  that  he  was 
conscious  of  great  differences  between  the  speech  of  his  own  time  as 
reflected  in  literary  works,  and  more  particularly  in  dramatic  literature,  and 
that  of  the  Elizabethans.  This  difference  Dryden  holds  to  be  greatly  to 
the  advantage  of  his  own  contemporaries,  and  he  attributes  the  improve- 
ment to  the  refinement  and  polish  of  the  language  of  the  Court  under 
Charles  II.  The  '  stiff  forms  of  conversation  '  had  passed  away. 

Dryden's  complaint  against  the  older  writers  is  in  reality  threefold  : 
their  language  is  'obsolete';  it  was  based  upon  bad  models;  it  has 
often  a  certain  incorrectitude. 

The  obsolescence  of  these  writers,  in  so  far  as  it  existed,  is  not  a 
reasonable  ground  of  complaint,  since  it  is  inseparable  from  the  normal 
development  of  speech.  The  other  two  charges  are  to  a  great  extent 
part  and  parcel  of  the  first.  It  is  inadmissible  that  Shakespeare  was  not 
acquainted  with  the  best  colloquial  English  of  his  time,  or  that  when  he 
chose  he  could  not  make  his  characters  speak  like  gentlemen.  The 
colloquial  convention  had  changed  greatly  during  the  century  or  so 
between  Shakespeare  and  Dryden,  and  it  is  this  difference  between  them 
that  Dryden  mistakes  for  '  clownishness  '  in  the  older  poets.  In  the  same 
way  Dryden's  contemporaries  speak  of  the  '  rude  unpolished  strain '  of 
Chaucer,  and  Dryden  himself  cannot  praise  this  poet's  verse  more  highly 
than  in  comparing  it  to  the  '  rude  music  of  a  Scotch  tune '. 

As  for  the  '  incorrectness  ',  some  of  it  no  doubt,  judged  by  the  strictest 
standards,  had  a  real  existence,  but  as  Professor  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  says 
of  Shakespeare — '  the  syntax  and  framework  of  his  sentences  have  all  the 


156  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

freedom  of  impulsive  speech ',  and  again — '  He  breaks  through  grammar 
only  to  get  nearer  to  the  heart  of  things.' 

Some  of  the  constructions  which  fall  under  Dryden's  censure  are 
perfectly  normal  in  the  sixteenth  century,  as,  for  instance,  Ben  Jonson's 
Contain  your  spirit  in  more  stricter  bounds,  which  is  a  very  usual 
form  of  the  Comparative  among  the  Elizabethans,  and  continued  in 
colloquial  use  after  their  day  (cf.  p.  326,  below).  But  it  is  not  from 
the  consideration  of  isolated  features  of  this  kind  that  the  essential 
character  of  the  language  of  an  age  is  to  be  apprehended.  This  is 
the  result  of  innumerable  factors — vocabulary,  the  particular  associations 
attached  to  certain  words,  the  order  of  these  in  the  sentence,  the  balance 
and  cadence  of  the  sentence,  the  peculiar  movement,  one  might  almost 
say  the  speed  of  the  utterance.  The  general  impression  of  the  typical 
seventeenth-century  style  at  its  best  is  one  of  rapidity,  lightness,  ease,  supple- 
ness, and  grace.  It  is  almost  impossible  to  conceive  that  the  dialogue 
which  we  find  in  Sir  Thomas  More's  Life,  in  that  of  Wolsey's  Life  by 
Cavendish,  or  in  Euphues,  could  have  rattled  and  flashed  along  with  the 
same  swift  inevitableness  which  is  felt  to  belong  to  the  dialogues  of  Dryden's 
best  manner,  to  those  of  Otway,  of  Vanbrugh,  or  even  of  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn, 
and,  above  all,  to  those  of  Congreve  (see  examples  on  pp.  369,  397,  &c.). 

In  this  connexion  it  is  interesting  to  recall  the  views  propounded  by 
Bacon  in  his  Short  Notes  for  Civil  Conversation,  which  no  doubt  were 
shared  by  many  in  his  day. 

1  It  is  necessary  to  use  a  stedfast  countenance,  not  wavering  with  action, 
as  in  moving  the  head  or  hand  too  much,  which  sheweth  a  fantastical  light, 
and  fickle  operation  of  the  spirit.  .  .  .  Only  it  is  sufficient  with  leisure  to 
use  a  modest  action  in  either. 

In  all  kinds  of  speech,  either  pleasant,  grave,  severe  or  ordinary,  it  is 
convenient  to  speak  leisurely,  and  rather  drawlingly,  than  hastily ;  because 
hasty  speech  confounds  the  memory,  and  oftentimes,  besides  unseemliness, 
drives  a  man  either  to  a  non-plus  or  unseemly  stammering,  harping  upon 
that  which  should  follow ;  whereas  a  slow  speech  confirmeth  the  memory, 
addeth  a  conceit  of  wisdom  to  the  hearers,  besides  a  seemliness  of  speech 
and  countenance.' 

This  passage  appears  to  recommend  a  gesture  and  a  manner  of  utter- 
ance as  sober  and  slow-moving  as  the  style  in  which  the  advice  is 
couched.  Precept  and  example  are  here  become  identical.  These  few 
sentences  of  Bacon  have  the  atmosphere  of  his  age,  and  certainly  they 
neither  lack  anything  of  the  leisureliness  which  he  enjoins  in  conversa- 
tion, nor  err  on  the  side  of  sprightliness  of  movement  which  would 
correspond  to  the  '  wavering  with  action  '  in  uttered  speech. 

If  we  put  these  and  similar  passages  of  this  age  side  by  side  with  others 
from  the  later  seventeenth  century,  the  difference  between  the  Elizabethan 
and  the  post-Revolution  sentences  in  what  we  have  called  the  general 
mode  of  movement  at  once  becomes  apparent. 

This  characteristic  movement  will  depend  very  largely  upon  the 
sentence  structure,  word  order,  and  syntax  ;  to  some  extent  also  upon 
accidence,  and  upon  the  general  habits  of  pronunciation.  It  is  the  subtle 
fusion  of  all  these  factors  which  gives  to  the  language  of  an  age  its  special 
tlavour,  character,  and  atmosphere.  Only  the  grosser  and  more  obvious 


LITERARY  STYLE  ROOTED  IN  THE  COLLOQUIAL  157 

of  the  elements  which  compose  the  whole  submit  to  our  analysis.  There 
are  hosts  of  imponderables  which  no  philological  microscope  can  focus. 

To  the  critics  of  Dryden's  day  there  was  only  one  test  of  supreme 
excellence  in  English  style,  and  that  was  conformity  to  their  own 
standards.  What  differed  from  these  was  suspect,  and  it  was  natural 
that,  convinced  that  '  Well-placing  of  words  for  the  sweetness  of  pro- 
nunciation was  not  known  till  Mr.  Waller  introduced  it f,  the  men  of  the 
seventeenth  century  should  feel,  in  reading  diligently  the  works  of 
Shakespeare  and  Fletcher,  that  a  man  who  understood  English  would 
'  find  in  every  page  either  some  solecism  of  speech,  or  some  notorious 
flaw  in  sense '.  It  is  well  to  remember  that  Dryden,  although  he  may 
try  to  justify  his  strictures  by  producing  a  series  of  examples  of  the 
supposed  improprieties  of  the  Elizabethans,  is  simply  protesting  against 
what  is  to  him  archaic  and  unfamiliar.  However  much  we  may  be  alive 
to  the  differences  between  the  English  of  the  age  of  Shakespeare  and 
that  of  the  age  of  Dryden,  it  is  evident  that  Dryden  himself  and  the  men 
of  his  time  felt  these  differences  far  more  keenly.  To  be  obsolete  was  to 
be  inferior,  and  the  charges  of  '  clownishness ',  and  the  assertion  that 
the  '  wit'  of  the  earlier  dramatic  writers  was  '  ill-bred  ',  amount  to  no  more 
than  an  insistence  that  the  colloquial  style,  and  with  it  the  style  of  prose 
generally,  had  changed. 

This  is  perhaps  the  proper  place  to  reiterate  what  was  insisted  upon 
in  general  terms  in  the  earlier  chapters,  that  the  literary  and  colloquial 
styles  of  any  age  are  most  intimately  related. 

The  style  of  literary  prose  is  alive  and  expressive,  chiefly  in  so  far  as 
it  is  rooted  in  that  of  colloquial  utterance.  The  general  atmosphere  of 
both  is  the  same  in  any  given  age.  It  may  be  safely  affirmed  that  a 
piece  of  prose  which  is  genuinely  typical  of  the  period  in  which  it  is  pro- 
duced, no  matter  how  highly-wrought  and  finished  it  may  be,  will  not 
sound  strange  when  read  aloud  and  judged  by  the  colloquial  standards  of 
its  own  day.  Dryden  attributes  the  improvement  of  dramatic  literature  in 
his  day  to  the  polishing  of  conversation  since  the  Restoration.  It  may  be 
said  that  dramatic  style  necessarily  aims  at  reproducing  conversation  at  its 
best,  and  that  the  relation  between  this  genre  of  literature  and  the  col- 
loquial language  is  closer  than  that  between  the  latter  and  any  other 
form  of  writing.  To  recognize  this  is  not  to  exclude  the  extension  of 
the  principle  to  other  kinds  of  prose.  We  may  make  every  possible 
allowance  for  differences  which  distinguish  the  various  types  of  colloquial 
speech  from  each  other,  according  to  the  occasion  which  calls  them 
forth,  and  for  those  differences  again  which  naturally  divide  the  style  of 
uttered  speech  from  that  of  written  prose,  of  whatever  kind  this  may  be, 
yet  we  must  recognize  that  at  a  given  period  the  language  is  everywhere 
one  and  the  same — within  the  limits  of  the  same  dialect — and  that 
written  and  uttered  language,  passing  through  the  various  gradations 
from  the  most  familiar  and  colloquial  to  the  most  elevated  and  carefully 
finished,  are  all  of  a  piece ;  they  all  represent  merely  different  ways  of 
using  the  same  instrument ;  they  breathe  the  same  general  spirit  and 
atmosphere,  and  express,  in  divers  tones,  the  same  characteristic  genius 
of  the  age  to  which  they  belong. 

This  is  why  the  changing  genius  of  a  language  such  as  English  may 


158  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

be  illustrated  by  means  of  literary  prose.  If  this  has  changed,  it  is 
because  the  colloquial  language  has  changed  first.  Everything  which 
is  true  of  one  is  true  of  the  other,  allowing  for  the  different  conditions 
under  which  conversation  and  writing  are  severally  produced.  Dryden's 
account  of  the  English  of  his  age,  although  this  refers  primarily  to  that 
of  literature,  is  applicable  also  to  the  colloquial  language. 

The  change  in  English  style  from  the  close  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth 
to  the  Restoration  has  been  illustrated  above  from  the  more  polished 
and  deliberate  types  of  literary  prose ;  the  more  specifically  colloquial 
types  will  be  displayed  later  on  in  their  proper  place,  in  the  general  survey 
of  colloquial  English. 

Passing  on  to  the  next  generation  after  Dryden  we  come  naturally 
to  Swift,  whose  various  treatises  on  the  English  of  his  own  day  and  that 
of  the  age  immediately  preceding  this,  are  very  instructive. 

They  consist  (i)  of  a  short  article  in  the  Tatter  (No.  230,  Sept.  28, 
1710);  (2)  a  burlesque  entitled  A  complete  Collection  of  Genteel  and 
Ingenious  Conversation^  &c.,  known  also  by  the  shorter  title  of  Polite 
Conversations  ;  (3)  A  Proposal  for  correcting,  improving,  and  ascertaining 
the  English  Tongue,  In  a  letter  to  ...  the  lord  high  treasurer  of  Great 
Britain.  This  is  dated  Feb.  22,  1711-12. 

These  three  documents  are  all  in  the  nature  of  an  indictment  of  the 
fashionable  English  of  the  period,  on  various  grounds : — that  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  deliberate  affectation  ;  that  this  takes  the  form  of  '  corrupt- 
ing '  the  pronunciation — sometimes  by  leaving  out  vowels,  so  that 
awkward  combinations  of  consonants  are  brought  about — sometimes 
by  dropping  whole  syllables  and  otherwise  '  clipping '  words ;  a  further 
form  of  affectation  is  the  use  of  what  we  should  call  '  slang '  words  and 
phrases ;  another  is  the  persistent  use  of  set  words,  tags,  and  phrases,  so 
that  conversation  degenerates  into  a  mere  string  of  cliches.  The  most 
elaborate  of  these  articles  is  the  Introduction  to  the  Polite  Conversations, 
which  describes,  in  a  vein  of  irony,  some  of  the  chief  features  of  fashion- 
able pronunciation,  as  well  as  the  various  airs  and  graces  of  manner 
which  distinguish  the  bearing  of  genteel  persons  in  social  intercourse. 
A  much  more  serious  document,  though  perhaps  hardly  more  instructive, 
from  the  amount  of  light  which  it  throws  upon  the  actual  habits  of  speech 
of  the  period,  is  the  Letter  to  the  Lord  Treasurer.  The  great  interest  of 
this  lies  in  the  author's  attempt  to  discover  the  causes  of  the  corrupting 
tendencies  which  he  censures,  and  to  trace  them  to  their  different  sources. 
Throughout  these  treatises  Swift  includes  both  writers  and  speakers  under 
a  common  condemnation,  referring  specifically  now  to  one,  now  to  the 
other. 

Perhaps  the  first  point  in  Swift's  Letter  to  the  Lord  Treasurer  which  will 
strike  the  reader  who  is  familiar  with  Dryden's  views  concerning  the 
English  style  of  his  own  day  compared  with  that  of  the  Elizabethans, 
is  the  remarkable  divergence  between  the  views  taken  by  these  two 
great  writers.  Born  in  1667,  Swift  was  just  a  generation  younger 
than  Dryden.  We  have  seen  what  Dryden  thought  of  the  Eliza- 
bethans as  writers,  and  how  superior  to  them  he  considered  his  own 
contemporaries. 

In  contrast  to  this  we  find  Swift  saying  of  the  former — *  The  period, 


SWIFTS   OPINION   OF  COURT   SPEECH  159 

wherein  the  English  tongue  received  most  improvement,  I  take  to 
commence  with  the  beginning  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  to  con- 
clude with  the  great  rebellion  in  forty-two.'  Now  for  Swift's  opinion  of 
the  effect  of  the  Restoration  upon  English  style.  '  During  the  usurpation, 
such  an  infusion  of  enthusiastic  jargon  prevailed  in  every  writing,  as  was 
not  shaken  off  in  many  years  after.  To  this  succeeded  that  licentiousness 
which  entered  with  the  restoration,  and  from  infecting  our  religion  and 
morals  fell  to  corrupt  our  language ;  which  last  was  not  like  to  be  much 
improved  by  those,  who  at  that  time  made  up  the  court  of  King  Charles 
the  Second ;  either  such  who  had  followed  him  in  his  banishment,  or 
who  had  been  altogether  conversant  in  the  dialect  of  those  fanatic  times  ; 
or  young  men  who  had  been  educated  in  the  same  country ;  so  that  the 
court,  which  used  to  be  the  standard  of  propriety  and  correctness  of 
speech,  was  then,  and  I  think  hath  ever  since  continued,  the  worst  school 
in  England  for  that  accomplishment ;  and  so  will  remain,  till  better  care 
be  taken  in  the  education  of  our  young  nobility,  that  they  may  set  out 
into  the  world  with  some  foundation  of  literature,  in  order  to  qualify 
them  for  patterns  of  politeness.  The  consequence  of  this  defect  in  our 
writing  may  appear  from  plays,  and  other  compositions  written  for  enter- 
tainment within  fifty  years  past;  filled  with  a  succession  of  affected 
phrases  and  new  conceited  words,  either  borrowed  from  the  current  style 
of  the  court,  or  from  those,  who  under  the  character  of  men  of  wit  and 
pleasure  pretended  to  give  the  law.  Many  of  these  refinements  have 
already  been  long  antiquated,  and  are  now  hardly  intelligible,  which  is 
no  wonder  when  they  were  the  product  only  of  ignorance  and  caprice.' 

The  function  of  the  Court  of  Charles  II  then,  in  regard  to  English,  was, 
from  Swift's  point  of  view,  hardly  that  which  Dryden  attributed  to  it. 

After  the  courtiers  and  '  dunces  of  figure ',  Swift  passes  to  '  another 
set  of  men  who  have  contributed  very  much  to  the  spoiling  of  the  English 
tongue  ;  I  mean  the  poets  from  the  time  of  the  restoration '.  The  fault 
of  these  writers  is  alleged  to  be  that  they  abbreviate  words  '  to  fit  them 
to  the  measure  of  their  verses,  and  this  they  have  frequently  done  so  very 
injudiciously,  as  to  form  such  harsh  unharmonious  sounds  that  none  but 
a  northern  ear  could  endure :  they  have  joined  the  most  obdurate  con- 
sonants without  one  intervening  consonant,  only  to  shorten  a  syllable ' 

It  was  maintained  that  words  '  pronounced  at  length  sounded  faint  and 
languid '. 

'  This  was  a  pretence  to  take  up  the  same  custom  in  prose,  so  that 
most  books  we  see  nowadays  are  full  of  these  manglings  and  abbrevia- 
tions/ Swift  gives  instances  of  the  fault  complained  ot—drudgd,  disturb 'd, 
rebuk'd,  fledgd.  We  may  note  in  passing  that  the  omission  of  the  vowel 
of  the  suffix  -ed  had  been  in  vogue  for  centuries,  but  if  Swift  is  to  be 
relied  upon,  there  must  have  still  been  many  in  his  day  who  pronounced 
the  P.  P.  suffix  in  the  above  words  as  a  separate  syllable. 

The  next  cause — 'perhaps  borrowed  from  the  former* — which  has 
'  contributed  not  a  little  to  the  maiming  of  our  language,  is  a  foolish 
opinion,  advanced  of  late  years  that  we  ought  to  spell  exactly  as  we 
speak '.  Swift  naturally  condemns  phonetic  spelling  on  various  grounds. 
For  us  the  most  interesting  of  those  alleged  is  that  '  Not  only  the  several 
towns  and  counties  of  England  have  a  different  way  of  pronouncing,  but 


160  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

even  here  in  London  they  clip  their  words  after  one  manner  about  court, 
another  in  the  city,  and  a  third  in  the  suburbs '.  If  all  these  varieties 
were  reduced  to  writing  it  '  would  entirely  confound  orthography '. 

The  last  source  of  '  corruption '  mentioned  by  Swift  is  a  certain  school 
of  young  men  from  the  Universities  '  terribly  possessed  with  a  fear  of 
pedantry ',  who  from  his  description  wish  to  be  what  we  should  call  '  up 
to  date '.  '  They  .  .  .  come  up  to  town,  reckon  all  their  errors  for  accom- 
plishments, borrow  the  newest  set  of  phrases ;  and  if  they  take  a  pen  into 
their  hands,  all  the  odd  words  they  have  picked  up  in  a  coffee-house,  or 
at  a  gaming  ordinary  are  produced  as  flowers  of  style,  and  their  orthography 
refined  to  the  utmost.'  Such  a  '  strange  race  of  wits  ',  with  their  '  quaint 
fopperies '  of  manner  and  speech,  exist  in  every  age.  Their  mannerisms 
rarely  pass  beyond  their  immediate  clique,  and  have  no  more  permanence 
than  foam  on  the  river. 

Swift's  indictment  appears  at  first  sight  rather  a  grave  one.  It  is  not 
altogether  clear  whether  he  objects  more  to  certain  habits  of  pronuncia- 
tion, or  to  those  tricks  of  spelling,  certainly  common  in  his  day,  which 
were  supposed  to  represent  those  pronunciations.  It  is  possible  that 
Swift  did  not  distinguish  very  clearly  between  sound  and  symbol,  and 
included  both  under  a  common  curse.  When  we  remember  the  many 
peculiarities  of  pronunciation,  eccentric  as  we  should  think  them,  which 
were  prevalent  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  more 
particularly  in  the  way'of  dropping  consonants  in  various  positions  (see 
pp.  296,  &c.),  we  might  suppose  that  Swift's  criticism  is  directed  against 
this  mode  of  pronunciation,  slovenly  and  slipshod  as  it  would  be  considered 
at  the  present  time.  Some  readers  might  be  inclined  to  say,  '  Here  is 
Swift,  a  man  of  taste,  refinement,  and  by  no  means  unacquainted  with 
the  fashionable  world  of  his  day,  but  he  censures  the  careless  speech  of 
his  period.  Is  it  fair  to  assume,  in  the  face  of  Swift's  strong  disapproba- 
tion, that  the  best  speakers  really  spoke  in  the  manner  suggested  by  the 
writers  in  the  Verney  Memoirs  or  the  Wentworih  Papers  ?  It  may  be 
well  to  inquire  what  it  really  is  with  which  Swift  finds  fault.  The  few 
examples  given  in  the  Letter  to  the  Lord  Treasurer  are  really  of  no 
meaning,  unless  the  strictures  passed  upon  them  refer  primarily  to  the 
spelling.  The  Taller  article,  however,  gives  a  letter  which  is  evidently 
intended  to  illustrate  as  many  as  possible  of  the  ( late  refinements  crept 
into  our  language '.  They  do  not  amount  to  very  much — to  ha'  come 
I'd  ha  bro't  'um ;  ha'nt  don't '  haven't  done  it ' ;  dot  '  do  it ' ;  that 's  pozz 
to  g'imselfairs ;  their  phizz's ;  the  hipps ;  prornis't;  upon  Rep.  '  reputation ' 
incog  \  mob — instead  of  mobile — ;  7w  ;  banter 'd,  and  a  few  more.  Some 
of  these,  such  as  ha,  do'/,  that's,  &c.,  were  already  well-established  forms, 
at  least  a  century  or  a  century  and  a  half  old. 

The  really  new,  or  comparatively  new,  abbreviations  are  rep,  phzzz, 
mob,  pozz,  plenipOy  &c.  The  number  of  these  truncated  words  which 
appear  already  in  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  never 
very  large,  and  most  have  now  become  obsolete,  mob  being  the  only  one 
which  has  passed  into  permanent  and  universal  use.  Pozz  has  vanished, 
rep  still  lingered  in  the  phrase  demirep  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  phizz  barely  survives,  as  a  half-facetious  word  which  amuses  no 
one  and  which  few  now  employ. 


SWIFT   NO  PURIST   IN   PRONUNCIATION  161 

We  look  in  vain  among  Swift's  examples  for  what  were  indeed 
the  characteristic  pronunciations  from  the  sixteenth  to  late  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  for  instances  of  the  dropping  of  consonants  in  the 
middle  and  at  the  end  of  words.  Why  does  Swift  not  mention  Lunnon, 
Wensday,  Chrismas,  greatis  (for  greatest],  respeck,  hounes  (for  hounds}! 
How  is  it  that  the  common  habit  of  adding  a  d  or  /  at  the  end  of  a  word 
has  escaped  him  ?  Why  does  he  allow  such  pronunciations  as  laft  (for 
laugh),  generald  (general),  varmint  (vermin),  and  a  dozen  more  of  the 
same  kind  to  pass  without  notice?  In  Chapter  VIII  numerous  instances 
are  given  of  these  and  similar  omissions  and  additions,  and  it  will  be 
observed  that  not  a  few  are  taken  from  the  late  seventeenth  and  early 
eighteenth  centuries.  It  is  inconceivable  that  Swift  should  not  have 
heard  these  pronunciations,  yet  they  do  not  fall  under  his  lash.  Why 
not  ?  Because  they  were  so  widespread  among  the  best  speakers  that  to 
take  exception  to  them  would  have  been  to  fall  foul  of  the  English  of  all 
his  contemporaries,  his  own  included.  Does  not  Swift  himself  rhyme 
vermin  with  ferment,  thus  implying  either  that  he  pronounced  a  /  at  the 
end  of  the  former,  or  dropped  one  at  the  end  of  the  latter  ?  Let  the 
reader  glance  at  the  lists  on  pp.  217-20,  and  he  will  probably  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  these  things  were  so  common,  so  much  part  of  the  fabric 
of  English  pronunciation  in  Swift's  day,  that  he  did  not  notice  them, 
indeed  that  he  himself  shared  the  universal  habit  of  his  age.  In  the  long, 
satirical  Introduction  to  the  Polite  Conversations,  he  refers  again  to  pozz 
and  bam  (bamboozle)  and  shortenings  of  that  class,  as  in  the  Letter •,  and 
further  to  cant,  han't,  shan't,  couldn't,  isnt,  &c.,  where  it  is  surely  rather 
the  spelling  than  the  suggested  pronunciation  which  is  aimed  at.  He 
does,  however,  refer  to  four  words  whose  pronunciation  was  different  in 
his  day  from  what  it  is  in  our  own,  and  we  must  perhaps  suppose,  from 
the  fact  that  these  words  are  mentioned,  that  Swift  did  not  himself  pro- 
nounce them  according  to  the  manner  usual  to  his  contemporaries. 

These  words  are  learnen  for  learning,  jometry  for  geometry,  vardi  for 
verdict^  and  lard  for  lord.  On  the  various  points  involved  see  pp.  289, 
303,  242,  below.  Probably  lard  was  in  any  case  going  out  of  fashion. 

Swift  is  not  a  purist  in  pronunciation ;  at  any  rate  he  is  not  bent  upon 
reforming  the  fixed  habits  of  his  time,  however  much  he  may  dislike  the 
mere  passing  fashions  which  he  regards  as  ephemeral  affectations.  He 
sees  on  the  one  side  a  rather  vulgar  slanginess,  and  on  the  other  an  equally 
intolerable  preciocity. 

He  is  mainly  concerned  with  propriety  of  vocabulary  and  diction,  and 
he  dislikes  neologisms.  It  is  evidently  upon  these  grounds  that  Swift 
objects  to  the  style  of  the  dramatists  of  the  Restoration.  What  he  con- 
siders as  '  a  succession  of  affected  phrases  and  new  conceited  words ' 
was  to  Dryden  the  embodiment  of  all  that  is  gay,  gallant,  and  polite,  as  it 
was  exhibited  in  the  easy  and  elegant  conversation  of  King  Charles's 
Court.  It  is  apparently  this  very  identity  between  the  diction  of  literature 
and  that  of  life  which  is  condemned  by  Swift,  or  if,  theoretically,  he  would 
not  deny  the  necessity  of  this,  he  at  any  rate  disapproves  of  those  very 
models  of  colloquial  English  which  Dryden  most  admires.  To  this 
extent  then,  and  in  theory,  if  not  in  practice,  Swift  represents  the  view  of 
the  academic  pedant,  and  Dryden  that  of  the  urbane  man  of  the  world. 


i62  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

If  we  consider  the  general  character  of  the  English  of  the  average 
printed  books  after  the  first  decade  of  the  seventeenth  century,  compared 
with  that  of  a  similar  class  of  work  in  the  preceding  century,  we  observe 
a  far  greater  uniformity  of  spelling  and  of  dialect  generally.  Only  rarely 
do  we  find,  here  and  there,  those  occasional  spellings  which  we  have  seen 
occurring  with  surprising  frequency  in  books  of  all  kinds,  down  to  the 
end  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and  even,  to  some  extent,  for  the  first  few 
years  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

The  spelling  and  accidence  of  literary  English,  especially  when  printed, 
have  gradually  become  crystallized,  deviations  from  the  recognized  standard 
are  more  and  more  rare,  and  those  trifling  variations  from  this  which  do 
occur  are  of  no  importance,  as  a  rule,  in  throwing  light  upon  the  changes 
of  language.  What  is  true  of  printed  literature  is  true,  in  a  general  way, 
and  with  certain  important  exceptions,  of  the  English  preserved  in  the 
letters  of  the  period.  Whereas  in  the  former  century  we  found  that  such 
writers  as  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  Barnabe  Googe,  Ascham,  Cranmer,  Lyly, 
and  so  on,  often  employ  very  instructive  spellings  in  their  private  corre- 
spondence, and  that  they  retain  certain  dialectal  features  in  the  forms  and 
accidence,  such  things  are  increasingly  hard  to  find  during  the  seventeenth 
century  among  persons  of  the  same  type.  Thus  if  we  examine  the  con- 
siderable collection  of  letters  contained  in  Ellis's  nine  volumes,  we  find 
that  whereas  on  almost  every  page  of  the  sixteenth-century  letters  several 
forms  of  great  interest  occur,  these  are  remarkably  rare  later  on.  Ortho- 
graphy and  grammar  are  uniform  and  stereotyped,  and  more  than  this ; 
the  personages  whose  correspondence  is  presented  to  us,  mostly  highly 
educated  officials,  courtiers,  and  bishops,  adhere  with  great  consistency 
to  the  orthodox  spelling. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  priceless  collection  of  letters  for  our  purpose 
exists  in  the  1  Verney  Memoirs,  which  cover  practically  the  last  three 
quarters  of  the  seventeenth  century.  These  four  volumes  are  an  inex- 
haustible treasure-house  of  material  for  the  study  of  seventeenth-century 
colloquial  English.  The  letters  are  principally  those  of  Sir  Ralph  Verney, 
his  wife  (and  later  of  his  children),  his  sisters  and  brothers,  his  uncle 
Dr.  Denton,  his  aunts  and  cousins,  besides  many  other  persons  among 
the  intimate  friends  of  the  family.  There  are  a  few  letters  from  humbler 
persons,  bailiffs  and  other  dependants,  but  the  vast  majority  are  from 
people  of  the  same  social  standing,  men  and  women  belonging  to 
the  class  of  country  gentry,  some  of  them,  as  in  the  case  of  several  of 
Sir  Ralph's  sisters,  living  pretty  continuously  in  the  country — at  Claydon 
on  the  borders  of  Oxfordshire  and  Buckinghamshire — others,  such  as 
Lady  Hobart,  Mrs.  Eure,  Mrs.  Sherard,  and  Dr.  Denton,  living  principally 
in  London.  Dr.  Denton,  a  member  of  an  old  Buckinghamshire  county 
family,  was  a  man  of  considerable  cultivation  who  was  educated  at 
Oxford,  where  he  studied  medicine,  and  subsequently  became  a  fashion- 
able physician  in  London  ;  his  opinions  concerning  both  health  and 

Less  important  only  because  less  numerous  are  the  letters  in  the  Verney  Papers 
(Letters  and  Papers  of  the  Verney  Family,  Ed.  Bruce,  Camden  Soc.  1853)  to  which 
reference  is  often  made  below.  These  come  down  to  1639,  with  which  date  the  later 
collection  begins. 


THE  ENGLISH   OF   THE   VERNEYS  163 

other  grave  problems  of  life  were  greatly  prized  by  all  his  family  and 
friends,  including  his  close  relatives,  the  Verneys. 

A  very  large  proportion  of  the  letters  in  the  Memoirs  are  from  ladies, 
and  it  is  from  these  that  we  obtain  the  greater  number  of  those  occasional 
departures  from  the  conventional  spelling  which  shed  so  much  light  upon 
current  pronunciation.  But  these  spellings  are  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  letters  of  the  ladies.  Sir  Ralph  himself,  his  brothers,  his  sons,  Dr. 
Denton,  and  Sir  John  Burgoyne,  to  mention  no  others,  all  now  and  then 
employ  spellings  of  the  same  kind  as  those  found  in  the  letters  of  the 
female  correspondents,  and  the  indications  given  by  these  spellings, 
though  less  frequent,  point  in  exactly  the  same  direction  as  the  spellings 
of  the  ladies,  and  suggest  an  identical  pronunciation.  Thus  we  are  by 
no  means  justified  in  supposing  that  the  ladies  habitually  used  a  more 
careless  and  slipshod  mode  of  speech  than  the  men  of  their  family  and 
class.  If  the  Verney  ladies  spell  phonetically,  and  in  such  a  way  as  to 
imply  what  we  should  now  call  a  careless  and  even  illiterate  pronunciation, 
this  is  because  they  read  less  than  their  men  folk,  and  were  less  familiar 
with  the  orthodox  spelling  of  printed  books.  To  spell  badly  was  not 
a  ground  of  reproach  in  the  seventeenth,  nor  even  in  the  eighteenth,  century. 
It  is  not  a  plausible  suggestion  that  the  ladies  of  a  family  spoke  other- 
wise than  their  sons  and  brothers,  and  indeed  the  evidence  is  all  against 
such  a  supposition.  Regional  dialect  does  not  appear  in  the  letters  of 
these  Buckinghamshire  ladies  and  their  friends,  and  the  characteristic 
features  revealed  by  the  Verney  Memoirs  seem  to  be  those  of  the  English 
of  the  age  as  spoken  among  the  upper  classes.  There  seems  to  be  no 
reason  for  supposing  that  the  pronunciations  recorded,  and  the  easy- 
going grammar  of  the  letters,  were  not  those  in  general  use.  As  one 
reads  these  Memoirs  one  has  a  very  vivid  impression  of  reality,  and  no 
amount  of  study  of  the  purely  literary  works  of  the  period  on  the  one 
hand,  or  of  the  contemporary  writers  on  English  pronunciation  on  the 
other,  can  possibly  give  such  an  insight  into  the  actual  pronunciation  and 
the  familiar,  unstudied  diction  of  the  seventeenth  century,  as  is  to  be 
gained  from  a  perusal  of  these  documents,  written  on  the  whole,  as  we 
have  said,  by  persons  of  the  same  class,  but  various  in  character,  tempera- 
ment, education,  and  the  general  circumstances  of  their  lives.  It  might 
be  said  that  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth-century  colloquial  English  is 
here,  in  its  various  degrees  of  familiarity,  and  also  of  more  studied 
utterance.  The  number  of  persons  whose  letters  appear  makes  the  col- 
lection truly  representative  of  the  age,  and  we  can  observe  the  differing 
modes  of  expression  of  three  generations.  Every  mood  finds  expression, 
and  almost  every  shade  of  temperament,  and  if  none  of  the  writers  has 
the  pen  of  a  Se'vigne'  or  a  Walpole,  the  correspondence  holds  us  by  its 
intense  human  interest,  quite  apart  from  its  value  for  linguistic  and  social 
history.  These  letters  are  genuine  human  documents,  in  which  living 
men  and  women  tell  the  story  of  their  lives  in  the  natural  diction  of  their 
age,  and,  we  must  repeat,  in  the  actual  pronunciation  of  their  age.  We 
are  in  an  altogether  more  attractive  world  than  that  of  the  litigious 
Fastens  and  huckstering  Celys,  whose  correspondence  is  nearest  to  that  of 
the  Verneys  in  point  of  linguistic  interest.  It  is  worth  noting  that  the 
spellings  into  which  the  writers  ift  the  Verney  Memoirs  often  drop  uncon- 

M  2 


1 64  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

sciously  are  in  many  cases  identical  with  those  employed  by  contemporary 
writers  on  pronunciation,  such  as  Wallis  and  Cooper,  in  order  to  express 
the  pronunciation  they  wish  to  describe. 

Another  collection  of  letters  covering  about  the  same  period  as  the 
Verney  Memoirs  is  the  Correspondence  of  Dr.  Basire.  This  volume 
contains  chiefly  the  letters  of  the  Reverend  Doctor  himself,  and  of  other 
more  or  less  eminent  clergy,  and  these  are  of  small  value  for  the  light 
which  they  throw  upon  the  pronunciation,  but  the  letters  of  Mrs.  Basire 
— formerly  a  Miss  Corbet  of  Shropshire — are  as  enlightening  as  those 
of  the  Buckinghamshire  ladies.  The  pronunciation  exhibited  by  these 
letters  shows  the  same  general  character  as  that  of  the  Verneys.  A  lin- 
guistic uniformity  of  this  kind  between,  on  the  one  hand,  a  group  of 
persons  chiefly  belonging  to  Buckinghamshire,  some  of  them  residing 
in  London,  and  on  the  other  a  lady  of  the  same  class  belonging  to 
Shropshire,  but  living  most  of  her  life  in  the  North  of  England,  goes 
far  to  confirm  the  impression  regarding  pronunciation  which  we  gain 
from  the  Verney  Memoirs ;  it  also  shows  that  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  seventeenth  century  there  was  a  Received  Standard  which  had  a 
very  wide  currency  among  people  of  a  certain  social  standing.  From 
the  spontaneous  deviations  from  the  convention  in  spelling  which  occur 
in  the  letters  of  the  Verneys  and  of  Mrs.  Basire,  it  would  be  possible 
to  reconstruct  the  pronunciation  of  the  period  with  considerable  minute- 
ness and  no  little  certainty.  The  Standard  thus  reached  is  that  which 
might  be  adopted  were  it  desired  to  reproduce  the  pronunciation  of 
the  great  Restoration  dramatists.  If  it  be  thought  that  the  modes  of 
speech  of  the  Verneys  and  Mrs.  Basire  are  too  careless  and  unstudied  for 
the  sparkling  dialogue  of  the  smart  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  Congreve  and 
Vanbrugh,  it  should  be  remembered  that  these  characters  are  almost 
exact  contemporaries  of  Sir  Ralph  and  Lady  Verney,  of  Lady  Sussex 
and  Dr.  Denton ;  that  all  these  personages,  real  and  fictitious,  belong  to 
the  same  class;  that,  allowing  for  the  literary  polish  and  brilliancy 
imparted  by  the  dramatists  to  the  conversation  of  the  latter,  they  all 
employ  the  same  diction,  grammar,  and  constructions. 

Passing  on  to  about  a  generation  later  than  the  last  letters  in  the 
Verney  Memoirs,  &c.,  we  find  in  the  Wentworth  Papers,  documents 
no  less  important  as  illustrating  the  colloquial  English  of  the  Court  circle 
during  the  first  third  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  best  letters,  from 
our  present  point  of  view,  are  those  of  old  Lady  Wentworth,  who  had 
been  Woman  of  the  Bedchamber  to  the  Queen  of  James  II,  of  her  son 
Peter,  and  of  her  daughter-in-law  Lady  Strafford.  There  are  many  other 
letters  in  the  collection  which  are  of  great  value  for  the  study  of  eighteenth- 
century  English — as  indeed  is  nearly  everything  which  was  written  during 
the  first  three  quarters  of  the  century — but  the  above  are  the  chief. 

The  general  character  of  these  letters  closely  resembles  that  of  the 
Verney  collection.  They  are  intimate  effusions  from  a  mother  to  her  son, 
from  a  wife  to  her  husband,  from  one  brother  to  another.  The  style  of 
the  three  characters  mentioned  is  absolutely  unaffected  and  natural,  and 
is  clearly  as  close  as  it  is  possible  for  that  of  written  documents  to  be  to 
that  of  everyday  life.  The  spelling,  even  of  Peter  Wentworth — the 
'  Querry ',  as  he  calls  himself— is  instructively  remote  from  the  conven- 


CHARACTERISTIC   PRONUNCIATIONS  165 

tional  type,  and  shows  that  the  pronunciation  of  the  period  was  practically 
identical,  in  all  essential  features,  with  that  suggested  by  the  Verney 
correspondence.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  for  our 
knowledge  of  seventeenth-  and  early  eighteenth-century  conversational 
English  of  the  Verney  and  Wentworth  letters.  Those  who  have  not  made 
themselves  familiar  with  these  collections,  or  with  others  of  a  similar 
character,  have  missed  the  richest  and  most  vital  sources  of  information. 

Both  the  Verney  Memoirs  and  the  Wentworth  Papers  are  freely  drawn 
on  in  the  later  chapters  of  this  book,  but  it  will  not  be  out  of  place  to 
bring  together  here  a  few  of  the  priceless  gems  of  spelling  which  the 
former  volumes  contain. 

As  full  references  are  given  later  to  page  and  volume,  as  well  as  to 
the  writer,  and  the  date,  these  are  omitted  here.  The  following  forms 
are  all  taken  from  letters  written  between  1640  and  1688 : 

Vowel  Spellings. 

ar  for  er : — sartinly,  desarve,  sarvant,  sarve,  presarve,  divartion,  larne 
'learn',  vartus  '  virtues *,yarn  '  earn',  marcy,  &c.,  &c. 

M.E.  <?2  =  [e]  : — discrate  '  discreet ',  to  spake. 

e  for  / : — stell,  sperits,  keten  '  kitten  ',  pell (  pill',  fefty,  pettyful,  shelmgs, 
unfel,  &c.,  &c. 

a  for  o  or  au  shortened : — 6  a  clake,  becas  '  because '  (also  bicos),  faly 
'  folly ',  s  as  sages  '  sausages  '. 

wo-  for  wa- : — wore '  war ',  warning,  who  I  'what',  woater,  quorill,  quollity, 
woshing,  &c. 

Confusion  of  M.E.  i  and  oi: — by  led  leg  of  mutton,  implyment '  employ 
ment ',  gine  '  join '. 

Oblige  written  oblege,  obleging,  &c.,  several  times. 

Unstressed  Vowels. 

-est : — gretist,  sadist. 

-el : — cruilty. 

-une,  -ure  \-fortin,  misfortin,  &c. ;  jointer,  venter,  futer. 

-age  : — corige  '  courage  ',  advantig,  acknoliges. 

-on  : — pardenn,  surgin  '  surgeon  ',  ribins,  fashing  *  fashion  '. 

-day  \ — Frydy,  Mundy  (days  of  the  week). 

-oi'n)  -ot(s) : — Borgin  '  Burgoyne ',  Shammee  gloves. 

Consonantal  Spellings. 

-in  for  -ing : — seem,  missin,  comin,  shillins,  disablegin. 

w-  for  wh- : — any  ware,  wig '  whig '. 

shu-  for  su- : — shuite  (of  clothes),  shewted  '  suited ',  sfiewer  '  sure '. 

Loss  of  -r- : — quater '  quarter ', '  no  father  than  Oxford ',  doset '  Dorset ', 
fust '  first ',  passons  '  persons ',  wood  '  word  '. 

Loss  of  other  consonants  \-friten  (P.  P.),  diomons,  gretis  (Superl.), 
Wensday,  granmother,  Papeses  '  Papists  ',  respeck,  crismus,  nex,  hounes 
'hounds'. 

(Mrs.  Basire  has  Lonan  '  London ',  with  which  cf.  Lunnon  referred  to 
in  eighteenth  century.  See  p.  303.) 

Addition  of  consonants'. — lemonds  Memons',  night  gownd,  dendlynes, 
schollards,  mickelmust '  Michaelmas ',  hold  year  '  whole',  homb  '  home  '. 


1 66  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

These  spellings  speak  for  themselves,  and  the  few  examples  here  given, 
out  of  hundreds  equally  enlightening,  are  sufficient  to  illustrate  the 
importance  for  the  student  of  seventeenth-century  pronunciation  of 
extending  his  inquiries  to  naturally-written  documents,  and  of  not  trusting 
to  the  professional  orthoepists  alone. 

A  few  examples  may  be  added  from  the  Verney  Memoirs  of  peculiari- 
ties of  Accidence. 

The  suffix  -s  is  often  used  with  plural  subject  in  the  Pres.  Indie. — 
'My  Lady  and  Sir  tomos  remembers  their  sarvices  to  you  and  Mrs.  Gardiner'; 
is  also  used  with  PI.  subject : — '  all  hopes  of  peace  is  now  taken  awaye '. 

The  Auxiliary  have  shortened  to  a  : — '  It  would  a  greved  there  harts  to 
a  sene ',  &c. 

Speake,  rtt,  and  right  ('  wrote '),  safe,  are  used  in  the  Pret. ;  spok,  took, 
choose,  lyen,  eat,  loaden,  as  Past  Participles. 

Confusion  between  the  Nom.  and  Objective  of  Pronouns  : — between  you 
and  I ;  -SV.r(ter)  Peg  and  me  got  an  opportunity.  His  used  instead  of 
Possess,  suffix — My  lord  Parsons  his  sonne. 

Adjectives  are  used  where  we  should  use  Adverbs  : — he  is  reasonable 
well  agane  (Lady  Verney) ;  the  weather  has  been  wonderful  stormie  (Sir 
Edm.  Verney). 

The  general  question  of  the  survival  of  Regional  dialect  among  the  upper 
classes  has  already  been  touched  upon  (pp.  102,  103,  112,  163).  A  few 
words  may,  however,  be  added  with  special  reference  to  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries.  This  is  particularly  necessary  as  the  well-known 
passage  in  which  Macaulay  deals  with  the  speech  of  the  country  gentry 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  does  not  give  an  altogether  accurate  idea  of 
the  facts,  nor  put  them  in  their  proper  perspective  in  the  general  picture 
of  the  history  of  English.  We  have  shown  that  the  rustic  Verneys  and 
Mrs.  Basire  did  not  write  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest  that  they  spoke 
a  local  dialect,  but  rather  that  their  speech  was  the  Standard  English  of 
their  day.  This  is  true  of  all  the  correspondents  whose  letters  appear  in 
the  Verney  Memoirs.  It  is  probable  that  a  minute  examination  of  these 
letters  would  reveal  certain  rusticities,  and  it  is  inconceivable  that  such 
should  not  have  occurred,  here  and  there,  in  the  speech  of  the  Verney 
ladies  and  their  brothers.  But  that  they  all  spoke  a  Regional  broad  dialect 
is  quite  inadmissible.  Macaulay's  picture  of  the  speech  and  manners 
of  the  country  squire  of  the  seventeenth  century  is  apparently  con- 
structed partly  upon  the  testimony  of  the  Restoration  Comedies,  and 
more  especially  from  the  portrait  of  Squire  Western.  His  mention  of 
Somersetshire  and  Yorkshire  reveals  Fielding  and  Vanbrugh  as  his 
chief  sources,  and  they  are  very  good  ones.  It  is  certain  that  in  the 
remoter  shires  many  country  gentlemen  spoke  their  Regional  dialect 
well  into  the  eighteenth  century.  Many  did,  but  not  all.  By  the  side 
of  Squire  Western  we  have  his  neighbour,  Mr.  Allworthy,  and  for 
the  matter  of  that,  Tom  Jones  himself,  whose  education  was  purely  local 
until  he  was  fully  grown,  when  he  went  to  London.  The  dialect-speaking, 
swearing,  drinking  country  gentleman  of  the  Squire  Western  type  had 
plenty  of  opportunity  of  hearing  the  more  polite  forms  of  English,  and 
could  probably  use  them  when  he  chose,  without  much  difficulty.  After 


REGIONAL  DIALECT  AND  THE  COUNTRY  GENTLEMAN  167 

all,  we  do  not  gather  that  his  woman-kind  spoke  the  rustic  dialect,  so  that 
even  in  his  own  household  the  other  type  was  constantly  heard.  When 
he  went  to  town,  the  rustic  squire  was  certainly  a  butt  for  the  wags  and 
bloods  about  the  Court — the  seventeenth-century  comedies  offer  plenty 
of  examples  of  this — but  his  little  oddities  of  speech  and  manner  did 
not  cut  him  off  from  others,  of  exactly  his  own  class,  indeed  often  of 
his  own  family,  whose  acquaintance  with  the  town  was  of  longer  duration 
and  older  date  than  his  own.  Thus  his  angles  were  soon  rounded  off. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  fashionable  circles  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  were  made  up  of  persons,  some  greater, 
some  smaller,  but  all  ultimately  of  this  very  class  which  Macaulay 
describes  indiscriminately  as  boors,  drunkards,  and  clowns.  All  of  the 
fine  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  Court,  from  the  days  of  Charles  II  to 
those  of  Anne,  spent  some  portion  at  least  of  each  year  on  their  estates ; 
they  might  affect  to  jeer  at  rustic  speech,  but  they  were  not  unfamiliar 
with  it,  and  its  accents  doubtless  often  mingled  with  their  own,  as  they 
lapsed  in  unguarded  moments  into  the  speech  of  their  native  county.  It 
is  just  this  constant  touch  with  country  pursuits  and  rustic  dialect  which 
distinguished,  and  still  distinguishes,  the  upper  classes  from  the  middle- 
class  dwellers  in  the  towns.  As  was  said  above  (p.  112),  it  was  possible 
to  speak  with  a  rustic  accent  and  still  be  a  gentleman ;  it  was  not  allow- 
able to  speak  like  a  *  Sunday  citizen  '  or  a  '  comfit  maker's  wife '.  In 
any  attempt  to  realize  the  conditions  under  which  Received  Standard 
has  developed,  these  considerations  must  not  be  forgotten.  If  many 
country  gentlemen,  even  in  their  own  homes,  spoke  what  was  in  all 
essentials  the  language  of  the  Court,  so  also  there  were  many  courtiers 
and  gallants  who  when  they  spoke  the  latter  form  of  English,  must  have 
retained  certain  features  of  their  native  Regional  dialect,  and  these  passed 
muster  as  accepted  and  permissible  variants  in  the  speech  of  a  gentleman, 
some  of  them,  perhaps,  in  time,  becoming  more  or  less  universal.  In 
1772  Dr.  Johnson  said  that  if  people  watched  him  narrowly,  and  he  did 
not  watch  himself,  they  would  find  him  out  to  be  of  a  particular  county. 
He  added — '  In  the  same  manner,  Dunning  (afterwards  Lord  Ashburton) 
may  be  found  out  to  be  a  Devonshire  man ',  cp.  Life,  Oxford  Ed.,  ii.  159. 

It  is  not  wholly  fanciful  to  connect  the  free  and  easy  pronunciation 
and  grammar  which  are  characteristic  of  fashionable  English  down  to 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  with  the  intimate  relation  with  the 
country  and  with  Regional  speech  which  existed  among  the  ruling  classes. 
The  reaction  to  which  reference  is  made  later  begins,  and  progresses  at 
first,  chiefly  among  the  learned  middle  class  whose  touch  with  country  life 
and  rustic  speech  was  of  the  slightest. 

It  is  desirable  to  say  something  concerning  the  professional  writers  on 
pronunciation  of  this  period.  They  are  so  numerous  that  it  is  necessary 
to  make  a  selection  of  some  of  the  most  typical  and  informing.  The  best 
of  these  writers,  especially  those  from  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  onwards,  are  far  more  intelligible  than  the  grammarians  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  With  most  of  the  latter  we  not  only  have  the  very 
greatest  difficulty  in  understanding  what  sounds  they  are  trying  to 
describe,  but  when  by  chance  we  do  make  out  some  meaning,  we  cannot 
escape  the  gravest  doubts  that  the  information  conveyed  is  very  wide  of 


i68  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

the  truth.  The  great  difficulty  with  all  these  writers,  supposing  that 
some  definite  conception  can  be  gathered  from  their  statements,  is  to 
decide  how  far  their  accounts  are  reliable,  and  to  what  extent  the  type  of 
pronunciation  described  may  be  accepted  as  the  Received  Standard  of  the 
period.  On  the  one  hand  are  the  pedants  and  purists  like  Gill  and,  to 
some  extent,  Butler  and  Cooper,  and  on  the  other  the  writers  whom  we 
are  inclined  to  suspect  of  Regional  or  Class  modification,  such  as  Daines 
and  Jones.  The  safest  test  to  apply  is  that  of  the  evidence  derived  from 
the  Verneys,  Mrs.  Basire,  and  the  Wentworths.  Pronunciations  which 
recur  in  these  sources,  but  which  are  nevertheless  characterized  as  vulgar, 
careless,  or  barbarous,  by  the  grammarians,  may  safely  be  accepted  as 
belonging  to  the  Received  Standard  of  the  day. 

Provided  we  are  armed  with  a  touchstone  in  the  form  of  material 
supplied  by  our  correspondents,  it  is  true  that  some  small  pieces  of 
information  can  generally  be  extracted  from  nearly  any  of  the  professional 
writers,  even  from  such  unsatisfactory  authorities  as  Gill  or  Bullokar ;  but 
it  more  often  happens  that  a  large  collection  of  occasional  spellings  from 
contemporary  letters  will  render  reference  to  the  former  superfluous. 

In  the  English  Grammar  prefixed  to  his  Dictionary,  Dr.  Johnson  com- 
plains that '  most  of  the  writers  on  English  grammar ',  in  dealing  with 
pronunciation,  'have  often  established  the  jargon  of  the  lowest  people  as 
the  model  of  speech 7.  This  is  hardly  applicable  to  the  seventeenth- 
century  writers  such  as  Butler,  Wallis,  and  Cooper,  with  whose  works 
Dr.  Johnson  was  well  acquainted,  and  one  must  suppose  that  he  had 
in  his  mind,  perhaps,  such  early  eighteenth-century  writers  as  Jones  and 
Baker.  It  is  the  peculiar  merit  of  these  men,  as  we  shall  see,  that  they 
do  actually  describe,  not  an  ideal  form  of  speech,  but  one  which  we  know 
from  other  sources  to  have  been  that  in  actual  use. 

We  shall  consider  in  due  course  Dr.  Johnson's  general  views  regarding 
English  pronunciation,  and  may  now  mention  in  chronological  order 
a  few  of  the  earlier  writers,  all  of  whom  are  his  inferiors  in  learning,  as 
they  usually  are  in  judgement  also. 

Gill,  the  author  ofLogonomia  (1621),  was  High  Master  of  St.  Paul's 
School,  '  a  very  ingeniose  person ',  says  Aubrey,  '  as  may  appear  by  his 
writings.  Notwithstanding  he  had  moodes  and  humours  as  particularly 
his  whipping-fitts/  Aubrey  tells  a  ludicrous  story  to  illustrate  Gill's  zeal 
with  the  rod,  and  quotes  a  lampoon  upon  the  subject  which  shows  the 
estimation  in  which  he  was  held,  on  this  account  at  least.  He  was 
among  the  numerous  would-be  reformers  of  spelling,  and  has  left  a 
number  of  texts  in  his  notation.  His  brief  remarks  on  English  pro- 
nunciation are  so  wide  of  the  mark,  and  his  notation,  based  upon  his 
conception  of  how  English  ought  to  be  pronounced,  gives  a  picture  so 
wildly  remote  from  what  we  are  compelled  by  other  evidence  to  consider 
as  the  true  one,  that  in  spite  of  his  great  reputation  as  flogger  of  little 
boys  little  or  nothing  is  to  be  gained  from  detailed  consideration  of  his 
book.  The  chief  interest  lies  in  his  strongly  expressed  prejudices  against 
the  prevailing  habits  of  pronunciation  of  his  day,  and  his  abuse  of  certain 
classes  of  speakers  as  affected  and  effeminate  'mopseys'.  Forms  of 
pronunciation  which  had  certainly  been  long  in  use  by  the  end  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  reign  are  denounced  by  Gill  as  affected.  Thus  he  even 


GILL  AND  BUTLER  169 

pretends  that  M.E.  a  was  still  a  back  vowel  [<z],  and  that  ai  was  still 
a  diphthong. 

He  expresses  the  greatest  contempt  for  those  who  pronounced  '  I  pray 
you  give  your  scholars  leave  to  play '  as  [si  pre  ju  g!  ja(r)  sk<zl9(r)z  llv  te 
pie],  which,  on  the  whole,  was  the  way  in  which  most  decent  speakers 
pronounced  at  that  time  (except  that  not  all  said  [liv,  sk#b(r)  gl])  instead 
of  [91  prat  ju  giv  jur  skolorz  lev  tu  pla/'],  which  probably  none  but  yokels 
had  said  for  a  hundred  years  or  more.  The  chief  information  is  to  be 
derived  from  his  exhibition  of  certain  types  of  pronunciation  for  the 
purpose  of  pillorying  them.  Altogether,  Gill  seems  to  be  a  cantankerous 
and  rather  ridiculous  person,  who,  if  he  lived  up  to  his  theories,  must 
have  spoken  a  detestable  English. 

A  more  agreeable  man,  and  a  rather  more  informing  writer,  is  Charles 
Butler,  born  in  Buckinghamshire  in  1 560.  He  was  educated  at  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford,  was  a  schoolmaster  at  Basingstoke,  and  Rector  of  Laurence 
Wotton  in  1594.  He  lived  till  1647.  He  published  hisIZngh'sh  Grammar 
in  1634.  Butler  uses  a  special  notation  of  no  particular  merit  and  very 
little  phonetic  value.  His  chief  aim  is  to  be  consistent  in  spelling.  His 
intentions  were  good,  and  some  of  his  remarks  upon  the  relation  of  spell- 
ing to  sound  are  not  uninteresting,  but  he  lacked  both  the  special 
training  which  might  have  fitted  him  for  his  task,  and  the  intelligence  to 
supply  its  lack.  Thus  his  book  remains  a  barren,  vague,  and  unsatis- 
factory account  of  English  speech.  Commenting  on  the  uncertainty  of 
English  spelling  in  his  day,  Butler  remarks  that  one  of  the  causes  of  this 
is  that  '  in  many  words  wee  ar  fallen  from  the  old  pronunciation,  and 
therefore  soom  write  them  (i.  e.  words)  according  to  the  nu  sound  and 
soom  (for  antiquitis  sake)  do  keep  the  old  writing '.  Again — '  Wee  hav 
in  our  language  many  syllables  which  having  gotten  a  nu  pronunciation, 
doo  yet  retain  their  old  orthographi,  so  that  their  letters  doo  not  now 
rightly  express  their  sound  ...  the  which  errour  if  we  will  correct ...  the 
question  will  be  whether  we  should  conform  our  writing  to  the  nu  sound  ; 
or  reform  our  sound  and  return  to  the  old '. 

'  For  solution  of  which  doubt,  it  is  meet  that  when  wee  have  generally, 
or  in  the  most  civil  parts  (as  the  Universities  and  Citties)  forsaken  the 
old  pronunciation,  then  wee  conform  our  writing  to  the  nue  sound,  and  write 
as  wee  speak,  deede,  neede,  sleepe,  hart,  change,  strange,  angel,  danger  (for 
chainge  &c.)  not  dede,  nede,  sleap,  hert,  or  heart  (which  is  woors)  chaunge, 
straunge  &c.  as  they  ar  yet  sounded  in  the  North,  and  were  not  long  since 
written  in  the  book  of  Homilies  (imprinted  1562)  and  where  the  olde  sound  is 
left  only  by  soom,  and  in  soom  places;  that  there  we  reform  the  vowel 
sound  and  speake  as  wee  write :  first,  third,  bird,  dear,  ear,  hear,  heard  :  not 
furst,  thurd,  burd,  deer,  eer,  heer,  hard.' 

We  are  not  told  more  precisely  than  this  just  what  we  should  like  to 
know,  what  the  old  sounds  and  the  new  sounds  severally  and  respectively 
were.  We  must  suppose  that  Butler  intends  to  recommend  [did,  nld, 
slip,  hsert,  tjendz],  &c.5  in  the  first  group.  Incidentally,  we  may  note 
that  these  pronunciations  had  been  fairly  widespread,  if  not  universal,  for 
about  1 50  years  at  least.  As  regards  the  second  group,  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  what  he  is  driving  at ;  furst  represents  an  originally  different 
dialectal  type  from  first  \  thurd,  burd  represent  a  later  pronunciation 


170  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

than  that  expressed  by  i\  every  one  said  [hiar,  diar],  certainly  not  [her, 
der],  and  most,  probably,  said  [er]  if  not  fir,  for]  for  ear.  '  Hard '  [haerd], 
where  we  now  write  heard  and  say  [hXd],  was  apparently  the  commonest 
type  from  early  in  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  at 
least.  These  passages  illustrate  well  the  invincible  futility  of  Butler  and 
his  kind.  They  have  a  gift  for  selecting  the  worst  possible  examples  to 
illustrate  their  meaning,  and  their  statements  are  generally  confused. 
Butler  is  quite  incapable  of  giving  an  intelligible  account  of  the  character 
of  a  vowel  sound,  and  it  is  impossible  to  be  sure  what  he  means  when  he 
talks  of  diphthongs.  The  following  are  a  few  of  his  most  definite  and 
specific  statements,  taken  from  the  Index  of  words  like  and  unlike  : — 
'  Errand  a  message  commonly  pronounced  arrand; — Devil  or  rather 
deevil,  not  divel  as  some  far  fetching  it  from  diabolus  would  have  it — 
deevil  comes  from  eevil\ — For  enough  we  commonly  say  enuf,  as  for 
laugh,  daughter  soom  say  laf,  dafter,  for  cough  all  say  coff\ — ere,  erst,  not 
yer,yerst', — Ew  not  yew  ovis  femella,  as  iw  not  yiw  taxus,  though  y  be 
vulgarly  sounded  in  them  both '  (p.  70). 

John  Wallis  published  in  1653  his  Grammatica  Linguae  Anglicanae, 
a  work  which  was  many  times  reprinted  for  more  than  a  century,  and 
from  which  many  later  writers  pilfered  right  and  left. 

The  '  learned  and  sagacious  Wallis ',  as  Dr.  Johnson  calls  him,  was  born 
in  1616  at  Ashford  in  Kent,  of  which  his  father  was  incumbent.  He 
was  educated  at  a  school  near  Tenterden,  kept  by  a  Scot,  at  Felstead 
School,  Essex,  and  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  He  held  two  livings 
in  London,  and  was  elected,  in  1649,  Savilian  Professor  of  Geometry  at 
Oxford,  where  he  died  in  1703. 

Wallis  has  considerable  merits  as  an  observer  of  sounds,  he  has  good 
powers  of  discrimination,  nor  is  he  led  astray  by  the  spelling  like  all 
the  sixteenth-century  grammarians,  and  Bullokar,  Gill,  and  Butler  in  the 
seventeenth. 

He  makes  several  interesting  observations.  He  perceives  that  the 
sound  expressed  in  English  by  au  or  aw  is  a  kind  of  0-sound,  which, 
although  long,  differs  otherwise  but  little  from  *  short  o  '.  Thus  he  gives 
fall— folly,  hall,  haul — holly,  call — collar,  laws — losse,  cause — cost,  awd — 
odd,  saw'd — sod,  as  longs  and  shorts  of  the  same  sound. 

Again,  he  recognizes  the  existence  of  a  short  '  obscure '  sound  which 
he  identifies  with  the  French  '  e  feminine ',  and  which  is  heard  in  the  word 
liberty — presumably  in  the  second  syllable.  This  must  be  [9]. 

Wallis  further  notes  the  existence  of  another,  similar,  but  slightly 
different  'obscure*  sound,  which  the  French  have  long  in  the  last 
syllable  of  sacrificateur.  This  sound  is  expressed  in  English  by  short  u 
in  turn,  burn,  dull,  cut.  This  sound  is  also  heard  in  English  among  those 
who  pronounce  rather  negligently,  in  words  in  which  o  or  ou  is  written, 
as  in  come,  some,  done,  company,  country,  couple,  covet,  love,  &c.  Although 
the  identification  with  French  -eur  is  inaccurate,  it  is  sufficiently  near  to 
allow  us  to  understand  that  Wallis  is  referring  to  a  vowel  approximately 
the  same  as  our  [a].  The  pronunciation  indicated  of  turn,  burn  is 
apparently  that  heard  in  the  present-day  Scotch  pronunciation  of  these 
words.  It  is  not  quite  clear  from  Wallis's  account  whether  our  [A]  had 
yet  developed.  He  says  that  an  obscure  sound  occurs  in  vertue,  and 


MERITS   OF   WALLIS  AND  COOPER  171 

identifies  it  with  the  former  of  the  two  obscure  vowels  mentioned.  We 
should  expect  the  vowel  in  the  first  syllable  of  this  word  to  be  identified 
with  that  in  turn  and  burn. 

Another  great  merit  of  Wallis  is  that  he  includes  the  M.E.  short  a  in  bat, 
ban,  Sam,  &c.,  among  '  palatal '  vowels,  and  definitely  ranges  it,  as  what  we 
should  call  a  front  vowel,  with  M.E.  d  in  pale,  same,  bane,  bare,  &c.,  and 
with  the  sounds  in  still,  steel,  set,  seat,  &c. 

It  is  rather  remarkable  that  so  acute  an  observer  as  Wallis  should 
think  it  worth  while  to  say  that  au,  aw  rightly  pronounced,  consists  of 
a  combination  of  short  English  a  and  w,  when  in  the  next  sentence  he 
notes  that  '  nowadays  it  is  mostly  pronounced  simply  like  the  thick 
German  d,  the  sound  of  this  being  prolonged,  and  that  of  w  nearly 
suppressed '.  This  description  implies  [5]  with  perhaps  a  faint  diphthongal 
effect,  produced  by  a  very  slight  additional  rounding  of  the  lips  before  the 
end  of  the  vowel. 

By  far  the  most  reliable  phonetician  among  the  seventeenth-century 
writers  is  Cooper,  whose  Grammatica  Anglicana  was  published  in  1685. 
Cooper  was  born  in  Herts.,  went  up  to  Cambridge  in  1672,  took  orders, 
and  became  Head  Master  of  Bishop  Stortford  School  in  Herts.  He  died 
in  1698.  Cooper  tries,  in  his  book,  to  describe  the  actual  pronunciation, 
and  the  facts  of  articulation  which  underlie  it,  giving  an  account  of  the 
speech  organs  and  their  activities.  He  distinguishes,  as  none  of  his 
predecessors  except  Wallis  do,  between  sound  and  letter. 

Cooper  not  only  regards  a  as  a  front  vowel,  but  describes  it  as  being 
formed  '  by  the  middle  (that  is  what  we  call  the  '  front ')  of  the  tongue, 
slightly  raised  towards  the  hollow  of  the  palate '.  This  leaves  no  doubt 
that  he  is  describing  [ae],  and  that  he  thoroughly  understood  the  character 
of  the  sound,  and  the  way  in  which  it  was  formed.  He  notes  that  this 
same  sound  occurs  in  cast,  past,  only  lengthened,  which  implies  [ksest, 
paest].  Strangely  enough,  he  says  that  the  vowel  in  pass  is  short.  He 
gives  later  on  a  list  of  words  with  the  short  and  long  vowel.  Those  con- 
taining [ae]  are  : — bar,  blab,  cap,  car,  cat,  dash,  flash,  gasp,  grand,  land, 
mash,  pat,  tar,  quality,  [ae]  is  heard  in  : — barge,  blast,  asking,  carp,  dart, 
flasket,  gasp,  grant,  larch,  mask,  path,  tart.  He  distinguishes  thus  the 
vowels  in  can,  cast,  as  respectively  long  and  short  of  the  same  sound. 
From  this  he  separates  the  sound  in  cane,  wane,  age,  as  containing  in 
reality  '  long  e  ',  '  falsely  called  long  d '.  Thus  ken  contains  the  short, 
and  cane  the  long  of  the  same  sound.  His  description  of  this  vowel  is  '  e 
formatur  a  lingua  magis  elevata  et  expansa  quam  in  a  proprius  ad  extre- 
mitatem,  unde  concavum  palati  minus  redditur  et  sonus  maior  acutus  ut 
in  ken '. 

A  noteworthy  feature  of  Cooper's  pronunciation  is  his  account  of 
a  diphthongal  pronunciation  of  M.E.  d  in  certain  words — name  and  tale. 
He  says  :  '  u  gutturalis  interseritur  post  a  ut  in  name  quasi  scriberetur 
na-um  dissyllabum.  .  .  .  Tale  pronunciatur  quasi  scriberetur  ta-uV,  There 
is  no  doubt  as  to  what  Cooper  means  by  '  guttural  u ',  since  he  says  else- 
where that  this  vowel,  which  occurs  in  nut,  &c.,  is  like  '  the  groans  of 
a  man  afflicted  with  sickness  or  pain ',  which  might  serve  as  a  description 
for  [A,  a]  or  [a]. 

It  is  quite  certain,  therefore,  that  Cooper,  as  regards  name,  tale,  is 


172  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

describing  a  pronunciation  approximating  to  [neam,  teal].  The  descrip- 
tion is  so  circumstantial  that  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  its  occurrence 
within  Cooper's  own  experience,  perhaps  in  his  own  usage.  In  any  case, 
we  have  no  reason  to  regard  such  pronunciations,  at  any  period,  as  other 
than  provincialisms. 

The  question  of  the  probable  pronunciation  of  M.E.  a  and/2  in  Cooper's 
day  is  fully  discussed  later  on  (pp.  194-6,  209-12),  and  it  is  sufficient  here 
to  note  that  his  description  appears  to  refer  to  the  sound  [e]  rather  than 
to  [e],  although,  for  several  reasons,  duly  set  forth  below,  the  latter  sound 
seems  the  more  probable.  Differences  due  to  mere  tenseness  of  the 
tongue  have  been  properly  described  only  comparatively  recently,  and 
Cooper  would  find  it  difficult  to  distinguish  between  [e,  §],  or  to  describe 
the  former  otherwise  than  by  comparing  it  to  the  short  vowel  in  ken,  &c., 
of  which  he  might  quite  naturally  suppose  it  to  be  merely  the  lengthened 
form.  Had  the  English  of  his  day  possessed  both  the  tense  and  the 
slack  mid-front  vowels,  he  would  doubtless  have  perceived  the  difference, 
but  if,  as  seems  certain,  only  one  of  these  vowels  existed,  it  was  almost 
impossible  for  him  to  let  us  know  without  ambiguity  which  it  was.  It  is 
much  that  Cooper  distinguishes  different  degrees  of  height  of  the  tongue, 
and  between  back  and  front  activities. 

Cooper  must  be  commended  for  endeavouring  to  face  facts  in  actual 
speech,  even  although  it  was  rather  disconcerting  for  a  man  of  his  age  to 
admit  too  great  a  disparity  between  spelling  and  pronunciation.  Thus, 
although  he  says  that  the  sound  in  bait,  caitiff,  eight,  ay  consists  of  a  com- 
bination of  the  vowel  sound  in  cast  (previously  described  as  [se])  followed 
by  '  ee ',  while  that  in  praise,  height,  weight,  convey  is  a  diphthong  com- 
posed of  the  a  in  cane  ([e]  according  to  his  description)  placed  before 
i,  he  admits,  at  least  for  the  latter  group,  that  in  familiar  conversation 
people  '  speaking  negligently '  pronounce  the  simple  a  in  cane.  As  will 
be  seen  below  (p.  248),  the  evidence  of  the  occasional  spellings,  in  letters 
and  other  unstudied  writings,  is  against  the  assumption  of  a  diphthongal 
pronunciation  for  old  at,  ei. 

Cooper  has  some  interesting  indications  of  the  pronunciation  of 
unstressed  syllables,  the  correctness  of  which  is  confirmed  from  other 
sources.  Thus  he  says  that  picture  is  pronounced  like  picKther,  that  is, 
[pzktd],  and  he  gives  a  long  list  of  words  ending  in  -ure  in  which  this  is 
pronounced  [a]  and  not  [ja]  as  at  present.  Of  these,  figure  [figa]  is  as 
now,  but  not  so  rapture,  rupture,  sculpture,  structure,  torture,  scripture, 
future,  &c.,  &c.  [skiYpta,  torta]  are  proved  by  the  occasional  spellings  to 
have  been  the  sixteenth-  and  seventeenth-century  forms.  (See  on  this, 
pp.  277-8,  below.) 

We  now  pass  to  certain  classified  lists  of  Cooper's  which  are  important 
from  several  points  of  view. 

The  first  is  a  collection  of  pairs  or  larger  groups  of  words  which, 
according  to  our  author,  '  have  the  same  pronunciation  but  a  different 
sense,  and  mode  of  writing '.  This  collection  includes  : — are — air — ere — 
heir ;  ant — aunt ;  coat — quote ;  comming — cummin ;  coughing — coffin  ; 
jerkin— -jerking •;  flea— flay  \  fir— fur— far  ;  heart— hart ;  hard— heat- 
her d-,  i'le  (I  will) — isle — oil',  leaper — leper  ;  line — loin',  meat — mete', 
a  notion — an  ocean ;  own — one ;  order — ordure ;  pastor — pasture ;  rare — 


COOPER'S  STATEMENTS  GENERALLY  CONFIRMED    173 

rear    Vb. ;    raisin — reason  ;     season — seisin  ;    spider — spid-her',    tire — 
ty  (tie)-^r. 

We  may  note,  among  the  above,  the  pronunciation  [ear]  for  are  (cf. 
p.  357,  below);  [5(r)cb(r)]  (cf.  p.  299,  below);  the  pronunciation  of 
-ing  as  -in  (cf.  p.  289,  below);  -on  ==  -in  in  reason,  season  (cf.  p.  276, 
below). 

The  next  list  we  shall  mention  is  one  in  which  the  pairs  are  said  to 
have  '  nearly ' — affinem — the  same  sound.  This  probably  means  that 
the  sound  was  really  identical,  but  that  Cooper,  for  some  reason,  was  not 
quite  prepared  to  admit  it: — Eaton — eten;  Martial — Marshal ;  Nash — 
gnash ;  Noah's — nose ;  Rome — room  ;  Walter — water ;  carrying — carrion  ; 
craven — craving ;  doer — door ;  pulls — pulse ;  saphire — safer ;  shire — 
shear',  sex — sects',  stricter — stricture',  throat — throw 't. 

We  come  next  to  a  list  of  forms  which  belong  to  a  '  barbarous  dialect', 
and  are  therefore,  according  to  Cooper,  to  be  avoided,  although  many  of 
these  spellings,  or  others  which  imply  the  same  pronunciation,  are  to  be 
found  in  the  letters  of  the  Verneys  or  of  Lady  Wentworth.  The  most 
interesting  are: — Bushop-,  Chorles  'Charles'  (cp.  Mrs.  Basire,  p.  205, 
below) ;  eend  '  end ' ;  fut '  foot '  (=  [fat],  cp.  suit  in  the  Verney  Memoirs, 
p.  237,  below) ;  gave  '  gave ' ;  hild  '  held '  (cf.  p.  354) ;  leece  '  lice  ',  meece 
'  mice '  (S.E.  or  S.E.  Midi.) ;  ommost  '  almost ' ;  wuts  '  oats ',  hwutter 
'hotter*  (cf.  p.  307);  ap  to  'up';  stomp  'stamp';  sarvice  (cf.  p.  219); 
tunder  '  tinder ' ;  yerb  '  herb ',  yerth '  earth  '  (cf.  p.  308)  \yeuseles ;  yeusary. 
With  regard  to  the  two  last,  it  is  doubtful  which  pronunciation  they  are 
intended  to  suggest.  If  [jusb's],  &c.,  why  not  have  written yousless  ?  If  not 
this  then  is  it  [jys-]  ?  If  the  former  was  condemned  by  Cooper,  did  he 
still  adhere  to  the  latter  pronunciation  ?  Or  is  he  condemning  [jys-], 
which  must  have  been  very  archaic  by  his  time  ?  (Cf.  p.  243.) 

Finally,  a  few  examples  from  the  comparatively  small  list  of  pronuncia- 
tions which,  Cooper  says,  are  used  '  for  the  sake  of  ease ',  concerning 
the  propriety  of  which  he  offers  no  comment. 

Bellis  '  bellows ' ;  dander  '  dandruff ' ;  axtre  '  axeltree  ' ;  ent  '  isn't ' ; 
git  'get';  hundurd-,  hanker c  her  \  reddish  'raddish';  sez  'says';  shure 
'sure',  shugar ;  squourge  l scourge '  (cf.  p.  307);  vittles;  wusted. 

So  we  take  leave  of  Cooper,  a  competent  and  conscientious  observer, 
with  very  few  fads.  His  work  is  by  far  the  best  of  its  kind  we  have  met 
so  far,  or  shall  meet,  perhaps  down  to  Ellis  and  Sweet.  It  is  true  that 
he  can  tell  us  very  little  that  we  cannot  learn  for  ourselves  from  the 
Verneys  and  Wentworths,  but  his  statements  unquestionably  confirm 
many  of  the  conclusions  which  we  are  inclined  to  draw  from  the  occa- 
sional spellings  of  these  writers.  If  in  some  cases  Cooper  is  at  variance 
with  this  testimony,  this  must  be  put  down  partly  to  a  want  of  familiarity 
with  the  speech  usage  of  the  circles  in  which  Sir  Ralph  Verney  and  his 
family  moved,  partly  to  the  natural  tendency  of  a  writer  on  pronunciation 
at  that  period  to  describe  an  ideally  '  correct '  form  of  English.  From 
this,  the  besetting  sin  of  the  schoolmaster  and  the  professional  gramma- 
rian in  all  ages,  Cooper  is,  on  the  whole,  commendably  free.  We  must 
not  forget  to  recognize  that  we  owe  to  him  the  knowledge,  or  at 
least  the  accepted  view,  that  M.E.  a  when  lengthened  in  the  Mod.  period 
before  -si  and  -tht  &c.,  as  in  past,  path,  &c.,  was  still  pronounced  [£]  in 


174  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

the  third  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.  (See  pp.  203-5,  on  this 
lengthening.) 

We  now  come  to  Dr.  Jones,  author  of  the  Practical  Phonographer, 
published  first  in  1701,  whose  unprejudiced  attitude  to  his  subject,  and 
the  very  copious  examples  which  he  gives  to  illustrate  his  rules  for  the 
relation  of  sound  and  symbol,  render  his  book  very  valuable.  Jones 
was  born  in  1645  at  Pentyrch  in  Glamorganshire,  and  died  in  1709,  so 
that  he  represents  the  English  of  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
He  is  older  than  Cooper,  rather  younger  than  Sir  Ralph  Verney  and 
most  of  his  sisters,  and  older  than  old  Lady  Wentworth.  So  far  as  we 
can  judge,  the  pronunciation  which  Jones  describes  is  not  at  all  archaic, 
and  his  account  of  the  distribution  of  vowel  sounds  and  of  the  various 
treatment  of  the  consonants  agrees  with  the  prevailing  habit  down  at 
least  to  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century.  We  know 
but  little,  to  judge  from  Ekwall's  account  in  his  very  carefully  annotated 
edition  of  the  Phonographer,  of  the  details  of  Jones's  life  and  of  his  social 
experience.  He  was  educated  at  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  studied  medicine, 
and  became  a  qualified  physician.  Later  in  his  life  he  was  Chancellor  of 
the  Diocese  of  Llandaff.  A  minute  observer,  he  is  yet  in  no  way  com- 
parable to  Cooper  as  a  phonetician,  and  does  not  attempt  to  describe  how 
sounds  are  formed.  A  sub-title  of  his  book  is  '  The  New  Art  of  Spelling 
words  by  the  Sound  thereof,  and  of  sounding  them  by  the  Sight  thereof, 
Applied  to  the  English  Tongue '.  He  also  professes  to  set  forth  '  English 
Speech  ...  at  it  is  commonly  used  in  England  (particularly  in  London, 
the  Universities  or  at  Court) '. 

Jones's  work  is  at  once  an  elaborate  spelling-book,  and  one  that  gives 
indications  of  the  pronunciation.  It  proceeds  by  means  of  question  and 
answer — thus  : — '  When  is  the  sound  of  a  written  wa  ? '  '  When  it  may  be 
sounded  -ward  &c.  in  the  End  of  words.'  The  examples  include 
athwart,  backward,  coward,  eastward,  Edward,  forward,  inward,  North- 
ward, Windward,  &c.,  &c.  This  evidently  implies  that  Jones  regarded 
[baekad,  Istad,  edad,  forad,  inad],  &c.,  as  the  normal  and  usual  pronuncia- 
tion, but  at  the  same  time  recognized  a  pronunciation  with  [w].  He 
often  gives  additional  information  on  words  which  are  not  covered  by 
the  question,  as  when  he  adds,  after  the  above  list,  the  statement  that 
somewhat  is  sounded  son? at  (=  [samat]). 

Jones's  habit  of  recording  alternative  pronunciations  is  meritorious, 
and  if  his  statements  in  this  respect  are  reliable,  we  may  perhaps  draw 
the  inference  that  a  reaction  had  begun  against  the  extreme  negligence 
and  independence  from  the  written  form,  which  characterized  fashionable 
pronunciation  from  the  sixteenth  century  to  far  into  the  eighteenth.  We 
must  not,  however,  push  this  too  far,  since,  as  we  have  seen,  Swift,  who 
is  censorious  enough  in  certain  respects,  does  not  touch  upon  the  main 
features  which  would  now  be  considered  as  monstrous  blemishes  in 
speech. 

We  shall  return  to  this  point  later  on. 

There  are  few  writers  of  the  sort  from  whom  so  much  may  be  learnt 
as  from  Jones,  and  this  is  owing  to  his  very  remarkable  freedom  from 
bias  in  favour  of  '  correctness  ',  and  the  thoroughness  with  which  he  com- 
piles his  lists.  He  very  rarely  censures,  and  when  he  does  so  he  merely 


VALUABLE  INFORMATION  FROM  JONES  AND  BAKER  175 

notes  that  such  and  such  a  word  is  c  abusively  sounded '  in  such  a  way — 
as  when  he  tells  us  that  appetite  is  '  abusively  sounded  appety '. 

A  few  examples  may  be  given  of  the  kind  of  information,  generally 
quite  definite,  which  may  be  gathered  from  Jones. 

(1)  Among  a  list  of  words  in  which  Jones  says  that  /  is  not  sounded, 
in  many  of  which  we  still  omit  this  sound,  the  following  occur,  in  all  of 
which  we  have  now  'restored'  /: — Si.  Allans,  Talbot,  falchion,  falcon, 
almanac,  almost,  Falmouth,  falter,  Walter  (p.  30). 

(2)  The  sound  of  ee  (that  is  [i])  written  /  in  oblige  —  [oblidz]. 

(3)  Jones  gives  a  very  much  longer  list  than  Cooper  of  words  ending 
in  -lure,  in  which,  as  he  says,  -ure  is  sounded  -er.     Among  these  are 
adventure,  conjecture,  departure,  failure,  gesture,  jointure,  mixture,  nature, 
&c.,  &c.  (p.  52).    The  list  includes  also  all  those  words  mentioned  by 
Cooper. 

(4)  '  Some  sound  daughter,  bought,  naught,  taught,  nought  &c.  with 
&nf,  saying  daufter,  boft  &c.'  (pp.  54,  55).      The  au  in  daufter  is  prob- 
ably suggested  by  the  orthodox  spelling ;  there  is  no  lack  of  examples  of 
dafter  among  the  letter- writers  (cf.  p.  288). 

(5)  '  The  sound  of  o  written  au,  when  it  may  be  sounded  au  ',  as  in — 
Auburn,  auction,  audience,  August,  aunt,  austere,  because,  daunt,  fault, 

fraud,  jaundice,  Pauls,  sausage,  vault.  '  Which  may  be  sounded  as  with 
an  o'  (p.  79).  Here  clearly  two  possible  sounds  [5.  5]  are  indicated. 
While  most  of  the  words  in  the  list,  and  all  are  not  included  here,  are 
now  pronounced  with  [5],  several  of  them  are  almost  universally  pro- 
nounced [.?],  such  as  [b*k.?z,  s^sz'dz],  while  [i\  may  be  heard  from  some 
speakers  in  fault,  vault. 

(6)  '  The  sound  of  o  written  wo  where  it  may  be  sounded  wo'   Jones's 
list  is  a  long  one,  and  although  it  is  certain  that  good  speakers  did  omit 
the  w-  consonant  in  some  of  the  words  as  late  as  the  forties  of  last 
century  (cf.   p.  297),  one  wonders  whether,  even   in  Jones's  day,  its 
omission  in  other  words  in  the  list  was  not  due  to  Regional  dialect 
influence.      This  is  the  list  '.—forswore,  swole,  swofn,  swop,  sword,  swore, 
wolf,    Wolverhampton,   worm,   worn,   worry,    Wolverton,  woman,  womb, 
wonder,  wont,  word,  work,  worse,  worship,  worth,  worthy,  woven,  would, 
wound.      'Which   are',   says  Jones,   p.  82,  'especially   those   of  two 
or  more  syllables,  sounded   as  beginning  with  o!     (Cf.  also  p.  296, 
below.) 

The  next  book  which  we  may  consider  is  an  unpretentious  little  work 
by  William  Baker — Rules  for  True  Spelling  and  Writing  English 
(2nd  Ed.),  Bristol,  1724.  The  author  gives  an  instructive  list  of  '  Words 
that  are  commonly  pronounced  very  different  from  what  they  are 
written '.  The  grammar  of  this  title  does  not  inspire  confidence  in  the 
general  cultivation  of  the  author,  but  most  of  the  pronunciations  he 
indicates  are  confirmed  by  the  evidence  of  the  letter-writers  in  the 
Wentworth  Papers,  or  by  the  Verneys. 

Some  useful  light  is  shed  upon  the  pronunciation  of  unstressed  syllables. 
The  tendency  to  reduce  -on  to  -in  (cf.  pp.  275-6,  below)  is  recognized 
in  the  forms  sturgin,  dungin,  flaggin,  carrin,  cooshin,  for  '  sturgeon, 
dungeon,  flagon,  carrion,  cushion '.  Stomick  is  given  as  the  pronunciation 
of  '  stomach ',  Izic  for  '  Isaac ' ;  spannel,  Dannel  for  '  spaniel,  Daniel ' ; 


176  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

janders  for  'jaundice';  hanker cher  for  'handkerchief;  mastee  for 
'  mastiff',  as  in  Jones. 

As  regards  consonantal  pronunciations,  Egip,  poscrip  occur  with  the 
loss  of  final  -/ ;  the  disappearance  of  r  before  -s  is  shown  in  mis  '  nurse  ', 
pus  'purse',  Usly  'Ursula',  thusty  'thirsty',  sasnet  'sarsanet'.  The 
proper  names  Birmingham,  Dorothy,  Margaret,  Katherim  are  spelt 
Brumminjum,  Dorraty,  Marget,  Katturn.  Among  other  individual 
forms  are  sparagras,  staffer  '  slaughter ',  conster  '  construe  ',  and  cr owner 
'  coroner '. 

We  are  told  that  i  is  not  sounded  in  venison,  and  that  medicine  is 
pronounced  medson.  G-  is  not  sounded  in  gnat,  gnaw,  nor  k-  in  knead, 
knee,  knife,  &c. ;  '  Words  terminated  in  -re  sound  -ur  as  Acquire,  aspire, 
fire,  hire ',  &c.,  &c. 

This  pronunciation  [ai'di],  &c.,  probably  existed  early  in  the  sixteenth 
century  at  any  rate  (cf.  p.  300,  below).  The  few  examples  show  how 
informing  some  of  these  simple  treatises  by  unknown  writers  may  be, 
compared  with  the  pretentious  works  of  an  earlier  day  written  by  men 
incomparably  more  learned,  such  as  Sir  William  Smith,  Richard  Mul- 
caster,  Bullokar,  and  Gill. 

-During  the  eighteenth  century  the  teaching  of  English  pronunciation 
was  a  common  means  of  livelihood;  innumerable  quacks  flourished, 
and  many  of  them  published  small  manuals  on  their  art.  Their  practice 
lay,  no  doubt,  largely  among  the  richer  tradesmen's  families  in  London,  who, 
while  they  were  able,  so  far  as  mere  wealth  could  permit  this,  to  cut  some 
figure  in  the  polite  world,  were  afraid  of  rendering  themselves  ridiculous 
by  their  lack  of  breeding  and  their  ignorance  of  the  English  spoken  in 
fashionable  circles.  Dr.  Johnson,  as  usual,  has  a  pithy  remark  upon  the 
rich  retired  shopkeepers  who  in  his  day  were  pushing  their  way  in 
Society.  '  They  have  lost ',  said  he,  '  the  civility  of  the  tradesman,  but 
have  not  acquired  the  manners  of  a  gentleman/ 

Smollett,  in  chap,  xiv  of  Roderick  Random,  gives  an  account  of  one 
of  the  quack  teachers  of  pronunciation,  a  Scotchman  in  this  instance,  and 
the  picture  is  probably  not  overdrawn.  The  following  is  the  young 
Scottish  surgeon's  impression : 

'  This  gentleman  who  had  come  from  Scotland  three  or  four  years  before, 
kept  a  school  in  town,  where  he  taught  the  Latin,  French,  and  Italian 
languages ;  but  what  he  chiefly  professed  was  the  pronunciation  of  the 
English  tongue,  after  a  method  more  speedy  and  uncommon  than  any 
practised  heretofore ;  and  indeed,  if  his  scholars  spoke  like  their  master, 
the  latter  part  of  his  undertaking  was  certainly  performed  to  a  tittle ;  for 
although  I  could  easily  understand  every  word  of  what  I  had  heard  hitherto 
since  I  entered  England,  three  parts  in  four  of  his  dialect  were  as  unintel- 
ligible to  me  as  if  he  had  spoken  in  Arabic  or  Irish.' 

Unfortunately  very  few  examples  are  given  of  this  worthy's  pronuncia- 
tion, and  these  not  particularly  enlightening  : — caal  for  '  call '  ;  /  vaw  to 
Gad ;  and  hawze  for  '  house '.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  this 
Scotchman  made  of  the  English  diphthong  in  vow,  house,  a  sound  quite 
new  to  him.  Vanbrugh  spells  Lord  Foppington's  pronunciation  of  the 
English  diphthong  as  au,  so  it  is  just  possible  that  an  affected  pronuncia- 
tion [o]  existed. 


THE  TURN   OF   THE   TIDE  177 

We  have  seen  that  the  writers  on  pronunciation  of  the  sixteenth 
century  and  those  of  the  next,  before  Wallis,  are  chiefly  concerned,  not 
to  give  a  true  picture  of  English  speech  as  it  actually  existed,  but  to 
concoct  a  more  or  less  fanciful  form  of  language  based  largely  upon  their 
own  conception  of  what  English  ought  to  be,  a  conception  mainly  deter- 
mined by  the  supposed  '  powers  of  the  letters '.  The  result  of  these 
efforts  at  restoring  '  true '  pronunciation  was  nil.  The  writers'  descrip- 
tions were  so  wildly  remote  from  reality  that  no  one  paid  any  attention  to 
them.  Natural  tendencies  appear  to  have  continued  unchecked  in  the 
speech  of  all  classes,  and  a  vague  ideal  of '  correctness  '  was  the  last  factor 
which  determined  what  was  fashionable  and  polite.  This  was  settled 
rather  by  the  convention  of  the  moment  in  the  Court  and  among  the 
superior  classes.  These  tendencies  and  their  results  are  recognized  by 
Cooper  and  Jones,  especially  by  the  latter,  and,  as  has  been  said,  their 
statements  agree  wonderfully,  on  the  whole,  with  the  truth  so  far  as  we 
can  gather  it  from  the  unstudied  familiar  letters  of  the  day. 

From  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  or  thereabouts,  there  are 
signs  of  a  reaction  against  what  came  to  be  considered  too  great  a  laxity. 
This  reaction  is  represented,  and  was  probably  influenced  to  some 
extent,  by  Lord  Chesterfield  in  the  great  world,  and  still  more  considerably 
by  Dr.  Johnson  in  the  world  of  letters.  It  does  not  follow  that  these  two 
extremes  would  agree  completely,  either  in  theory  or  practice.  Lord 
Chesterfield's  attitude  to  '  correctness ',  in  speech  no  less  than  in  manners, 
has  already  been  illustrated  by  quotations  (cf.  pp.  19—23).  That  of 
Dr.  Johnson  is  well  defined  in  the  general  remarks  on  pronunciation  in 
the  Grammar  prefixed  to  his  great  Dictionary  (1755).  The  vital  passages 
are  these : — '  Most  of  the  writers  of  English  Grammars  have  given  long 
tables  of  words  pronounced  otherwise  than  they  are  written,  and  seem 
not  sufficiently  to  have  considered  that  of  English,  as  of  all  living  tongues, 
there  is  a  double  pronunciation,  one  cursory  and  colloquial,  the  other 
regular  and  solemn.  The  cursory  pronunciation  is  always  vague  and 
uncertain,  being  made  different  in  different  mouths,  by  negligence, 
unskilfulness  and  affectation.  The  solemn  pronunciation,  though  by  no 
means  immutable  and  permanent,  is  yet  always  less  remote  from  the 
orthography,  and  less  liable  to  capricious  innovation.  They  have 
however  generally  formed  their  tables  according  to  the  cursory  speech 
of  those  with  whom  they  happened  to  converse ;  and  concluding  that  the 
whole  nation  combines  to  vitiate  language  in  one  manner,  have  often 
established  the  jargon  of  the  lowest  people,  as  the  model  of  speech/ 

'  For  pronunciation  the  best  general  rule  is,  to  consider  those  the  most 
elegant  speakers  who  deviate  least  from  the  written  words/ 

The  new  trend  in  English  pronunciation  then,  which  Dr.  Johnson 
favoured,  and  which  with  his  enormous  influence  and  prestige  as  a 
scholar,  and  a  dictator  in  what  was  correct,  he  was  able  to  impose  upon 
his  own  circle,  and  upon  others  far  outside  it,  was  in  the  direction  of  the 
'  regular  and  solemn '  rather  than  of  the  '  cursory  and  colloquial '.  We 
shall  probably  not  be  far  wrong  in  placing  the  serious  beginning  of  this 
reaction  in  the  period  in  which  these  words  were  written.  The  age  of 
Swift  and  Pope  apparently  did  not  regard  'deviation  from  the  orthography' 
in  pronunciation  as  a  lapse  from  politeness,  or  from  the  speech  of  the 


178  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

1  best  companies '.  We  have  seen  that  Swift's  attacks  on  the  English  of 
his  day  are  directed  against  quite  other  features  ;  he  neither  pillories  in  his 
Polite  Conversations  the  typical  laxity  of  his  period  in  this  respect,  nor 
scruples  himself  to  take  advantage  of  the  prevailing  usage  in  his  rhymes. 

Pope  has  plenty  of  rhymes  which  show  that  he  must  have  pronounced 
very  much  as  did  Lady  Wentworth,  and  so  we  may  believe  did  the  '  Chiefs 
out  of  War  and  Statesmen  out  of  Place '  who  resorted  to  the  poet's  villa 
at  '  Twittenam  '.  If  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  in  her  letters,  does 
not  spell  like  Lady  Wentworth,  with  whom  by  the  way  she  was  perfectly 
acquainted,  it  is  not  that  she  spoke  differently  from  this  lady  and  her 
other  contemporaries,  but  simply  that  she  was  a  more  bookish  person  and 
was  better  informed  as  to  the  conventional  orthography.  She  has  such 
rhymes  as  please — stays,  fate — deceit t  theft — gift,  coquet — w it. 

As  to  the  age  before  this,  that  of  Charles  and  James  II,  a  society  which 
is  doubtless  faithfully  depicted  in  the  comedies  of  Congreve,  Wycherley, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  a  generation  which  laughed  '  a  gorge 
de'ploye'e  '  at  such  pranks  as  that  narrated  in  Grammont's  Memoirs,  of  my 
Lady  Muskerry  at  the  ball,  when  the  frolicsome  Duke  of  Buckingham  ran 
about  squeaking  like  a  new-born  infant,  and  inquiring  among  the  maids 
of  honour  for  a  nurse  for  my  young  Lord  Muskerry — '  vastly  pleasant 
burn  me ' — such  a  world  as  this  was  not  likely  to  spare  time  from  more 
diverting  pursuits  to  '  correct '  its  speech  after  the  model  of  the  '  true 
spelling '. 

The  great  Dictionary  of  Johnson  was  greeted  with  some  enthusiasm, 
though  in  a  bantering  tone,  by  Lord  Chesterfield  in  Nos.  100  and  101  of 
The  World.  '  I  hereby  declare ',  says  the  writer,  '  that  I  make  a  total 
surrender  of  all  my  rights  and  privileges  in  the  English  Language,  as 
a  freeborn  British  subject  to  the  said  Mr.  Johnson,  during  the  term  of  his 
dictatorship/ 

Lord  Chesterfield  has  some  remarks  upon  the  prevailing  uncertainty, 
in  the  spelling  of  private  persons,  down  to  that  time,  which  are  of  some 
importance.  '  We  have  ',  he  says,  '  at  present  two  very  different  ortho- 
graphies, the  pedantic,  and  the  polite  ;  the  one  founded  upon  certain  dry 
crabbed  rules  of  Etymology  and  grammar,  the  other  upon  the  justness  and 
delicacy  of  the  ear.  I  am  thoroughly  persuaded  that  Mr.  Johnson  will 
endeavour  to  establish  the  former ;  and  I  perfectly  agree  with  him, 
provided  it  can  be  quickly  brought  about.  Spelling  as  well  as  music,  is 
better  performed  by  book,  than  merely  by  the  ear,  which  may  be  variously 
affected  by  the  same  sounds.  I  therefore  most  earnestly  recommend  to 
my  fair  countrywomen,  and  their  faithful  or  faithless  servants,  the  fine 
gentlemen  of  this  realm,  to  surrender,  as  well  for  their  own  private  as  for 
public  utility,  all  their  natural  rights  and  privileges  of  misspelling,  which 
they  have  so  long  enjoyed,  and  so  vigorously  exerted.  I  have  really 
known  very  fatal  consequences  attend  that  loose  and  uncertain  practice 
of  auricular  orthography.' 

It  may  be  noted  that  Lord  Chesterfield  does  not  condemn  the  current 
pronunciation  itself,  but  only  the  habit  of  expressing  it  in  irregular  spell- 
ing. It  is  improbable  that  his  Lordship  would  have  endorsed  Dr.  John- 
son's definition  of  the  'most  elegant  speakers'  without  considerable 
qualifications  and  reservations. 


THE  SCOT   ABROAD  179 

A  younger  contemporary  of  Johnson's  was  James  Elphinston,  whose 
life  covers  the  last  three  quarters  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  extends 
into  the  nineteenth.  Elphinston  was  born  in  Edinburgh  in  1721,  the 
son  of  an  Anglican  clergyman,  and  was  educated  at  the  High  School 
and  at  the  University  in  that  city.  He  lived  chiefly  in  Scotland  until  he 
was  32,  when  he  went  to  London.  Here  he  taught  school  for  about 
twenty-five  years,  and  then  returned  to  Scotland  in  1778.  He  lectured 
upon  the  English  language  in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow  and  returned  to 
London  in  the  following  year.  Thence  he  removed  to  Hertfordshire  in 
1792,  but  returned  to  London — Hammersmith — in  1795,  where  he  spent 
the  remaining  fourteen  years  of  his  life.  Elphinston  appears  to  have 
been  in  every  way  an  excellent  man,  and  to  have  occupied  a  respectable 
position  in  society.  He  was  a  friend  of  Dr.  Johnson,  who  said  of  him, 
*  his  inner  part  is  good,  but  his  outward  part  is  mighty  awkward '.  The 
latter  part  of  this  estimate,  as  we  know,  agrees  fairly  accurately  with 
Lord  Chesterfield's  portrait  of  the  Doctor  himself.  In  spite  of  the  little 
peculiarities  of  his  'outward  part',  however,  Elphinston  was  a  very 
superior  type  of  man  to  the  Scotch  teacher  of  English  pronunciation 
described  by  Smollett.  He  was  an  accomplished  French  scholar  and 
published  a  poetical  translation  of  Racine's  La  Religion,  which  received 
the  approbation  of  Edward  Young. 

He  also  translated  the  Fables  of  Fe'nelon  and  Bossuet's  View  of  Uni- 
versal History,  made  an  Anthology  of  English  Verse,  and  wrote  some 
original  poems  and  a  translation  of  Martial's  Epigrams. 

Of  this  last,  Garrick  said  that  it  was  '  the  most  extraordinary  of  all 
translations  ever  attempted ' ;  Beattie  that  it  was  '  a  whole  quarto  of  non- 
sense and  gibberish';  while  Burns  thought  it  worth  while  to  devote  an 
Epigram  to  it : 

O  thou  whom  Poesy  abhors 
Whom  Prose  has  turned  out  of  doors, 
Heard'st  thou  yon  groan? — Proceed  no  further! 
'Twas  laurell'd  Martial  calling  '  Murther ! ' 

The  translation  of  Martial's  Satire  given  in  full  by  Muller  displays 
neither  wit  nor  felicity  of  phrasing  and  versification.  We  see  that 
Elphinston,  although  possessed  of  very  indifferent  literary  gifts,  was  at 
least  a  man  of  commendable  industry  and  varied  activities. 

They  are  not  exhausted  by  the  above  enumeration,  which  is  given  as 
a  factor  in  our  estimate  of  the  author's  qualifications  for  the  task  which 
concerns  us  here,  of  describing  the  English  pronunciation  of  his  day. 

This  subject  is  dealt  with  by  Elphinston  in  a  series  of  works  written 
between  1756  and  1790.  Of  these  the  most  important  is  The  Principles 
of  the  English  Language,  or  English  Grammar,  which  appeared  in  1765. 
The  gist  of  the  whole  collection  is  given  by  Muller  in  his  book  Englische 
Lautlehre  nach  James  Elphinston,  1914. 

The  first  thing  which  occurs  to  us  with  regard  to  Elphinston  is  that  he 
was  a  Scot,  not  in  itself  a  drawback  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life,  but 
a  fact  which  produces  some  misgivings  in  connexion  with  one  who  is  to 
act  as  a  guide  to  English  speech  in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  We  should  expect  to  find  that  a  Scotsman  who,  like  Elphin- 
ston, came  to  England  for  the  first  time  when  he  was  over  thirty,  would 

N  2 


i8o  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

have  his  Scottish  habits  of  speech  pretty  firmly  rooted,  that  he  would  be 
censorious  of  Southern  English,  and  would  be  often  inclined  to  put  down 
as  vulgarisms  some  of  the  most  widespread  features  of  good  speech  in  the 
South.  This  is  certainly  true  of  Elphinston's  attitude  to  English. 
Further,  because  the  London  type  is  the  only  Southern  type  he  really 
knows,  he  is  naturally  inclined  to  regard  as  vulgarisms  peculiar  to  London 
English,  many  things  which  were  by  no  means  confined^to  London,  and 
which,  moreover,  were  not  vulgar  at  all.  Even  at  the  present  time 
a  learned  Scot  who  is  unfamiliar  with  Southern  English  is  very  apt  to 
look  with  great  disapproval  at  what  is  alien  to  his  own  speech  habit, 
and  to  regard  agreement  with  the  latter  as  the  test  of  correctness  and 
elegance. 

It  is  very  difficult  for  a  stranger  to  appreciate  the  nice  shades  between 
different  Class  dialects,  and  just  as  Elphinston  sets  down  as  improprieties 
of  speech  pronunciations  which  were  habitual  among  good  speakers,  so 
he  also  credits  '  Manny  Ladies,  Gentlemen  and  oddhers '  with  the  mis- 
placement of  initial  h-,  and  observes  concerning  a  '  yong  Lady  ' — '  So 
hamiabel  howevver  iz  dhis  yong  Lady,  dhat,  widh  her  fine  air,  sweet  hies, 
quic  hears,  dellicate  harms,  above  all  her  tender  art  she  wood  giuv  anny 
man  a  anker  ing  to  halter  iz  condiscion ',  &c.,  &c.  Which  is  supposed  to 
represent  the  lady's  pronunciation. 

In  a  translation  of  one  of  Martial's  Epigrams  Elphinston  professes  to 
illustrate  the  characteristics  of  London  English.  The  interchange  of  w 
and  v — (ve  for  we,  wulgar  for  vulgar,  &c.) — is  at  least  as  old  as  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  was  probably  not  confined  to  London,  even  in  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth.  Wife  for  white,  wen  for  when,  &c.,  is  character- 
istic of  the  whole  South  of  England,  and  has  been  so  for  centuries ;  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  Class  dialect,  and  apparently  never  had.  Larn'd 
for  learned  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  certainly  not  a  vulgarism,  nor  in 
any  sense  a  Regional  peculiarity.  Sence  for  since,  e/ioi  if,  &c.,  were  com- 
mon enough  in  the  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  centuries,  in  circles  such 
as  Elphinston  in  all  probability  never  aspired,  even  if  he  desired,  to  enter. 
It  is,  however,  possible  that  such  forms  were  going  out  of  fashion  in 
Elphinston's  time;  Feller  [feb]  for  fellow  was  certainly  Pope's  pronuncia- 
tion, and  as  it  is  still  a  perfectly  good  and  natural  form  in  colloquial 
speech,  it  is  improbable  that  it  was  a  vulgarism  at  the  time  the  translation 
was  written. 

Many  of  the  other  supposed  inelegancies  satirized  by  Elphinston,  such 
as  we  was,  come  as  a  Pret.,  came  and  began  as  P.  P.'s,  and  so  on,  are 
*  mistakes '  of  accidence,  which  have  no  local  habitat,  but  may  occur 
anywhere.  Many  well-bred  seventeenth-  and  early  eighteenth-century 
speakers  would  have  used  such  forms. 

Present  Pis.  in  -s  were  common  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries,  and  are  not  infrequent  in  the  Wentworth  correspondence.  On 
the  whole,  Elphinston's  statements  as  to  what  is  vulgar  and  characteristic 
of  London  English  may  be  received  with  the  greatest  scepticism,  and 
should  never  be  accepted  unless  they  are  confirmed  from  other  sources. 
His  works  are  nevertheless  useful  in  establishing  the  existence,  in  his 
day,  of  such  and  such  forms  and  pronunciations.  We  must  hesitate  before 
accepting  the  author's  estimate  of  their  '  correctness ',  or  the  reverse,  in 


A   RHETORICAL   GRAMMARIAN  181 

the  speech  usage  of  the  time.  At  the  same  time,  while  we  may  exercise 
due  caution  in  believing  all  Elphinston's  statements  as  to  what  is  or  is 
not  '  good '  English,  especially  when  we  know  that  a  quarter  of  a  century 
before  him,  at  any  rate,  standards  were  quite  different  from  what  he  repre- 
sents them  in  his  own  time,  it  is  certainly  probable  that  standards  had 
actually  changed,  or  were  changing  as  has  been  said,  in  the  time  of 
Elphinston  and  Dr.  Johnson,  though  probably  not  as  much  as  both 
of  them  would  have  liked,  nor  as  much  as  Elphinston's  statements  sug- 
gest. As  the  knowledge  and  practice  of  a  fixed  spelling  gain  ground 
among  the  better  sort  of  speakers  it  becomes  increasingly  difficult  to 
check  the  statements  of  the  writers  on  pronunciation,  and  experience  has 
shown  that  their  evidence  on  points  of  fact  is  frequently  unreliable,  and 
that  what  these  gentlemen  put  down  as  an  actual  Pronunciation  may  be 
no  more  than  an  unrealized  ideal  of  their  own  construction, 

The  last  of  the  tribe  whom  we  shall  mention  here  is  John  Walker. 
This  writer  formerly  enjoyed  a  great  reputation,  and  his  pronouncing 
Dictionary  was  reprinted  again  and  again,  and  indeed  probably  forms 
the  basis  of  more  than  one  of  the  cheap  dictionaries  at  the  present  time. 
Walker  was  born  at  Colney  Hatch — which  had  not  then  its  present 
associations — in  1732.  His  family  seem  tc  have  occupied  a  very  humble 
position,  and  Walker  left  school  early  and  was  put  to  trade.  He  did 
not  stick  to  this  very  long,  but  went  on  the  stage,  married  a  comic 
actress,  Miss  Myners,  and  is  said  to  have  achieved  some  success  in  the 
characters  of  Cato  and  Brutus.  He  left  the  stage  in  1768,  and  set  up 
a  school  in  Kensington,  but  gave  this  up  after  two  years. 

He  now  began  to  give  lectures  on  elocution,  and  had  a  great  success, 
especially  in  Scotland  and  Ireland.  According  to  the  account  of  him 
given  in  the  Dictionary  of  Nat.  Biogr.,  Walker  was  invited  by  some 
of  the  Heads  of  Houses  in  Oxford  to  give  private  lectures  on  his  subject 
at  the  University.  He  was  acquainted  with,  and  enjoyed  the  patronage 
of,  Burke  and  Johnson.  Boswell  records  a  rather  dull  conversation 
between  Walker  and  Johnson.  He  said  he  had  only  taught  one  clergy- 
man to  read,  '  and  he  is  the  best  reader  I  ever  heard,  not  by  my  teaching, 
but  by  his  own  natural  talents '.  To  which  Dr.  Johnson  replied,  '  Were 
he  the  best  reader  in  the  world,  I  would  not  have  it  told  he  was  taught '. 
Amongst  other  remarks,  Walker  observed  that  '  the  art  (of  oratory)  is  to 
read  strong  though  low '. 

Fanny  Burney,  in  her  Diary,  under  the  date  of  Jan.  13, 1783,  mentions 
meeting  Walker  at  dinner.  All  she  has  to  say  of  '  Mr.  Walker  the 
lecturer '  is  that  '  though  modest  in  science,  he  is  vulgar  in  conversation '. 
This  may  refer  merely  to  the  subject-matter,  or  the  general  bearing  of 
the  speaker,  but  it  does  not  of  itself  inspire  confidence  in  Walker  as 
a  guide  to  propriety  in  speech.  Besides  his  Dictionary,  Walker  pro- 
duced a  Rhyming  Dictionary,  Elements  of  Elocution,  and  a  Rhetorical 
Grammar.  The  latter  first  appeared  in  1785,  and  went  into  many 
editions.  It  is  difficult,  from  the  meagre  facts  given  in  the  Dictionary 
of  Nat.  Biogr.)  to  judge  what  opportunities  Walker  had  for  becoming 
acquainted  with  the  politest  forms  of  English,  but  we  must  suppose  that 
he  made  the  most  of  his  chances  for  observing  the  conversation  of  Burke 
and  Johnson,  and  of  such  other  members  of  their  circle  as  he  came 


1 82  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

across.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that,  in  spite  of  his  early  training  on  the 
stage  and  his  profession  of  teacher  of  elocution — one  wonders  what 
sort  of  people  sought  his  aid — Walker  does  not  appear  to  inculcate  an 
artificial  and  pedantic  pronunciation.  On  the  contrary,  his  remarks  are 
generally  sober,  sensible,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  test  them,  accurate.  The 
style  of  pronunciation  which  he  recommends  seems  to  be  a  perfectly 
natural  and  easy  one,  and  the  Rhetorical  Grammar  is  probably  a  much 
safer  guide  than  the  works  of  Elphinston.  He  is  also  a  fairly  minute 
observer,  and  a  faithful  chronicler.  Thus  he  notes  with  approval  the 
'  liquid  k,  and  g'  in  sky,  kind, guide,  card,  &c.,  that  is  [skj0/,  kja/hd,  gjaz'd, 
kj0d],  &c.,  a  pronunciation  which  lingered  on  amongst  old  people  far 
into  the  last  century.  (See  p.  310,  below.) 

He  says  that  '  polite  speakers  always  *  pronounce  educate  as  though 
written  edjucate,  virtue  as  vertchew*.  These  pronunciations  are  the 
usual  ones  at  the  present  day,  [edjwkeit,  vXtjw]  being  quite  recent.  A  still 
older  form  of  the  first  of  these  words  was  [sdzlceit]  (cf.  treatment  of 
unstressed  Fr.  u,  p.  265).  Walker  has  some  interesting  remarks  on 
Indian,  odious,  insidious,  &c.  He  says,  in  continuation  of  the  sentence 
quoted  above — '  if  the  general  ear  were  not  corrupted  by  being  corrected^ 
we  should  hear  Indian  pronounced  Injian,  odious  ojeous,  and  insidious 
insidjeous  .  .  .  but  the  speaker  ought  to  avoid  sinking  the  i  and  reducing 
Indian  into  two  syllables  as  if  written  In-jan,  odious  as  o-jus,  insidious  as 
insid-jus.  The  i  ought  to  be  heard  distinctly  like  e  in  these  words  as  if 
written  and  divided  In-je-an,  o-je-us ',  &c.  Of  all  this  it  may  be  said  that 
it  is  very  greatly  to  Walker's  credit  that,  although  a  teacher  of  elocution, 
he  is  able  to  talk  of  the  ear  being  '  corrupted  by  being  corrected '.  Again, 
while  the  phonetic  descriptions,  and  the  notation  employed  to  express 
the  pronunciation,  are  those  of  a  man  totally  untrained  and  unskilled  in 
scientific  phonetics,  they  yet  leave  no  kind  of  doubt  as  to  the  pronuncia- 
tion referred  to.  Lastly,  while  we  no  longer  say  '  ojus  ',  &c.,  it  is  well 
known  to  many  still  living  that  good  speakers  born  early  in  the  last 
century  used  these  and  similar  forms,  and  it  is  rather  strange  that  Walker 
should  have  thought  it  necessary  to  warn  his  readers  against  Injun,  ojus 
[Yndzan,  oudzGs],  pronunciations  which  most  good  speakers  in  his  day 
must  have  employed,  and  to  insist  upon  'the  i'  being  heard  distinctly. 

Walker  shows  his  superiority  to  Elphinston  in  not  regarding  as  a 
vulgarism  the  'sinking  of  the  h'  in  while,  where,  &c.,  although  he  regards 
it  as  '  tending  greatly  to  impoverish  pronunciation ',  and  also  as  apt  to 
produce  confusion  of  meaning.  Such  a  view  is  perhaps  excusable  in  an 
elocutionist.  An  interesting  observation  on  the  part  of  Walker  is  that 
r  has  disappeared,  *  particularly  in  London',  in  bar,  bard,  card,  &c., 
which  are  pronounced  as  baa,  &c.  What  is  perhaps  even  more  remark- 
able is  that  he  does  not  find  fault  with  this,  but  merely  notes  that  r  ought 
to  be  strongly  pronounced  initially,  but  that  in  bar,  bard,  &c.,  it  must  be 
nearly  as  soft  as  in  London.  Incidentally,  we  may  note  that  the  dis- 
appearance of '  r '  in  these  words  probably  implies,  by  this  time,  [d]  as  the 
vowel,  and  not  [«]. 

With  regard  to  the  interchange  of  w  and  v  (vind  for  wind,  and  weal 
for  veal,  &c.),  Walker  records  that  this  occurs  '  among  the  inhabitants  of 
London,  and  those  not  always  of  the  lower  order '. 


A  RELIABLE   WITNESS  183 

His  statements  touching  the  final  consonant  in  the  suffix  -ing  are 
largely  borne  out  by  our  information  from  other  sources,  although  he  is 
inclined  to  limit  the  pronunciation  -in  to  verbs  whose  root-syllable  already 
contained  *ng\  such  -s&fling^  &c.  See  on  this  point  pp.  289-90,  below. 

Walker  has  some  sound  observations  concerning  the  vowels  in  un- 
stressed words,  such  as  pronouns  and  prepositions.  Thus  he  says  that 
yoit  is  pronounced  ye  in  such  a  sentence  as  '  he  had  no  right  to  tell  you ' 
(=  [tsl !]),  and  that  my  is  pronounced  ' me'  in  'my  pen  is  as  bad  as  my 
paper ' — [mt  pen,  mz'  pepa],  both  of  which  forms  of  reduction  are  per- 
fectly in  accord  with  the  habits  of  eighteenth-century  English. 

Walker  also  recognized  the  reduced  forms  of  of,  for,  from,  by,  which 
he  writes  uv^fur  [av,  fa],  &c.,  as  distinct  from  *  ov,four ',  &c.  On  the  other 
hand,  '  to  must  always  preserve  its  true  sound  as  if  written  two,  at  least 
when  we  are  reading,  however  much  it  may  be  suffered  to  approach  to  te 
(=  [ta])  when  we  are  speaking'. 

The  value  and  truth  of  Walker's  account  of  the  pronunciation  of  the 
latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  can  best  be  tested  by  checking  it, 
on  the  one  hand  with  the  various  sources  of  information  prior  to  his  day, 
the  private  letters,  the  testimony  of  rhymes,  and  the  statements  of  the 
earlier  grammarians,  and  on  the  other,  with  what  we  know  of  the  pro- 
nunciation after  his  time,  especially  what  could  be  learnt  from  the  speech 
of  old  people,  mostly  now  dead,  who  were  born  early  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  and  from  the  recollections  of  these  persons  concerning  forms  of 
speech  still  current  in  their  youth  among  a  yet  older  generation. 

Walker  emerges  very  creditably  from  the  test,  and  he  must  be  placed 
among  the  most  reliable  and  informing  writers  of  his  class,  that  is,  with 
Wallis,  Cooper,  and  Jones.  He  is  a  good  and  enlightened  representative 
of  the  reaction  already  referred  to,  against  the  laxity  of  speech  of  the  earlier 
generations.  His  tendency  is  towards  a  moderate  '  correctness ',  and  an 
approximation  to  the  supposed  pronunciation  implied  by  the  now  fixed 
orthography,  but  he  does  not  set  out  to  'reform'  English  speech  by 
destroying  everything  that  is  traditional  and  habitual.  He  appeals  con- 
stantly to  the  habits  of  '  our  most  elegant  speakers ',  that  is,  to  a  real  type 
of  existing  English,  and  he  must  be  held  to  mirror  the  usage  of  his 
day  among  refined  and  learned,  and,  though  to  a  less  extent  perhaps, 
among  fashionable  speakers,  with  considerable  fidelity.  Since  Walker's 
day,  the  '  correcting '  process  has  gone  much  farther  and  has  unquestion- 
ably obliterated,  in  the  speech  of  the  general  average  of  educated  persons, 
the  results  of  many  tendencies  which  had  existed  for  centuries.  The 
process,  as  is  shown  in  various  places  throughout  this  book,  involves  both 
isolated  words  and  whole  categories. 

At  any  and  every  period,  no  doubt,  there  may  be  found  among  speakers 
of  Received  Standard  those  who  are  purists  and  those  who  are  careless  and 
negligent  speakers,  giving  full  rein  to  the  natural  tendencies  which  make 
for  change  in  pronunciation.  If  the  seventeenth  century  had  its  Gill,  the 
eighteenth  had  its  Elphinston  and  many  others  of  the  same  sort,  while 
the  nineteenth  had  its  Dean  Alford,  to  mention  but  one  amid  innumerable 
*  reformers '.  But  while  no  one  seems  to  have  paid  any  attention  to  Gill, 
among  those  who  set  the  standard  of  polite  English,  from  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century  onward,  the  general  ideals  expressed  by  Dr.  John- 


i84  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

son  in  the  passage  quoted  on  p.  177  have  gained  an  ever-increasing  assent. 
It  is  this  gradual  but  undoubted  triumph  of  the  learned  class,  within 
which  may  be  included  the  real  scholars  of  whom  Johnson  is  the  type 
and  chief,  down  to  the  humble  and  ignorant  teacher  of  elocution  filled 
with  false  and  extravagant  theories  of  '  correctness ',  which  is  claimed  as 
exemplifying  the  influence  of  Class  dialect  on  the  development  of  Received 
Standard  (see  also  pp.  18-20).  This  influence  is  by  no  means  confined  to 
the  introduction  of  '  Spelling  pronunciation ',  but  includes  also  the  intro- 
duction of  other  types,  naturally  developed,  among  different  social  strata. 
It  is  not  always  easy  to  distinguish  between  these  two  classes  of  forms. 
The  present-day  pronunciation  of  nature,  &c.,  instead  of  [nets]  may  belong 
to  one  or  the  other  (cf.  p.  265).  The  same  applies  to  the  pronunciation 
of  gold.  It  is  certain  that  the  two  forms  [gold,  guld]  coexisted,  and  that 
the  rise  of  each  can  be  explained  by  natural  processes,  but  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  the  final  selection  of  [gowld]  as  the  '  correct '  form  was 
not  determined  by  its  apparent  agreement  with  the  spelling. 

During  the  lifetime  of  many  who  are  still  of  middle  age,  numerous  old 
pronunciations  have  been  given  up  by  large  sections  of  the  community, 
while  other  sections  adhere  to  them  most  obstinately.  There  are  still 
many  who  consider  as  very  offensive  vulgarisms  the  modern  pronunciations 
of  waistcoat^  of ten^  forehead,  landscape,  handkerchief,  as  [weistkout,  rftan, 
f5hsd,  laendzske/p,  hsendkatjlf]  instead  of  [weskat,  5fn,  fond,  laenzkzp, 
haerjkstJzT],  and  there  are  perhaps  as  many  more  who  use  all  these  pro- 
nunciations habitually  without  a  single  qualm.  Whatever  may  be  the 
resistance  of  the  present  generation  of  middle-aged  or  elderly  people  to 
these  innovations,  it  seems  probable  that  they  will  appear  as  natural  to  our 
grandchildren  or  great-grandchildren  as  the  now  universally-received  forms 
of  gold,  servant,  oblige,  nature,  London,  Edward,  &c.,  do  to  us. 

It  must  be  reiterated  that  all  the  'reforms'  in  pronunciation  and 
grammar  which  have  passed  into  general  currency  in  colloquial  English 
during  the  last  century  and  a  half,  have  come  from  below,  and  not  from 
above,  in  the  first  instance,  so  far  as  we  can  discover.  This  fact  will  be 
variously  received  and  interpreted  according  to  the  peculiar  social  bias 
of  the  reader.  One  interpretation  at  any  rate  has  been  suggested  in 
Chap.  I,  pp.  20-23,  above. 

The  reaction  against  the  happy-go-lucky  pronunciation  and  grammar 
of  the  Restoration,  and  of  the  early  eighteenth  century,  is  accompanied  by 
a  certain  bias  towards  formality  and  stiffness  which  is  traceable  in  the 
poetry  and  the  literary  prose,  and,  as  we  may  well  believe  from  the  evi- 
dence before  us,  in  the  conversational  style  also,  of  the  later  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  century.  It  is  a  tendency  towards  the  '  regular  and 
solemn '  and  away  from  the  '  cursory  and  colloquial '. 

Pope  and  his  generation  still  kept  the  sparkle,  along  with  the  ease  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  The  later  writers  often  lose  the  brilliancy  of  their 
predecessors,  if  they  preserve  the  ease  and  grace  of  movement.  Gray, 
and  Walpole,  and  Goldsmith  perhaps  combine  both  qualities  to  a  higher 
degree  than  many  of  their  contemporaries.  If  we  put  a  passage  of  the 
Deserted  Village  alongside  one  from  Pope,  taken  almost  at  random,  the 
different  genius  of  the  two  ages  is  as  perceptible  as  when  we  compare 
Congreve's  dialogue  with  that  of  She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  It  may  be  said, 


A  SOLEMN    AGE  185 

probably  with  justice,  that  the  younger  writer  surpasses  the  older  ones  in 
tenderness,  humanity,  and  real  feeling  for  nature,  possibly  in  humour, 
and  that  he  is  their  equal  in  his  mastery  of  a  supple  and  intimate  style, 
free  from  literary  affectation.  But  the  swift  thrust  of  Congreve's  rapier, 
the  epigrammatic  finality  of  Pope's  couplet,  are  no  longer  there. 

What  the  later  age  lost  in  keenness  and  glitter  it  may  be  said  to  have 
gained  in  sincerity  and  solidity.  There  were,  however,  not  wanting,  even 
among  the  contemporaries  of  Pope,  those  who  foreshadowed  the  style 
and  spirit  of  a  younger  day.  The  sweetness,  naturalness,  simplicity, 
and  shrewd  gaiety  of  Addison,  Pope's  senior  by  sixteen  years,  are  perhaps 
nearer  to  the  spirit  of  Goldsmith  than  to  that  of  the  age  immediately 
following  the  Restoration ;  while  the  sober  decorum  of  Richardson,  born 
only  a  year  later  than  Pope,  with  his  leisurely  narrative  and  rather  stiff 
and  pompous  dialogue,  exhibits  the  correctitude  of  Middle  Class  propriety 
in  speech  and  conduct.  The  formality  of  the  conversations  in  Pamela, 
which  to  us  is  almost  ludicrous,  is  typical  of  a  habit  of  mind  and  mode 
of  expression  which  were  gaining  ground  among  our  people,  and  held 
them  for  three-quarters  of  a  century.  Allowing  for  differences  of  genius, 
wit,  and  of  social  setting,  it  may  be  said  that  the  recorded  conversations 
of  Johnson  are  on  the  same  note,  and  we  catch  echoes  of  this  spirit  in  the 
utterances,  both  trivial  and  serious,  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Segrave. 

The  later  eighteenth  century  and  the  early  nineteenth  seem  to  have 
favoured  a  very  serious  turn  of  mind  which  expressed  itself  in  a  formal 
and  solemn  style.  It  is  easy  to  find  exceptions  to  this,  as  in  the  Diary 
and  letters  of  the  sprightly  Fanny  Burney,  or  the  captivating  letters  of 
Cowper  in  his  happier  moments,  or  the  irresistible  mirth  of  Sheridan,  but 
are  not  these  in  many  ways  less  representative  of  their  age  than,  let  us  say, 
Wesley's  Journal,  and  Sandford  and  Merloni  Miss  Austen  has  left 
a  gallery  of  imperishable  portraits  of  human  beings,  drawn  from  the  life 
if  any  ever  were.  But  the  conversation  of  her  characters,  even  of  those 
whose  parts  are  most  extolled,  is  singularly  lacking  in  brilliancy,  humour, 
pointedness,  or  charm  of  any  kind.  The  charm,  the  humour,  the  magic  lie 
in  the  author's  handling  of  these  rather  second-rate  though  generally  well- 
bred  people,  in  whose  conversation,  which  hardly  ever  rises  above  the  com- 
monplace, and  in  whose  self-centred  lives,  she  contrives  to  interest  us 
amazingly.  We  have  here  the  representation  of  actual  life  and  dialogue 
as  the  author  knew  it.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  is  the  real 
thing,  and  that  people  really  spoke  like  this  in  the  closing  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Perhaps  no  books  were  ever  written  which  embody 
the  spirit  and  idiom  of  an  age  so  faithfully  as  Miss  Austen's  novels.  All  the 
little  pomposities  and  reticences,  the  polite  formulas,  the  unconscious  vulgar- 
isms, the  well-bred  insincerities,  are  here  displayed.  It  is  not  Miss  Austen 
who  is  speaking,  it  is  the  men  and  women  of  her  day,  each  perfectly  distinct, 
a  complete  and  consistent  human  being.  The  characters  reveal  them- 
selves naturally  and  inevitably  in  their  conversation,  with  hardly  any 
commentary  by  their  creator,  who  rarely  troubles  to  pass  a  personal 
judgement  upon  them,  or  to  see  that  they  are  very  good — or  otherwise  as 
the  case  may  be. 

We  shall  not  go  far  wrong  in  supposing  that  the  Bennets,  the  D'Arcys, 
and  the  Wodehouses,  &c.,  pronounced  their  English  very  much  according 


1 86  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

to  the  principles  laid  down  by  Mr.  Walker  in  describing  the  utterance 
of  '  our  most  polite  speakers '. 

They  undoubtedly  pronounced  '  kyard,  gyearl,  ojus,  Injun',  to  use 
Walker's  own  rough  and  ready  notation,  and  almost  certainly  said 
'  coming  goin',  singin,  shillin' ' ;  some  of  them,  Lady  Catherine  de  Burgh 
in  particular,  probably  said  '  Eddard' ', '  toy  ', '  chancy ', l  ooman  '  '  woman  ', 
' neighb 'rood' ', '  lanskip ',  ' Lunnon  \  'cheer '  for '  chair ',  and  possibly  'goold', 
lobleege\  and  'sarvant'.  Many  still  living  have  heard  the  last  echoes  of  these 
things  in  the  mouths  of  their  parents  and  grandparents.  We  can 
remember  old  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  spoke  in  this  way  in  our  child- 
hood, and  whose  conversation  still  preserved  the  decorums  of  the  former 
age,  its  quaint  mixture  of  eighteenth-century  survivals,  with  the  new 
*  correct '  forms  of  their  youth.  Unfortunately  most  of  these  are  now 
'  fallen  asleep '. 

In  this  very  imperfect  account  of  the  character  and  general  tendencies 
of  English  speech  during  something  like  two  centuries,  a  few  important 
problems  are  touched  on,  and  many  more  are  omitted  altogether  from 
our  survey. 

This  period  offers  ample  scope  for  investigation.  It  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say  that  a  proper  history  of  the  English  of  each  of  these  centuries  has 
still  to  be  written. 

We  want  minute  studies  of  such  documents  as  the  Verney  Letters  and 
the  Wentworth  Papers,  and  also  of  other  similar  letters  and  diaries  of  the 
same  period,  and  if  possible,  of  more  recent  collections  covering  the 
period  from  about  174010  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Apart  from  these,  the  well-spelt  letters  and  diaries  of  such  writers  as  Fanny 
Burney  should  be  carefully  examined  for  the  sake  of  the  colloquial  and 
grammatical  usage  which  they  reveal,  and  much  may  be  learnt  incidentally 
from  casual  remarks  scattered  through  biographies  and  memoirs  (cf.,  for 
example,  instances  quoted,  pp.  203, 2 15, '2 y  2,  &c.,  from  Leigh  Hunt's  Auto- 
biography and  Tuckwell's  Reminiscences  of  Oxford).  Many  works  which 
few  scholars  would  think  of  investigating  specially  for  such  a  purpose,  con- 
tain priceless,  if  isolated,  pieces  of  information  as  to  the  speech  habits  of 
our  immediate  ancestors.  This  is  why  the  dutiful  and  painful  philologist, 
who  '  goes  through '  large  numbers  of  the  orthodox  '  sources ',  may  often 
miss  some  of  the  best  things,  unless  he  happens  also  to  be  widely  read 
in  English  Literature.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  during  the  last 
twenty  or  thirty  years  a  series  of  observations  into  the  speech  of  old 
people  speaking  the  best  English  of  the  first  half  of  the  last  century  was 
not  made  in  a  systematic  way.  These  old  people,  both  by  their  own 
actual  usage,  and  by  their  recollections  of  that  of  their  own  elders,  could 
have  shed  a  very  valuable  light  on  much  that  is  now  obscure.  The 
present  writer  had  the  advantage  of  knowing,  during  his  boyhood  and 
early  manhood,  a  considerable  number  of  excellent  speakers  who  were 
born  between  1800  and  1830,  and  although  he  remembers  accurately 
certain  points  of  interest  from  the  speech  and  recollections  of  this  genera- 
tion, these  are  unfortunately  all  too  few.  It  is  remarkable  that  while 
the  English  of  illiterate  elderly  peasants  has  often  been  examined,  with 
the  view  of  recording  for  posterity  the  rugged  accents  of  the  agricultural 
community,  and  even  of  the  inhabitants  of  slum  villages  in  colliery  and 


PROBLEMS  FOR  THE  FUTURE  187 

industrial  districts,  it  has  not  been  thought  worth  while  to  preserve  the 
passing  fashions  of  speech  of  the  courtly  and  polite  of  a  former  day,  and 
those  whose  good  fortune  it  was  to  be  in  a  position  to  record  these  at 
first  hand  have  neglected  their  opportunity. 

Among  the  general  problems  still  to  be  solved  may  be  mentioned: — 
the  precise  extent  and  character  of  both  Regional  and  Class  dialect  influ- 
ence upon  Received  Standard  during  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries ;  the  divorce  of  prose  style  from  the  colloquial  language  of  the 
day  which  may  appear  in  any  language  from  time  to  time,  and  which 
research  might  possibly  show  occurred  among  the  latest  Elizabethans  and 
their  immediate  successors,  and  again  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century ;  the  precise  linguistic  results,  if  any,  of  the  Civil  Wars  upon  our 
language,  whether  in  conducing  to  laxity  of  pronunciation  and  grammar, 
or  in  modifying  the  diction  of  conversation  or  of  literature;  the  beginnings 
of  the  reaction  in  favour  of  the  '  regular  and  solemn '  style  of  pronuncia- 
tion and  grammar,  and  the  progress  of  this  movement  in  colloquial  and 
literary  English  down,  roughly,  to  the  Early  Victorian  period  ;  the  rise  of 
bogus  pronunciations,  based  purely  on  the  spelling,  among  persons  who 
were  ignorant  of  the  best  traditional  usage ;  the  gradual  process  by  which 
many  of  these  obtained  currency  among  the  better  classes.  It  would  be 
desirable  to  run  these  monstrosities  to  earth,  when  it  would  probably 
appear  that  many  had  their  origin  with  the  class  of  ignorant  teachers  of 
pronunciation  referred  to  by  Smollett. 

Among  special  questions,  it  would  be  satisfactory  to  know  with 
certainty  approximately  when  the  modern  [a]  sound  in  path,  last,  &c., 
developed  out  of  [se]  and  became  generally  current  in  Received 
Standard. 

The  whole  question  of  unstressed  vowels  is  a  virgin  field  for  the  young 
investigator.  A  small  beginning  is  made  in  Chap.  VII,  below,  towards 
a  systematic  collection  of  material  upon  which  conclusions  may  be  based. 
What  was  the  attitude  of  the  more  sober  '  reformers '  like  Dr.  Johnson 
in  this  matter  ?  Is  it  probable  that  he  applied  his  principle  of  conforming 
pronunciation  to  orthography  to  the  vowels  of  unstressed  syllables  ?  If 
so,  how  far  did  he  and  '  those  associated  with  him '  go  in  this  respect  ? 
If  we  may  judge  from  his  younger  contemporary  Walker,  that  generation 
probably  did  not  pronounce  fortune,  future^  &c.,  as  'fortin',  lfuter\  like 
the  Verneys,  the  Wentworths,  Cooper,  and  Jones ;  but  did  they  attempt  to 
'  restore '  all  unstressed  vowels  to  the  extent  to  which  Mr.  Bridges  would 
like  us  all  to  do  at  the  present  day  ?  Perhaps  Mr.  Bridges  can  tell  us. 
So  far  as  the  evidence  now  available  carries  us,  it  looks  as  if  nearly  the 
whole  movement  towards  '  full '  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  is  an  abso- 
lutely modern  conceit,  based  entirely  upon  spelling.  To  this  there  are 
certain  exceptions,  such  as  the  -ure,  -une  words  whose  present-day 
pronunciation  may  be  explained  as  a  purely  phonetic  development  from 
a  different  type  from  that  which  produced  l for  tin ',  'futer ',  &c.,  and 
again,  the  interchange  of  [-aw]  and  -in,  [-9/J  and  -it  in  ribbon,  faggot, 
&c.,  appears  to  represent  two  different  speech-usages.  (See  pp.  276-8.) 

But  all  these  and  many  other  points  await  investigation. 

It  would  be  an  interesting  inquiry  how  far  the  falling  off  in  the  quality 
of  prose  style  among  the  generality  of  writers  after  the  third  quarter  of  the 


1 88  THE  SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURIES 

eighteenth  century  is  related  to  social  developments.  An  East  Indian 
Director  is  said  to  have  told  Charles  Lamb  (of  all  men !)  that  the  style 
the  Company  most  appreciated  was  the  humdrum,  thus  doubtless  voicing 
the  literary  ideals  of  the  rising  class  of  bankers,  brokers,  and  nabobs 
whose  point  of  view  was  largely  to  dominate  English  taste  for  several 
generations.  Horace  Walpole  lived  and  wrote  on  nearly  to  the  end  of 
the  century,  but  his  spirit,  his  gaiety,  and  the  sprightliness  of  his  style 
belong  in  reality  to  the  early  eighteenth  century.  Even  Macaulay  was 
unable  to  rate  him  at  his  true  value.  The  letters  of  Gray  are  prob- 
ably better  appreciated  to-day  than  in  the  age  which  immediately  followed 
his  death.  The  peculiar  quality  of  Sheridan's  wit  and  raillery  is  assuredly 
nearer  to  Congreve  in  spirit  than  to  Hook  and  Jerrold. 

But  this  is  not  the  place  to  pursue  a  subject  which  is  the  business  of 
the  critic  of  Literature.  If  an  appeal  is  made  to  pure  Literature,  in  dis- 
cussing the  changing  spirit  and  atmosphere  of  Colloquial  English,  it  is 
because  of  the  principle  so  often  propounded  here,  that  the  style  of 
Literature  is  rooted  in  the  life  and  conversation  of  the  age.  From  these 
sources  alone  can  prose  renew  its  life  from  generation  to  generation. 
When  Literary  prose  style  loses  touch  with  the  spoken  language  it 
becomes  lifeless  and  unexpressive,  powerless  to  *  strike  the  ear,  the  heart, 
or  the  fancy ',  remote  alike  from  human  feeling  and  from  the  speech  of 
man  because  it  has  never  known  real  life  and  movement. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE  HISTORY  OF  ENGLISH  PRONUNCIATION  IN  THE 
MODERN  PERIOD 

I.   The  Vowels  in  Stressed  Syllables. 

IN  the  foregoing  chapters  we  have  taken  a  series  of  rapid  surveys  of 
the  English  of  the  Modern  Period,  not  only  of  the  pronunciation,  but 
of  other  aspects  also,  century  by  century,  from  the  fifteenth  century 
onwards. 

In  the  following  portions  of  this  book  it  will  be  our  business  to  attempt 
to  work  into  a  continuous  account  the  facts  of  development  exhibited  by 
our  language  throughout  the  whole  period  with  which  we  are  dealing. 
Of  the  various  aspects  with  which  we  shall  concern  ourselves,  pronuncia- 
tion is  one  of  the  most  important,  the  one  perhaps  which  demands  the 
greatest  amassing  and  sifting  of  detail  in  the  elucidation  of  fact ;  it  is  also 
the  one  which  involves  most  care  in  the  construction  of  a  reasonable 
theory  in  the  interpretation  of  the  facts. 

It  has  been  already  ksaid  that  the  convenient  practice  of  dividing 
English,  chronologically,  into  Old,  Middle,  and  Modern  English  is  apt 
to  be  misleading,  and  to  give  the  impression  that  our  language  has 
changed  by  a  series  of  sudden  bounds.  Still  more  danger  is  there  in 
conveying  such  a  wrong  view  when  we  divide  our  treatment  of  the 
language,  as  has  been  done  in  this  book,  into  centuries.  It  is  therefore 
desirable  to  renew  the  warning  previously  given,  and  to  re-state  our  con- 
ception of  the  History  of  English  as  a  process  of  continuous  development 
and  change.  If  the  previous  chapters,  which  aimed  at  discovering 
what  is  characteristic  of  the  language  of  each  of  a  series  of  centuries, 
have  led  the  reader  to  think  too  much  of  English  as  broken  up  into 
a  number  of  brief,  clear-cut,  and  distinct  periods  of  development,  in 
each  of  which  a  new  set  of  tendencies  and  impulses  arises,  the 
following  chapters  may  possibly  act  as  a  corrective. 

The  student  who  constructs  his  picture  of  the  unfolding  of  English 
chiefly  from  the  long  series  of  documents  of  all  kinds,  in  which  the 
language  of  each  age  is  enshrined,  is  not  likely  to  be  misled  into  what 
one  may  call  the  spasmodic  view  of  its  history.  To  him  the  gradual 
and  insensible  passage  from  one  phase  of  development  to  another  is  so 
manifest  that  he  finds  it  ever  more  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between 
period  and  period,  and  he  becomes  increasingly  sceptical  of  the  propriety 
of  attempting  to  define  the  limits  of  each.  But  it  is  one  thing  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  continual  onward  sweep  of  evolution,  and  quite  another  to 
be  able  to  convey  the  sense  of  this.  The  realization  of  this  linguistic  deve- 
lopment comes  slowly,  from  the  prolonged  study  of  a  mass  of  individual 


1 9o    STRESSED   VOWELS  IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

facts  and  details,  all  of  which  contribute  something  to  the  picture 
which  exists  in  the  student's  mind.  In  the  present  state  of  our  know- 
ledge, it  is  difficult  to  see  how  we  are  to  bring  home  to  the  reader  this 
sense  of  perpetual  and  continuous  development,  otherwise  than  by  pre- 
senting him  with  a  considerable  quantity  of  detail,  together  with  certain 
generalizations  based  upon  this. 

Let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  in  tracing,  by  means  of  the  sources  of 
knowledge  at  our  disposal,  the  history  of  a  language,  we  have  not  and 
cannot  have  all  the  links  in  the  chain  of  development.  We  know — 
approximately — the  starting-point,  and  we  know  what  is  the  outcome 
at  the  present  time.  But  of  the  intervening  stages,  many  are  missing 
altogether,  while  at  the  precise  character  of  too  many  others  we  can  but 
guess. 

For  instance,  if  we  are  tracing  the  change  of  M.E.  a  in  name  into  its 
present  form^  while  we  can  easily  construct  theoretically  the  various 
stages  of  development,  it  is  impossible  to  say  exactly  at  what  period  each 
of  them  is  reached.  Supposing  that  already  in  the  first  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  we  find  M.E.  a  written  e,  what  precise  value  are  we  to 
attach  to  this  symbol  in  this  period?  How  far  has  the  sound  gone 
towards  its  present  pronunciation  ?  And  so  with  all  the  other  vowels ; 
we  have  divers  hints  of  changes — from  peculiar  spellings,  from  rhymes, 
from  statements  of  grammarians— and  we  must  piece  all  these  scraps 
of  information  together,  compare,  and  check  one  with  another,  but  when 
all  is  said  and  done,  there  are  more  lacunae  in  our  picture  than  some 
scholars  like  to  admit. 

In  former  days,  when  those  great  figures  of  English  Philology  Ellis 
and  Sweet  were  in  their  prime,  these  men,  and  others  who  followed 
limpingly  in  their  footsteps,  believed  it  to  be  possible  to  construct, 
almost  entirely  from  the  accounts  given  by  the  Orthoepists,  a  fairly  exact 
chronological  table  of  vowel  changes,  and  to  say  with  confidence,  such 
and  such  was  the  shade  of  sound  in  the  sixteenth  century,  this  or  that 
other  shade  in  the  seventeenth,  yet  another  in  the  eighteenth,  and  so  on. 
As  I  have  already  indicated  above,  I  cannot  find  any  such  sure  foundation 
in  the  statements  of  the  old  writers  upon  which  Ellis  and  Sweet  relied, 
and  when  I  compare  these  statements  with  the  testimony  of  the  other 
kinds  of  evidence,  I  become  more  than  ever  distrustful  of  the  results 
which  were  formerly  accepted  so  confidently,  less  inclined  to  be  dog- 
matic as  to  the  chronology  of  vowel  changes.  For  one  thing,  quite 
recently,  many  scholars  have  been  led  to  put  back  the  beginnings  of  the 
modern  vowel  system,  anything  from  one  to  two  hundred  years  earlier 
than  the  date  to  which  Ellis  and  Sweet  assigned  the  rise  of  this.  If 
this  is  justified,  then  it  follows,  since  the  formerly-received  chronology 
was  almost  entirely  based  upon  the  testimony  of  the  old  grammarians, 
that  these  have  misled  us,  and  that  much  of  the  system  of  minute  chronology 
derived  from  them  crumbles.  A  single  instance  will  suffice.  Sweet, 
trusting  to  the  Orthoepists,  believed  that  far  into  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  among  some  speakers  well  into  the  seventeenth  century,  M.E.  a  in 
name,  take,  &c.,  retained  its  old  sound  [&].  But  we  know  now  that  as 
early  as  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century  this  sound  must  have  been 
completely  fronted,  and  that  before  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  it  rhymed 


DIFFICULTY  OF   PRECISE  CHRONOLOGY  191 

with  the  M.E.  e  in  seat,  &c.     Now  this  entirely  knocks  the  bottom  out  of 
the  delightfully  simple  old  tables  such  as  : — 


M.E. 
a 


1  6th  c. 


iyth  c. 


W  [i]  [e] 


1 8th  c. 


which  satisfied  most  of  us  down  to  within  the  last  few  years,  and  if  I  had 
to  be  tied  down  to  a  definite  statement  on  the  chronology  of  this  sound 
I  should  be  inclined  to  construct,  from  the  facts  at  my  disposal,  some 
such  table  as  :  — 


M.E.  (i  3th  and 
early  i4th  c.) 


late  1 4th  c. 


1 5th  c. 
[i] 


1 6th,  1 7th,  and  i8th  cc. 

[e]  (among  some  speakers  [i]) 


But  I  should  know  that  this  was  rather  a  dangerous  table  to  make, 
because  at  least  two  and  perhaps  more  of  the  stages  which  are  here 
neatly  packed  into  separate  periods,  certainly  coexisted  in  the  same 
period,  and  overlapped  into  the  periods  before  and  after  that  to  which 
they  are  assigned. 

And  this  brings  me  back  to  the  point  which  I  set  out  to  emphasize, 
namely,  that  a  clear-cut  and  precise  chronology  is  impossible  in  linguistic 
history,  since,  as  was  said  earlier  in  this  book,  the  periods  overlap  as  do 
the  generations  of  speakers.  From  this  point  of  view  it  is  obvious  that 
some  men  must  have  been  born  in  the  M.E.  period  and  have  died  in  the 
Modern  Period,  just  as  they  may  be  born  in  one  century  and  die  in 
another.  Thus  while  Chaucer  himself  no  doubt  always  spoke  what  must 
still  be  called  M.E.,  he  must  have  heard,  before  he  died,  younger  speakers 
who  were  at  least  on  the  verge  of  Early  Modern.  He  may  himself 
always  have  pronounced  [mak(9)],  and  probably  he  did  so,  but  it  is, 
I  think,  certain  that  he  must  have  heard  the  younger  generation  say 
[msek],  possibly  with  disapproval  as  strong  as  that  with  which  the 
present  Poet  Laureate  hears  the  unstressed  vowel  in  [^ksfsd]  and  so  on. 
But  whereas  the  vowel  above  indicated  in  make,  was  a  novelty  in  Chaucer's 
old  age,  the  unstressed  vowels  of  which  his  illustrious  successor  com- 
plains have  been  in  pretty  common  use  for  five  hundred  years  or  so. 
While  then,  in  dealing  with  each  sound  change,  we  naturally  ask — When 
did  it  start  ?  and  attempt  to  answer  the  question,  it  is  absurd  to  suppose 
that  our  answer,  however  carefully  considered,  is  absolutely  exact.  We 
can  give  the  earliest  evidence  known  to  us  of  a  modification  of  the  old 
usage,  and  of  a  move  in  the  new  direction,  but  we  must  never  forget  that 
there  may  be  older  evidence  which  our  industry  has  failed  so  far  to  dis- 
cover, and  that  a  sound  change  is  nearly  always  considerably  older 
than  the  earliest  documentary  evidence  of  its  existence.  Further, 
although  we  may  be  able  to  say  that  a  sound  change  in  a  certain 
direction  has  begun,  and  is  well  under  way  by  a  given  period,  we  can 
rarely  say  with  certainty  exactly  how  far  it  has  gone.  Any  effort  to  do 
this  must  be  tentative,  and  is  based  upon  reasoning  from  all  sorts  of 
collateral  evidence.  (Compare,  in  illustration  of  this,  the  attempt  to 
fix  approximately  the  various  stages  of  development  of  M.E.  a  on 
pp.  195,  &c.,  below,  together  with  the  inferences  drawn  from  the  history 
of  other  vowels.) 

In  tracing  the  history  of  the  English  vowels  I  have  followed  the  usual 


192     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE  MODERN   PERIOD 

practice,  and  an  excellent  one  it  is,  when  dealing  with  the  later  periods  of 
the  language,  of  starting  from  the  M.E.  vowel  system. 

But  the  term  Middle  English  covers  a  long  period  which  begins, 
roughly,  towards  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century  and  extends, 
according  to  the  view  taken,  down  to  about  1400,  or  twenty  or  thirty 
years  later.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  English  pronunciation  stood 
still,  even  within  a  single  dialect,  all  this  time.  Even  if  we  adopt  the 
further  divisions — Transition,  Early  M.E.,  M.E.  Central  Period,  and 
Late  M.E. — the  limits  of  each  of  these  will  depend  upon  the  feature  which 
we  take  as  the  test.  Thus  while  we  have  no  direct  evidence,  from 
areas  more  southerly  than  Lincolnshire,  before  about  1420,  of  the 
alteration  towards  its  present  pronunciation  of  the  a-sound  which 
arose — in  English  words — about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  which  we  call  '  M.E.  a r,  we  have  unmistakable  indications  that 
one  of  the  O.E.  0-sounds — as  in  O.E.  mono,  '  moon ' — had  moved  on 
far  towards,  even  if  it  had  already  reached,  its  present  sound,  perhaps  100 
to  125  years  earlier,  and  this  in  the  South-East. 

Therefore  when  we  speak  of  *  M.E/  sounds,  we  do  not  always  refer  to 
one  and  the  same  period.  In  the  case  of  the  vowel  last  mentioned,  M.E. 
o  (which  is  also  O.E.  J,  and  further  occurs  in  words  borrowed  from 
Norman  French),  this  sound  was  certainly  no  longer  pronounced  in  the 
old  way,  but  had  become  almost,  if  not  quite,  [u]  probably  early  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  in  some  dialects,  perhaps,  much  earlier. 

With  these  qualifications  of  our  terminology  we  may  pass  to  some 
general  observations  on  what  is  sometimes  called  'the  Great  Vowel 
Shift '.  From  what  has  been  said  above  the  reader  will  be  on  his  guard 
against  supposing  that  the  phenomena  of  which  we  treat  in  this  chapter 
are  new  and  sudden  departures  of  the  Modern  Period.  He  will  consider 
that  the  pronunciation  which  the  old  vow^l  sounds  have  now  acquired  is 
the  result  of  a  slow  and  gradual  process,  and  of  tendencies  which  un- 
doubtedly existed  in  English  long  before  the  various  periods  at  which 
the  changes  can  be  shown  severally  to  have  come  about. 

If  we  compare  the  M.E.  vowels  in  stressed  syllables  with  the  corre- 
sponding sounds  in  the  same  words  at  the  present  day,  it  appears  that  all 
the  old  diphthongs,  all  the  old  long  vowels,  and  some  of  the  short  vowels, 
have  acquired  a  totally  different  pronunciation.  But  if  we  compare 
the  two  lists  of  actual  sounds,  the  M.E.  vowels  and  diphthongs,  and  those 
of  the  present  day,  we  notice  that,  as  far  as  we  can  judge,  the  contents  of 
each  list  are  not  so  very  different.  M.E.  had,  amongst  others,  the  simple 
sounds  [a,  u,  I,  5],  and  the  diphthongs  [at,  au\,  and  so  has  the  English 
which  we  speak.  But  they  do  not  occur  in  the  same  words  now  as  then. 
Where  M.E.  had  a  as  in  name  we  have  the  diphthong  [ei] ;  where  M.E. 
pronounced  [u]  as  in  hus,  hous,  we  pronounce  [au] ;  in  the  words  in  which 
[i]  occurred  in  M.E.,  e. g.  wif,  &c.,  we  now  pronounce  [at] ;  and  corre- 
sponding to  M.E.  [5]  as  in  boon  '  bone '  we  now  have  [owj.  Again,  we 
do  not  retain  the  diphthongs  [at,  au\  in  our  pronunciation  of  rain  and 
cause,  but  have  substituted  for  them  [ei,  5]  in  these  and  other  words.  On 
the  other  hand,  our  [a]  as  in  path,  our  [u]  in  moon,  our  [i]  in  queen,  our 
[o]  in  saw,  are  not  survivals  of  the  M.E.  sounds,  but  have  developed  out 
of  sounds  entirely  different. 


RELATIVE   CHRONOLOGY   OF   CHANGES  193 

Thus  the  new  sounds  never  caught  up  the  old  sounds  which,  so  far  as 
we  can  tell,  were  identical  with  them,  except  in  the  case  of  M.E.  a  and 
M.E.  e  —  [i],  on  which  see  pp.  1 94,  &c.,  209,  &c.,  below.  This  fact  has  an 
important  chronological  bearing.  It  means  that  supposing  we  are  able  to 
ascertain,  for  instance,  that  not  later  than  a  given  year,  O.E.  o  in  mono,,  &c., 
had  reached  the  [u]  stage,  it  follows  that  the  O.E.  u  in  hus  had,  before  that 
stage  was  reached,  been  so  far  altered  in  pronunciation,  that  it  was  quite 
unlike  the  new  sound  which  had  developed  in  the  word  moon,  and 
although  this  word  and  other  words  containing  O.E.  o  now  have  the  same 
vowel  sound  that  once  existed  in  hus  and  other  words  containing  O.E.  u, 
there  never  was  a  time  at  which  moon  and  house  were  pronounced  with 
the  same  vowel.  For  if  this  had  been  so,  they  would  be  pronounced 
with  the  same  vowel  now.  When  once  two  originally  different  sounds 
become  levelled,  as  often  happens  in  the  course  of  their  history,  under 
one  and  the  same  sound,  the  history  of  the  sound  in  both  is  henceforth 
one  and  the  same.  We  see  an  instance  of  this  in  the  vowel  [a],  which 
occurs  in  the  words  nut,  blood,  and  judge.  In  the  first  of  these  words  the 
O.E.  and  M.E.  sound  was  [u],  in  the  second  it  was  [o],  and  in  the  last  it 
was  French  [yj.  The  present  sound  developed  probably  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  its  immediate  predecessor  was  [u].  This  means  that  some 
time  before  the  rise  of  [a]  the  three  originally  different  sounds  [u,  o,  y] 
had  all,  under  certain  circumstances,  been  levelled  under  one  single 
sound  [u].  This  sound,  no  matter  what  its  antecedents  may  have  been, 
was  unrounded  at  a  given  point,  and  gradually  developed  into  the  present 
vowel  [a].  In  such  a  case  as  this,  it  is  evident  that  whatever  the  period 
at  which  the  unrounding  of  old  [ii]  occurred,  the  various  other  processes 
whereby  old  [o,  y]  became  [u]  must  have  already  taken  place. 

To  return  to  our  former  line  of  argument  concerning  sounds  originally 
different  which  remain  different,  this  is  often  of  the  greatest  use  in  deter- 
mining at  least  the  relative  chronology  of  sound  changes.  With  regard 
to  the  history  of  old  o,  it  has  been  already  mentioned  that  this  sound  had 
apparently  become  [u]  as  early  as  the  first  half  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
We  must  therefore  assume  that  certain  disturbances  had  arisen  prior  to 
that  date  in  the  old  [u]  sound.  Now,  although  this  latter  has  now 
become  the  diphthong  \au\,  it  does  not  by  any  means  follow  that  any- 
thing like  the  present  form  had  been  reached  before  old  o  had  become 
[u].  All  that  we  can  say  is  that  something  had  happened  to  u,  that  it 
had  started  upon  that  series  of  changes  which  was  to  result  in  our  present 
diphthong.  The  same  line  of  argument  may  be  applied  to  all  other 
vowels  whose  pronunciation  has  changed  from  what  it  formerly  was,  and 
which  have  either  themselves  taken  the  place  of  other  vowels  which  have 
also  become  something  quite  different,  or  have  had  their  old  places  taken 
by  other  vowels. 

The  old  z  in  wtf,  Uf,  bite,  &c.,  has  been  diphthongized  to  [at],  but 
a  new  [I]  sound  has  developed — in  seek,  green,  feet,  &c. — from  an  old  [e]. 
It  is  instructive  to  consider  the  histories  of  these  two  original  vowels  in 
relation  to  each  other.  It  is  evident  that  the  old  [i]  must  have  changed 
into  something  different  before  the  new  [i]  in  feet,  green,  &c.,  was  fully 
developed.  The  old  and  the  new  [i]  never  had  the  same  sound  at  the 
same  time.  In  this  instance  we  have  evidence  of  about  the  same  age,  on 


i94     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN    PERIOD 

the  one  hand,  that  old  i  had  become  a  diphthong,  and  on  the  other,  that 
old  [e]  had  become  [i]  (cf.  pp.  205-7).  It  seems  certain  that  at  least 
as  early  as  1420  [i]  had  become  a  diphthong  (cf.  p.  223),  but  how  far 
it  had  gone  towards  its  present  sound  is  another  question.  In  this 
connexion  we  must  consider  also  the  history  of  the  old  diphthong  at, 
which  later  on  became  [e].  The  development  of  all  three  sounds  took 
place  in  such  a  manner  that  the  new  [e]  from  at  never  caught  up  old  e; 
this  latter,  while  it  was  clearly  on  the  move  towards  [i],  never  caught  up 
old  *;  and  this,  though  it  subsequently  became  [0z],  never  overlapped 
with  the  old  diphthong,  since  if  it  had  done  so  it  would  have  gone  still 
farther  and  become  monophthongized  again  to  [e].  Incidentally,  it  may 
be  pointed  out  that  all  this  illustrates  the  fact  that  in  all  languages 
certain  tendencies  arise,  at  a  given  moment,  which  change  certain  sounds 
in  a  particular  direction.  Then  the  tendency,  for  the  time  being  at  any 
rate,  dies  out,  so  that  when,  perhaps  shortly  after  the  beginning  of  the 
process  which  changed  the  original  sound  has  set  in,  the  same  sound 
arises  from  some  different  source,  the  tendency  has  spent  itself  and  this 
sound  remains  unaltered,  it  may  be  for  centuries. 

The  consideration  of  the  history  of  several  sounds  during  the  same 
period,  such  as  has  been  briefly  attempted  above,  is  of  value  sometimes 
in  checking  the  statements  of  the  Orthoepists.  Thus,  when  some  of 
these  seem  to  tell  us,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  that  old  J  is  still  pronounced 
[i],  while  at  the  same  time  they  admit  that  old  e  is  pronounced  [i],  we 
know  that  either  they  are  deceiving  themselves,  and  would  mislead  us  if 
we  trusted  them,  or  that  we  must  have  misinterpreted  their  statements. 

The  Vowels  in  Detail. 
M.E.  a. 

This  vowel  must  have  been  definitely  fronted  by  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  This  is  proved  by  rhymes  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
century  and  by  spellings  which  occur  during  the  first  half. 

The  earliest  spellings  I  have  found  which  indicate  fronting  are  in 
R.  of  Brunne's  Handlyng  Sinne,  Lines.  1303,  where  meke  'make'  Inf. 
occurs  line  1618,  and  mekest  3906.  It  would  be  rash,  at  present,  to 
generalize  too  much  from  these  N.E.  Midland  forms. 

In  the  Siege  of  Rouen  (c.  1420)  we  have  the  rhyme  care — were,  and 
Bokenam  writes  credytt^  S.  Cecil.  80,  for  earlier  cradel '  cradle ',  and  bare, 
Pr.  149,  for  M.E.  bere  O.E.  bxr  'bier'.  This  use  of  the  symbol  a  to 
express  what  can  only  have  been  a  front  vowel  [e~|,  or  in  Suffolk  more 
probably  [e]  in  the  latter  word,  is  as  convincing  "as  is  the  use  of  the 
letter  e  to  express  the  sound  usually  written  a.  The  Treasurer  of  Calais, 
in  1421,  in  a  letter  among  the  collection  of  letters  of  Marg.  of  Anjou 
and  Bishop  Bekinton,  p.  16,  writes  er  '  are '.  If  this  represents  the  strong 
M.E.  form  are  it  is  a  case  in  point,  but  it  may  possibly  represent  the 
weakened  form  in  unstressed  positions  which  in  M.E.  was  are.  In  this 
case  it  might  be  evidence  of  the  fronting  of  M.E.  #. 

Since  the  evidence  shows  that  the  old  diphthong  at  had  been  mono- 
phthongized and  fronted  in  the  fifteenth  century  (see  treatment  of  at,  ei, 
p.  248),  the  use  of  the  symbol  ai  for  old  a  is  a  further  evidence  of  fronting, 


THE  VOWEL   IN   MADE,  ETC.  195 

and  also  of  the  fact  that  M.E.  a  and  at,  ei  had  all  been  levelled  under 
one  sound.  In  the  account  of  the  State  of  Ireland  (State  Papers, 
Hen.  VIII,  Part  III,  p.  18)  save  is  written  saive ;  the  Coventry  Leet  Book, 
under  date  1421,  p.  24,  writes  maid  'made',  M.E.  made',  waiter  mylne  is 
thus  written  in  a  Leics.  Will  of  1533  (Sir  J.  Digby),  cf.  Lines.  Dioc. 
Docs.,  p.  142.  9.  The  Cely  Papers  have  ceme  M.E.  came  'came', 
p.  46,  and  Zachrisson  has  noted  teke  M.E.  take  l  take ',  and  feder  M.E. 
fader  '  father ',  in  the  Paston  Letters  of  the  fifteenth  century.  I  have  also 
noted yeate  'gate*  in  Shillingford's  Letters,  p.  10.  Now  ea  is  a  regular 
L.M.E.  and  Early  Mod.  method  of  expressing  the  sounds  [i]  or  [e]. 
So  far  as  I  know  it  rarely  expresses  any  other  sound,  certainly  never  any 
sound  like  [d].  Possibly,  however,  yeate  represents  M.'E.ye/e,  rather  than 
ydte,  in  which  case  the  form  is  not  to  our  purpose  here.  Jul.  Berners 
constantly  writes  aege  '  age ',  M.E.  age,  and  the  same  spelling  occurs  in 
Bishop  Fisher's  Sermons,  p.  306.  This  spelling  seems  to  show  that  a  was 
not  felt  as  a  suitable  symbol  for  the  sound  as  it  then  was.  Rede  me,  &c. 
(1528)  rhymes  declare — theare  46,  spare — wheare  76,  declare — weare  Vb. 
122.  French  writers  on  English  pronunciation  from  1529  onwards  liken 
the  English  sound  of  d  to  French  e  and  at,  that  is  [§].  English  gram- 
marians and  orthoepists  are  ambiguous  upon  the  nature  of  this  as  of 
most  other  vowels  (though  both  Palsgrave  and  Ben  Jonson  hint  at  the 
existence  of  a  sound  other  than  [<zj),  and  it  is  not  until  the  first  quarter 
of  the  seventeenth  century  that  we  find,  in  Gill's  Logonomia,  the  fronted 
sound  referred  to,  but  then  only  with  contemptuous  disapproval,  as  of  an 
effeminate  and  affected  pronunciation.  Gill  would  apparently  have  us 
believe  that  he  himself  said  [d].  It  is  more  important  to  arrive,  if 
possible,  at  the  current  pronunciation  of  his  time,  and  for  this  we  shall  be 
guided  by  other  evidence. 

Since  the  fronting  is  so  definitely  established  comparatively  early  in 
the  fifteenth  century,  and  for  Lincolnshire  much  earlier  still,  as  we  see 
from  a  consideration  of  the  spellings  of,  and  rhymes  with,  old  d,  taken 
together  with  the  facts  and  arguments  given  below  (pp.  196,  211) 
concerning  the  development  of  the  old  diphthong  at,  it  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  fronting  of  d  had  begun,  even  in  London,  at  least 
as  early  as  Chaucer's  day.  The  first  stage  was  probably  [ae],  and  this, 
we  may  conjecture,  lasted  into  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
From  the  moment  that  d  and  at  are  levelled  under  a  single  sound,  that  is 
by  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  century,  it  is  most  probable  that  the 
stage  [e]  had  been  reached.  The  next  change  consists  in  making  the 
slack  vowel  into  tense  [e],  and  we  may  believe  that  this  has  come  to  pass 
from  the  moment  that  v;e  find  the  old  <z-words  rhyming  with  those  con- 
taining M.E.  *2  [e],  which  became  [e]  towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century  (see  p.  209,  below).  The  period  could  be  fixed  with  fair 
accuracy  by  a  careful  examination  of  the  rhymes  from  the  first  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century  or  so  down  to  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth,  before  the 
first  of  which  dates,  I  believe,  the  change  took  place.  To  take  a  concrete 
example,  the  question  is  how  early  are  hate  and  heat,  or  mate  and  meat, 
pronounced  precisely  alike ;  how  early  does  heat  rhyme  with  mate,  make 
with  speak,  &c.  ?  We  have  seen  that  already  in  the  fifteenth  century 
care  and  were  rhymed,  but  the  [e]  sound  was  retained  before  r 

0    2 


196     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

so  that  we  must  find  examples  of  rhymes  before  other  consonants.  The 
identity  of  mate  and  meat  is  proved  in  1685  (see  P-  2IO)>  DUt  how  much 
earlier  can  it  be  established?  It  is  pretty  certain  that  the  old  [i]  became 
[e],  otherwise  than  before  r,  as  soon  as,  or  at  least  soon  after,  M.E.  el  [e] 
had  been  raised  to  [I]  (cf.  pp.  209-10).  At  this  point  it  was,  or  just  before 
old  [i]  had  become  [4],  that  the  new  [i]  from  a  caught  it  up.  We  must 
note  here,  though  the  point  will  be  discussed  later,  that  the  fact  that  we 
now  pronounce  [i]  in  heat  and  other  words  from  M.E.  e 2,  whereas  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  Received  pronunciation,  on  the 
whole,  favours  [e]  in  these  words,  does  not  imply  a  sound  change  whereby 
[e]  has  become  p]  since  the  eighteenth  century,  but  merely  indicates  one 
of  the  many  instances  of  the  adoption  of  a  different  and  already  existing 
type  of  pronunciation  as  the  normal  standard. 

Had  there  really  been  a  late  sound  change  of  the  kind  suggested,  it  is 
clear  that  it  must  have  involved  all  the  old  «-words  as  well  as  the  £2-words. 
That  is  to  say,  we  should  now  pronounce  heat  and  meat  with  the  same 
vowel  as  hate  and  mate,  as  was  the  habit  in  certain  circles  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries. 

As  early  examples  of  the  apparent  identity  of  old  d  with  old  <?2,  we  may 
cite  Lord  Buckhurst's  rhyme  speake — make,  Complaint,  p.  154;  Spenser's 
rhymes  states — seates,  Heavenlie  Beautie,  estate  and  late  with  retrate  (sic) 
'retreat',  F.  Q.  i.  8.  12;  Shakespeare's  rhyme  nature — defeature,  V.  and 
A.  734-6 ;  and  Mrs.  Isham's  spelling  discrate  for  discreet  in  1655,  Verney 
Mem.  iii,  p.  235.  It  appears  from  a  careful  comparison  of  the  state- 
ments and  equations  of  Wallis  and  Cooper  that  they  intend  to  imply  that 
in  their  day,  the  three  original  M.E.  sounds  d,  at,  and  <?2  had  all  been 
levelled  under  what  they  call  'long  e'.  The  precise  character  of  this 
sound  is  open  to  discussion.  I  believe  it  to  be  tense  [e],  but  having 
here  brought  the  history  of  a.  down  to  the  point  at  which  it  is  levelled 
under  a  vowel  in  which  it  converges  with  two  other  originally  different 
sounds,  I  reserve  the  arguments  in  support  of  the  view  just  stated  until 
the  treatment  of  M.E.  e1 ;  cf.  pp.  209,  &c.,  below. 

The  present-day  diphthong  into  which  old  d  has  developed  (in  make, 
&c.)  is  first  noted  by  Batchelor,  Orthoepical  Analysis,  pp.  53-4,  1809. 

M.E.  a  in  the  Modern  Period. 

In  Received  Standard  English  the  present  pronunciation  of  M.E. 
short  a,  in  all  words  where  this  sound  was  unaffected  by  any  combinative 
change,  either  in  Late  M.E.  or  at  some  subsequent  period,  is  [se]. 
Examples : — mad,  man,  cat,  rag,  wax,  &c.,  &c.  The  Late  M.E.  -dr  from 
-cr  (cf.  pp.  212-22)  became  [-ser],  for  the  subsequent  history  of  which 
see  pp.  203-5,  below.  The  problems  are  when  and  in  what  dialect  did 
the  new  sound  first  develop,  and  when  did  it  become  the  received  pro- 
nunciation in  Standard  English  ?  The  process  is  one  of  fronting,  and,  if 
we  assume  that  M.E.  d  was  a  mid-back  vowel,  also  of  lowering.  The 
lowering  may  have  accompanied  the  fronting,  or  [a]  might  become  first 
[e],  and  then  have  been  lowered.  The  difficulty  of  the  second  hypothesis 
is  that  a  general  tendency  to  lower  all  [e]  sounds  would  have  necessarily 
involved  also  original  M.E.  e  in  tell,  bed,  &c. 


OLD    SHORT    a  197 

The  dialectal  and  chronological  problems  are  not  altogether  easy  of 
solution.  The  earliest  (sixteenth  century)  writers  on  pronunciation, 
especially  the  native-born  grammarians,  give  us  very  little  help,  their 
remarks  being  extremely  ambiguous.  And  this  is  not  to  be  wondered  at 
when  we  reflect  that  the  modern  English  sound  is,  even  to-day,  very  rare 
among  the  languages  of  the  world,  that  it  is  by  no  means  universal  in 
the  English  dialects,  whether  Regional  or  Social,  at  the  present  time,  and 
that,  for  those  speakers  who  have  not  used  it  from  childhood,  it  is 
apparently  one  of  the  most  difficult  vowels  to  acquire,  difficult  to  recognize 
and  discriminate,  and  difficult  to  analyse  and  describe.  It  is  a  matter  of 
very  common  experience  that  English  speakers  who  have  studied  and 
perhaps  spoken  a  foreign  language  for  years,  in  which  no  sound  at  all 
resembling  the  genuine  English  [ae]  occurs,  continue,  when  pronouncing 
this  foreign  tongue,  to  substitute  their  native  sound  for  the  foreign  [0J 
without  the  slightest  misgiving,  and  without  entertaining  any  doubt  as  to 
the  complete  identity  of  the  two  sounds.  I  have  also  known  persons  who, 
without  having  had  any  systematic  training  in  phonetics,  had  yet  given 
much  intelligent  attention  to  phonetic  questions,  who  maintained  stoutly 
that  English  [20]  was  not  a  front  vowel  at  all,  but  a  back  vowel,  closely 
associated  with  [a],  and  this  although  they  themselves  undoubtedly 
pronounced  the  normal  front  sound. 

From  these  considerations  I  am  impelled,  when  the  sixteenth-  and 
seventeenth-century  English  writers  on  pronunciation  identify  the  English 
a  with  the  sound  usually  expressed  by  this  symbol  in  continental 
languages,  and  give  no  hint  of  the  existence  of  another  sound,  to  disregard 
their  testimony  as  proving  nothing  at  all — not  even  that  the  new  sound  did 
not  exist  in  their  own  pronunciation.  When  it  further  appears  that 
a  writer  has  no  phonetic  knowledge,  no  grasp  of  foreign  sounds,  but  is 
completely  under  the  spell  of  the  l  letters  '  and  their  supposed  mysterious 
'  powers ',  it  seems  mere  waste  of  time  to  spend  it  in  trying  to  make 
definite  sense  out  of  his  vague  nonsense. 

Our  best  chance  of  help  from  the  grammarians  is  in  the  works  of 
foreigners  who,  having  no  prejudices  in  favour  of  one  sound  more  than 
another,  have  no  hesitation,  if  they  are  acute  enough  to  observe  a  differ- 
ence between  the  English  pronunciation  of  a  '  letter '  and  their  own,  in 
pointing  it  out. 

The  occasional  spellings  which  are  often  so  enlightening  shed  some 
slight  light  on  our  problem,  in  that  we  find  a  few  examples,  even  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  of  e  written  for  a.  Many  of  the  words  in  which  this 
spelling  occurs  may  be  otherwise  explained  than  by  the  assumption  of 
a  genuine  development  of  a  front  pronunciation  from  old  a.  It  is  true 
that  e  is  an  unsatisfactory  spelling  for  [se],  but  supposing  that  a  writer 
feels  that  the  vowel  in  cat  is  front  (he  does  not  of  course  call  it '  front '  to 
himself),  what  symbol  can  he  use  to  express  this  except  e  ?  But  spellings 
of  this  kind  which  are  not  patient  of  some  other  explanation — e.  g.  as 
representing  a  M.E.  (S.E.)  £-type,  and  not  an  a-type  at  all — are  very  few 
and  far  between. 

Lastly,  there  is  the  testimony  of  rhyme,  which  in  the  present  instance 
can  serve  us  but  little,  since  there  can  be  no  genuine  rhymes  with  [ae] 
except  in  words  which  are  derived  from  a,  and  it  therefore  proves  nothing 


i98     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

that  words  originally  containing  [a]  and  spelt  a  are  rhymed  together,  for 
the  rhyme  would  be  equally  good  before  and  after  the  change  of  sound, 
which  would  affect  all  words  of  this  class  equally.  The  nearest  approach 
we  get  to  any  enlightenment  from  this  source  are  rare  rhymes  of  a  with 
e.  This  is  comprehensible  if  the  former  sound  had  been  fronted  to  [s], 
but  not  if  it  was  still  a  back  vowel. 

The  information,  such  as  it  is,  from  the  various  sources  is  the 
following : 

During  the  fifteenth  century  we  have  a  few  examples  of  e  written 
instead  of  a  in  different  parts  of  the  country  : — in  St.  Editha  (c.  1420)  the 
rhyme  was — cress  '  cross '  occurs  twice,  lines  1543, 1548.  Cress  is  written 
for  crass(e),  which  is  found  in  line  1387.  That  the  writer  of  St.  Editha  un- 
lounded  o  is  shown  by  this  form  and  by  starme '  storm  '  939,  which  rhymes 
with  harm.  It  would  appear  from  the  spelling  cress  that  he  had  also 
fronted  a ;  sedness,  Palladius,  10.  255 ;  ibid.,  eddres '  adders  ',  34.  935  ;  wex 
'  wax  ',  38.  1023  ;  wesshe  '  wash  ',  40.  1105.  Wm.  Paston,  the  judge,  has 
— 1 heve l  have '  (perhaps  long)  ;  Duke  of  Buckingham — thenking  l  thank- 
ing ',  1442-55,  Paston  Letters,  i.  61  ;  Bokenam — venyschyd,  Agn.  603; 
wecheman,  Agn.  295;  Marg.  Paston — seek  'sack',  ii.  179;  pollexis 
'-axes',  ii.  215;  wetch  '  watch '  (Vb.),  ii.  362;  Shillingford — Sheftesbury, 
5;  hendes  'hands',  46;  Gregory — becheler,  203;  j'esper,  209;  fethem, 
213;  cheryte  'charity',  232;  Rewle  of  Sustr.  Men. — wexe  (Vb.),  107. 
24  ;  chesiple  'chasuble*  91.  4.  In  the  sixteenth  century  I  have  noted  es 
/or,  Rec.  Cath.  of  Ar.,  L.  and  P.  ii.  405.  1501  ;  bend  '  band',  Bp.  Knight 
(1512),  p.  191  (twice)  ;  renk  '  rank ',  Lord  Berners,  i.  295  (twice) ;  axemyne, 
in  the  Letter  of  Thos.  Pery  to  Mr.  R.  Vane  (Ellis  2.  2),  p.  142  ;  and  the 
same  writer  has  exemynyde,  pp.  142  and  145;  Jenewery,  149,  cheryte^ 
156.  Machyn  writes  Crenmer,  57,  and  cherete,  131.  Wm.  Faunte, 
Alleyne  Papers — '  if  you  hed  him  ',  p.  32,  159-,  where  hedis  stressed.  Mrs. 
Basire  writes  settisfie  135  (1654),  Frencis  139  (1655),  sednes  140(1656). 

The  inverted  spellings  (a  for  e)  occur  in  Wanysday  '  Wednesday ', 
Gregory,  97  and  229;  massynger,  124,  and  massage,  223,  in  the  same 
writer;  zastyrday  'yesterday'  (z  =  M.E.  3)  i.  81;  and  massynger, 
i.  no,  Marg.  Paston  ;  while  in  the  sixteenth  century  Sir  T.  Elyot  writes 
mantion,  2.  316  ;  and  Machyn  prast  for  '  pressed  ',  127.  We  are  perhaps 
entitled  to  assume  that  when  a  writer  puts  a  for  e,  he  attributes  a  front 
pronunciation  to  the  former  symbol.  Of  the  first  group  above  (e  for  a), 
it  might  be  contended  that  the  forms  from  Palladius  (Essex)  represent 
not  M.E.  a  at  all,  but  the  old  S.E.  type  with  e,  though  this  particular  ex- 
planation does  not  apply  to  wesshe.  Heve  for  have  may  possibly  be  an 
unstressed  form.  Shillingford's  Sheftesbury  may  be  from  an  O.E.  South- 
western form  with  sceft-  for  earlier  sceaft-.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
whole  collection  may  be  perfectly  genuine,  in  which  case  it  would  be 
established  that  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century  a  had  been  fronted  in 
Essex,  Suffolk,  and  possibly  in  London,  though  Gregory,  as  we  have 
seen  (p.  64),  was  by  birth  a  Suffolk  man.  None  of  the  English  writers 
on  pronunciation  of  the  sixteenth  century  appear  to  throw  any  light, 
except  Palsgrave  ( 1 530),  who  hints  at  the  existence  of  a  pronunciation  other 
than  [a]  : — French  a  is  sounded  '  suche  as  we  vse  with  vs,  where  the  best 
englysshe  is  spoken '.  Some  of  the  French  writers  on  English  assert  that 


NEW    SOUND   OF  a   ADMITTED  199 

English  a  is  pronounced  like  e  ('  at  least  in  Latin ',  Tory,  1529) ;  l  e  almost 
as  brode  as  ye  pronounce  your  a  in  englysshe '  (Wes.  1532).  Unfortu- 
nately, we  do  not  know  whether  this  refers  only  to  long  a  or  to  a  as  well. 

Shakespeare  rhymes  scratch — wretch  in  Venus  and  Adonis  (Victor, 
Shakespeare  Pron.,  p.  208),  and  neck — back  in  V.  &  A.  593  (Horn,  N.E. 
Gr.,  §  40)  Publ.  Pprs.  6,  beck  '  back ',  1485.  Diehl  (Eng.  Schreibung  und 
Ausspr.)  mentions  a  few  more  occasional  spellings — siren  'strand  ',  1554 
Machyn,  72;  ectes  'acts',  1598  Henslowe's  Diary,  137,  1.  13. 

The  statements  of  the  grammarians  down  to  the  second  half  of  the 
seventeenth  century  are  nearly  as  useless  for  our  purpose  as  those  of 
their  predecessors  in  the  former  century. 

Butler  (1634)  only  tells  us  that  a  and  a  differ  '  in  quantity  and  sound  '. 
This  might  mean  that  d  was  still  unfronted,  while  d  was  fronted,  or  that 
a  =  [ae]  and  d  =  p i  e].  Ben  Jonson,  however  (Gr.  1640,  but  written  twenty 
years  or  so  earlier),  notes  a  difference  between  French  a  and  the  English 
vowel  in  art,  act,  apple.  He  says :  '  A  with  us  in  most  words  is  pro- 
nounced lesse  than  the  French  a'  This  is,  perhaps,  intended  to  refer  to 
a  fronted  vowel. 

Wallis  (1653)  nas  tne  grace  to  distinguish  between  'guttural'  and 
'  palatal '  vowels,  and  among  the  latter  he  includes  English  a,  both  long 
and  short,  which  he  also  denominates  '  exile ',  that  is  '  thin,  meagre '.  If 
these  terms  mean  anything  when  applied  to  vowel  sounds  they  must  mean 
that  the  sound  thus  described  is  a  front  sound.  We  know,  fortunately, 
from  other  sources  that  M.E.  d  was  undoubtedly  fronted  long  before  the 
time  at  which  Wallis  wrote  (cf.  pp.  194-6,  above,  concerning  M.E.  d), 
and  therefore  this  author's  equation  of  the  vowels  in  the  pairs — sam — 
same,  lamb — lame,  bat — bate,  &c.,  as  simply  long  and  short  forms  of  the 
same  sound  makes  it  pretty  certain  that  the  short  vowel  was  [ae]. 

Cooper  (1685)  is  the  first  serious  phonetician,  and  the  most  accurate 
observer  we  have  hitherto  met.  He  describes  English  a  and  says,  '  for- 
matur  a  medio  linguae  ad  concavum  palati  paululum  elevato,  in  can,  pass 
a  corripitur ;  in  cast,  past  producitur  '.  This  is  quite  unambiguous  and 
can  only  mean  [ae],  and  the  analysis  is  identical  with  that  which  the  best 
modern  phoneticians  have  made  of  the  sound,  described  by  Bell  and 
Sweet  as  the  low  front.  Cooper's  list  of  words  containing  the  short 
vowel  is  : — bar,  blab,  cap,  cat,  car,  dash,  flash,  gard,  grand,  land,  mash, 
hat,  tar,  quality.  It  will  be  seen  that  this  includes  words  where  a  occurs 
before  -r,  and  the  word  quality  which  we  do  not  now  pronounce  with  [ae]. 
The  explanation  of  this  will  appear  later  (cf.  pp.  201-3). 

We  need  not  pursue  any  farther  the  winding  mazes  of  the  grammarians 
in  their  descriptions  of  this  sound,  since  it  is  clear  that  our  present-day 
vowel  is  now  fully  recognized  and  adequately  described.  We  may  note 
in  passing  that  Bachelor  (1819)  warns  his  readers  against  a  prevalent 
vulgarism  in  the  pronunciation  of  a.  He  says  (p.  22):  '  Refinement 
should  be  kept  within  very  moderate  bounds  with  respect  to  this  letter,  as 
the  real  exchange  of  a  for  e  is  the  result  of  ignorance  or  affectation,  by 
means  of  which  certain  words  will  cease  to  be  distinguished  in  pronuncia- 
tion.' He  illustrates  his  meaning  by  a  list  of  words  showing  how  one 
vowel  is  passing  towards  the  pronunciation  of  the  other.  Thus  had  is 
becoming  like  head,  lad  like  led,  man  like  men,  and  so  on.  '  The  broad- 


200     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

est  provincial  tone ',  he  adds,  '  seems  to  make  a  far  nearer  approach  to 
propriety  than  the  exchange  of  the  ( =  these)  sounds.  ...  It  cannot  be 
foreseen  whether  the  fickle  goddess  of  fashion  will  not  one  day  authorise 
such  an  alteration/  She  has  not  done  so  yet.  We  catch  echoes  of  this 
vulgarism,  springing,  no  doubt,  from  a  desire  for  a  bogus  elegance,  in  the 
satires  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray,  and  we  may  still  hear  '  head'  instead 
of  had  from  a  few  would-be  refined  vulgarians,  as  well  as  from  certain 
sections  of  Cockney  speakers. 

We  may  now  attempt  a  constructive  theory  of  the  course  of  events, 
which  are  somewhat  imperfectly  reflected  by  the  facts  which  have  so  far 
been  collected. 

It  seems  probable  that  the  fronting  of  M.E.  a  began  in  the  S.E. 
counties,  notably  in  Essex,  in  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
that  it  spread  during  the  first  half  of  the  century  to  Suffolk,  and  possibly 
to  Norfolk.  Only  gradually  did  the  tendency  spread  to  London,  and  at 
first  only  among  the  proletariat  or  the  middle  classes.  The  forms  in 
Gregory's  Chronicle,  if  we  take  them  as  establishing  that  he  had  the 
fronted  pronunciation,  may  be  due  largely  to  his  Suffolk  origin.  The 
fronting  was  very  gradual,  so  that  a  was  not  felt  as  an  incongruous  symbol 
for  the  sound.  When  we  find  ^-spellings,  or  rhymes  of  #-words  with 
those  containing  e,  we  may  reasonably  assume  that  the  vowel  implied  was 
fully  front.  From  the  lower  and  middle  classes  in  London  the  new 
pronunciation  passed  during  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  upper  classes, 
and  even  into  the  English  of  the  Court. 

Among  the  latter  sections  of  the  community  the  fronted  sound  may 
quite  possibly  have  been  at  first  an  affectation  adopted  from  some  feeling 
that  it  was  more  refined  than  the  '  broader '  [#].  This  seems  likely  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  even  to-day,  outside  Received  Standard  and  the 
dialects  of  the  Eastern  Counties  (as  far  as  Bedfordshire  and  Cambridge- 
shire ?),  the  sound  is  practically  unknown  in  natural  Regional  and  Class 
dialects.  In  any  case,  it  was  in  all  likelihood  universal  among  fashionable 
speakers  by  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  If  the  professed  writers  on 
English  pronunciation  are  so  slow  to  recognize  and  admit  the  existence 
of  [se],  this  is  due  partly  to  their  inadequate  observation  and  incapacity 
for  phonetic  analysis,  partly  to  their  dislike  of  new  departures  in  pronun- 
ciation, and  their  reluctance  to  admit  these,  especially  when  there  was  no 
traditional  symbol  ready  to  their  hand  to  express  the  new  sound.  It  was 
comparatively  easy  to  admit  the  new  [se  or  e]  from  old  a  because  it  was 
possible  to  liken  the  sound  to  French  or  Italian  or  Latin  e.  Also  a  long 
vowel  is  always  easier  to  recognize  and  describe  than  a  short  one.  It  was 
hardly  possible  to  give  any  idea  of  [ae]  without  some  knowledge  of  the 
functions  of  the  tongue  in  the  production  of  vowels,  such  as  Cooper  and, 
to  some  extent,  Wallis  possessed.  It  seems  likely  that  many  old- 
fashioned  speakers,  even  at  Court,  preserved  the  old  sound  well  into  the 
seventeenth  century. 

If  Shillingford's  hendes  really  implies  a  front  pronunciation  of  the 
vowel,  he  must  have  picked  up  the  sound  during  his  trip  to  London 
together  with  many  other  features  of  his  .English  which  are  foreign  to  his 
native  dialect  (cf.  pp.  65  and  81  above).  It  is  hardly  possible  that  [ae] 
should  have  existed  in  Devonshire  in  the  fifteenth  century,  seeing  that  it  is 


COMBINATIVE   TREATMENT   OF   OLD   a  201 

foreign  even  now  to  the  dialect  of  that  county.  The  form  can  hardly  be 
of  Scandinavian  origin — in  Devonshire !  If  we  take  St.  Editha's  cress 
=  crass  seriously,  this  was  probably  a  foreign  importation.  While  at  the 
present  time  most  English  provincial  dialects  show  more  or  less  well- 
marked  advancing  or  fronting  of  old  a,  except  in  the  North,  none  would 
seem  to  have  developed  a  full  front  vowel.  Even  the  considerably 
advanced  [#]  of  many  of  the  forms  of  Modified  Standard,  especially  as 
heard  in  large  towns,  is  probably  not  a  survival  of  the  native  Regional, 
but  due  to  the  influence  of  Received  Standard.  In  the  would-be  refined 
English  of  certain  classes  in  Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  vigorous  efforts  to 
attain  an  '  English  accent '  have  resulted  in  a  front  sound  indeed,  but  in 
[e]  instead  of  [ae]. 

M.E.  a  I  becomes  auL 

In  Late  M.E.  a  followed  by  -/  is  diphthongized  to  au.  This  happens 
only  in  stressed  syllables,  and  only  when  these  end  in  a  consonant. 
There  are  many  examples  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  of  the 
spelling  aul  or  awl.  It  is  doubtful  whether  these  spellings,  at  any  rate 
by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  do  not  express  a  sound  very  like  our 
present  sound  [5]  in  hall,  ball,  all,  salt,  rather  than  the  diphthong. 

The  development  of  [au]  to  [o]  is  discussed  below  (pp.  251-3). 

A  few  examples  will  suffice  to  illustrate  the  flw-spellings. 

Gregory,  Saulysbury,  102  (this  must  have  been  pronounced  [s<z«lzbm] 

with  no  vowel  following  the  -/) ;    Cely  Papers,  Tawbot  '  Talbot ',  46, 

fawkyner,  81,  aull  'all',  cawlyd,  74,  schawl  be.     The  last  word  must  be 

the  strong  or  stressed  form.     Our  present-day  shall  [Jael]  is  derived  from 

the  undiphthongized  unstressed  form,  which  is  far  commoner. 

Thos.  Pery  (1539), saume  'psalm ', Ellis ii.  2. 152 ;  Sir  Thos.  Seymour, 
cawlh,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  i,  p.  773  (1544);  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  hawle, 
Ellis  ii.  3.  15  (1572-6) ;  Q.  Elizabeth,  faule,  Letters,  4%,/aukth,  Transl.  2; 
stauke  '  stalk  ',  Trans.  26. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  multiply  examples,  as  these  may  be  found  scattered 
about  in  most  fifteenth-  and  sixteenth-century  letters. 

Wherever,  in  present-day  English,  the  combination  -al-  is  pronounced 
[51],  or  when  the  /  is  no  longer  pronounced,  as  in  talk,  stalk,  &c.,  [5],  we 
may  be  sure  that  this  vowel  is  derived  from  the  earlier  diphthong  au. 
The  change  of  this  into  [5]  has  been  so  regular  that  au,  aw  are  regarded 
in  English  as  the  natural  symbols  to  express  this  vowel  sound. 

See  p.  251,  &c,  below,  for  the  history  of  au. 


M.E.  a  in  the  Modern  Period  after  w-,  wh-,  gu-,  squ-. 

At  the  present  time  we  pronounce  a  rounded  vowel  \_o]  in  wand,  wash, 
what,  quantify,  squash,  &c.  If  we  assume  that  the  preceding  [w,  w] 
rounded  M.E.  a  before  fronting  to  [se]  had  taken  place,  the  change  in 
sound  is  easy  to  understand.  In  this  case  the  change  was  earlier  than  that  of 
[a]  to  [ae]  (cf.  pp.  196-200).  If  we  place  this  in  the  fifteenth  century  in  the 
South-East  and  in  the  following  century  in  London  English,  the  rounding 
after  w,  &c.,  must  be  earlier  still.  This  would  put  the  development  of  the 
rounded  vowel  in  this  position  rather  earlier  than  the  meagre  evidence  of 


202     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

occasional  spellings  would  lead  us  to  suppose.  The  Celys  write  wosse, 
whos,  &c.,  for  was  several  times,  and  the  same  form  occurs  in  Cr.  of 
Duke  of  York  a  Knight  of  the  Bath,  p.  390;  but  this  is  not  absolutely 
convincing,  since  the  Auxiliary  is  usually  unstressed,  and  the  spelling  may 
represent  the  reduced  vowel.  The  first  convincing  spelling  with  which 
I  am  acquainted  is  wosse  'wash',  Machyn,  p.  230.  In  William  Watson's 
Teares  of  France  (1593)  occurs  the  very  bad  rhyme  songs — swans,  which 
seems  to  imply  a  rounded  vowel  in  the  latter  word.  After  that  there 
is  nothing  until  the  seventeenth  century,  when  Sir  R.  Gresham  in  Verney 
Papers,  p.  106,  writes  Whoddon  for  Whadden  in  1622.  The  grammarian 
Daines  (1640)  says  that  ait  is  pronounced  in  quart,  wart,  swart,  and 
thwart.  This  implies  the  sound  [5]  with  the  lengthening  of  o  before  r. 
The  Verney  Memoirs  from  1642  onwards  furnish  numerous  examples  of 
^-spellings  of  a  after  w-t  &c.,  and  Cooper  in  1685  gives  war,  warm, 
warder,  watch,  water,  wattle,  wrath  as  containing  either  the  short  vowel 
in  of,  or  the  long  vowel  in  off  respectively. 

Already  in  the  fourteenth  century  I  have  noted  a  few  instances  of  o  for 
a  after  w-,  but  always  before  -/,  so  that  one  is  led  to  suppose  that  the 
latter  consonant  exercised  some  influence.  The  examples  are  : — swolwe- 
bridde,  Earliest  Eng.  Pr.  Psalter  (1350),  p.  180;  sivolj  'swallow'  (N.), 
Allit.  Poems,  Patience,  250 ;  swotyd  (Pret.),  Patience,  363, 1 268.  Chaucer 
in  the  House  of  Fame,  1035,  rhymes  swallow  (Vb.)  with  holowe. 

The  list  of  ^-spellings  in  the  letters  of  the  excellent  Verney  ladies  is 
a  fairly  long  one.  Whot  'what',  V.  Memoirs,  iv.  87,  1662  ;  wos  'was', 
1642,  ii.  67,  70,  71;  wore  'war',  1644,  i.  201;  worr,  1688,  iv.  449; 
worning,  1646,  ii.  356;  woshing  ' washing',  1661,  iv.  21;  woching 
'  watching ',  iii.  433  ;  Worik  *  Warwick ',  1658,  iii.  416 ;  quorill '  quarrel ', 
1674,  iv.  226;  quollity  'quality',  1683,  iv.  273;  quollyfications,  1685, 
iv.  275  ;  squobs  'squabs',  1664,  iv.  72. 

Woater  'water',  1688,  iv.  449,  though  representing  the  rounding  of 
M.E.  a,  may  be  included  here. 

Cooper  indicates  a  rounded  vowel  [o]  in  was,  wasp,  wan. 

The  words  waft,  quaff,  usually  pronounced  [waft,  kwaf),  though  some 
speakers  say  [w^ft,  w5ft,  kwof],  have  in  the  former  case  escaped  the 
rounding.  Unless  this  be  a  spelling  pronunciation,  which  is  unlikely, 
since  wa-  for  most  Englishmen  stands  for  [w.?,  WD],  these  forms  must 
represent  a  type  in  which  M.E.  wa-  became  [wee].  The  subsequent 
change  in  this  vowel  before  -ft  is  dealt  with  on  p.  204,  below. 

The  Pret.  swam  [swsem]  instead  of  [sw0m]  may  be  explained  by  the 
analogy  of  began  and  other  Prets.  of  this  class. 

By  the  side  of  the  rounded  forms  whose  existence  is  fully  established 
among  the  best  speakers,  by  the  above  evidence,  for  the  seventeenth 
century,  Mulcaster,  1582,  puts  warde,  wharf,  dwatf,  warn,  wasp  into  the 
same  list  as  cast,  far,  clasp,  grasp,  &c.,  as  regards  the  vowel,  Elementarie, 
127,  and  some  seventeenth-  and  eighteenth-century  grammarians  seem  to 
suggest  the  existence  of  unrounded  forms  such  as  [waez,  swsen,  kwael/t/, 
kwaentzb'J,  which  again  are  either  spelling  pronunciations  or  dialectal 
variants.  It  looks  as  if  we  must  assume  the  existence  of  a  speech  com- 
munity among  which  wa-  became  simply  [wse]  and  not  [w/|,  whose 
habits  of  speech  have  left  some  slight  traces.  It  is  certain,  in  spite  of  the 


ROUNDING;   LENGTHENING,   ETC.  203 

Verney  forms,  that  many  eighteenth-century  speakers  said  [kwselz'tz*  and 
kwaentzh'].  This  is  asserted  by  the  writers  on  pronunciation,  and  is  con- 
firmed by  a  statement  made  to  me  by  a  lady  who  died  recently,  aged 
eighty-six,  that  nearly  eighty  years  before,  a  great-aunt  of  hers,  then  very 
old,  corrected  my  informant  for  saying  [kw^hb',  kw^ntzb'],  asserting  that 
these  were  vulgar  pronunciations.  Further,  in  Leigh  Hunt's  Auto- 
biography, p.  180,  it  is  recorded  that  John  Kemble  the  actor  (1757-1823) 
always  said  [kwaeh't*']. 

The  rounding  does  not  normally  occur  in  Received  Standard  English 
when  wa-,  qua-,  wha-  are  followed  by  g  or  k.  Hence  we  pronounce  [se] 
in  wag,  whack,  wax,  quack,  quagmire.  The  Danish  writer  Bertram  (1753), 
whose  observations  are  generally  accurate,  states,  however,  that  a  rounded 
vowel  was  heard  in  quagmire,  and  [kw.?g-]  may  still  be  heard. 

If  the  seventeenth-  and  eighteenth-century  unrounded  forms  of  such 
words  as  wash,  swan,  wasp  were  not  spelling  pronunciations,  that  is,  if 
wa-  really  developed  into  [wae-]  and  subsequently  became  [wo],  then  we 
must  assume  that  the  initial  w,  while  not  hindering  the  early  fronting  of 
the  vowel,  later  unfronted  it  again  before  rounding.  This  would  be 
a  later  process  than  that  which,  among  a  different  set  of  speakers,  rounded 
M.E.  a  direct,  before  fronting  took  place. 

The  poets  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  (e.g.  Surrey, 
Wyatt,  Sackville,  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Habington,  Donne,  and  Herrick) 
do  not,  so  far  as  I  have  got  evidence,  rhyme  wa-  with  o,  but  with  a 
— e.g.  want  rhymes  with  grant,  pant,  &c.,  was  with  grass.  Pope  rhymes 
rewards — cards,  Moral  Essays,  Epistle  ii.  243.  These  rhymes  would 
still  be  held  perfectly  sound,  being  traditional,  and  also  appealing 
to  the  eye.  These  reasons  would  explain  their  occurrence  at  an  earlier 
date,  even  if  those  who  used  them  pronounced  [w^nt,  w^z],  &c.  Such 
rhymes  prove  nothing  one  way  or  the  other.  The  absence  of  the  rhymes 

wa o  may  be   due   to  the   dislike  already  alluded  to,  to  rhyme  in 

antagonism  to  the  conventional  spelling. 
M.E.  a  before  s,f,  th  [s,  f,  J>];  also  before  r  and  r  + consonant. 

The  words  path,  bath;  pass,  glass;  chaff,  after;  hard,  far,  &c.,  may 
serve  as  types  of  what  has  happened  to  the  old  short  vowel  before  the 
above-mentioned  consonants.  In  Received  Standard,  instead  of  a  short 
vowel  [se]  we  have  a  long  [a].  In  the  various  Regional  and  Class  dialects, 
different  developments  occur,  such  as  [glas,  glaes,  glses],  &c.;  these, 
however,  do  not  concern  us  here,  except  in  as  much  as  they  may  repre- 
sent survivals  of  the  stages  through  which  the  Received  Standard  forms 
have  passed  in  their  time.  Two  things,  then,  have  happened  to  the  vowel 
in  Early  Modern  [paef,  glaes,  tjaef] :  it  has  been  lengthened,  and  it  has 
been  retracted,  from  a  front  to  a  back  vowel. 

The  generally  received  view  is  that  M.E.  path,  &c.,  became  [paef>], 
whenever  the  fronting  took  place ;  that  this  was  then  lengthened  to  [pae)>] 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  whence  [p#}>]  developed  in  the  course  of  the 
eighteenth.  In  the  same  way  hard  became  [haerd,  haerd,  ha(r)d].  There 
is  little  fault  to  find  with  this,  except  as  regards  the  approximate  period 
of  lengthening.  This  took  place,  in  all  probability,  much  earlier  than  is 
usually  supposed. 

We  shall  see  (p.  257)  that  #  is  lengthened  in  Warwickshire  as  early  as 


204     STRESSED   VOWELS  IN   THE  MODERN   PERIOD 

1420,  when  we  find  crooft  for  croft  (Coventry  Leet) ;  also  that  the  spelling 
marster  for  master  occurs  in  the  Cely  Papers.  This  last  form  has  been 
adduced  to  prove  that  r  could  have  had  no  consonantal  sound  at  this 
period  before  -s,  but  it  also  shows  that  the  preceding  vowel  was  long,  in 
fact  that  a  was  already  lengthened  before  -s  +  consonant.  There  is  no 
reason  for  supposing  that  lengthening  of  a  took  place  earlier  before  -s 
than  before  [f,f>],  or  that  the  vowel  o  was  lengthened  earlier  before /than 
a  was.  If  we  draw  what  seems  the  natural  inference  from  these  facts  we 
shall  have  to  assume  that,  at  any  rate  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
the  vowel  in  path,  glass,  chaff  was  already  long.  Did  this  lengthening 
occur  before  or  after  the  fronting  of  a  ?  Are  we  to  assume  for  the  six- 
teenth century  [pof>,  glas,  tjtff],  or  [pai]?,  glaes,  tjsef]? 

The  question  seems  open  to  discussion,  and  it  may  be  well  to  argue  it 
out.  Let  us  assume  that  M.E.  bap  *  bath '  was  lengthened  direct  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  before  the  fronting  of  a,  to  bap.  In  this  case  what  was 
its  position  with  regard  to  the  verb  bathe,  which  had  a  long  a  in  M.E.  ? 
Either  this  latter  vowel  had  already  been  fronted,  or  it  had  not.  If  not, 
then  bap  and  bad  must  have  had  the  same  vowel,  and  this,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  fronted  in  the  fifteenth  century  and  subsequently  became  [e]. 
The  same  fate  would,  therefore,  have  overtaken  the  same  vowel  in  both 
words,  with  the  result  that  there  would  have  been  no  distinction  in  vowel 
sound  at  the  present  time  between  bath  and  bathe.  But  there  is  a  dis- 
tinction. Let  us  assume,  then,  that  when  bap  became  bap,  the  old  a  in 
\ba<f\  was  already  fronted  and  had  thus  got  far  ahead  of  the  new  a.  This 
assumption  necessitates  the  further  one  that  at  a  later  period  a  fresh 
tendency  arose  to  front  a.  But  this  assumption  is  not  justified,  apparently, 
by  facts.  We  are  compelled,  therefore,  to  assume  that  bap  did  not 
become  bap  direct,  but  that  the  vowel  had  already  been  fronted  before 
the  lengthening  took  place,  so  that  the  development  was  [balp,  baef,  bse]?]. 
This  offers  no  difficulty,  since  we  know  that  [bsef]  did  exist  (from  the 
testimony  of  the  seventeenth-century  Orthoepists),  and  the  only  question 
which  arises  is,  when  did  it  come  into  existence  ?  If  it  be  held,  as  it  still 
is  by  some,  that  M.E.  a  had  only  reached  the  [se]  stage  by  the  sixteenth 
century,  this  would  certainly  be  a  difficulty,  but  we  have  established 
already  (pp.  195-6)  at  least  a  very  strong  probability  that  by  that 
period  [e],  or  still  more  probably  [e],  had  already  been  reached  by  the 
old  0,  so  that,  if  that  be  so,  the  difficulty  is  removed. 

Incidentally  it  may  be  remarked  that  such  a  rhyme  as  past — waste, 
which  occurs  in  Shakespeare's  sonnet,  '  When  to  the  sessions  of  sweet 
silent  thought ',  is  intelligible  if  we  assume  that  the  vowels  in  both  words 
were  long — [psest — west] — but  hardly  so  if  we  are  to  suppose  [p£st — 
west]  or  even  [west]. 

As  regards  the  change  from  [psest,  bse}?,  seft3(r)]  to  [past],  &c.,  it  is 
difficult  to  be  sure  of  the  approximate  date  of  the  change.  The  state- 
ments of  the  eighteenth-century  authorities  are  very  unsatisfactory.  The 
chief  argument  against  assuming  a  very  early  (say  late  seventeenth  or 
early  eighteenth  century)  retraction  to  [a]  is  the  fact  that  this  vowel  seems 
to  have  been  difficult  for  Englishmen  at  that  time.  Why,  if  the  sound 
was  a  common  one  in  our  language,  did  it  always  become  [5],  written  aw 
or  au,  in  foreign  words  when  borrowed  into  English  ? 


THE   VOWEL  IN   LAUGH,   ETC.  205 

We  find  spaw  for  Spa  in  the  Verney  Memoirs,  ii.  23  (1641) ;  iv.  120 
(1665),  and  the  habit  survives  in  the  spelling  and  pronunciation  of 
Cawnpore,  Punjaub,  brandy  pawnee,  and  in  the  pronunciation  [kobwl] 
for  Cabul,  really  [p^ndzab,  panz',  kabwl],  &c.  The  old-fashioned  and 
now  vulgar  pronunciation  [voz]  for  vase  illustrates  the  same  point.  The 
word  in  this  form  must  have  been  borrowed  when  [d]  was  unknown  in 
English.  Our  present-day  pronunciation  [vaz]  is  the  result  of  a  com- 
paratively recent  approximation  to  the  French  sound. 

Before  r,  a  becomes  -o  in  some  dialects;  cf.  for  instance  Charlbury, 
Oxon.,  locally  called  [tjolbn'].  There  was  in  the  nineteenth  century 
a  hyper-fashionable  or  vulgar  by-form  [t|5lz]  of  Charles.  This  used  to  be 
facetiously  written  '  Chawles '.  The  prototype  of  this  form  seems  to  occur 
in  Mrs.  Basire's  chorls,  141  (1655).  Cp.  also  Cooper,  p.  173,  above. 
The  form  is  difficult  to  account  for  unless  [d\  had  already  developed 
from  [ee]. 

The  Vowel  in  half,  laugh,  dance,  &c. 

If  we  assume  that  our  pronunciation  of  these  words  goes  back  to 
a  late  M.E.  haf,  laf,  dance  which  became  [haef— naif — h<zf],  &c.,  there  is 
no  difficulty  concerning  them,  nor  one  or  two  other  words,  such  as  calf. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  insist  on  deriving  our  present  forms  from  Early 
Modern  forms  with  the  diphthong  au — haulf,  caulf,  lauf,  daunse,  &c. — as 
some  scholars  do,  then  we  are  put  to  all  sorts  of  shifts  to  explain  the 
present-day  [d~\  instead  of  [5].  That  diphthongized  forms  haulf,  caulf 
existed,  no  one  doubts,  but  it  is  suggested  that  undiphthongized  forms 
also  existed,  and  that  from  these  our  present  received  pronunciation  is 
derived.  As  regards  laugh,  laughter,  there  is  no  proof  that  [la«ffor],  &c., 
ever  existed.  In  words  of  this  kind  there  were  two  types,  one  in  which 
the  final  [^]  became  [f],  and  in  this  type  au  did  not  develop ;  but  there 
was  another  type  in  which  final  [x]  or  this  sound  before  /  did  not 
become  [f]  but  retained  its  back  character  and  then  disappeared.  In 
this  type  au  did  develop,  and  afterwards,  quite  normally,  became  [5]. 
Our  forms  laugh,  laughter  (in  spite  of  the  spelling  which  really  belongs 
to  the  second  type),  and  the  earlier  forms,  so  much  in  vogue  right  into 
the  eighteenth  century,  staffer,  dafter,  are  derived  from  the  first  type.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  received  pronunciation  of  slaughter,  daughter  with 
[3]  is  derived  from  the  second  type.  See  p.  288,  below,  for  early 
examples  of  the  spellings  laffe,  &c.,  and  p.  297  for  ^a/'half '. 

M.E.  ?  in  the  Modern  Period. 

By  common  consent,  the  long  tense  e  of  M.E.,  no  matter  what  its  origin, 
was  raised  to  [l]  in  the  Early  Modern  period.  Apart  from  present-day 
vulgar  English  of  big  towns,  the  new  vowel  sound  has  been  preserved. 
In  the  degraded  forms  referred  to,  there  appears  to  be  a  tendency  to 
diphthongize  [i]  to  something  like  [az'].  This  tendency  generally  goes 
with  a  drawling  habit  of  speech  which  seems  incompatible  with  the 
preservation  of  any  long  vowel  as  a  pure  sound.  The  same  speakers 
who  pronounce  [ha/,  baz',  maz]  for  he,  be,  me,  &c.,  also  diphthongize  the 
vowel  in  boot,  &c.  (cf.  235,  below). 


206    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

The  first  indications  we  get  of  the  change  of  [e]  to  [l]  are  given  by 
the  occasional  spellings  of  persons  who  write  i,y  instead  of  e.  These 
spellings,  so  far  as  my  knowledge  goes,  begin  before  the  end  of  the  first 
quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century.  They  are  fairly  frequent  during  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  are  found  even  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  following  examples  will  suffice : 

Siege  of  Rouen,  c,  1420 — hyre  'hear',  1.  23,  hyrde  'heard',  29. 
Bokenam  (1443) — besychyn,  S.  Marg.  925;  Shillingford  (1447-50) 
mykely,  myte  '  meet ',  6,  hire  '  hear ',  9,  dyme  '  deem ',  1 3,  myve 
'move',  60,  from  M.E.  meve,  meeve,  pryving,  pryved,  57,  'proving', 
&c.,  from  M.E.preve.  Shillingford's  wyke  'week',  59,  may  =  [wlk],  or 
it  may  represent  an  old  form  wike  without  lengthening.  Sike  '  sick ',  64, 
may  be  either  M.E.  seke,  or  an  early  shortening. 

Gregory  (1450-70)— &r*  'hear',  passim,  dyre  '  dear',  116,  stypylle 
'steeple',  149,  slyvys,  160,  'sleeves';  the  spelling  schyppe,  162,  'sheep', 
no  doubt  expresses  a  shortening  of  the  vowel  after  it  had  been  raised  to  [i]. 
Margaret  Paston  (1440-70) — thir,  2.  142,  'there,  in  which',  hyrafter 
'here-',  2.  178,  agryed,  2.  i>jg,priste  'priest',  2.  179,  symed  'seemed', 
2.  186,  spyde  '  speed',  2.  i88,fg?i*gr,  2.  i<)2,dymeth,  2.  ig^shype  'sheep', 
2.  196,  kype,  2.  197,  wypyng  '  weeping',  2.  226.  Creation  of  Knight  of 
the  Bath  (1494) — sien  'seen',  390,  indied,  391,  Letters  and  Papers, 
vol.  i.  Hymn  to  B.V.M.  (before  1500) — wi,  Quin  'queen',  tri  'tree', 
win' '  weary ',  si  '  see '. 

Anne  Boleyn  in  1528  writes  besyche,  Ellis  i.  i.  306  and  307,  and  so 
does  Thos.  Pery  in  1539,  Ellis  2.  2.  148.  The  spelling  Mons.  de  Guees 
for  Guise  in  Cavendish's  Life  of  Wolsey,  p.  76,  makes  it  quite  clear  what 
value  the  symbol  ee  had  for  the  writer.  Ascham  has  style  '  steel ', 
Toxophilus,  112,  and  piuyshlye,  Tox.  83  and  84;  Roper's  Life  of  Sir 
Thos.  More,  liver  'rather',  xxviii.  16  (1556).  As  has  been  pointed  out 
already,  p.  136,  Queen  Elizabeth  in  her  letters  and  in  her  Translations 
makes  very  frequent  use  of  this  spelling.  The  following  list  is  rather 
fuller  than  that  given  above,  and  includes  references.  From  letters  to 
James  VI  (1582-1602)  : — agreed,  p.  n,  fa'res&y  (Noun),  17,  grivous,  19, 
ivel,  20,  kiping,  23,  fried  'freed',  23,  nideful  'need-',  27,  &jte'keep', 
53,  besiche  'beseech',  53,  spidye  '  speedy ',  53,  hire  (Inf.),  61 ;  from 
Ellis :  —briding  'breed-',  i.  2.  157  (1549),  dides  'deeds',  i.  2.  147,  hire, 
i.  2.  146.  In  the  Translations,  among  other  forms,  we  find  whir 
'where',  p.  146.  The  habit  of  these  spellings,  then,  is  observable 
in  the  Queen's  writings  from  her  girlhood  to  the  end  of  her  life.  It 
is  unnecessary  to  prolong  the  list  farther,  and  still  less  necessary  to 
refer  to  the  early  Orthoepists,  who  for  once  seem  all  to  agree,  and  all 
to  be  describing  the  real  facts.  It  may  be  useful  to  observe  that  when 
the  late  sixteenth-  and  the  seventeenth-century  writers  on  pronunciation 
speak  of  the  sound  of  '  ee ',  they  invariably  mean  [i]. 

How  early  did  the  sound  change  take  place  ?  Since  we  have  evidence 
of  it  in  spelling  as  early  as  1420  or  thereabouts,  it  is  probable  that  the 
present  sound  was  fully  developed  in  pronunciation  considerably,  perhaps 
fifty  years,  earlier,  A  thorough  search  through  the  late  fourteenth-century 
texts  might  reveal  examples  of  /, y  spellings  in  these.  It  is  probable  that 
M.E.  e  was  pronounced  very  tense,  and  slightly  raised,  like  the  vowel  in 


LENGTHENING    OF   SHORT   f  207 

Danish- se  'see',  which  to  English  ears  is  almost  indistinguishable  from 
[si].  This,  point  is  reached  before  the  full  high  position  of  the  tongue  is 
attained.  It  might,  of  course,  be  argued  that  the  fifteenth-century 
spellings  indicate  only  a  very  tense  and  very  high  [e],  and  that  the  full 
[l]  sound  is  only  reached  in  the  following  century.  The  exact  chronology 
of  minute  degrees  of  sound  change  is  not  obtainable  with  absolute 
certainty,  but  the  facts  and  inferences  based  upon  them  with  regard 
to  the  history  of  M.E.  e*  [i]  (see  pp.  209-13)  all  make,  in  my  opinion,  in 
favour  of  the  view  here  taken,  that  [i]  was  probably  fully  developed  from 
el  before  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

So  far  as  my  present  knowledge  goes,  I  see  no  reason  for  claiming 
any  particular  Regional  dialect  as  the  starting-point  of  the  change,  nor 
any  Class  dialect  as  the  medium  through  which  it  passed  into  the  English 
spoken  in  London,  and  ultimately  into  Received  Standard.  The  sound 
change  appears  common  to  the  speech  of  all  areas  and  classes. 

The  Vowel  in  evil,  &><:. 

We  have  now  briefly  to  consider  a  group  of  words  containing  M.E.  el 
of  Late  M.E.  origin. 

There  are  a  few  words  in  Received  Standard  English  at  the  present 
day  which  have  [I]  spelt  e  or  ee,  about  which  there  has  been  some  dis- 
cussion. The  chief  words  are  evil,  beetle,  weevil,  and  week,  the  last  three 
of  which  all  have  original  i  in  O.E.  In  some  dialects  bitul,  wifol,  wicu 
appear  as  beotul,  weofol,  weocu.  In  M.E.  these  become  betel,  wevel,  weke 
respectively,  the  <?  being  due  to  monophthonging  ofeo  to  ^,and  the  lengthen- 
ing of  this  in  open  syllables  in  M.E.  Until  recently  these  M.E.  forms 
were  accepted  as  the  ancestors  of  the  present-day  forms.  Evil,  O.E. 
yfel,  was  regarded  as  the  descendant  of  the  Kentish  type,  O.E.  efel,  M.E. 
evel.  It  has  been  pointed  out,  however,  that  M.E.  lengthened  e  was 
slack,  and  would  not  produce  [i]  in  the  Earliest  Modern,  but  at  best  [e]. 
It  is  pretty  generally  accepted  now  that  in  certain  dialectal  areas — not 
yet  very  precisely  defined — O.E.  i  in  open  syllables  was  lengthened  in 
M.E.,  and  lowered  to  a  tense  [e]  which  would  account  perfectly  well  for 
the  Modern  forms  of  the  above  words.  Evil  is  regarded  not  as  a 
1  Kentish  '  form,  but  as  an  E.  Midland  form  from  ivel,  the  vowel  of  which 
was  lengthened  to  tense  e  in  later  M.E.  (See  on  this  question  my  Short 
Hist,  of  Eng.,  §§174  and  229,  Note  i,  and  references  there  given.) 

In  present-day  Standard  English  we  usually  retain  the  short  forms  of 
words  with  O.E.  and  M.E.  z,  as  in  live,  give,  written,  shriven,  little,  to  wit, 
privy,  city,  pity,  stick  Vb.,  &c.,  &c.  As  we  shall  see,  however,  the  long 
forms  with  [i]  were  far  commoner  during  the  first  four  centuries  of  the 
Modern  period  than  at  present.  '  Peety  '  [pit*]  for  pity  was  occasionally 
heard  till  quite  recently,  and  '  leetle '  [litl]  is  still  used  facetiously  in  the 
sense  of  '  very  little '.  There  is  some  difficulty  in  distinguishing  among 
the  early  spellings  with  e,  those  which  really  represent  the  long  vowel, 
from  those  which  are  the  lowered  form  of  the  short/,  discussed  pp.  226-9, 
&c.  In  the  case  of  some  words  such  as  live,  give,  we  know  in  other 
ways  that  the  pronunciation  [liv,  giv]  was  current;  in  other  cases  the 
spelling  ea  or  ee  sometimes  reveals  the  length.  It  is  certainly  possible 
that  all  three  pronunciations  [Izv,  lev,  liv,  giv,  gev,  giv],  &c.,  coexisted. 


208     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

The  dialectal  distribution  of  the  late  M.E.  <?-forms  from  earlier  i  needs 
much  more  investigation  than  it  has  hitherto  received.  At  any  rate,  the 
view  that  the  lengthening  (to  e)  of  /  in  open  syllables  was  a  purely 
Northern  process  must  be  given  up.  It  undoubtedly  involved  a  consider- 
able area  of  the  E.  Midlands,  and  may  even  have  spread  South,  and,  to 
some  extent,  Westwards. 

The  following  examples,  in  so  far  as  they  contain  a  long  vowel  and  are 
rightly  classified  here,  must  be  regarded  as  having  M.E.  e1,  which  was 
raised  to  [i]  very  early,  in  these  as  in  other  words. 

Lydgate — wedewe,  &c. ;  Coventry  Leet  (1421) — previe,  131;  Hen.  V 
(Letters  of  Marg. of  Anjou,  &c.) — yeuenP.T*.,  2 1  (this  may,  however,  be  M.E. 
/2);  Wm.  Paston — abedyn  P.  P.,  i.  30 ;  Bokenam — pete  '  pity ',  Pr.  ^i^sekyr, 
Pr.  70,  wretyn,  Pr.  Marg.  41,  weteth,  Pr.  Marg.  228,  presoun,  Pr.  Marg. 
289,  iebet,  Marg.  428,  and  Christ.  366,  bedel,  Pr.  Marg.  349  (may  repre- 
sent either  M.E.  bldel,  or  S.E.  type  bedel  with  lengthening),  wedowe,  Ann. 
578,  shrevyn,  Elev.  Thous.  Virg.  415,  quekyn  Inf.,  Cecil.  782,  793,  796, 
lenyn  Pres.  PI.,  Lucie  296;  Gregory — preson^  65,  81,  levyd  '  lived  ',  106, 
wete  'wit'  Vb.,  levyn  Inf.,  130,  wedowe,  164,  peiefullyste,  199,  rever 
'river',  207;  Shillingford — weket,  101 ;  Exeter  Tailors'  Guild — weke, 
319,  wekett,  %22,geven,  315  (perhaps  M.E.  /*,  fr.  O.E.  geofen],  dener,  315 
(both  long  and  short  forms  of  e  occur  in  this  word,  cf.  Machyn ;  dener 
being  a  case  of  the  lengthened  forms  we  are  considering,  dener  of  the 
lowering  treated  on  pp.  226-9);  Ord.  of  Worcester — geve,  388  ;  Shilling- 
ford — prevyly,  61,  prevy  seal,  63  ;  Marg.  Paston — levyn  '  live '  Inf.,  petous, 
ii.  26,  preson,  ii.  84  (indeferently,  i.  178,  and  levery,  ii.  192,  &c.,  are 
doubtful);  Short  Eng.  Chron. — presone,  74,  prevely,  75;  Cr.  of  Knt.  of 
Bath — shreven  P.  P.,  390,  gentilwemen,  393;  Caxton — to  wete  'wit', 
Jason,  58.  i^wre/en  'written',  15.  24;  Sir  Robt.  Wingfield  (1513) — 
gevyn  P.  P.,  Ellis  2.  i.  212  ;  Bury  Wills — wedow,  78,  dener,  74,  wedowed 
'-hood',  75  (1482),  leve  'live',  in  (1509);  Lord  Berners — suspeciously 
(?),  i.  71,  jebet,  i.  36;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot — weete  Inf.,  i.  51  ;  Will  of 
R.  Bradley  (Leics.  1533),  L.  D.  D. — levyng,  161.  19,  geue,  161.  27;  Will 
of  R.  Astbrooke  (Bucks.  1534),  L.  D.  D. — I  geue,  168.  n  ;  Sir  Thos. 
Seymour,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII  i  (1544) — rever,  776;  Thos.  Lever's 
Serm.—forgeuenesse,  50;  Machyn — deener,  138,  cete  'city',  10,  presuns, 
18,  Prevesell '  Privy  Seal ',  37,  pete,  43,  wedew,  49,  leved,  67,  veker  'vicar', 
80  ;  Gabr.  Harvey's  Letters — steekid,  2,  steek  '  stick  ',  34  ;  Verney  Memoirs 
— letel,  M.  Faulkiner,  ii.  55  (1642),  leetle,  ii.  355  (1645)  and  384  (1648), 
reaver  '  river',  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  137  (1666), pety>  Lady  Hobart,  ibid.  138. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  Lady  Wentworth  has — leved  '  lived ',  Wentw. 
Pprs.  64,  116,  levin  and  leving  'living',  54,  pety,  39,  geven  P.  P.,  40,  56, 
64,  lever  'liver  ',  42,  wemen  'women',  113. 

We  see  that  these  forms  were  both  fairly  numerous  and  widespread 
formerly,  and  it  is  remarkable  that  nearly  all  should  have  been  eliminated 
from  Received  Standard  and  Literary  English. 

It  is  highly  probable  that  many  more  of  these  forms,  in  documents  of 
the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries  are  concealed  under 
the  spelling  z',  in  which  case  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  them  from  the 
unlengthened  forms.  Thus  such  a  spelling  as  give  may  well  represent 
either  of  the  two  forms  [g*v,  giv]. 


THE   VOWEL   IN   HEAT,  ETC.  209 

M.E.  e*  =  [§]. 

This  sound,  which  remained  during  the  whole  M.E.  period,  and  for  some 
time  afterwards,  quite  distinct  from  el  =  [e]  (see  pp.  205-7),  nas  various 
origins  (for  which  see  pp.  29,  30  ;  33-4,  above).  With  the  exception  of  the 
words  break,  great,  steak,  all  words  originally  containing  this  sound,  unless 
shortening  or  other  combinative  influences  have  supervened  (see  p.  212), 
have  in  present-day  Received  Standard  developed  the  vowel  [i],  so  that 
the  old  [e]  is  now  completely  levelled  under  old  [e].  Examples  of 
words  containing  M.E.  e*  are  : — meat,  eat,  breathe,  speak,  steal;  heat, 
teach,  heath,  deal  (Vb.) ;  clean ;  leap,  heap,  east}  also  the  French  words 
feast,  beast,  veal,  &c.,  &c. 

For  the  shortening  of  this  vowel  see  p.  254. 

When  e1  was  raised  to  [i]  (cf.  pp.  205-7),  ^  at  first  remained  unaltered. 
At  this  point  M.E.  a  and  M.E.  at,  which,  as  we  have  seen  (pp.  194-6),  had 
by  this  time  both  been  levelled  under  a  single  sound,  caught  up  P,  and 
thus  the  three  originally  distinct  vowels  were  all  represented  by  the  single 
sound  [i],  which  was  tending  more  and  more  to  become  tense. 

Between  this  stage  and  the  present  sound  the  intermediate  stage  [e] 
must  certainly  be  assumed.  When  was  this  stage  of  a  fully  tense  vowel 
reached  ? 

It  seems  likely  that  soon  after  M.E.  e1  became  [i],  <?2  would  take  its 
place  as  a  mid-front-tense  vowel ;  the  tendency  of  Modern  English  being, 
on  the  whole,  to  make  long  vowels  tense  and  to  reserve  slack  quality  for 
short  vowels.  We  shall  probably  be  within  the  mark  if  we  place  the 
development  of  the  new  tense  e  at  least  as  early  as  the  first  quarter  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  This  view  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  in  Gregory's 
Chronicle  (1450-70)  M.E.  helen  'conceal',  fr.  O.E.  helan,  is  written  hylyn 
(p.  146),  where  the  M.E.  vowel  was  certainly  [e].  , 

This  is  evidence  that  among  certain  sections  of  the  community,  at  any 
rate,  this  new  e  had  already  been  raised  to  [i].  Again,  in  the  virulent 
Protestant  tract  Rede  me  and  be  not  wrothe  (i 528)  the  rhyme  cleane — bene 
'  been '  occurs.  Now  the  latter  word  can  only  have  had  [l]  at  this  time, 
since  it  contains  M.E.  e1. 

During  the  sixteenth  century  we  find  scattered  spellings  of  this  vowel 
with  i,  e.g.  Mzchyn—firych  '  preach ',  p.  13,  &c.,  brykyng  'breaking', 
109,  bryke-fast,  199,  spykyng  'speaking',  35;  Ascham  has  lipe  'leap', 
Toxophilus,  p.  89;  Gabriel  Harvey,  Letters,  1573-80,  has  birive,  p.  53; 
Q.  Elizabeth  has  bequived  'bequeathed',  Transl.  140  (M.E.  quefre,  O.E. 
cwepari),  besides  spike  Vb.  The  Queen  also  has  spick,  but  this  no 
doubt  represents  the  non-Southern  form  with  e\  Skelton  rhymes  stepe — 
lepe,  Ph.  Sparowe,  114-15;  Surrey  rhymes  grene—clene  (Tottel,  p.  3). 
Spenser  rhymes  seas — these  in  Heavenly  Beautie,  and  streeme — seeme  in 
Prothalamion,  cleene  with  beene  P.  P.,  sheene  (Adj.)  and  seene,  F.  Q.  2.  i.  10; 
Shakespeare  rhymes  teach  thee — beseech  thee,  V.  &  A.  404  and  406 ;  but 
all  of  these  poets  have,  more  commonly,  rhymes  which  suggest  the  [e] 
pronunciation  (cf.  p.  211).  The  grammarian  Gill,  in  Logonomia  (1621), 
mentions  with  contempt  what  he  considers  affected,  effeminate  pronuncia- 
tions with  [i]  of  leave  and  meat,  which  he  writes  liv,  mit.  Thus  the 
comparatively  early  raising  to  [i]  and  therefore  a  still  earlier  '  tensening '  of 
M.E.  tf2  are  completely  established. 


210    STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

But  this  is  not  the  whole  story.  It  is  evident  from  rhymes  and  from 
the  statements  of  writers  on  pronunciation  that  [spik]  for  speak  and  so 
on  was  not  the  only,  nor  indeed  the  prevalent,  type  in  Received  Standard 
during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  Another  pronunciation, 
with  [e],  in  words  of  this  class  is  recorded,  and  this  seems  to  have  been 
the  more  usual  during  this  period.  We  must  assume,  therefore,  that  the 
[e]  from  earlier  [e]  was  differentiated  among  different  classes  of 
speakers — whether  in  a  Regional  or  a  Class  dialect  I  am  unable  at 
present  to  say — into  two  types,  one  of  which  retained  the  old  [ej,  while 
the  other  gradually  raised  this  to  [i].  It  is  unnecessary  to  discuss  at 
length  the  often  contradictory  and  never  very  clear  statements  of  the 
English  and  French  writers  as  to  the  precise  quality  of  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth-century  English  'long  e',  but  so  much  at  least  seems 
certain,  that  they  refer  to  a  mid  and  not  a  high  vowel.  We  have  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  this  was  tense  and  not  slack,  quite  apart  from  their 
statements.  If  these  were  accepted  literally  they  would  generally  tend 
to  show  that  the  vowel  was  slack.  Even  Cooper  (1685)  equates  the 
quality  of '  long  e '  with  that  of  the  short  in  ken.  On  the  other  hand,  Wallis 
(1653),  anc*  Sherwood  in  Cotgrave's  Dictionary  (1672),  state  that  English 
*  long  e '  has  the  sound  of  French  /,  that  is,  a  tense  sound. 

If  these  men  are  right,  then  Cooper  is  wrong,  and  it  is  not  extraordi- 
nary that,  good  phonetician  as  he  is  on  the  whole,  he  should  not  have 
realized  that  there  was  a  difference  of  quality  as  well  as  quantity  between 
the  vowels  in  sell — sail,  tell — tale  respectively,  these  being,  amongst  others, 
the  examples  he  gives  of  '  long  '  and  '  short  e '.  Cooper  shows  clearly 
that  he  did  not  appreciate  the  distinction  of  tense  and  slack,  since  he  gives 
the  pair  win — wean  [i — i]  as  differing  only  in  the  length  of  the  vowel. 

However,  passing  from  this  point,  we  may  note  that  Cooper  gives 
a  longish  list  of  words  containing  '  long  e ',  words,  that  is,  with  '  ea  pro  e 
longa ',  which  includes  the  following : — beacon,  bead,  beam,  lean  (Vb.  and 
Adj.),  beat,  bequeath,  bleach,  breach,  break,  deal,  dream,  Easter,  eat,  great, 
heal,  cheap,  heap,  heat,  heath,  heathen,  leaf,  leap,  clean,  leave,  mead  (the 
drink),  meal,  meat,  sea,  seat,  sheaf,  sheath,  speak,  squeak,  steal,  stream, 
sweat,  teach,  weak,  wean  (Vb.),  bean,  ivheat ;  also  the  words  of  French 
origin  : — appeal,  beast,  cease,  cheat,  conceal,  cream,  creature,  deceave,  defeat, 
disease,  ease,  extream,  feast,  impeach,  preach,  queasie,  repeat,  reveal,  treat, 
veal.  This  is  a  pretty  satisfactory  list  of  words  which  had  [e]  in  M.E., 
and  it  is  perfectly  certain,  in  my  opinion,  that  in  Cooper's  pronunciation 
all  these  had  the  sound  [e].  I  am  quite  unable  to  see  the  force  of  the 
arguments  of  Jones,  the  recent  editor  of  Cooper,  and  of  Zachrisson,  who 
seek,  apparently,  to  prove  that  Cooper  intended  to  suggest  that  all  these 
words  were  pronounced  with  [i].  He  definitely  places  them  under  ea ; 
immediately  above  comes  a  list  of  words  like  behead,  bread,  &c.,  in  which 
he  says  '  Ea  ponitur  pro  e  brevis ',  and  our  list,  as  stated,  is  headed  '  ea 
pro  e  longa '.  Of  *  E1  he  says, '  Vera  huiusce  soni  productio  scribitur  per 
a  absque  a  longum  falso  denominatur  ut  in  cane,  wane,  age '.  Further,  in 
a  list  of  words  pronounced  alike  though  written  differently,  '  Voces  -quae 
eandem  habent  pronunciationem ',  &c.,  Cooper  includes  meat — mate. 
Surely  if  this  means  anything  it  means  what  we  have  already  tried  to 
establish,  that  M.E.  a  and  M.E.  <?2  had  both  the  same  sound  in  the 


SEVENTEENTH  AND  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  RHYMES  211 

* 

seventeenth  century,  if  not  much  earlier,  and  further,  if  we  can  ever  learn 
anything  from  the  Orthoepists,  we  may  learn  that  this  sound  was  a  mid 
and  not  a  high  vowel.  Shakespeare  rhymes  sea  \vithplay,  &c.  (see  p.  ) ; 
Spenser,  seates — states,  Heavenly  Beautie,  retrate  (sic) — late,  F.  Q. 
i.  8.  12;  Habington — sea  with  pray,  Castara,  134,  with  play,  89,  with 
away,  91,  and  so  on;  Thames — streames,  ibid.  21;  and  Suckling — cleane 
with  Seine  in  '  I  came  from  England  into  France  '.  Donne — but  these 
rhymes  are  not  quite  conclusive — rhymes  meat  with  great,  breake  with 
weake  (Auct.  of  the  World). 

Such  a  spelling  as  'to  spake  to  her'  (1693),  C.  Stewkley  in  Verney 
Mem.,  iv.  464,  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  the  type  of  pronunciation  intended. 

Cooper's  list,  then,  is  invaluable,  and  may  be  considered  reliable  as 
showing  that  words  of  the  class  we  are  now  considering  were  still  com- 
monly pronounced  according  to  a  different  type  from  that  now  in  vogue 
in  Received  Standard  English,  although  our  present  type  was  certainly 
already  in  existence,  as  we  have  proved  above,  and  had  existed  before 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Cooper  himself  seems  to  have  known 
both  pronunciations  of  wean.  It  is  rather  strange  that  the  evidences 
of  the  [e]  pronunciation  of  the  old  [s]  words  should  be  so  comparatively 
rare  as  they  are.  This  may  be  due  partly  to  the  dislike  of  the  more 
fastidious  poets  for  rhyming  together  words  which  are  spelt  with  different 
vowel  symbols  although  the  sounds  be  identical,  so  great  a  hold  has 
spelling  on  the  literary  imagination,  partly  also  perhaps  to  the  fact  that 
the  [i]  type  may  have  gained  ground  more  rapidly  in  fashionable  speech 
during  the  eighteenth  century  than  we  suppose.  Still,  such  rhymes  as 
great —  cheat,  sea — survey,  gate — eat  (Pope),  dreame — name  and  speake — 
mistake  (Swift,  An  Apology),  shade — mead  (Pope,  Windsor  Forest,  135-6 
(1713)),  please — stays,  ease — days,  fate — deceit  (Lady  M.  Wortley),  &c., 
occur  far  into  the  eighteenth  century.  A  thorough  investigation  of  these 
rhymes  from  the  early  sixteenth  to  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century 
would  be  a  laborious  but  repaying  piece  of  work.  In  dealing  with  M.E.  a, 
p.  104,  above,  I  have  shown  the  existence  of  the  rhyme  M.E.  d  with  M.E.  e* 
before  r,  as  early  as  c.  1420. 

This  is  the  proper  place  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  our  modern  usage 
with  [/]  in  heat,  meat,  &c.,  is  not  in  the  nature  of  a  sound  change  as  some 
writers  seem  to  suggest,  but  is  merely  the  result  of  the  abandonment  of 
one  type  of  pronunciation  and  the  adoption  of  another,  a  phenomenon 
which,  as  we  know,  is  of  the  commonest  occurrence  in  the  history  of 
Received  Standard  Colloquial  English. 

Had  such  a  sound  change  taken  place  between  the  seventeenth  century 
and  the  present  day  it  must  have  involved  all  the  words  which  had  d  and 
at  in  M.E.,  and  made,  maid,  and  mead  would  all  have  been  pronounced  alike. 
It  is  possible  that  a  tendency  to  make  M.E.  d  and  ai  into  [i]  did  actually 
exist  in  some  Regional  dialects,  and,  if  Gill  is  to  be  believed,  some  affected 
speakers  of  Standard  English  in  his  day  actually  said  [kipnj  for  capon. 

This  tendency,  however,  must  have  been  confined  to  a  small  and 
obscure  community,  and  it  has  not  affected  Received  Standard.\It  is  not 
comparable  in  importance  to  the  tendency  to  raise  M.E.  <?2  to  [I],  and  in 
the  community  among  whom  this  latter  process  was  carried  out,  it  is 
evident  that  this  must  have  started  before  the  descendants  of  the  old  d 

P  2 


212     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN    THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

and  ai  had  developed  into  the  full  [e]  sound.  Incidentally,  this  shows 
how  early  must  have  been  the  '  tensening '  of  <?2.  To  make  the  matter  more 
concrete  for  those  unused  to  this  kind  of  discussion,  we  may  say  that  in 
the  dialect  from  which  is  derived  the  present  pronunciation  of  mead,  this 
word  must  have  been  approaching  that  pronunciation  before  made  and  maid 
had  reached  the  [med]  stage  and  while  they  were  both  pronounced  [mid]. 

The  three  words  break,  steak,  great  may  be  simply  survivals  of  the  type 
represented  in  Cooper's  list,  in  which  they  all  occur. 

On  the  other  hand,  great  has  been  explained  on  the  analogy  of  the  old 
Com\).gretter,  which  was  fairly  common  in  the  fifteenth  century  (cf.  p.  325). 
The  shortened  form  preserved  [g],  and  the  quality  of  this  vowel  may, 
it  is  said,  have  influenced  that  of  the  Positive  by  preventing  so  great 
a  differentiation  between  the  two  forms  as  would  exist  between  [grit — 
greta].  This  explanation  now  appears  to  me  improbable.  Break  and 
steak  have  been  supposed  to  be  loan  forms  from  a  South- West  dialect. 
But  the  South-West  dialects  have  had  extremely  little  influence  upon 
Received  Standard,  in  spite  of  Drake  and  Raleigh.  Besides,  while  this 
might  be  a  plausible  explanation  for  the  sixteenth  century,  the  problem 
does  not  arise  till  the  late  seventeenth  or  eighteenth  century  in  this  case. 

It  is  simpler  to  regard  all  three  forms  as  survivals  of  the  older  type. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  these  words  were  pretty  widely  pronounced  with  [i] 
in  the  eighteenth-century  Received  Standard,  and  break  is  still  [brik]  in 
Irish  English  and  in  many  Regional  dialects. 

Dr.  Johnson  said  that  Lord  Chesterfield  told  him  that  great  should  be 
pronounced  so  as  to  rhyme  with  state,  while  Sir  William  Yonge  sent  him 
word  that  it  should  rhyme  with  seat,  and  that '  none  but  an  Irishman  would 
pronounce  it  grait\  (See  Boswell's  Life  of '/.,  Oxford  Ed.,  ii,  p.  161.) 

The  Change  of  -er-  to  -ar-. 

A  number  of  words  in  Mod.  Engl.  which  formerly  had  -er-  are  now 
pronounced  with  [a],  and  this  irrespective  of  the  fact  that  some  are  still 
written  -er-,  e.  g.  clerk,  others  -ear-,  e.  g.  heart,  while  others  are  written 
-ar-,  e.  g.  hart,  starve,  far,  carve,  star,  and  so  on.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  larger  number  of  words  which  formerly  had  -er-  in  the  spelling  retain 
this  spelling,  as  clergy,  mercy,  person,  swerve,  &c.,  or  are  written  -ear-,  as 
learn,  early,  search,  and  are  pronounced  [A],  We  have  here  the  survivals 
of  two  types,  differentiated  in  Late  M.E.  from  one  original  type — 
one  type  which  preserved  -er-  unaltered,  until  by  a  series  of  changes 
this  vowel  developed  into  present-day  [A],  the  other  type  in  which 
M.E.  -er-  became  -ar-.  This  has  normally  become  present-day  [a] 
when  the  r  is  followed  by  a  consonant  as  in  starve,  or  is  final,  as  in 
star,  but  has  remained  short  and  is  fronted  to  [se]  when  another  vowel 
follows  the  -r-,  as  in  tarry. 

Our  task  now  is  to  trace  the  rise  and  history  of  the  M.E.  -ar-  type,  and 
to  give  some  account  of  its  distribution  in  the  Mod.  Period. 

The  phonetic  process  is  most  probably  one  of  simple  retraction  of  [e] 
to  \a]  before  -r~,  but  it  is  conceivable  that  the  series  of  changes  was 
[er — ser — ar] ;  that  is  to  say,  the  sound  represented  by  e  in  M.E.  may 
first  have  been  lowered  and  then  retracted.  The  difficulty  of  the  problem 


PRONUNCIATION   OF  BERKSHIRE,  ETC.          213 

lies  in  the  fact  that  at  no  period,  and  in  no  early  writer  after  the  appear- 
ance of  the  -ar-  spellings,  is  either  type  used  with  perfect  consistency,  the 
same  writer  often  spelling  the  same  word  in  both  ways.  Nor  is  it  easy 
to  see  why  in  a  certain  number  of  words  the  -ar-  spelling  should  gradually 
have  become  fixed,  thus  helping  to  fix  the  pronunciation,  while  in  others 
again  in  which  -er-  or  -ear-  is  written,  the  pronunciation  should  preserve 
the  other  type,  nor  further  why  yet  a  third  group  has  preserved  the 
-er-  spelling,  and  are  pronounced  according  to  this  type.  It  is  difficult 
enough  to  reach  a  satisfactory  solution  of  the  difficulties  even  when  the 
facts  are  known  with  some  fullness ;  it  is  quite  impossible  to  do  so  when 
the  facts  are  imperfectly  known.  The  following  account,  though  incom- 
plete, is  less  so  than  those  which  have  appeared  hitherto. 

From  an  examination  of  the  list  of  words  which  have  been  found 
written  -ar-  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth  century,  it  seems 
impossible  to  formulate  any  law  to  account  for  the  change  in  terms  of 
combinative  phonetic  conditions,  since  almost  every  word  formerly  con- 
taining -er-  in  a  stressed  syllable  is  found  at  one  time  or  another  to  have 
been  written  -ar-,  and  therefore,  presumably,  to  have  been  pronounced 
according  to  this  type  among  some  groups  of  speakers.  The  nearest 
approach  to  any  combinative  influence  which  might  be  suspected  is  that 
of  lip  consonants,  which  present  some  slight  appearance  of  having  pre- 
disposed to  the  -ar-  type  when  they  stand  before,  and  perhaps  also  after, 
the  combination.  I  consider  this,  however,  very  doubtful,  and  it  leaves 
much  unaccounted  for. 

It  seems  more  probable  that  dialect  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  difference, 
dialect  of  a  Regional  character  to  start  with — though,  as  we  shall  see,  this 
is  hard  enough  to  determine — which,  however,  was  later  on  rather  social 
than  Regional. 

The  Chronological  Facts. 

The  -ar-  forms  are  very  rare  in  any  text  before  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  I  cannot  profess  to  give  an  exhaustive  account  of 
the  conditions  in  M.E.  until  my  M.E.  Grammar  is  much  farther  advanced 
than  at  present,  and  I  only  give  the  results  of  my  investigations  on 
M.E.  vowels  so  far  for  what  they  are  worth.  I  have  not  yet  examined 
PL  N.'s  in  respect  of  our  present  point.  The  earliest  example  of  -ar- 
for  >er-  which  I  have  is  dare  in  St.  Juliana,  line  30  (Prose),  MS.  Royal, 
c.  1250;  the  only  other  from  the  West  before  the  fifteenth  century  is 
from  Robt.  of  Glos.  (1320-30),  Barcssire,  1.  64,  Barkssire,  5706.  The 
Eastern  and  South-Eastern  texts  are  slightly  more  fruitful,  and  I  have 
noted  sarmon  and  sarmoun  in  Will. of  Shoreham's  Poems  (c.  1320),  4. 1212, 
56.  1562,  50.  1411,  100.  67,  and  harkne,  141.  330,  in  the  same  writer. 
From  the  Norfolk  Guilds  of  1389  I  have  noted  parsones  andprestes,  p.  23, 
garland,  117,  and far -thing,  122  (five  times).  Chaucer  has  only/izr/,  harre 
'hinge'  (rh.  with  knarre,  Prol.  C. T.  550),  tarie  'tarry'  (Vb.),  and  harrie. 

When  we  come  to  the  fifteenth  century  we  find  that  the  larger  number 
of  the  -ar-  forms  occur  in  S.E.  and  E.  Midland  texts,  and  they  are  not 
common  here  until  well  on  in  the  century.  Palladius  on  Husbandry 
(Colchester,  c.  1420)  has  only  barn  and  barley,  Bokenam  has  very  few 
of  these  forms,  and  they  appear  in  the  Suffolk  Wills  apparently  only 


2i4     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

from  1463  onwards;  it  is  perhaps  only  a  coincidence  that  Marg.  Paston, 
also  belonging  to  Suffolk,  has  hardly  any  of  these  forms  before  1461, 
and  that  before  that  date  she  writes  her  own  maiden  name  Berney,  after 
1461  Barney.  The  Essex  family  of  Celys  have  a  larger  number  of  -ar- 
forms  in  their  letters  in  the  late  seventies  and  eighties  of  the  century  than 
is  found  prevailing  in  any  other  collection  of  documents.  The  writers  of 
this  century  who  belong  to  the  more  Westerly  parts  of  the  country  have 
practically  no  -ar-  forms..  This  is  true  of  the  Life  of  St.  Editha.  Bishop 
Pecok,  Shillingford's  letters,  and  the  Exeter  Guild  documents.  In  the 
last  mentioned,  however,  tarmes  is  a  remarkable  exception. 

Turning  to  London  documents,  the  -ar-  forms  here  are  very  rare 
before  the  middle  of  the  century,  though  scattered  instances  will  be 
found  in  the  list.  It  is  not  until  the  second  half  of  the  century  that  we 
find  any  considerable  number,  and  it  is  significant  that  we  find  most  of 
all  in  the  Chronicle  of  Lord  Mayor  Gregory,  who  was  a  Suffolk  man  by 
birth.  Caxton  has  very  few  -ar-  forms,  and  they  are  very  rare  in  the 
official  documents  down  to  the  end  of  the  century. 

In  the  following  century  the  -ar-  spellings  are  more  frequent,  and 
most  writers,  of  all  classes,  have  a  certain  number.  The  examples  quoted 
below  are  from  documents  of  all  kinds,  including  private  letters,  and 
works  published  in  the  sixteenth  century.  It  will  be  noted  that  in  some 
words,  e.g.  clerk,  heard,  serve,  &c.,  swerve,  war,  these  spellings  are  fairly 
widespread.  It  will  be  found,  I  believe,  that  the  writers  who  use  these 
\  spellings  most  frequently  are  Bishop  Latimer,  Machyn,  and  Queen 
\  Elizabeth.  The  evidence  seems  to  point  to  the  probability  that  before 
\  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  -ar-  pronunciation  was  far  more 
common,  that  is,  it  included  a  much  larger  list  of  words,  than  at  present. 
For  the  seventeenth  century  our  best  evidence  is  derived  from  the  Verney 
Papers  and  the  Verney  Memoirs.  These  collections  of  letters  put  us  in 
possession  of  the  habits  of  speech  of  all  the  members  of  a  very  numerous 
family,  and  of  a  large  circle  of  their  friends  (see  remarks  on  these  docu- 
ments, pp.  162-3).  We  find  not  only  the  Verney  ladies,  but  many  of 
their  male  relatives  and  friends  writing  -ar-  in  words  where  we  now 
pronounce  the  other  type.  It  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  the  writers 
of  these  letters  spoke  typical  upper-class  English  of  their  period,  and  we 
are  led  to  the  conclusion  that  sarvent,  vartue,  and  so  on,  really  represent 
the  pronunciation  in  vogue  at  this  time.  If  these  spellings  are  more 
common  in  the  ladies'  letters  than  in  those  of  the  men,  we  must,  I  think, 
put  this  down  to  the  fact  that  the  former  read  fewer  books  than  the  latter, 
and  were  less  influenced  by  the  spelling  which  was  rapidly  becoming 
stereotyped  by  the  printers.  Many  people  doubtless  used  the  -ar-  forms 
who  wrote  -er- ;  cf.  Ch.  Butler  in  his  Gr.,  p.  3 — '  We  write  person  though 
we  say  parson.'  Lady  Wentworth,  whose  letters  contain  a  large  number 
of  these  spellings,  although  her  letters  continue  down  to  1711,  must  be 
held  to  represent  the  English  of  the  Court  during  the  last  quarter  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  She  therefore  continues  our  record  of  this  type  of 
English  for  thirty  years  or  so  after  the  Verneys.  Those  whose  views 
on  the  history  of  pronunciation  are  derived  mainly  from  the  statements 
of  writers  on  pronunciation,  will  be  glad  to  find  that  Jones  (1701) — one 
of  the  best  of  his  kind — includes  mercy,  heard,  and  verdict  in  his  rather 


JOHN   KEMBLE'S   PRONUNCIATION   OF    VIRTUE    215 

brief  list  of  words  in  which  le  is  sounded  as  a  ',  p.  24.  Apart  from  the 
evidence  of  the  Verneys,  several  of  Lord  Rochester's  rhymes  point  in 
the  same  direction,  and  in  supplement  of  Lady  Wentworth's  spellings 
we  have  several  rhymes  and  spellings  of  Swift,  which  tell  the  same  tale,  and 
make  it  certain  that  down  to  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
the  [#]  pronunciation,  or  its  immediate  ancestor,  obtained  very  largely  in 
a  number  of  words  which  are  now  pronounced  according  to  the  -er-  type. 

Later  in  this  century,  Elphinston,  a  Scotchman  who  lived  for  many 
years  in  England  and  moved  in  decent  society,  puts  down  larrid  as 
a  London  Vulgarism  in  1783,  though  we  have  reason  to  believe  that 
the  word  was  normally  so  pronounced  by  the  best  speakers  of  an 
earlier  generation.  Elphinstone  is  not  absolutely  above  suspicion,  since 
as  a  professional  authority  on  pronunciation  he  was  bound  to  uphold 
a  theoretically  '  correct '  pronunciation,  while  he  would  be  inclined  to 
preserve  a  certain  number  of  Scotticisms  and  Scottish  prejudices  against 
certain  types  of  English  pronunciation. 

Apparently,  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  distribution  of 
[A,  d]  among  the  old  -er-  words  was,  on  the  whole,  the  same  as  our  own, 
though  doubtless  the  older  usage  lingered  here  and  there,  among  good 
old-fashioned  speakers,  much  later.  According  to  Leigh  Hunt's  Auto- 
biography, i,  p.  180,  the  actor  John  Kemble  (1757-1823)  pronounced 
-ar-  in  virtue.  Beigh  Hunt  regarded  this  as  an  eccentricity.  It  is 
evident  that  the  -ar-  pronunciations  were  declining  from  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  since  Fielding  singles  out  sarvis,  sartain,  parson 
'  person '  for  ridicule  by  putting  them  into  the  mouths  or  the  letters  of 
vulgar  persons.  This  pronunciation  evidently  died  out  in  some  words 
earlier  than  in  others,  and  the  usage  varied  among  speakers  of  the  same 
breeding,  at  the  same  period.  Thus  it  is  curious  that  in  spite  of  the 
testimony  of  the  Verneys,  and  the  habit  of  John  Kemble  150  years  or  so 
later, Vanbrugh  appears  to  discredit  the  pronunciation  vartue  by  attributing 
it  to  a  peculiarly  dingy  and  dubious  character,  Mrs.  Amlet  in  The  Con- 
federacy (1705).  Seventy  years  later  Goldsmith  puts  varment  into  the 
mouth  of  Tony  Lumpkin.  As  a  rule,  when  a  comic  writer  departs  from 
ordinary  spelling  in  depicting  the  speech  of  one  of  his  characters,  he  intends 
to  suggest  a  pronunciation  which  is  out  of  the  ordinary,  though  there  is 
always  the  possibility  that  he  is  deceiving  himself;  as  when  a  writer  at  the 
present  time  attempts  to  express  the  pronunciation  of  a  vulgar  person 
by  writing  '  orf  for  off",  '  wen  '  for  when,  '  chewsdy '  for  Tuesday,  thereby 
expressing  nothing  different  from  the  normal  pronunciation.  Swift's 
spellings  vardy  for  verdict  and  varsal  for  universal  in  Polite  Conversations 
may  have  represented  fashionable  pronunciations  of  his  day,  of  which  he 
disapproved.  The  reality  of  the  vowel  in  the  former  is  confirmed  by 
Jones.  Swift  himself  evidently  said  ldargy ',  and  varment.  (See  these 
forms  in  the  lists.) 

To  sum  up,  we  may  say  that  the  -ar-  pronunciations  appear  to  have ) 
been  almost  universal  for  at  least  two  and  a  half  centuries,  among  the; 
politest  speakers,  and  that  the  use  of  this  type  was  gradually  discontinued 
from  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  a  large  number  of  words. 

Why  was  this  ?     The  most  natural  explanation  seems  to  be  that  it  was 
chiefly  due  to  the  influence  of  a  different  social  stratum,  which  had  either 


216     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN  PERIOD 

preserved  the  -er-  type  traditionally,  or  deliberately  adopted  it  on  account 
of  the  spelling,  from  a  desire  for  correctness.  The  question  naturally 
arises,  Why  should  the  spelling  of  the  printers  of  -ar-  in  certain  words, 
and  -er-  or  -ear-  in  others,  have  gradually  crystallized  ?  The  practice 
cannot  have  reposed  altogether,  or  mainly,  upon  that  of  the  Late  M.E. 
professional  scribes,  since  the  -ar-  forms  were  not  nearly  sufficiently 
well  established  in  their  time  to  make  their  usage  consistent,  and  as  we 
have  seen  the  -ar-  spellings  are  rare,  and  very  scattered  in  M.E.  texts. 
It  would  seem  that  the  early  printers  were  a  law  unto  themselves,  for 
had  they  followed  the  scribes  ^in  this  respect,  as  they  did  in  most 
others,  they  must  have  printed  no  -ar-  forms  at  all. 

We  must  suppose  then  that  the  distribution  of  -er-  and  -ar-  spellings 
in  the  printed  books  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  had  a  certain 
phonetic  basis.  The  very  inconsistency  in  usage  seems  to  show  that 
the  printers  did  to  a  certain  extent  reproduce  their  authors'  own  spelling 
(see  discussion  of  this  point,  pp.  112-13).  And  if  the  early  writers,  as 
we  know  is  the  case  from  numbers  of  autograph  letters  and  other 
documents,  wrote  sometimes  -er-  sometimes  -ar-,  this  must  have  repre- 
sented a  conflict  between  traditional  and  phonetic  spelling  on  the  one 
hand,  or,  on  the  other,  a  different  pronunciation  in  different  words.  How 
did  this  fluctuation  arise  ?  Clearly  only  from  a  mingling  of  the  habits 
of  two  different  dialects. 

Dialectal  Origin  of  the  -ar-  Forms. 

Looking  at  all  the  facts  so  far  as  they  are  known  to  me,  and  set  forth 
in  the  preceding  pages  and  the  following  lists,  I  am  inclined  to  assume 
that  the  change  of  -er-  to  -ar-  began  in  Kent  early  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, and  spread  thence  to  Essex,  to  Suffolk,  and  to  Norfolk.  During 
the  fourteenth  century  the  new  forms  began  to  filter  into  London 
speech  very  gradually  from  Kent  or  Essex,  or  from  both.  They  were 
rare  in  the  speech  of  the  upper  classes  at  first,  but  gradually  gained 
ground,  probably  through  the  speech  of  the  lower  strata  of  society,  during 
the  fifteenth  century,  possibly  also  through  the  direct  influence  of 
merchants  from  the  Eastern  Counties  who  acquired  wealth  and  position 
like  Gregory. 

During  the  sixteenth  century  these  South-Eastern  forms  became 
fashionable,  and  were  much  used  by  Queen  Elizabeth  herself.  Incident- 
ally, we  may  call  attention  to  the  occurrence  of  desarve  in  a  letter  of 
Anne  Boleyn,  and  the  same  form  in  a  letter  of  her  daughter  about  twenty 
years  later.  In  the  former  case  the  form  may  be  due  to  native  Eastern 
dialect,  while  Queen  Elizabeth'  was  simply  following  the  increasingly 
fashionable  tendency.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  -ar-  forms  are  more 
frequent  in  the  Queen's  later  letters  and  her  translations  than  in  those 
written  in  her  girlhood. 

According  to  the  view  here  taken,  the  -ar-  forms  were  originally  from 
a  Regional  dialect,  then  passed  into  the  London  Class  dialect  of  the 
lower  orders,  whence  they  spread  upwards. 

The  precise  distribution  of  -er-  and  -ar-  forms  would  thus  be  as 
impossible  to  account  for  as  that  of  the  three  forms  /,  e,  u  from  O.E.  y. 

The  second  list  of  -er-  spellings  shows  how  comparatively  late  many  of 


ILLUSTRATIVE   SPELLINGS  217 

these  persisted,  even  in  words  where  -at-  spellings  and  pronunciations 
have  long  been  absolutely  fixed,  and  which  one  might  therefore  suppose 
to  have  been  among  the  earliest  words  to  be  adopted  in  the  -ar-  type. 

To  my  mind  this  shows  that,  even  in  these  cases,  difference  of  pronun- 
ciation persisted  for  a  long  period. 


List  of  Words  which  formerly  had  -er-,  but  which  appear 
occasionally  written  -ar-  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth 
centuries. 

Bark  Vb.     barcke,  Lever's  Sermons,  115,  1550. 

Barley,     barley,  Pallad.  on  Husbandry  1420  ;  Bury  Wills  1467. 

Barn,     barnes,  Pallad.  on  Husbandry  1420;    barnys,  Bury  Wills  98, 

1504  ;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  Gouernour  1531  ;  Ascham. 
Carve.     Engl.  Conq.  of  Ireland  (MS.  Trinity  1425);  karue,  p.  1423; 

carue,  Shakespeare  ist  Fol.  Loves  L.  L. 
Clergy,     clargy,  Gregory's   Chron.   1450-70;    Rede  me  and  be  not 

wrothe    1528;    Latimer's   Sermons;    Thos.  Lever's  Serm.   1550; 

Swift  rhymes  clergy — charge  ye. 
Clerk,    clarke,  &c.,  Line.  Will  1451  (Line.  Dioc.  Docs.);  Rede  me,  &c., 

1528;    Skelton,    Magnificence;    Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey  1577; 

Latimer;  clarklte,  Gabriel  Harvey  1578-80;   -dark,  Q.  Elizabeth  ; 

Machyn  1550-63  ;  Thos.  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet.  1585. 
Certain,     sartqyne,  cartayne,  Gregory  in,  176;  sartten,  sarten,  Cely 

P.  64,  139,  140,  &c.,  1475-88;  unsartin,  Mrs.  Pulteney,  Verney 

P.   199,  1639;    sartinly,  Lady  Sussex  1641,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  i, 

82,  83;  carten,  Mrs.  Basire,  140,  1655;  E.  of  Rochester  rhymes 

certain — Martin;  sartain,  Went  worth  P.  48  (Lady  W.),  1705;  and 

Fielding  in  Tom  Jones,  where  it  is  said  by  Landlady  of  an  Inn,  and 

is  written  by  Mrs.  Honour,  a  lady's-maid. 

Confirm,     confarmes  (Luce  Sheppard),  Verney  Mem.  iii.  75,  1651. 
Concern,     consarned,  Pen.  V.  in  Verney  Mem.  ii.  195,  1642. 
Dark.    Skelton  rhymes  with  clarke,  Magnif.  485  (1-1529);  dark,  Fisher, 

Bp.  of  Rochester's  Serm.  (fl.  1459-1535) ;  Lord  Berners's  Froissart ; 

Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  Gouernour  1531 ;  darknes,  Q.Elizabeth. 
Dearth,     darth,  Lord  Berners  1520,  i.  344,  415  ;  Lever's  Serm.,  p.  84, 

1550;  Thos.  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet.  1560,  &c. 

Defer,     defarre,  Lord  Berners,  i.  100;  ds/ar,  Q.  Elizabeth  1572  (letters). 
Divert,      divartid,  Gary  V.  in  Verney  Mem.  iv.  276,  1686;  divarlion, 

ibid.  iv.  275. 

Early.     E.  of  Rochester  rhymes  early  with  Farley,  Epistle  fr.  B.  to  E. 
Errand.     Gabr.  Harvey,  arrand,  Letter  Bk.  1573-80. 
Earn,    yarne,  Edm.  V.  Verney  Mem.  iv.  193,  1675. 
Ermine,     armyns,  Lord  Berners  1523  ;  armyn,  Machyn  1550-3. 
Par.   farre,  &c.,  Lord  Berners ;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot ;  Bp.  Fisher;  Ascham; 

Wilson ;  Lyly. 
Farther.     Bury  Wills   1535;  Latimer;   Bp.  Fisher;  Lord  Burghley; 

farder,  Ascham ;  Lyly,  farther. 

Farm,   farme,  Machyn;  Lever's  Sermons, farmes,  farmer  three  times. 
Fervent,   faruentlye,  Latimer. 


218     STRESSED   VOWELS  IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

Farthing,   fardyng,  Machyn  1550-63. 

Guerdon,  guardon,  Bokenam,  S.  Agn.,  701,  1443;  Shakespeare  ist 
Fol.  Loves  L.  L.,  four  times. 

Heard  (Pret.  and  P.  P.).  herde  rhymes  farde,  Siege  of  Rouen  c.  1420; 
harde,  Marg.  Paston,  P.  Letters  ii.  124,  1463;  ibid.  ii.  241,  1465; 
Cely  Papers  77  ;  Skelton,  Magnif. ;  Sir  R.  Wingfield  1513,  Ellis  2. 
i.  212;  Lord  Berners;  Cranmer,  Letters  (Ellis  i.  2.  33)  1533;  Sir 
T.Elyot;  Lever's  Serm. ;  Latimer  ;  hard,  Machyn  1550-63  ;  Gabr. 
Harvey,  Letter  Bk.  1573-80;  Lord  Burghley,  Letters,  Bardon  P., 
and  Ellis  i.  3.  12;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey  ;  Ascham;  Ch.  Butler, 
Gr.  1634;  Verney  Mem.,  passim — Gary  V.  ii.  70,  1642;  Lady  V. 
ii.  268,  1647;  Pen-  Denton,  ibid.  iii.  228,  1655,  &c.,  &c. ; 
Lady  W.  in  Wentworth  Papers,  51,  1706,  &c. ;  Jones,  Practical 
Phonogr.  1701. 

Heart.  Hoccleve,  Reg.  of  Pr.  1412  ;  rhymes  smarte,  Siege  of  Rouen 
c.  1420;  M.  Paston,  Letters  ii.  365,  1469;  Fortescue  1470  (?); 
Anne  Boleyn  1528,  Letter  in  Ellis  1528  ;  Skelton,  Magnif.;  Thos. 
Pery,  Ellis  2.  2.  149,  1539;  Sir  T.  More;  Thos.  Lever;  hartly, 
J.  Mason,  Ellis  2.  2.  54.  1535;  hartie,  Cranmer,  Letter  1533; 
Bp.  Fisher ;  hartes,  Ascham ;  Lord  Berners ;  Sir  T.  Elyot ;  hartily, 
Lord  Burghley ;  Ascham ;  hartiest,  hartily^  hart,  Q.  Elizabeth ; 
Lyly;  Ch.  Butler,  Gr.  1634;  Cooper  1685;  Jones,  Practical 
Phonogr.  1701. 

Hart,     hart,  Lord  Berners  1520;  Machyn,  hartes  ede  =  head. 

Harbour,  harborowe,  Sir  Thos.  Seymour  1544,  Letter  in  State  Papers, 
Hen.  VIII,  i.  775. 

Hark — hearken,  harke,  Thos.  Lever  1550;  harken,  Lyly  1579-80; 
Ch.  Butler,  Gr.  1634,  ea  in  hearken  =  a. 

Harvest.     Ascham. 

Hearth.  Chapman,  harth ;  Mons.  D'Olive,  Wks.  i.  239  (1606) ;  Cooper 
1685. 

Herald,     harold,  Machyn  1553-60. 

Hereford.     Arfford,  Harrford,  Machyn  1550-3. 

Hurdle  [fr.  S.E.  form  M.E.  herdel\  hardel,  Palsgrave's  Esclarcissement 
1530;  bar  dels,  Dives  Pragmaticus  1563;  hardell,  Bury  Wills  1569; 
Levins,  Manipulus  1570. 

Herbage,     tharbagt  '  the  herbage',  Letters  and  Pprs.,  i.  80,  1483. 

Infer,     enferre  Vb.  rhymes  debar ,  Skelton's  Magnif.  60. 

Learn,  learne  rhymes  warm,  Rede  me  and  be  not  wrothe,  p.  1 23,  1528  ; 
larne,  Henry  V  in  Verney  Mem.  iii.  368,  1647  ;  Luce  Sheppard, 
ibid.  iii.  98,  1652  ;  Swift  rhymes  learn  with  darn  in  *  A  Panegyric  ' ; 
Elphinston,  1783,  regards  larn  as  a  London  vulgarism. 

Mr  Vb.  marre  rhymes  barre,  Rede  me,  &c.,  1528;  marre,  Caven- 
dish, L.  of  Wolsey  1577. 

Mercy,  marcy,  Siege  of  Rouen  c.  1420;  marcyfully,  Bokenam,  S. 
Ann.  665,  1443;  marcy,  Gregory's  Chron. ;  Marcie  (girl's  name), 
Gabr.  Harvey  1578-80;  marcy,  Q.  Elizabeth  ;  marzy,  Lady  Sussex, 
Verney  Mem.  ii.  151,  1642  ;  Lady  V,  ibid.  ii.  296,  1647  ;  Mrs-  Ba~ 
sire,  marci,  135,  1654;  marcey,  Mall  Verney,  ibid,  iv.  214,  1655; 
Jones,  Practical  Phonogr.  24,  1701. 


SARVE  AS   A   POLITE   FORM  219 

Marvel,  &c.     marvylyously,  Cely  Papers. 

Merton  College.  Marten  Colege,  Rich.  Layton  (afterwards  Dean  of 
York)  in  Letter,  Ellis  2.  i.  60,  1535. 

Peril,  paryl,  Ordinances  of  Worcester  374,  1467  ;  parill,  Caxton's 
Jason  1477  ;  patytt*  Lord  Berners,  i.  288  ;  panllouse,  ibid.  i.  31  ; 
par  ells,  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey  1577. 

Person,  parson,  Marg.  Paston ;  State  of  Ireland,  St.  Papers  Hen.  VIII, 
iii.  15,  1515;  Thos.  Pery,  Letter,  in  Ellis  2.  2.  147,  1539;  Lord 
Berners ;  Sir  T.  Elyot's  Will ;  parsonages,  ibid. ;  parson  —  1  person  ', 
Machyn  ;  Q.  Elizabeth ;  '  We  write  person,  though  we  say  parson ', 
Butler's  Gr.  1634,  p.  3 ;  Lady  Sussex  in  Verney  Mem.  ii.  88,  1641  ; 
Dr.  Denton,  ibid.  iii.  461,  1660;  Lady  Wentworth  in  W.  Papers, 
94,  96,  1709;  occurs  in  a  letter  by  Mrs.  Honour,  a  lady's-maid,  in 
Tom  Jones. 

Parson,    parson,  Latimer's  Serm.  ;  Machyn. 

Prefer.  Rede  me,  &c.,  prefarre ;  E.  of  Rochester  rhymes  preferred — 
Blackguard  in  Nell  Gwynne. 

Search,     sarche,  State  of  Ireland,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii.  15,  1515. 

Serjeant,  sargent,  Gregory's  Chron.  81,  1450-70;  sarjant,  Dick  Hals 
(cousin  of  Verneys)  in  Verney  Mem.  iv.  310,  1674. 

Sermon,  sarmon,  Bury  Wills,  p.  17,  1463;  Gregory's  Chron.  203; 
Machyn  ;  sarment,  Lady  W.  in  Wentworth  Papers  221,  1711. 

Serve,  sarvyd,  Cely  Papers  44  ;  to  sarve,  Ld.  Adm.  Sir  Thos.  Seymour 
1544,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  i.  778;  same,  sarved,  Q.  Elizabeth; 
sarve,  Lord  Barrymore,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  53,  1642;  Magdalen 
Faulkiner,  ibid.  ii.  56,  1642;  Lady  Hobart,  ibid.  iv.  127,  1665; 
Lady  Wentworth,  W.  Pprs.  p.  77,  1709;  sarving,  ibid.,  p.  118, 
1710  ;  Prior  rhymes  served — carved,  The  Ladie. 

Servant,  sarvant,  Sir  T.  Seymour,  St.  P.  Hen.  VIII,  i.  776, 
1544;  sarvand,  Machyn;  sarvant,  Q.  Elizabeth;  sarvanfe,  Sir 
J.  Hotham  1560,  Ellis  2.  2.  325  ;  Sir  E.  Sydenham,  Verney  Mem. 
ii.  102,  1642;  Lady  V.,  ibid.  ii.  257,  1647;  Sir  R.  Burgoyne, 
ibid.  iii.  51,  1652;  Lady  Wentworth  in  W.  Papers,  passim, 
1705-11. 

Service,  sarvyse,  Gregory's  Chron.  222,  1450-70;  Cooper,  1685, 
designates  sarvyse  as  belonging  to  a  '  barbarous  dialect ' ;  sarvice, 
Verney  Papers  ii.  120,  1642;  ii.  68,  1642;  ii.  70,  1642;  Lady 
Wentworth,  W.  Pprs.  p.  95,  1709  ;  sarvis  is  written  by  Mrs.  Honour, 
a  lady's-maid,  in  Tom  Jones. 

Deserve,  desarve,  Cely  Pprs.  63.  1475-88;  Anne  Boleyn,  Letter, 
Ellis  i.  i.  305,51528;  disarued,  Q.  Elizabeth  1546;  E.  of  Rochester 
rhymes  deserving — starving, '  Bath  Intrigues ' ;  desarve,  Lady  Sussex, 
Verney  Mem.  ii.  83,  1641  ;  Lady  V.,  ibid.  ii.  347  (twice),  1647; 
Lady  Wentworth,  W.  Pprs.  118,  1710. 

Desert,  desart,  Q.  Elizabeth  ;  Shakespeare  rhymes  deserts— parts, 
Sonnet  xvii. 

Preserve,  presarve,  Lord  Barrymore,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  53,  1642; 
Mrs.  Isham,  ibid.  iv.  n8,  1665. 

Quarrel.     Q.  Elizabeth ;  Lyly. 

Smart,    smart,  Siege  of  Rouen  c.  1420;  smarting,  Caxton,  Jason  1477. 


220     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

Star,  starre,  Gregory's  Chron.  80,  1450-70;  Sir  Thos.  More,  Letters 
in  Ellis  i.  i  and  2  ;  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet.  52,  1585  ;  Q.  Elizabeth. 

Starling,     starlyng,  Cely  Papers  1473-88  ;  stare,  Sir  Thos.  Elyot  1539. 

Start,     astarte  rhymes  harte,  Hoccleve,  Reg.  of  Pr.  1412. 

Starve,     starue,  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet.  61. 

Swerve,  swarue,  Skelton,  Magnif.  1529;  swarved,  Lord  Berners,  i. 
376,  1523;  swarumg,  Latimer's  Serin. ;  swarue,  Wilson,  A.  of 
Rhet.  53;  Q.Elizabeth;  Gill,  Logomonia  1621;  Daines,  Orthoep. 
Angl.  51,  1640. 

Tarry  Vb.  tarying,  Bokenam,  Agn.  476,  1443;  taryed,  Lord 
Berners. 

Term,  farmes,  Exeter  Taylors'  Guild  317,  1466;  Gary  V.  in  Verney 
Mem.  iii.  431,  1657. 

Universal.     '  the  varsal  world ',  *  Miss  '  in  Swift's  Polite  Conversation. 

Virtue,  vartus  (PI.),  Lady  Hobart  in  Verney  Mem.  iv.  57,  1664; 
vartuous,  Vanbrugh's  Confederacy  (said  by  Mrs.  Amlet),  Act  in. 
Sc.  i,  p.  174,  1705. 

Verdict.  Jones,  Practical  Phonogr.  1701,  includes  this  word  among 
those  pronounced  with  ar\  one  of  the  fashionable  speakers  in 
Swift's  Polite  Convers.  says  vardy. 

Vermin,  varment,  Thos.  Pery,  Letter,  Ellis  2.  2.  145,  1539  ;  varmin, 
Mrs.  Eure,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  86.  1642  ;  -vermin  rhymes  garment  in 
Swift's  poem  '  The  Problem ' ;  varment,  said  by  Tony  Lumpkin  in 
Goldsmith's  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  Act  v,  1773. 

War.  warre,  &c.,  Sir  J.  Fortescue  1471-6  ;  Gregory's  Chronicle  1450- 
70;  Caxton,  Jason  1477;  Bp.  Knight  of  Bath  and  Wells  1512; 
St.  of  Ireland,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII  1515;  Sir  Thos.  More;  Lord 
Berners  1523  ;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot  1531  ;  Lever's  Serm.  1550;  Caven- 
dish, L.  of  Wolsey  1577;  Ascham;  Lyly. 

Work,  workys,  Siege  of  Rouen  1420;  warkys,  Bokenam,  Christ.  887, 
1443;  Exeter  Taylors'  Guild  awarke  Adv.,  1466;  wark,  Lord 
Berners  i.  82 ;  awarke  Adv.  i.  161 ;  wark,  Skelton,  Magnif.; 
Lincolnshire  Inventory,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  1527;  warke,  Sir  Thos. 
Elyot ;  Q.  Elizabeth  (Trans.) ;  worke  (Letters). 


Proper  Names. 

Barney.     This,  the  maiden  name  of  Marg.  Paston,  is  always  written 

Berney  by  her  down  to  1461 ;  from  then  onwards  generally  with  a. 
Berks.     Barks  in  an  Oxfordshire  Will  of  1455,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.; 

Barkshire,  Spenser,  Present  State  of  Ireland  628.  2  (Globe  Ed.). 
Berkley.     Barkeley,  Gregory's   Chron.;    Barkly,  Bp.  Knight  of  Bath 

and  Wells  1512;   Lord  Berners;   Shakespeare,  First   Fol.,  Pt.  I, 

Hen.  IV,  Act  i,  Sc.  iii. 
Bermondsey.     Barmondsay,  Creation  of  Duke  of  York  a  Knight  of 

Garter,  L.  and  P.  i ;  Barmsey,  Machyn  303. 
Dunfermline.     Dunfarlin,  Sir  J.  Temple,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  249. 
Derby.     Darby,  Rede  me,  &c.,  59,  1528;  the  yerle  of  Darbe,  Machyn; 

Darby,  Tom  Verney  in  Verney  Mem.  iii.  174,  1659. 


PROPER   NAMES— WORDS  NOW   SPELT   -AR         221 

Guernsey.  Garnesey,  Machyn  271;  Garnsea,  Sir  Ralph  Verney  in 
Verney  Mem.  iv.  289,  1658;  Baker,  Rules  for  True  Spelling,  &c., 
1724,  says  that  this  name  is  pronounced  Garnzee. 

Herbert.  Included  by  Jones,  Pract.  Phonogr.  1701,  among  words 
where  -er-  is  pronounced  -ar-. 

Jerningham.    Jarnyngham,  Marg.  Paston  ii.  29. 

Jersey.  Lady  Wentworth  in  Wentw.  Papers,  Lord  Jarzys  (Possess.) 
84;  Garzy  55;  Jarzy  149. 

Ker  of  Fernihurst  (family  name).    Written  Car  by  Q.  Elizabeth. 

Verney.  This  name  occurs,  with  very  few  exceptions,  in  this  form 
throughout  the  Camden  volume  of  Papers,  and  the  four  volumes  of 
Memoirs,  in  which  nearly  all  the  letters  are  by  members  or  near 
connexions  of  the  family.  The  only  exceptions  I  have  noted  are — 
Varny,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  82,  1641 ;  Sir  R.  Burgoyne,  ii.  166,  1641  ; 
Susan  Verney,  same  date,  ii.  167,  170;  Lady  Hobart  (a  Denton), 
iv.  285,  1657,  and  iv.  49,  1662.  The  family  now  call  themselves 
Verney  [' 


List  of  words  which  now  have  [d]  in  pronunciation  whether 
spelt  -er-,  -ear-,  or  -ar-,  but  which  occur  spelt  -er-  in  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

Barley.  Barley,  Lord  Level's  Will  1455,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  PI.  Name 
now  Barley.  The  first  element  is  O.E.  here,  barley. 

Barn,  berne,  Palladius  c.  1420;  bernys,  Marg.  Paston;  berne,  Bury 
Wills  21,  1463;  ibid.  94,  1501 ;  ibid.  100  bern,  103  beern  1504. 

Carve  Vb.  kerver,  Short  Eng.  Chron.  1465;  kervyr,  Gregory;  kerved, 
kervyr,  Cr.  D.  of  York  1495  ;  kerued,  keruinge,  Sir  Thos.  Elyot; 
kervers,  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey  1577. 

Clerk,  clerkis,  Bp.  Pecok  c.  1449;  clerk,  Lord  Level's  Will  1455; 
clerkes,  Marg.  Paston  ;  Lord  Berners ;  clerk,  Machyn. 

Dark,  derk,  Shillingford  Papers  1447-50;  Bp.  Pecok;  Bk.  of  Quin- 
tessence 1460-70;  derke,  Caxton,  Jason  1477;  Gregory's  Chron.; 
Jul.  Berners,  Fysshynge  1496  ;  derkness,  Lever's  Sermons  1550. 

Far.  ferre,  Pallad.  c.  1420;  /er,  Hoccleve,  Reg.  of  Pr.  1412;  Bp. 
Pecok;  Rewle  of  Sustris  Men.  c.  1450}  ferre,  Sir  J.  Fortescue;  afer, 
Shillingford  1447-50;  ferre,  Bury  Wills  20,  1463;  /er,  Exeter 
Taylors'  Guild  1466 ;  ferre,  Caxton,  Jason  1477  \ferr,  Lord  Berners ; 
ferre,  Sir  T.  Elyot. 

Farther,  &c.  ferther,  Pallad.;  ferdyr,  Marg.  Beaufort  (1443-1509), 
Ellis  i.  i ;  Bp.  Pecok;  ferther,  Shillingford;  ferthermore,  ferthest, 
Marg.  Paston;  ferther,  Gregory;  ferthest,  Caxton,  Jason  1477; 
ferther,  Skelton  t i 529 ;  ferther,  Sir  T.  More. 

Farthing,    ferthing,  Bury  Wills  1463,  p.  15. 

Farm,   &c.    fermed,  Bp.  Pecok;  fee-ferme,  Lord  Lovel's  Will  1455; 

fee  ffermys,  Sir  J.  Fortescue ;  ferme,  Shillingford ;  ferme,  fermor, 

Marg.  Paston;  ferme,   Gregory;    Bury  Wills,    many   times   from 

1467-80;   Sir  Thos.  Elyot ;  Lever's  Sermons  (ferme,  four  times); 

ferme,  Latimer ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey. 


222     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

Harvest,     hervcst,  Pallad.  c.  1420. 

Heart,    herte,  hertely,  Judge  Paston  1425-30;  Bp.  Pecok;  Shillingford  ; 

herte,    Gregory ;    Marg.  Paston ;    Marg.   Beaufort    (letters) ;    heries, 

Fortescue ;  Caxton ;  Jul.  Berners ;  hert,  hertiest,  Bp.  Knight  of  Bath 

and  Wells  1512;  Dean  Layton  of  York  1535;  Lord  Berners;  Bp. 

Fisher  of  Rochester ;  hertes,  herted,  Latimer ;  hert,  Ascham ;  heart, 

Lyly. 

Harbour.     Colde  Herborowe,  Gregory ;  Cole  herber,  Machyn. 
Hark,     herke,  Skelton  ti529;  Lever's  Sermons  1550. 
Hearken,     herkened,  Latimer. 
Jar  ' discord '.     ierre,  Wilson's  A.  of  Rhet.  166. 
Marvel,     mervilyous,  Cely  P.;  mervelous,  Bp.  Knight  1512. 
Parson,  &c.    person,  Gregory ;  person,  personage  '  parsonage ',  Lever's 

Sermons  1550;  personage,  Latimer. 
Partridge,    pertrych,  Jul.  Berners. 
Serjeant.     Serjeants,  Machyn. 
Smart,     smertli,  Bp.  Pecok  1449. 
Star,     sterre,  Bp.. Pecok;  sterres,  Gregory;  sterns,  Bk.  of  Quintessence 

1460-70;  sterres,  Caxton,  Jason  1477;  Sir  T.  Elyot;  Bp.  Fisher. 
Starve,     sterue,  Hoccleve,  Reg.  of  Pr.  1412;  Pallad.  1420;  Latimer; 

Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey ;  sterue,  Shakespeare,  First  Fol.,  Hen.  IV, 

Pt.  I,  Act  i,  Sc.  iii. 

Start,     stert,  a  Lines.  Inventory,  1527,  Lines.  Dioc.  Docs. 
Tarry,     terryed^  Marg.  Paston. 

e  becomes  i  by  a  combinative  change. 

Before  certain  consonants  or  combinations  of  consonants  there  was  an 
early  tendency  to  raise  e  to  i.  The  traces  cf  this  have  almost  faded  from 
Received  Standard  at  the  present  time,  except  in  a  few  words  where  the 
change  is  recorded  by  the  spelling,  e.  g.  wing  from  M.E.  weng,  O.N.  veng-, 
string,  M.E.  strenge;  and  in  England,  English,  where  the  old  spelling 
remains. 

In  Early  Modern,  and  even  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
a  certain  number  of  spellings  with  i  are  found,  chiefly  before  -n  +  con- 
sonant, but  also  before  -s,  and,  more  rarely,  before  -/. 

England  occurs  with  the  spelling  Ing-  fairly  often,  quite  apart  from 
Northern  texts,  already  in  M.E.,  and  Ing-,  Yng-  forms  are  scattered 
throughout  fifteenth-  and  sixteenth-century  texts.  A  few  references  are : — 
Gregory  63;  Fortescue  113;  Wm.  Paston  (the  Judge)  i.  29;  Cr.  Duke 
of  York  414;  Inventory  of  J.  Asserly,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.;  Letter  of 
Thos.  Pery,  Ellis  2.  2.  146  (1539);  Letter  of  J.  Mason,  Ellis  2.  2.  56 
(1523);  Lord  Berners,  passim;  &c.,  &c. 

The  Short  English  Chron.  1465  still  writes  bowes  strenges,  73. 

Before  -nch  : — Gregory,  Kynges  Bynche,  194 ;  also  Short  English  Chron. 
68,  &c.,  and  Machyn  195  (twice);  Ascham  has  wrynchynge,  Tox.  145. 

Before  -n  +  d,  t,  s: — Gmtlemen,  Laneham's  Letter  40,  1575;  repmt, 
M.  Faulkiner,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  56  (1645);  atinding,  Doll  Leake,  ibid, 
iv.  113  (1665);  rintes  'rents',  Lady  Sussex,  ibid.  ii.  84  (1642); 
sincible,  Peter  Wentworth,  Wentw.  Papers  211  (1711). 

Before  -s: — Latimer,  opprision,  Serm.  on  Ploughers  22;  Q.  Elizabeth, 


OLD   i   BECOMES   A  DIPHTHONG  223 

opprissing,  Transl.  26;  Lady  Sussex,  requist,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  121  ;  Gary 
Verney,  bist  '  best  ',  ibid.  ii.  70. 

Before  -/:  —  Fortescue,  rebillion  129  (twice),  rebyllion  130;  Gary 
Verney,  will  'well',  Mem.  ii.  63,  '//'//  'tell',  ii.  70;  Mrs.  Basire,  will 
'well',  134  (1654). 

Gary  Verney,  who  seems  fond  of  the  i-  forms,  also  has  lit  for  let. 

M.E.  /  in  the  Modern  Period. 

The  present-day  development  is  the  well-marked  diphthong  [at].  The 
first  stage  in  the  process  was  most  probably  [?'],  that  is,  the  latter  part  of 
the  old  long  vowel  was  made  slack.  We  must  consider  this  stage  as 
already  diphthongal.  The  next  stage  was  probably  a  further  differentia- 
tion between  the  first  and  second  elements  of  the  diphthong,  the  former 
being  lowered  to  [e].  The  subsequent  career  of  the  diphthong  may  well 
have  been  (V  —  aez'  —  at].  A  point  of  importance  is  that  at  one  stage  the 
diphthong  became  identical  with  that  developed  out  of  old  oi.  This 
identity  is  still  preserved  in  some  Regional  dialects—  e.g.  that  of  Oxfordshire, 
where  the  sound  in  both  line  and  loin  appears  to  be  something  approach- 
ing [ai].  The  rhymes  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  tend  to 
show  that  the  identity  still  survived,  and  it  seems  to  have  existed  as  early 
as  the  fifteenth  century  (see  history  of  ot1,  p.  250,  also  324,  below).  The 
fact  of  this  one-time  identity  to  some  extent  affects  the  views  we  shall  take 
concerning  the  precise  path  followed  between  the  starting-point  and  the 
present  stage.  The  stage  [ei]  may  be  represented  by  the  occasional 
spellings  with  ey,  ei  in  the  fifteenth  century.  These  spellings  are  not 
particularly  common  —  I  have  noted  more  in  St.  Editha  (c.  1420)  than  in 
any  other  text  —  and  although  they  occur  here  and  there  as  late  as  the 
seventeenth  century,  it  seems  clear  from  other  evidence  that  they  do  not 
always  express  the  same  diphthong.  The  scattered  spellings  I  have 
found  ^are—  St.  JL$tfhz.—y-leyche  Mike',  399;  neynthe  'ninth',  668;  ley$t 
1  light  ',  904  ;  weyjf  (  wight  ',  960  ;  feyre  '  fire  ',1294;  myelde  '  mild  ',  1408, 
2833  ;  seyjf,  1517  ;  bleynte  'blind  ',  2731;  bkynde,  2822  ;  bleynasse,  2937; 
feyndi  Inf.  3254.  Meynde  'mind',  3858,  rhymes  with  hende  'end',  and 
therefore  probably  represents  the  form  mende,  rather  than  minde.  Marg. 
Paston  has  abeyd  Inf.  '  bide  ',  ii.  26.  The  Hymn  to  the  Virgin,  in  Welsh 
spelling  (c.  1500),  writes  meichti,  breicht,  setcht,  geiding,  abeid,  deifyrs 
'  divers  ',  ei  '  I  '.  Sir  Thos.  Seymour  has  Eylle  of  Wyght,  and  trey  '  try  ', 
St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII.  i.  780  (1544);  Machyn  writes  feyre  'fire',  41  ;  and 
mety  occurs  in  a  letter  of  John  Hotham  of  Scarborough,  Ellis  2.  2. 


In  the  Verney  Memoirs  we  have  obleiged,  Sir  R.  V.,  ii.  358  (1647), 
obleige,  M.  Eure,  Hi.  336  (1657).  The  English  and  French  Orthoepists 
of  the  sixteenth  century  generally  describe  English  I  as  consisting  of  e 
and  z',  though  Smith  and  Bullokar  appear  to  regard  it  as  a  single  long 
vowel,  a  view  which  we  cannot  take  seriously.  In  the  seventeenth 
century,  Butler  (1634)  and  Howel  and  Sherwood,  independently,  in 
Cotgrave's  Dictionary  (1672)  all  say  that  the  sound  is  the  diphthong  ei. 
By  this  time,  probably  [sez'J  is  intended,  and  we  may  suppose  that  the 
same  type  of  pronunciation  is  referred  to  as  that  used  by  the  writers  o 
the  occasional  spellings  et\  ey  just  quoted. 


224    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE  MODERN   PERIOD 


There  is  no  difficulty  in  assuming  that  such  a  diphthong  as  [ez]  could 
;come  [at].     We  find  the  M.E.  diphthongs  ei  and  at  levelled  under 
a  single  diphthong,  apparently  [at]  in  the  M.E.  period,  and  at  the  present 


time  London  Cockneys  have  made  the  early  nineteenth-century  diphthong 
[ez'J  (cf.  p.  196)  into  something  approaching  to  [at],  although  the  former 
remains  in  Received  Standard. 

On  the  other  hand,  during  the  same  period  throughout  which  the  ei 
spellings  are  found  for  old  [I],  other  spellings  are  found  which  seem  to 
establish  the  existence  of  another  type  of  pronunciation  of  this,  identical 
with  that  of  the  old  diphthong  oi. 

St.  Editha  has  the  spelling  anynted  '  anointed ',  376  ;  Gregory  writes  dys- 
tryde  for  'destroyed',  p.  59,  pyson  for  '  poison  ',  p.  161  ;  in  the  Cely  Papers, 
p.  69,  we  have  voyage  '  voyage ',  where  the  first  syllable  may,  it  is  true, 
represent  either  i  or  oy  in  M.E.  Shakespeare  in  V.  and  A.,  1 1 1 5-1 6,  rhymes 
groin  with  swine ;  the  rhyme  tryall — disloyal  occurs  in  Marston's  Insa- 
tiate Countess  (1613),  Activ  ;  Lady  Sussex  in  1639  writes  kaindet  V.  Pprs. 
206  ;  in  the  Verney  Memoirs  the  following  spellings  may  be  noted : — 
gine  'join ',  Gary  Stewkley,  vol.  iii,  p.  433  (1656) ;  byled  leg  of  mutton, 
Dr.  Denton  iv.  227  (1670);  implyment  'employment',  C.  Stewkley,  iv. 
276  (1686);  Mrs.  Basire  writes  regis  'rejoice',  Corresp,  137  (1654).  In 
1712  we  find  voiolence,  Wentworth  Papers,  p.  280.  The  spelling  joyst 
for  original  jlste  is  found  in  1494,  and  boyle  (on  the  body)  from  bile, 
in  1529  (cf.  Jespersen,  New  Eng.  Gr.,  p.  320).  To  Jesper sen's  early 
examples  of  oy  for  i  we  may  add  defoyled,  Mnk.  of  Ev.  59,  1482,  Obroyn 
'  O'Brien ',  St.  of  Irel.  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii.  9,  and  defoylynge  in  Rede 
me  and  be  not  wrothe  (1528). 

The  spelling  might '  right ',  Cely  Papers,  46, 158,  &c.,  clearly  expresses 
a  diphthongal  pronunciation,  possibly  [a*'],  at  any  rate  it  could  hardly  have 
represented  the  same  pronunciation  as  that  expressed  by  the  spelling  ei. 
These  spellings  can  only  mean  one  thing,  namely,  that  those  who  used 
them  pronounced  old  ;  and  old  oi  in  exactly  the  same  way.  What  was 
the  probable  character  of  the  diphthong  thus  expressed  ?  Certainly  not 
\oi\  but  very  possibly  a  sound  not  unlike  [a/]  now  heard  in  Oxfordshire 
for  both  old  t  and  old  oi.  The  spelling  voyage  cited  above  from  Cely 
Papers  points  to  the  first  element  being  already  unrounded,  in  fact, 
to  either  [a/]  or  [at],  and  this  is  not  necessarily  contradicted  by 
ruight  from  the  same  source.  A  curious  spelling,  loay  '  lie ',  used  by 
Gary  Stewkley  in  1656,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  434,  shows  that  this  lady  did 
not  regard  o  in  diphthongal  combinations  as  expressing  a  rounded 
vowel. 

But  the  testimony  of  the  writers  on  pronunciation  also  confirms  the 
identity  of  pronunciation  of  i  and  oi  already  proved  by  the  occasional 
spellings  cited.  Thus  Wallis  (1653)  says  that  'long  i'  is  composed  of 
'  feminine  e '  followed  by  i.  He  has  previously  described  '  feminine  e ' 
(of  the  French)  as  an  '  obscure  sound ',  which  is  heard  in  English  when 
'  short  e '  immediately  precedes  ~r-,  the  examples  given  being  liberty, 
virtue.  It  is  impossible  to  be  sure  whether  Wallis  means  [a]  or  [aj. 
That  he  is  either  trying  to  describe  one  or  other  of  these  sounds,  or  that 
he  is  confusing  them  and  making  one  description  apply  to  both,  is  pretty 
certain.  At  any  rate,  the  first  element  is  not  a  front  vowel  and  not 


TWO  TYPES   OF  PRONUNCIATION   OF  f  225 

a  round  vowel.  Cooper,  thirty  years  later,  is  more  explicit.  He  says 
that  there  is  a  diphthong  composed  of  the  sound  u  in  cut  +  i,  which  is  ex- 
pressed in  English  sometimes  by  i  as  in  wine,  wind,  blind,  &c.,  and 
sometimes  by  oi  as  in  injoin,  joint,  jointure,  broil,  &c.  Concerning  the 
sound  of  u  in  cut  he  tells  us  (i)  that  it  is  different  from  the  vowel  in  bull, 
and  (2)  that  it  is  made  in  the  throat  and  resembles  the  groans  of  a  man 
afflicted  with  illness  or  pain.  The  English  pronounce  this  short  sound 
almost  everywhere,  as  in  nut,  even  in  Latin,  except  when  the  preceding 
consonant  is  labial  as  mpull.  He  gives  a  very  precise  analysis  of  the  way 
the  sound  is  made,  saying  that  guttural  u  is  formed  if  when  pronouncing 
long  o  the  lips  are  retracted  into  an  oblong  form.  This  appears  to  be 
another  way  of  saying  that  the  sound  is  '  unrounded  o ',  which  is  precisely 
the  analysis  we  now  make  of  the  English  vowel  [a]  in  cut,  &c. — '  mid- 
back-(tense) '. 

From  this  combined  evidence  of  occasional  spellings  and  the  statements 
of  grammarians,  it  appears  (i)  that  from  the  fifteenth  to  well  into  the 
seventeenth  century  old  I  was  pronounced  by  many  speakers  as  a 
diphthong  of  which  the  first  element  was  a  front  vowel,  the  diphthong 
thus  being  either  [ei',  ez]  or  [gei]  ;  (2)  that  during  the  same  period  other 
speakers  pronounced  old  i  and  old  oi  with  one  and  the  same  diphthongal 
combination ;  (3)  that,  at  any  rate  from  the  seventeenth  century  onwards, 
the  first  element  of  the  diphthong  was  either  [a]  or  [a],  most  probably 
the  latter,  giving  the  diphthong  [a/].  The  transition  from  this  to  the 
present-day  sound  consists  merely  in  making  the  first  element  slack. 

It  seems  thus  to  be  established  that  there  were,  in  the  fifteenth,  six- 
teenth, and  seventeenth  centuries,  two  types  of  pronunciation  for  this  J, 
as  for  so  many  other  sounds  in  English.  Two  questions  arise,  namely, 
by  what  process  did  old  l  pass  into  the  [ai]  type,  and  from  which  type  is 
our  present  pronunciation  descended  ? 

The  most  probable  answer  to  the  first  question  appears  to  me  to  be 
that  the  [ai]  type  branched  off  from  the  other  at  the  [e/*]  stage,  and  that 
the  process  was  one  of  simple  retraction  from  a  mid-front  to  a  mid-back- 
tense  vowel.  We  may  illustrate  the  development  of  the  two  types  by 
a  simple  diagram. 


It  seems  to  me  that  it  is  impossible  to  reconcile  the  undoubted  exis- 
tence of  the  two  pronunciations  [ei",  ai]  at  the  same  time,  as  proved  by  the 
evidence,  without  some  such  theory. 

As  regards  the  second  question,  it  may  be  said  that  either  type  could 
become  [ai].  Possibly  both  types  had  this  development,  so  that  they 
were  finally  reunited  thus : — 

Type  A. 

[i*   <    ei  /   Type  B.     \   <  at] 
\  a/'  —  ai 

On  the  other  hand,  A  may  have  died  out  altogether  in  Received 
Standard,  leaving  the  field  entirely  to  B.  Or  it  may  have  survived  only 

Q 


226     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN    PERIOD 

in  provincial  dialects,  and  in  some  of  these  its  descendants  may  still  linger, 
offering  more  or  less  strange  variants  from  the  Standard,  and  constituting 
a  characteristic  feature  of  rustic  speech.  This  is  a  question  for  the 
'  dialectologists '  to  solve. 

The  word  oblige  was  commonly  pronounced  with  [!]  during  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries.  In  the  Verney  Memoirs,  Lady  Verney 
writes  obleged,  ii.  305  (1647),  Lady  Gaudy  ends  a  letter  '  your  obleged 
humble  sarvant  Vere  Gaudy',  iii.  224  (1650),  and  Sir  Richard  Browne 
refers  to  ' your  most  obleginge  letter  \  iii.  in  (1653) ;  Lady  Hobart  has 
disablegin,  iv.  55  (1664),  obleg,  139  (1666).  On  the  other  hand,  Sir 
Ralph  Verney  writes  obleiged,  ii.  305  (1647),  and  Mary  Eure  obleige,  iii. 
336  (1657),  and  Mrs.  Basire's  spelling  ableiage,  Corresp.  141  (1655), 
certainly  suggests  [&i\.  Pope,  as  is  well  known,  rhymes  obliged  with 
beseiged,  and  Jones  (Practical  Orthographer,  1701)  says  that  oblige  con- 
tains the  sound  of  '  ee '. 

As  may  be  inferred  from  the  above  spellings  of  Sir  R.  Verney  and 
Mrs.  Eure,  the  word  was  also  pronounced  with  a  diphthongal  sound  [at] 
as  now,  even  in  their  day.  The  old  [I]  pronunciation  survived  among 
some  speakers  far  into  the  nineteenth  century,  and  according  to  The 
Bookman,  May  1907  (cit.  Jespersen,  Mod.  Eng.  Gr.,  8.  33),  Wilkie  Collins 
retained  this  mode.  It  has  been  said  that  the  dying  out,  even  during  the 
eighteenth  century,  of  the  old  pronunciation  is  due  to  the  influence  of 
Lord  Chesterfield,  who,  it  is  alleged,  warned  his  son  against  [l]  in  this 
word.  This  statement  seems  to  have  been  repeated  without  verifying  the 
facts,  or  at  least  without  considering  the  meaning  of  words,  among  others 
by  myself  in  my  Short  Hist,  of  EngL,  §  254,  Note.  I  cannot  excuse  the 
statement,  nor  indeed  even  explain  how  I  came  to  make  it,  since  I  was 
acquainted  with  the  passage  in  which  Lord  Chesterfield  refers  to  the 
word.  His  words  are  these  : — '  The  Vulgar  man  .  .  .  even  his  pronun- 
ciation of  proper  words  carries  the  mark  of  the  beast  along  with  it.  He 
calls  the  earth  yearth ;  he  is  obleiged  not  obliged  to  you/  The  plain 
meaning  of  this,  written  1749,  Letter  195,  in  my  Edition,  is  that 
[oblflzdzd]  is  the  vulgar  pronunciation,  and  some  other — presumably 
[oblidzd]  —the  polite  pronunciation. 

Lord  Chesterfield  has  been  made  to  say  exactly  the  reverse  of  what  he 
intended,  and  a  theory  which  is  not  even  consonant  with  the  facts  has 
been  based  upon  a  misinterpretation  of  his  words. 

We  must  suppose  that  [obWdz]  is  derived  from  a  M.E.  form  with  t, 
while  [oblidz]  owes  its  second  vowel  to  late  French  influence. 


Lowering  of  i  to  e. 

In  documents  of  all  kinds,  public  and  private,  during  the  fifteenth 
century  and  in  the  successive  centuries  until  the  eighteenth,  there  are 
numerous  examples  of  e  written  for  original  *.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that 
these  spellings  reflect  an  actual  tendency  in  pronunciation,  since  late  in 
the  eighteenth  century  Edmonston  censures  'fell'  for  'till',  and  ' seme* 
for  '  since ',  &c.,  as  London  vulgarisms.  Whatever  may  have  been  the 
history  of  the  introduction  of  these  forms  in  London  and  Court  English, 


TELL  PRONOUNCED   FOR    TILL  227 

there  is  no  doubt  that  from  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  or  so, 
down  to  the  first  third  of  the  eighteenth  century  at  any  rate,  they  were 
current  in  circles  whose  speech,  however  much  we  may  now  take  exception 
to  this  or  that  feature,  was  certainly  not  the  vulgar  speech  of  the  day. 

Among  the  various  forms  with  e  instead  of  i  that  occur  scattered 
through  the  documents  during  the  four  centuries  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned, there  are  some  in  which  the  quantity  is  doubtful,  and  we  hesitate 
whether  to  class  them  under  our  present  heading  or  under  that  of/,  which 
became  e  in  open  syllables  in  the  M.E.  period.  (See  pp.  207-8,  above.) 

But  even  if  it  is  certain  that  the  quantity  is  short,  e.  g.  in  knet '  knit ', 
some  doubt  may  arise  whether  we  have  to  do  with  e  lowered  from  7,  or 
whether  we  have  the  survival  of  an  old  dialectal  type  with  the  '  Kentish ' 
or  South-Eastern  vowel,  from  O.E.  y. 

We  have  already  seen  (p.  30.  (3))  how  this  vowel  became  i  in  E.  Mid- 
land, but  e  in  the  South-Eastern  dialects,  and  that  the  London  dialect  of 
M.E.  has  many  examples  of  the  latter  type  (cf.  pp.  41.  (3),  53).  Thus  knet, 
or  for  the  matter  of  that,  the  present  knell,  which  both  contain  a  develop- 
ment of  O.E.^,  might  be  explained  either  from  the  South-Eastern  type, 
or  as  the  E.  Midland  z-type  with  the  lowering  which  we  are  considering. 

As  regards  the  antiquity  and  dialectal  origin  of  the  change  of  I  to  e, 
a  minute  and  far-reaching  examination  of  the  M.E.  sources  would  be 
necessary  to  arrive  at  very  definite  conclusions,  and  at  present  I  am  only 
able  to  indicate  that  apparent  examples — e.  g.  gresly  '  grisly ',  grennyng, 
merour — are  found  in  Robt.  of  Brunne's  Handlyng  Sinne,  and  Lenne  for 
Lynne  several  times  in  the  Norfolk  Guilds.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  so 
far  as  my  observation  goes,  forms  with  e  are  more  frequent  in  definitely 
E.  Midland  or  Essex  writers  such  as  Palladius,  Marg.  Paston,  Bokenam, 
the  Celys,  or  in  writers  who  came  from  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  such  as 
Lydgate  and  Gregory,  than  in  documents  written  by  Westerners,  or  in 
the  pure  London  dialect. 

In  the  following  century  the  forms  are  found  more  frequently  than 
earlier,  in  documents  which  exhibit  no  Regional  features,  but  are  more 
common  in  Machyn's  Diary  than  in  any  other  work  of  the  period  with 
which  I  am  acquainted.  ^ 

From  the  by  no  means  complete  material  at  present  at  my  disposal  I 
draw,  tentatively,  the  conclusion  that  the  tendency  to  lower  i  to  e  arose  in 
the  E.  Midlands,  probably  in  the  northern  part  of  the  area,  and  that  it  gradu- 
ally extended  southwards  and  found  a  footing  in  the  dialects  of  Norfolk, 
Suffolk,  and  Essex.  How  far  westwards  the  tendency  spread  I  am  at 
present  unable  to  say,  though  the  Oxfordshire  Oseney  Register  (1460) 
and  a  Bucks.  Will  of  1534  show  some  traces  of  it.  During  the  fifteenth 
century  a  certain  number  of  forms  showing  this  change  penetrated  into 
the  London  dialect,  perhaps  from  Essex,  and  they  gained  an  increasing 
currency  first,  probably,  among  the  lower  orders  of  the  population. 

It  would  be  unwise  to  press  too  far  the  view  that  the  *-forms  in  London 
English  belong  to  a  lower  Class  dialect,  although  Machyn,  as  has  been 
said,  has  more  of  them  than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  since  they  are 
found  in  fair  numbers  in  letters  of  Sir  Thos.  Seymour  (1544),  and  later 
in  Queen  Elizabeth's  Letters  and  Translations.  I  have  noted  the  follow- 
ing examples : — 

Q  2 


228    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

Fifteenth  Century. 

Definitely  E.  Midland  and  South-Eastern  writers. 

Palladius  rhymes  children — eldron  26.  713,  and  myrour — terrour  36. 
976  ;  Marg.  Paston  has  well  'will'  i.  83,  Beshopys  i.  236,  hese  '  his'  i. 
245,  I-  355,  Welyam  i.  438,  vetayll  i.  371,  Trenyte  i.  43,  355,  &c., 
'  Trinity'.  Chene  'chin  ',  i.  69,  has  perhaps  a  long  vowel,  and  week,  ii. 
217,  might  be  otherwise  explained.  Bokenam  has  smet  P.  P.  Marg.  431, 
sneuelyng  Marg.  482,  to  grenne  Marg.  661,  contenuely  Ann.  465,  flekeryngs 
Fth.  232,  menstralsy  Marg.  743,  merour  Pr.  Marg.  166  ;  Bury  Wills  1463, 
merours  21  ;  Cely  Pprs.  havey£/'  fit  '(Noun)  77,  1504,  and  cheldren,  47  ; 
beche  i bitch'  74,  sen  'since'  41,  fenyshe  47,  sweffte  48,  wendow  82, 
scheppe  'ship'  70,  dfcrfoj  182,  smethe  'smith'.  The  Will  of  Sir  Thos. 
Cumberworth,  Lines.  1451,  has  peter  'pillar',  L.  D.  D.  51.  2. 

Writers  who  on  the  whole  write  London  English,  but  who  were  born  in 
Suffolk. 

Lydgate  has  merours,  glemeryng  ;  Gregory  schelyngys  79,  pejon  '  pigeon  ' 
80,  lemyted  123,  pelory  183  ;  denyr  is  doubtful  and  may  have  either  e 
or  e  (cf.  Machyn's  forms,  below).  The  three-syllabled  words  just  quoted 
have  almost  certainly  a  short  e. 

Other  writers— fifteenth  and  following  centuries. 

The  Western  writers — Shillingford  and  Bp.  Pecok — and  the  Ordinances 
of  Worcester  and  the  Exeter  Tailors'  Guild,  appear  not  to  use  these 
forms.  The  last  mentioned  has  es  '  is ',  and  hes  '  his  ',  p.  314,  but  these 
are  both  unstressed.  Fortescue,  however,  has  contenually  147,  lemited 
128,  deficulte  144,  147,  149  (probably  e),  inconsederably  143  (probably  £, 
cf.  Lady  Wentworth's  forms,  below),  and  the  rather  doubtful  wech  '  which ' 
1 1 8,  &c.,  by  the  side  of  usual  wich.  Short  Engl.  Chron.  has  Beshoppes 
55,  Caxton  shellyngs  '  shillings '  Dial  in  Fr.  and  Engl.  1 6. 6.  Seek  '  such ', 
knetted}-&s.  174.  31,  and  besines  Jas.  96.  31,  are  most  probably  to  be 
reckoned  as  '  Kentish '  forms. 

Skelton  has  gletteryng,  Magnyf.  855 ;  Will  of  R.  Astbroke  (Bucks. 
1 534)>  cheldryn,  L.  D.  D.  169.  3  ;  Lord  Berners'  Froissart,  mengled  i.  379, 
hedeous  i.  230;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  Gouernour,  sens  'since'  i.  197,  208, 
221 ;  Sir  Thos.  Seymour  1544,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  vol.  i,  fesshermen 
784,  Premrose  790,  weteleres  778,  Beshope  777,  begennyng  776,  fenyshed 
776,  shepe  'ship'  passim  (vowel  probably  short,  cf.  spelling  in  Cely 
Pprs.);  Bp.  Latimer,  sence  'since',  Serm.  of  Ploughers  24  and  25,  Sev. 
Serm.  119,  Chichester  ibid.  120,  mestris  166  (may  be  intermediate  form 
from  mastres1\  thether  166;  Ascham,  splettyd,  Tox.  109;  Wilson,  A.  of 
Rhet.  grenning  221 ;  Q.  Elizabeth,  bellowes  '  billows  '  Letters  to  J.  VI,  29, 
weshing  ibid.  4  (might  be  'Kentish',  but  this  is  improbable),  rechis 
Transl.  49;  Euphues,  father  60,  hetherio  83;  sheuering  161  (probably 
short?);  Machyn,  pelere  'pillory'  14,  pelorie  22,  vetell  20,  deleverd  23, 
chelderyn  24,  pelers  'pillars'  27  (twice),  Rechard  38,  sent  Necolas  42, 
sennet  'signet'  51,  essut  'issue'  71,  menyster  79,  velyns  'villains'  82, 
Eslyngton  %$,  prtmepalles  90  (Noun),  selver  90  (might  be  fr.  O.E.  eo  if  in 
a  Western  text,  but  not  here),  red '  rid '  Pret.  of  ride  167,  vesetars,  veseturs 


THE  PRONUNCIATION  BUSHOP  229 

206,  207,  beliefs  211,  denner  2,  &c.,  &c.,  also  deener  138,  leveray  t  livery* 
passim,  prevelegys  61,  ennes  of  the  cowrt  131,  consperacy  104,  &j  'is'  139, 
sterope  '  stirrup '  139. 

The  following  are  found  in  Verney  Memoirs  : — M.  Falkiner,  fefty>  ii. 
52,  strept  'stripped'  52,  pettyful  52,  cheldren  53,  sence  'since'  55,  melch 
1  milch  '  55,  resestance  56,  mesry  '  misery '  56,  stell  '  still '  52  (all  1642)  ; 
Sir  R.  Verney,  untel  ii.  24  ;  Anne  Lee,  shelings  ii.  235  (1646) ;  Lady  V., 
untel  ii.  249  (1646);  Mall  Verney,  sence  ii.  379  (1647);  Lady  Elmes, 
thenck  'think*  ii.  381  {\btf\consedowring  381  ;  Lady  Hobart,  bet  'bit', 
pell '  pilP  iv.  53  (1664)  ;  Doll  Leake,  peted  '  pitted'  iv.  51  (1664). 

Lady  Sussex's  speriets  'spirits',  ii.  102,  has  probably  a  short  vowel, 
since  [sperrts]  still  survives  as  a  vulgarism.  Mr.  H.  Blaxton,  Corresp. 
of  Dr.  Basire,  has  to  vesit  35,  1638,  and  conteneiv  36,  and  Mrs.  Basire 
herself  has  sens  '  since  '  108,  presnor  108,  relegos  ibid.,  ret  for  '  rit ' '  wrote ' 
109,  all  1651 ;  cheldren  135,  1654.  Aubrey  writes — 'he  would  sett  up 
very  late  at  nights ',  Lives,  i.  150,  Clark's  Ed. 

In  the  next  century  the  ^-spellings  are  pretty  numerous  in  Wentworth 
Pprs. — Lady  W.  has  tel '  till '  84,  hender  '  hinder '  Vb.  95,  setting  '  sitting ' 
107,  veseting  day  39  ;  consperacy  40,  delever  46,  contenew  40,  condedder 
41,  senc  'since'  50,  spetting  51,  sesterns  'cisterns'  65,  beger,  begest 
'bigger,  biggest'  129,  well  (unstressed)  'will'  129;  Peter  Wentworth 
has  hetherto  435  ;  Lord  Wentworth  (a  child)  has  sesters  '  sisters '  461. 

Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu  rhymes  wit  with  coquet,  and  gift  with 
theft,  which  may  imply  a  pronunciation  [wst,  geft]. 

These  examples,  though  less  copious  than  could  be  desired,  aje  suffi- 
cient to  establish  the  wide  currency  which  the  -^-forms  once  enjoyed. 
That  they  have  so  completely  died  out  of  Received  Standard  English 
must  be  put  down  to  the  increasing  tendency,  to  which  attention  has 
so  often  been  called,  to  approximate  pronunciation  to  the  spelling. 


The  i  in  Bishop. 

It  is  perhaps  worth  noting  that  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century  this  word  is  fairly  often  spelt  bushop,  busshop,  &c. 

I  have  noted  the  following  instances: — Marg.  Paston,  Archebusshop  ii. 
372,  373;  Lord  Berners,  Froissart  i.  28;  Archbp.  Cranmer,  Busshope 
(at  least  nineteen  times  in  a  letter  of  1537),  Ellis  3.  3.  23,  &c. ;  Ascham, 
Scholem.  127;  Roper's  Life  of  Sir  Thos.  More,  Bushopps  xlv.  14; 
Dr.  Denton  in  Verney  Memoirs  iv.  430,  1688;  Cooper  (1685)  includes 
Bushop  among  the  pronunciations  to  be  avoided  as  belonging  to  a 
'barbarous  dialect';  Jones  (1701)  notes  that  the  word  is  'sounded 
Booshop  by  some '. 

With  all  this  evidence  we  are  bound  to  take  the  early  spellings  as 
meaning  something.  It  looks  rather  as  if  the  /'  had  been  rounded  to  [y] 
through  the  influence  of  the  initial  b-,  and  this  vowel  then  retracted,  along 
with  the  other  [y]  sounds,  to  [u].  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  this 
underwent  unrounding,  or  whether  it  was  preserved  after  b.  It  is  possible 
that  some  speakers  said  [ba/ap],  while  others  said  [bujap],  Jones's 
spelling  rather  suggests  the  latter  pronunciation.  In  any  case,  in  spite  of 


23o     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN  PERIOD 

Cooper,  the  pronunciation  was  not  always  a  vulgarism;  witness  Cranmer, 
who  ought  certainly  to  have  known  the  best  pronunciation  of  the  word. 

It  is  strange  that  this  word  should  be  apparently  the  only  instance  of 
the  rounding  of  i  after  b. 

M.E.  u  in  the  Modern  Period. 

This  vowel  has  been  diphthongized  to  [au\.  Typical  examples  are— 
house,  mouse,  how,  bow  (Vb.),  cow,  shroud,  &c.,  &c.  All  these  words  had 
[u]  in  Old  and  Middle  English,  written  at  first  u,  and  later,  after  the 
French  fashion,  ou  or  ow.  Thus  while  no  change  has  taken  place  in  the 
spelling,  the  change  in  pronunciation  has  been  considerable.  The  actual 
process  probably  began,  as  in  the  case  of  M.E.  i,  by  a  differentiation  of 
the  first  and  latter  parts  of  the  long  vowel  into  tense  and  slack  respectively, 
a  condition  which  may  be  expressed  as  [u1*].  The  first  element  in  this 
homogeneous  diphthong  was  then  lowered  to  [o],  and  this  was  sub- 
sequently unrounded,  which  resulted  in  a  diphthong  approximately  the 
same  as  that  in  use  to-day  in  Received  Standard.  The  whole  series 
would  thus  be  : — [u — utt — ou — a#  — au].  At  the  present  time  there  are 
several  varieties  of  pronunciation  of  the  old  u.  In  the  dialects  of  the 
North  no  diphthongization  has  taken  place,  and  '  house '  is  still  pronounced 
[hus],  with  a  single  vowel,  although  various  sounds,  all  of  an  u-like 
character,  are  heard  in  different  areas.  In  some  parts  of  Yorkshire,  on  the 
other  hand,  diphthongization  apparently  took  place,  but  the  second 
element  of  the  diphthong  was  lost,  and  the  remaining  vowel  lengthened, 
so  that  instead  of  [h0#s]  we  get  [(h)as].  Again,  in  some  parts  of  Lanca- 
shire the  development  seems  to  have  been  [hflws,  hae^s — (h)sws — e'ls — 
es],  the  last  being  actually  in  use.  In  Middle-Class  London  Cockney 
the  first  element  of  the  diphthong  has  been  fronted,  and  a  typical  mark 
of  the  beast,  as  Lord  Chesterfield  would  call  it,  in  certain  circles,  is  the 
pronunciation  [haews]. 

When  did  the  beginning  of  the  diphthongization  take  place  ?  My  own 
collections  of  spellings  throw  no  light  upon  the  question,  but  Zachrisson 
(Pronunciation  of  English  Vowels,  p.  79)  has  brought  forward  a  few 
spellings  with  au,  aw,  for  old  u,  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries,  collected  some  by  himself,  some  by  others.  Of  these  the  most 
convincing  seem  to  me  abaught '  about ',  faunde,  withaught,  from  Paston 
Letters ;  aur  '  our  ',  Cely  Papers,  20 ;  Register  of  Godstow,  sauth  '  south ', 
faul  (cit.  '  More ',  and  no  reference  except  to  a  German  Dissertation 
which  I  have  not  seen)  ;  Henslow's  Diary,  hause  '  house '  (from  Diehl). 
With  regard  to  some  of  these  spellings  it  has  been  maintained  that  the 
writers  merely  wrote  au  '  by  mistake '  for  ou,  and  that  they  are  not  phonetic 
at  all,  and  therefore  cast  no  light  upon  the  matter  in  hand.  Who  shall 
pretend  to  decide  with  absolute  certainty  the  meaning  of  these  spellings, 
unless  it  be  some  foreign  philologist  who  is,  naturally,  infallible  ?  It  must 
be  admitted  on  the  one  hand,  that  if  the  sound  was  still  [a]  au  would 
be  the  very  worst  way  of  expressing  it,  and  on  the  other,  that  these  occa- 
sional spellings  do  not  inspire  quite  the  same  confidence  as  do  some 
others  of  the  kind,  and  this  from  their  extreme  rarity.  I  have  found  none 
in  the  thousands  of  documents  I  have  looked  through,  and  have  even 


RISE   OF   THE   DIPHTHONG   IN   HOUSE,  ETC.      231 

overlooked,  owing  to  slowness  of  vision,  the  few  that  there  were  in  some 
of  the  documents  which  I  did  examine.  It  may  be  asked,  Why  should 
these  tell-tale  spellings  (if  indeed  they  be  such  in  this  case)  be  so  rare  in 
respect  of  old  ft,  when  in  the  case  of  some  other  vowels  we  find  them  so 
frequently  ?  The  answer,  I  think,  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  traditional 
spelling  ou,  if  taken  literally  to  mean  o  +  u,  was  by  no  means  a  bad 
representation  of  the  pronunciation  of  the  diphthong  as  it  probably  was 
during  perhaps  the  greater  part  of  the  sixteenth  century.  In  fact, 
Salesbury  (1547)  and  Hart  (1569)  appear  to  describe  the  sound  as  made 
up  of  these  two  elements.  The  other  English  grammarians  of  this 
century  are  so  obscure  on  this  vowel  that  it  is  mere  waste  of  time  to  try 
to  wring  some  meaning  out  of  their  accounts.  The  French  grammarian 
Mason  (1622)  transcribes  how  as  haow,  which  certainly  suggests  a  pro- 
nunciation not  far  removed  from  our  own.  Diphthongs  are  always 
difficult  to  analyse  exactly. 

Wallis,  in  1653,  describes  the  sound  in  house,  mouse,  out,  our,  owl,  foul, 
sow,  &c.,  thus  :  '  obscuriori  sono  efferuntur;  sono  nempe  composito  ex 
b  vel  u  obscuris,  et  w.'  Cooper  (1685)  says:  '  composita  ex  u  guttu- 
rali  et  oo  labiali,  sonatur.'  Both  of  these  descriptions  indicate  approxi- 
mately [a«]  or  \?u],  that  is  to  say  a  diphthong  differing  from  our  own,  if  at 
all,  only  by  a  difference  of  tenseness  in  the  first  element.  It  may  well  be, 
however,  that  Wallis  and  Cooper  are  really  referring  to  a  diphthong  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  identical  with  that  now  in  use. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  any  further  torturing  of  the  other  sixteenth-  and 
seventeenth-century  French  grammarians,  not  mentioned  above,  will  bring 
us  any  nearer  the  truth  with  regard  to  the  history  of  this  sound.  As  for 
the  early  spellings  in  au,  supposing  they  do  mean  something,  how  shall 
we  interpret  them  ?  If  we  take  Salesbury  and  Hart  seriously  at  all,  it  is 
reasonable  to  believe  what  they  tell  us,  when  for  once  they  are  intelligible 
and  even  plausible,  and  not  to  attempt  to  make  their  perfectly  definite 
statements  mean  something  quite  different  from  what  they  appear  to 
mean.  But  to  believe  Salesbury  and  Hart  is  to  assume  that  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  at  least  in  the  form  of  English  which  they  are  describ- 
ing, the  first  element  of  the  diphthong  was  rounded.  In  this  case,  either 
the  fifteenth-  and  sixteenth-century  writers  who  occasionally  wrote  au 
were  using  a  very  unsuggestive  mode  of  expression,  or  they  were 
representing  a  different  pronunciation  altogether — one  more  like  that 
suggested  by  the  French  writer  who  transliterates  aou  forty  or  fifty  years 
later.  It  is  quite  possible  that  some  speakers  pronounced  [au]  while 
others  still  said  [ou],  the  first  element  in  the  latter  case  being  perhaps 
only  slightly  rounded.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  diphthonging  of 
old  u  must  have  begun  very  early — before  old  <?1  had  developed  into  «, 
and  this,  as  we  shall  see  (pp.  234-5),  was  probably  completed  during  the 
fourteenth  century  at  latest.  From  the  moment,  therefore,  that  old  01  has 
become  [a]  we  may  be  sure  that  old  u  has  started  on  that  career  of  change 
which  subsequently  brought  it  to  its  present  sound.  But  the  process  was 
not  necessarily  equally  rapid  in  all  areas,  or  among  all  sections  of 
speakers.  It  is  extremely  probable  that  a  full-blown  [au]  had  arisen — 
perhaps  in  the  Eastern  parts  of  the  country — during  the  fifteenth  century. 
When  we  remember  how  many  of  the  Modern  sound  changes  first  appear 


232    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN  PERIOD 

in  the  South-East  or  E.  Midland  dialects,  it  will  perhaps  not  seem  to  be 
without  significance  that  the  earliest— in  fact,  the  larger  number — of  the 
spellings  with  au  are  found  in  the  letters  of  the  Pastons  and  Celys. 

It  is  absurd  to  dogmatize  where,  at  the  best,  intelligent  speculation  must 
take  the  place  of  certainty. 

Unrounding  of  M.E.  u. 

M.E.  u,  which  had  originally  the  pronunciation  of  a  short  (probably 
tense)  [u],  underwent  in  the  Modern  period  a  process  of  unrounding 
and  then  of  lowering,  whereby  the  present  peculiar  sound,  so  character- 
istic of  English,  was  reached. 

The  short  u  thus  affected  had  four  distinct  origins,  only  one  of  which 
we  are  perhaps  really  entitled  to  describe  as  M.E.  u.  The  latter,  which 
we  may  call  (i),  was  undoubtedly  the  sound  in  such  words  as  buck,  run, 
hunt,  suck,  summer,  &c.,  &c.  In  addition  to  this,  earliest  Modern  u 
sprang  (2)  from  original  English  it,  O.E.  y,  where  this  survived,  as  in 
bundle,  thrush,  cudgel,  &c. ;  (3)  from  M.E.  u  of  French  origin,  as  in 
judge,  just,  study,  public,  &c.,  &c. ;  (4)  from  the  new  u  derived  from 
earlier  01,  as  in  blood,  flood,  glove,  done,  &c.  (cf.  pp.  236-7  on  this  last  group). 

Since  the  unrounding  process  involves  the  three  later  groups,  it  is 
evident  that  it  is  later  than  the  retraction  of  earlier  [y]  to  [u],  later  than 
the  development  of  the  new  [u]  from  01,  and  later  than  the  shortening  of 
this  new  sound.  In  1528,  vnjust  rhymes  with  must,  Rede  me,  &c.,  p.  105. 

As  to  the  approximate  date  of  the  development  of  u  from  [^/]  we  have 
no  precise  evidence,  but  we  know  that  ol  had  become  [u]  already  in  the 
fourteenth  century  (see  pp.  234-5),  and  we  shall  see  there  is  good  reason 
for  believing  that  the  shortening  had  taken  place  at  any  rate  by  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century,  if  not  earlier.  We  are  therefore  free  to 
assume  that  the  process  whereby  short  u  was  unrounded  began  any  time 
after  the  latter  date. 

From  the  direct  statements  of  Wallis  and  Cooper,  quoted  above, 
p.  224-5,  it  appears  that  the  sound  had  attained  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
its  present  stage  by  the  third  quarter  of  the  seventeenth  century.  If  that 
is  so,  the  unrounding  must  have  begun  some  time  before.  In  1580 
a  French  writer  states  that  the  u  in  upon  sounds  like  the  French  o, 
and  in  1620  another  French  writer,  Mason,  says  that  French  o  is  heard 
in  hungrie,  while  yet  another  in  1625  identifies  the  vowel  in  up,  butter, 
sunder,  &c.,  with  French  o.  Now  there  are  several  vowels  in  present-day 
French  expressed  by  o,  of  which  that  in  homme,  bonne,  has  a  very  distinct 
acoustic  resemblance  to  the  English  sound  in  but,  &c.,  especially  to 
untrained  and  uncritical  ears.  In  fact,  in  a  French  Grammar  which 
I  used  as  a  boy,  it  was  definitely  stated  that  bonne  is  pronounced  like 
the  English  word  bun  \  This  theory  is  still  held  by  many  Englishmen, 
apparently,  and  they  put  it  into  practice  in  pronouncing  French. 

Therefore,  if  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  early  seventeenth  centuries  the 
English  sound  in  butter  was  pretty  much  what  it  is  now,  the  French 
writers  who  described  it  as  being  like  the  French  o  were  not  wider  of  the 
mark  than  the  Englishmen  above  referred  to,  at  the  present  time,  nor 
than  present-day  French  writers  who  write  tob  for  tub.  The  most 


THE   NEW   SOUND  IN   GUN,   ETC.  233 

reasonable  inference  is  that  as   early  as  1580  the  old  u  had  reached 
a  stage  of  pronunciation  not  very  different  from  that  of  our  own  time. 

The  occasional  spellings,  which  we  have  found  so  helpful  in  indicating 
the  pronunciation  of  other  vowels,  are  less  frequent  in  the  present  instance 
than  in  some  other  cases,  but  they  are  none  the  less  convincing. 

In  the  chapter  on  the  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  it  will  be  seen 
that  in  this  position  u  and  o  are  not  infrequently  written  a,  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  a  spelling  which  certainly  expresses  our  unrounded  vowel. 
Whatever  the  precise  sound,  therefore,  a  vowel,  the  result  of  unrounding  u 
and  o,  was  already  in  existence  in  the  language,  if  only  in  unstressed  syllables. 
But  there  are  fortunately  a  few  instances  of  spellings  with  a,  for  #,  in 
stressed  syllables  also,  from  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The 
following  are  all  that  I  have  found  : — gannes  '  guns ',  Marg.  Paston, 
ii.  372  (twice);  sadanly  'suddenly',  Sir  John  Fortescue,  p.  126;  camyth 
( cometh',  Cely  Papers  146,  and  warsse,  wars  'worse',  Cely  Papers 
159;  Samersett,  Machyn  182;  Chamley  '  Cholmondely ',  Machyn  38. 
Zachrisson  (Eng.  Vowels,  and  Contributions,  p.  319)  has  all  of  these 
except  the  form  from  Fortescue,  and  warrse,  &c.,  from  Cely  Papers,  but 
he  also  adds  farniture  and  Saveraigne.  I  regard  all  these  forms  as 
establishing  beyond  a  doubt  that  those  who  wrote  them  pronounced  an 
unrounded  vowel  in  place  of  the  old  ii  in  the  words  given.  (It  is  possible 
that  Machyn's  Wat  Ion  =  Wot  ton  [waton]  ?  should  also  be  included  with 
the  above  examples.) 

The  precise  nature  of  the  vowel  may  be  uncertain,  but  it  certainly  was 
no  longer  u ;  the  process  of  unrounding  has  begun,  and  that  is  all  we  are 
concerned  with. 

I  regard  Cooper's  account,  given  about  200  years  later  than  the 
Celys  and  Sir  John  Fortescue,  as  an  accurate  description  of  our 
present  sound  in  Received  Standard;  the  French  writers,  respectively 
sixty,  and  a  hundred  years,  earlier  than  Cooper,  are  evidently  describing 
a  sound  which  is  not  very  far  from  our  present  one,  and  the  fifteenth- 
century  writers,  by  their  spellings,  clearly  indicate  a  vowel  which  is  no 
longer  u. 

The  confusion  which  we  find  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies between  [a,  9,  A]  I  regard  as  perfectly  natural.  Many  people 
at  the  present  day  are  unable  to  distinguish  between  the  two  former, 
and  consider  the  last  as  merely  a  lengthening  of  one  or  both  of  these. 
i  If  the  above  view  is  accepted,  it  follows  that  we  must  regard  the 
early  shortenings  bludde,  sutt,  &c.,  instanced  on  p.  236-7,  below,  as  con- 
taining the  sound  [a]  or  at  least  a  stage  in  the  development  of  this 
sound,  .that  is,  an  unrounded  vowel. 

It  will  be  noted  that  in  words  containing  genuine  M.E.  u,  the 
unrounding  does  not  always  take  place,  or  rather,  perhaps,  a  new 
rounding  has  sometimes  taken  place,  when  a  lip  consonant  immediately 
precedes  the  «  as  in  bull,  pull,  put,  push,  &c.  On  the  other  hand,  this  is 
not  invariable,  for  we  have  the  unrounded  vowel  impulse,  bud,  but,  butter, 
Puck,  pug,  mug,  mud.  It  is  therefore  probable  that  we  have  here  a 
duality  due  to  difference  of  dialect,  perhaps  of  Social  rather  than  Regional 
character.  We  may  remark  that  the  Frenchman's  example  upon  is 
unfortunate,  since  u  here  is  unstressed,  and  we  have  several  examples 


234     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

(cf.  p.  278)  of  the  spelling  apon,  which  I  regard  as  illustrating  unround- 
ing in  an  unstressed  position.  If  he  had  mentioned  up,  he  would  have 
been  right.  Probably,  however,  like  many  of  his  countrymen  to-day,  he 
pronounced  [#p0n]. 

It  will  be  observed  that  before  original  r,  which  has  now  disappeared 
in  pronunciation,  [a]  has  been  lengthened,  and  altered  in  character. 
Originally,  purse,  hurt,  word,  worse,  &c.,  were  pronounced  [pars,  hart, 
ward,  wars]  as  in  Scotch.  As  the  r  was  weakened,  the  vowel  was 
gradually  lengthened  and  passed  into  the  present-day  [A].  Already  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  Wallis  identifies  the  vowel  in  turn  and  burn 
as  being  like  eur  in  French  serviteur.  This  makes  it  probable  that  [A] 
was  already  pronounced.  Many  Englishmen  to-day  believe  that  cur 
and  cceur  are  identical  in  pronunciation,  and,  indeed,  although  the 
articulation  of  the  two  sounds  is  absolutely  different,  the  inherent  pitch 
of  both  is  very  close,  and  the  acoustic  effect  is  very  similar  to  a  more  or 
less  superficial  observer. 

M.E.  01  [6]  in  the  Modern  Period. 

In  the  fourteenth  century  there  is  evidence  from  widely  separated  areas 
of  England  that  old  tense  o  had  either  developed  completely  its  present 
sound  [u],  or  progressed  far  in  this  direction.  While  as  a  rule  the  most 
careful  scribes  still  write  gode  or  goode,  &c.,  for  O.E.  god  '  good ',  others, 
more  enterprising,  occasionally  adopt  the  spelling  goude,  &c.,  or  gude. 
The  former  is  the  ordinary  spelling  for  the  sound  [u]  from  the  middle  of 
the  thirteenth  century.  I  have  come  across  a  fair  sprinkling  of  these 
spellings  for  01  in  the  fourteenth  and  early  fifteenth  century.  Thus  R.  of 
Brunne's  Handlyng  Sinne,  1303,  has fre tourer  '  other'  406,  doun,  O.E.  don 
'do',  mysdoun  rhymes  enchesoun  1 101 ;  William  of  Shoreham  (Kent,  1320) 
has  roude  25.  685,  O.E.  rod  'rood',  douj>  '  doth',  O.E  dop,  PI.  Pres.,  53. 
1471,  bloude  '  blood ',  O.E.  blod,  goud  'good ',  O.E.  god  60.  1 701,  &c.,  &c., 
loukep  'looketh',  O.E.  locep  75.  2142,  touke  94.  256  'took',  O.E.  toe,  and 
so  on;  the  Feudal  Aids  of  1370  or  so  have  Boucland,  O.E.  Boc-, 
Lollelrouk,  O.E.  -broc,  Curypoule,  O.E.  -pol '  pool ',  Caresbrouc,  Cokepoule, 
&c.,  which  are  PI.  N.'s  which  occur  in  documents  dealing  wiih  Dorset- 
shire, Somersetshire,  and  Hampshire;  Alliterative  Poems  (Cheshire  or 
Lanes,  c.  1350)  write  goud,  Patience  336,  Pearl  33  (twice),  &c. ;  St. 
Editha  (Wilts,  c.  1420)  has  gowde  'good'  1472,  brouk  'brook'  1363; 
Bokenam  (Suffolk,  1441)  not  infrequently  writes  u—suthly  'soothly', 
St.  Agn.  524,  &c.,forsuk,  O.E.  -sok,  St.  Faith,  68,  stude  'stood',  St.  Eliz. 
206,  and  so  on.  One  of  the  commonest  words  to  be  written  otherwise  than 
with  o  is  earlier  mdste '  must ',  often  written  must,  mwst  during  the  fifteenth 
century.  This  may  not  really  be  a  case  in  point  at  all,  as  it  may  represent 
the  unstressed  form  and  stand  for  some  sound  quite  other  than  [u].  The 
spelling  at  any  rate  is  found  in  Palladius  (1420),  Rewle  Sustr.  Men. 
(c.  1450),  Bp.  Pecok  (1449),  Marg.  Paston,  passim,  and  Cely  Papers,  and 
Monk  of  Evesham  (1482)  to  mention  no  more.  As  we  know,  this  has 
become  the  Received  Spelling,  and  it  is  one  of  the  few  cases  where  old 
o  is  now  spelt  otherwise  than  o  or  oo.  Marg.  Paston  also  writes  Munday ; 
London  Records  (1419,  cit.  Morsbach)  hwegud;  Cely  Papers  have  gud 
and  tuk. 


RISE   OF   NEW  VOWEL   SOUND  IN  MOON,    ETC.    235 

The  ou-  or  ow-  and  w-spcllings  in  words  of  this  class  persist  through- 
out the  sixteenth  century  in  private  letters  and  in  published  books ;  the 
w-spellings  are  less  common.  The  former  are  found  amongst  other  places 
in  a  letter  of  Thos.  Pery,  Ellis  2.  2  (mounth  'month');  Rede  me,  &c.,  has 
shues  '  shoes '  81,  82,  must  rhymes  vnjust  105  ;  in  Edward  VI's  First  P.  B. 
(floude,  &c.) ;  Latimer's  Sermons  (bloud,  gould,  shutyng) ;  Machyn  (sune 
'soon',  bludshed,  &c.);  Ascham,  bowne  'boon',  lowse-,  Fisher,  Bp.  of 
Rochester's  Sermons;  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  De  Republ.  (bloud);  Queen 
Elizabeth's  Letters  (houke  '  hook ') ;  John  Alleyne,  dueth  '  doth ',  Alleyne 
Papers  16,  159- ;  &c.,  &c.  Such  spellings  as  blud,  in  Ascham,  Fisher,  &c., 
may  indicate  the  shortening  of  the  vowel,  on  which  see  below,  p.  236,  &c. 
On  the  other  hand,  Latimer's  shutyng  '  shooting ',  Serm.  161,  and  Ascham's 
'  it  buted  not',  Toxoph.  81,  almost  certainly  represent  the  long  vowel. 

Few  will  doubt  that  ou  in  the  words  from  the  fifteenth  century  onwards 
implies  [u] ;  how  much  sooner  the  sound  was  fully  developed,  and  when 
the  new  sound  was  first  pronounced  exactly  as  in  present-day  Received 
Standard,  is  more  questionable.  The  spellings  just  illustrated  from  writings 
from  the  South  and  Midlands,  or  from  the  London  dialect,  have  nothing  to 
do  with  such  spellings  as  gude,  guid,  &c.,  in  the  Northern  texts  of  the  four- 
teenth century  and  later.  In  the  North,  old  o  pursued  quite  a  different 
path  of  development  from  that  which  it  followed  farther  South,  and  the 
rhymes  of  fourteenth-century  Northern  texts  show  an  approximation  to 
the  sound  of  French  u  [y],  e.  g.  stude— fortitude,  &c. 

Even  the  sixteenth-century  grammarians  agree  in  describing  [u]  as  the 
vowel  heard  in  words  containing  old  01. 

As  regards  the  phonetic  process  it  seems  certain  that  it  resembled  that 
now  in  progress  in  Swedish  in  bo  '  live ',  &c.,  where  the  old  long  5  is 
strongly  over-rounded,  so  that  to  unaccustomed  ears  it  sounds  rather  like 
some  kind  of  [u].  The  full  development  of  the  latter  sound,  however, 
demands  also  the  raising  of  the  back  of  the  tongue  from  a  mid  to  a  high 
position.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  early  fourteenth-century  0#-spellings 
in  English  may  indicate  only  that  the  over-rounded  stage  is  reached,  and 
that  the  sound  pronounced  at  that  time  was  the  same  as  the  Swedish 
vowel  just  referred  to. 

If  all  words  containing  old  long  01  were  pronounced  with  [u]  at  the 
present  time,  the  history  of  this  sound  would  offer  no  difficulties.  The 
fact,  however,  is  that  we  note  a  threefold  development  of  the  sound  in 
present-day  English. 

!i)  Words  which  have  [u]  : — rood,  spoon,  moon,  food,  fool. 
2)  Words  which  have  \u\  -.—good,  stood,  hood,  hook,  book,  shook,  forsook, 
look. 

(3)  Words  which  have  [a]  -.—flood,  blood,  glove,  done,  month,  brother, 
mother,  other. 

In  class  (i)  the  Early  Mod.  or  Late  M.E.  vowel  has  remained  unaltered  ; 
in  (2)  it  has  been  comparatively  recently  shortened ;  in  (3)  it  wasshortened 
much  earlier,  and  underwent  a  further  change.  This  change  also  involved 
original  M.E.  (or  O.E.)  short  [«],  so  that  at  the  time  when  it  came  about, 
the  latter  sound  and  original  ol  in  certain  words  were  pronounced  exactly 
alike.  In  other  words,  at  a  certain  period,  short  [u],  whatever  its  origin, 
began  to  alter  in  the  direction  of  [a].  This  question  has  been  treated  above 


236    STRESSED  VOWELS  IN  THE   MODERN  PERIOD 

under  #,  pp.  232-4  ;  it  is  our  business  here  to  inquire  what  information 
is  available  (a)  of  the  early  shortening  of  the  new  [u]  which  gave  us 
class  (3),  and  (b)  of  the  late  shortening  which  gave  us  class  (2). 

Early  Shortening  of  [u]  from  b\ 

I  assume  that  when,  in  M.E.  and  later,  the  consonant  following  a  vowel 
is  doubled,  this  implies  that  the  preceding  vowel  was  short.  When  in 
texts  which  express  long  u,  whether  original  or  derived,  by  the  process  we 
have  just  discussed,  from  original  01  in  some  words  by  ou,  we  find  u 
written  in  other  words  even  when  the  following  consonant  is  not  doubled, 
it  is  probable  that  we  are  justified  in  assuming  that  this  represents  a  short 
vowel,  since,  except  in  the  North,  u  was  not  commonly  used  for  a  long 
vowel,  apart  from  French  £,  which  had  quite  a  different  sound  from  [u]. 
The  conditions  under  which  old  long  vowels  were  shortened  in  M.E.  have 
often  been  formulated  (cp.  my  Short  Hist.  pp.  113-15),  but  the  shortenings 
of  the  kind  we  are  considering  belong  to  a  different  category  from  any  of 
those  mentioned.  If  on  the  strength  of  blood  and  flood  we  assume  that  the 
-d  exercised  the  shortening  influence,  this  appears  to  be  contradicted  by 
rood  and  stood,  for  although  we  pronounce  a  short  vowel  in  the  latter  at 
the  present  time,  the  fact  that  the  short  vowel  here  is  [u]  and  not  [a] 
shows  that  it  did  not  undergo  the  early  shortening  of  [uj,  otherwise  it 
would  have  shared  the  fate  of  flood  and  blood.  Again,  why  was  the  vowel 
in  done  shortened  but  not  that  in  moon  and  spoon  ? 

I  believe  it  to  be  impossible  to  formulate  the  precise  combinative  con- 
ditions under  which  these  forms  were  produced,  and  am  inclined  to  think 
that  the  explanation  of  the  three  pronunciations  of  old  01,  or  at  any  rate 
the  existence  of  the  [a]  pronunciations,  must  be  explained  by  assuming 
a  mixture  of  dialect,  probably  of  Social  origin.  This  becomes  more 
probable  when  we  consider  that  while  the  group  of  words  with  [a]  in 
Received  Standard  is  now  quite  fixed,  the  distribution  of  these  forms  has 
varied  according  to  the  usage  of  different  periods,  and  a  greater  latitude 
seems  to  have  existed  formerly  in  this  respect. 

The  earliest  shortened  form  of  the  new  u  which  I  have  found  is  sunner 
'  sooner',  R.  of  Brunne's  Handlyng  Sinne,  1.  386  (Lines.  1301).  This  is 
a  remarkable  form  as  showing  how  early  the  attainment  of  the  new  pro- 
nunciation was  in  this  dialect.  The  shortening  may  be  explained  as  due 
to  the  same  process  which  has  shortened  the  vowel  in  done,  in  which  case 
it  implies  a  Positive  sun  '  soon '  and  is  a  very  early  instance  of  the  process, 
or  on  the  other  hand  it  may  be  due  to  the  analogy  of  other  Comparatives 
which  shortened  the  vowel,  when  the  word  ended  in  a  consonant,  before  the 
suffix  -re.  This  is  an  early  M.E.  shortening.  Palladius  (Essex  c.  1420) 
has  sonner  '  sooner',  83.  615,  which  may  represent  the  old  M.E.  Comp. 
when  the  shortening  of  5  before  it  had  become  [u]  would  produce  o,  or 
it  may  represent  the  new  form  sunner  as  in  R.  of  Brunne,  the  old  spelling 
with  o  being  retained  as  elsewhere  in  Palladius.  Mzchyn's/otfman  126 
probably  stands  for  a  M.E.  shortening  before  [u]  developed,  but  may  be 
identical  with  Bp.  Fisher's  foimfutt below.  St.  Editha  (Wilts,  c.  1420)  has 
floddt '  flood '  rhyming  with  gode,  and  in  view  of  the  present  pronuncia- 
tion of  the  former  word  I  am  inclined  to  accept  the  spelling  here,  as 


EARLY  SHORTENING  OF  VOWEL  IN  FLOOD,  ETC.    237 

standing  for  [flud].  We  know  that  this  dialect  had  already  developed 
the  new  [u]  from  dl,  cf.  p.  234.  In  the  will  of  Sir  Thos.  Cumberworth, 
Lines.  1451,  Lines.  Dioc.  Docs.,  the  spellings  gud,  46.  29,  utherwise, 
56.  15,  occur,  but  these  may  be  Northern  spellings.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  Berne rs,  Froissart,  has  fludde,  i.  221,  241,  291  (three  times); 
Edward  VI's  First  P.  B.  has  fluddes  and  bludde\  Spenser,  On  the  State 
of  Ireland,  has  flude ;  Bp.  Fisher  has  blud  and  bloud  in  his  Sermons ; 
Gabriel  Harvey  in  his  Letters  has  blud  32,  futt  'foot'  121,  and  in 
a  poem,  whudd  'hood'  rhyming  with  budd,  Letter  Bk.,  p.  125.  In 
Sackville's  Induction  (1563)  undone  and  done  rhyme  with  run,  119. 
Marston  has  hudwinkt,  What  You  Will,  Act  i,  Sc.  i  (1607).  In  1621 
Gill  (Logonomia)  gives  the  following  as  containing  short  u : — blood,  glove, 
good,  brother,  done,  does  (Vb.),  mother,  other.  Butler  (1634)  gives  gud, 
blud  as  short.  Sir  Edm.  Verney  in  1639  writes  bludd,  bluddynose, 
Verney  Papers  212.  Daines  (1640)  mentions  the  pronunciation  swut 
=  [swut  or  Pswat],  but  says  it  is  'better  written  and  pronounced  soot' 
=  [sut].  Wallis  (1653)  mentions  done  as  having  'obscure  o' .=•  [a].  In 
1653  Wil.  Roades,  the  Verneys'  bailiff,  writes  tuck  'took',  Verney  Mem. 
iii.  275.  Cooper  (1685)  gives  flood,  hood,  other,  sool,  stood,  as  having 
labial  o  shortened,  which  according  to  his  teiminology  =  u,  which  again 
he  defines  as  being  the  sound  of  oo  shortened,  that  is  [u].  Cooper  also 
has  fut  l  foot '  as  a  '  barbarous '  form.  Does  this  mean  [fat]  or  [fut]  ? 
At  any  rate  it  is  represented  also  by  Bp.  Fisher's  form  futt  given  above, 
and  would  be  [fat]  at  the  present  time.  Sir  R.  Verney  writes  sutt '  soot ', 
Verney  Mem.  iv.  358,  1686  (=  [sut  or  sat]  ?).  Jones  (1701)  has  a  list 
with  [ii]  which  corresponds  to  our  present  usage  -.—book,  brook,  cook,  foot, 

forsook,  good,  hood,  look,  soot,  stood,  took.  The  one  word  in  this  list  which 
we  should  not  now  include  is  forsooth.  Jones's  list  of  words  with  [a]  is 
another,  mother,  brother.  He  appears  to  recognize  both  [u  or  u]  as  well 
as  [a]  in  foot,  forsooth,  good,  hood,  look,  -sook,  stood,  took.  He  further 
says  that  the  sound  of  u  is  written  ou  '  when  it  may  be  so  sounded '  as  in 

floud,  bloud,  which  seems  to  imply  the  pronunciations  [flad,  blad ;  flud, 
blud]. 

In  the  Gr.  of  the  Engl.  Tongue,  1713,  attributed  to  Steele,  brother, 
mother  are  said  to  contain  an '  obscure  sound  like  u  short '  =  [a],  and  the 
same  sound  is  said  to  occur  in  flood,  blood.  Bertram  (1753),  the  writer 
of  an  Engl.  Gr.  for  Danes,  in  Danish,  and  an  excellent  observer,  gives 
book,  look,  and  other  words  ending  in  k,  and  also  hood  and  foot  as  con- 
taining the  sound  of  Danish  u,  while  blood,  flood,  soot  are  said  to  contain 
Dan.  o,  e.g.  blodd,  &c.  This  clearly  means  the  sound  that  is  now  [a]. 

From  the  above  brief  account  it  seems  to  be  established  that  the  new 
[u]  was  shortened  by  the  first  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  at  any  rate, 
if  we  disregard  the  somewhat  doubtful  evidence  from  Robt.  of  Brunne, 
or  if  we  accept  it,  more  than  a  century  earlier.  Until  there  is  more 
evidence  forthcoming  of  the  development  of  the  new  [u]  at  this  early 
period,  it  is  safer  not  to  build  too  much  upon  this.  At  the  same  time  it 
may  be  pointed  out  that  the  w-spellings  in  this  text  for  old  dl  may  well 
dispel  the  suspicion  which  some  might  attach  to  the  u  in  sunner,  if  this 
stood  alone.  In  that  case  it  might  be  said  that  the  Lines,  dialect  was 
influenced  by  the  Northern  English.  But  since,  so  far  as  I  know,  the 


238     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

Northern  w-spellings  for  ol  which  express  the  sound  [y]  are  not  founa  as 
early  as  1303,  since  in  any  case  Northern  texts  do  not  write  ou  for  old  d, 
and  since  Handlyng  Sinne  is  quite  definitely  E.  Midland  (though  of 
a  N.  Midland  type  certainly)  in  dialectal  character  and  not  Northern,  we 
may,  I  think,  take  the  0«-spellings  in  this  text  seriously  as  representing 
an  E.  Midland  sound  change,  especially  as  the  rhyme  s/owe — vowe 
[slu(e)— -vu(e)]  occurs  lines  1887-8. 

Probably  further  investigation  of  fourteenth-century  texts  would  show 
that  during  the  first  half  of  this  century  old  &•  became,  in  the  Eastern 
dialects,  from  Lincolnshire  to  Kent  and  Essex,  a  sound  approximating 
to  if  it  not  quite  attained  the  character  of  [u].  From  thence  it  passed 
into  the  London  dialect.  We  ought  probably  to  regard  the  spelling  must 
in  fourteenth-century  texts  as  representing  the  unstressed  form,  with 
a  vowel  shortened  after  the  [u] -stage  had  been  reached. 

In  any  case,  the  forms  with  short  [u]  are  the  ancestors,  so  far  as  they 
survive,  of  those  with  [a]  of  a  later  date.  The  question  of  the  unround- 
ing of  \u\  has  been  discussed  in  its  proper  place  (cf.  pp.  232-4,  above). 

In  the  meantime  we  are  left  in  doubt  by  the  statements  of  the  gram- 
marians down  to  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  as  to  which  of 
the  forms  which  they  describe  as  having  '  short  u '  really  had  [u],  and 
which  had  [a]  or  its  immediate  ancestor.  They  appear  to  correspond 
very  largely  with  our  [a]  type,  and  include  the  words  most  commonly 
indicated  as  short  by  the  occasional  spellings.  So  long  as  we  are  not 
sure  of  the  existence  of  [a]  we  cannot  say  with  certainty  whether  the 
forms  with  '  short  u '  are  the  descendants  of  those  which  had  [u]  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  are  the  ancestors  of  our  [a]  type,  or  whether  they 
are  the  beginnings  of  the  second  or  later  shortening  which  has  pro- 
duced our  [«]  in  cook,  &c.  It  does  not  follow  even  when  once  the 
[a]  forms  had  come  into  existence  in  some  dialects,  that  they  were  used  in 
the  best  type  of  London  and  Court  speech.  The  shortened  forms  from 
which  they  came  probably  came  in  slowly  and  sporadically,  and  it  is 
certain  that  many  speakers  still  said  [Mud]  long  after  others  said  [flud], 
and  may  have  continued  to  do  so  after  the  latter  had  gone  on  to  the  next 
stage  [flad]. 

The  Later  Shortening  of  New  [»]. 

While  Wallis  and  Cooper  undoubtedly  recognize  the  three  types 
[u,  u,  a]  in  the  class  of  words  we  are  considering,  by  far  the  larger 
number  of  words,  according  to  them,  have  one  or  other  of  the  two  former 
vowels.  This  being  so,  and  bearing  in  mind  what  was  said  in  the  last 
paragraph  of  the  preceding  section,  we  may  be  inclined  to  assume  that 
the  forms  with  short  [u]  which  these  writers  mention,  are  really  rather 
survivals  of  the  early  shortening,  which  in  this  dialect  underwent  no 
unrounding  because  they  were  only  adopted  after  original  short  u  had 
been  unrounded,  than  the  ancestors  of  our  present  type  of  words  like 
hood,  cook,  &c.  This  view  becomes  more  probable  when  we  consider 
that  words  such  as  foot,  stood,  good,  and  look,  all  of  which  at  the  present 
tiwe  show  the  late  shortening,  occur  in  the  lists  of  Wallis  and  Cooper 
among  those  with  [u].  This  is  even  more  strongly  emphasized  if  we 
compare  Gill's  list  of  shorts  already  given  above  (which  all  correspond  to 


LATE  SHORTENING  OF  VOWEL  IN  BOOK,  ETC.     239 

our  [a]  type)  with  his  list  of  longs,  which  include  both  of  our  other  types 
— \u  and  u\.  Gill's  list  of  words  with  long  [u]  is : — soot,  soon,  moon, 
book,  shook,  forsook,  look,  brook,  hook,  food,  foot,  brood,  stood,  goose,  smooth, 
tooth,  doth. 

When  we  come  to  Jones  the  case  is  different.  As  has  been  said,  his 
account  points  to  a  considerable  variety  of  usage  in  the  pronunciation  of 
the  same  words.  Evidently  the  [a]  type  has  become  much  more  wide- 
spread than  in  the  periods  which  Wallis  and  Cooper  describe,  and  his  list 
of  words  with  [u]  is,  as  has  been  shown  above,  pretty  much  the  same  as 
our  own. 

On  the  above  grounds  I  am  therefore  inclined  to  put  the  late  or 
second  shortening  of  [u]  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  or  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

Henceforth  the  chief  interest  lies  in  the  distribution  of  the  several 
types  of  pronunciation  among  the  different  words.  There  is  no  further 
question  of  sound  change.  The  whole  question  is  a  very  difficult  one, 
and  I  see  no  solution  to  it  except  on  the  lines  already  suggested,  of  the 
influence  of  Social  or  Class  dialect. 

At  the  present  time  the  distribution  of  the  types  in  the  various  Modi- 
fied Standards  still  differs  more  or  less  considerably  from  the  usage  of 
Received  Standard.  The  only  variations  of  usage  in  the  latter  appear  to 
be  in  groom,  and  to  some  slight  extent  in  soon,  in  which  words  [u,  ii]  are 
both  possible.  Within  my  own  memory  some  old-fashioned  speakers  of 
Received  Standard  still  said  [sat]  instead  of  the  no\v  universally  received 
[s*t]. 

ROME  AND  GOLD. 

The  present  pronunciation  of  Rome,  instead  of  the  historically  normal 
[rum],  is  comparatively  recent  and  is  due  to  the  influence  of  the  French 
or  Italian  pronunciation  of  the  name,  perhaps  also  to  the  spelling. 
Cooper,  Jones,  and  Steele  all  give  [rum]  as  the  normal  pronunciation. 
In  some  verses  on  Sir  J.  Davenant,  by  Sir  J.  Menis  (1641),  cit.  Aubrey, 
Lives,  i.  206,  Rome  rhymes  with  groome. 

The  present-day  pronunciation  of  gold  goes  back  to  a  M.E.  short  form 
gold,  which  may  be  derived  from  an  adjectival  goldne,  or  from  such 
a  compound  as  goldsmith,  &c. 

The  normal  O.E.  and  M.E.  forms  of  the  noun  had  a  long  vowel,  and 
would  yield  a  Modern  [guld].  This  type  was  in  use  among  some 
persons  who  lived  far  into  the  nineteenth  century,  though  by  that  time  it 
was  doubtless  old-fashioned.  An  old  lady  who  died  in  1855,  aged  over 
So,  a  very  near  relative  of  my  own,  always,  so  I  have  heard  from  her 
children,  said  [guld].  It  was  a  very  usual  though  by  no  means  the  only 
pronunciation  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  among  good 
speakers.  It  is  indicated  probably  by  the  spelling  gould,  Latimer,  Serm. 
7  and  26,  G.  Harvey's  Letters,  p.  86,  and  it  is  recognized  by  Elphinstone. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  ancestor  of  the  present-day  type  is  referred  to 
by  the  grammarians  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  In 
Rede  me,  &c.,  gold  rhymes  with  cold — sold.  In  Alphabet  Anglois  (1621) 
gaould  is  supposed  to  represent,  for  French  speakers,  the  pronunciation 
of  the  English  word. 

For  01-  <  wo,  and  ho-  <  who,  &c.,  cf.  p.  308,  below. 


240     STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

The  Unrounding  of  M.E.  o  in  the  Modern  Period. 

During  the  fifteenth  century,  especially  in  documents  written  by  men 
from  the  West  Country,  but  not  here  alone,  we  find  a  written  for  M.E.  o. 
In  the  sixteenth  century  a  certain  number  of  these  spellings  are  found  in 
London  English,  a  few  in  Machyn,  and  one  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  letters. 
In  the  following  century  the  0-spellings  occur  occasionally  in  the  Verney 
Papers,  and  the  habit  of  unrounding  o,  by  this  time  evidently  a  fashion- 
able affectation,  is  pilloried  by  Vanbrugh  in  The  Relapse  in  the  well-known 
character  of  Lord  Foppington.  Early  in  the  eighteenth  century  Lady 
Wentworth  and  her  son  Peter  each  have,  so  far  as  I  have  observed,  one 
of  these  spellings. 

This  unrounding  is  at  the  present  day  heard  chiefly  in  the  South- 
West  of  England,  but  at  least  as  far  East  and  North  as  Oxfordshire.  It 
has  been  suggested  that  Raleigh  and  Drake— both  Devon  men,  the  former, 
as  we  have  seen  (p.  109),  speaking  with  a  Devon  accent  all  his  life — made 
this  pronunciation  fashionable  and  current  in  the  Court  English  of  their 
day.  This  may  be  so,  but  the  largest  number  of  a-  forms  in  any  one 
writer  in  the  sixteenth  century  are  found  in  Machyn,  who  was  not  likely  to 
reflect  fashionable  habits  of  Court  speech,  and  who  wrote  at  a  time  when 
Drake  was  still  a  boy,  and  Raleigh  a  baby,  the  former  having  been  born, 
according  to  the  Did.  of  Nat.  Biogr.,  about  1540,  the  latter  about  1552. 
Evidently  then,  the  habit  was  current  among  the  inferior  orders  of  the 
metropolis  long  before  either  of  the  two  heroes  were  in  a  position  to  exert 
any  influence  upon  London  English.  It  is  certainly  possible  that  at 
a  later  date  the  courtiers  may  have  adopted  Raleigh's  pronunciation  of 
words  containing  0,  though  it  does  not  seem  very  likely  that  the  haughty 
Queen  would  follow  another's  lead  in  matters  of  this  kind.  As  the 
following  examples  show,  traces  of  the  <z-spellings  are  found  also  in 
Palladius  and  Margaret  Paston.  If  the  pronunciation  were  in  vogue  also 
in  the  South-East  and  South-East  Midland,  it  is  comprehensible  that  it 
should  penetrate  into  London  speech,  along  with  many  other  features 
from  these  areas. 

At  any  rate,  wherever  the  habit  came  from,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it 
existed,  and  that  it  rose  in  the  linguistic  world.  It  has  even  left  a  few 
traces  at  the  present  time,  notably  in  Gady  a  weakened  blasphemy,  and 
in  strap  by  the  side  of  the  unrounded  strop.  We  have  now  restored  the 
rounded  vowel  in  plot  (of  ground),  where  the  Authorized  Version  has 
plat. 

These  are  the  examples  I  have  noted  : — 

Palladius,  strape  '  strap ',  92.  870  ;  St.  Editha,  starme  '  storm  ',  rhymes 
'harm',  932,  crasse  *  cross',  1387;  Shillingford,  aftetymes,  53,  'oft-'; 
Marg.  Paston,  last  Most'  Pret.  Subj.,  ii.  373;  Lord  Berners,  yander 
'yonder',  Froissart,  i.  205  ;  Machyn,  the  marrow  '  morrow  ',  47,  Dasset 
'  Dorset ',  48,  57,  caffen  '  coffin  ',  120  ;  Q.  Elizabeth,  '  I  pray  you  stap  the 
mouthes ',  Letters,  64.  This  last  word  will  cause  a  thrill  of  pleasure  to 
those  who  know  Lord  Foppington's  celebrated  '  stap  my  vitals '.  A 
certain  number  of  these  forms  occur  in  the  Verney  Memoirs  \-becas 
'because',  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  77  (1642),  cf.  also  the  shortened  form  becos, 
Cary  Verney,  ii.  68,  from  which  becas  is  derived  ;  faly  'folly ',  Mall  V.,  ii. 


STRAP  AND   STROP-,   LORD   FOPPINGTON        241 

380  (1647);  sassages,  Dr.  Denton,  ii.  318  (1648);  6  a  clake  'o'clock', 
Luce  Sheppard,  iii.  78  (twice,  1652) ;  Sir  ^4rlandoe  Bridgmen,  Lady 
Rochester,  iii.  434  (1656).  Mrs.  Basire  prays  for  Prence  George  in  1655, 
Corresp.  139.  To  these  should  probably  be  added  naty  'naughty',  Lady 
Sussex,  ii.  154,  and  dater  (see  p.  305).  These  forms  presuppose  probably 
the  unrounding  of  a  shortened  vowel  from  [o].  On  the  other  hand,  the 
vowel  in  both  may  still  be  long,  and  in  that  case  we  must  assume  that  it 
was  pronounced  as  pe].  In  Marston's  Eastward  Hoe  occurs  the  rhyme 
after — daughter,  Act  v,  Sc.  i,  and  here  we  must  suppose  an  earlier 
form  '  dofter'. 

Lord  Foppington,  already  referred  to,  has — stap,  Tarn,  Gad,  pasitively, 
harse,  plats,  bax,  &c.  Lady  Wentworth  writes  Anslow  for  '  Onslow ', 
p.  67  (1708),  and  beyand,  127  (1710). 

This  habit  must  have  been  fairly  widespread  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  since  it  survives  to-day  in  the  English  of  America. 

The  fact  that  several  French  writers  on  English  pronunciation  from 
the  third  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century  onwards  find  a  resemblance 
between  English  o  and  French  d  certainly  suggests  that  the  former  was 
commonly  pronounced  with  but  slight  rounding.  Bellot  (1580)  says  that 
the  English  vowel  is  almost  like  French  o.  U Alphabet  Anglois  (1625) 
says  '  O  se  prononce  souvent  A,  come  Thomas,  short,  qu'il  fauct  prononcer 
thames,  chart*.  Mauger,  Grammaire  Anglotse  (16*19),  savs  °f  ° — '  Quand 
il  est  lie*  a  m,  n,  r,  t,  d,  g,  p,  st,  ss,  sk,  il  se  prononce  comme  notre  a — 
from  Mst'ifram,  anon — anan,  nor — nar,  not — nat,  God — Gad,  lodge — 
ladge,  frost— frast. 

It  is,  I  think,  impossible  not  to  believe  that  there  is  a  connexion 
between  these  statements,  and  the  above  spellings,  taken  from  documents 
written  by  English  people  during  the  same  period.  It  does  not  much 
matter  whether  these  Frenchmen  got  their  ideas  of  English  pronuncia- 
tion from  lower-class  speakers  or  from  the  ultra-fashionable.  They 
cannot  be  misleading  us  altogether,  for  their  statements  agree  so  well 
with  the  testimony  of  the  occasional  spellings  and  other  known  facts. 
An  interesting  and  I  think  a  valuable  light  is  thrown  by  these  French 
writers  upon  the  probable  character  of  the  vowel  sound  implied  by  the 
spelling  a  in  the  English  documents.  It  cannot  have  been  [se],  the  sound 
of  the  ordinary  English  '  short  a ',  because  these  Frenchmen,  or  some  of 
them,  have  fixed  this  as  a  front  vowel — '  quasi  comme  le  premier  e  du 
verbe  etre '  (Gr.  Angl.) ;  *  comme  e  Latin  .  .  .  master  lisez  mester,  man 
lisez  men  '  (Mauger).  Since  lodge,  &c.,  are  described  as  having  a  sound 
rather  like  French  a,  we  must  suppose  that  the  French  writers  heard 
a  back  vowel  for  the  English  short  d,  and  that  vowel  I  take  to  have  been 
approximately  a  more  or  less  slightly  unrounded  form  of  d  (i.  e.  mid- 
back,  or  perhaps  low-back  with  slight  rounding).  This  is,  I  believe, 
pretty  nearly  the  sound  now  heard  in  America  and  in  many  South- 
western English  dialects.  The  Frenchmen's  description  is  the  nearest 
they  could  get  to  such  a  sound,  since  even  if  they  had  perceived,  as  they 
apparently  did,  that  the  vowel  was  not  precisely  the  French  a,  not  being 
phoneticians  they  would  be  unable  to  fix  upon  the  essential  factor — the 
slight  rounding — which  differentiated  the  English  vowel  from  their  native 
sound. 


242     STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

When  the  unrounding  was  complete,  as  it  subsequently  became  in  the 
politer  forms  of  English,  the  resulting  vowel  was  advanced  (fronted)  and 
levelled  under  the  ordinary  English  [ae],  the  old  sound  of  short  a  having 
long  disappeared.  This  is  what  has  happened  in  Gad  and  strap. 

During  the  eighteenth  century  the  old  fully  rounded  vowel  was 
restored,  partly  from  the  spelling,  by  purists,  partly  by  the  influence  of 
a  large  body  of  speakers  who  slill  preserved  it  unaltered.  We  must 
remember  that  Lady  Wentworth  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  fashionable 
speaker  of  the  late  seventeenth  century,  although  her  letters  were  written 
in  the  opening  decade  of  the  eighteenth. 

If  proof  is  needed  that  the  French  writers  sometimes  do  intend  a 
slightly  rounded  vowel  when  they  refer  to  French  a,  it  is,  I  think,  found 
in  Mauger's  statement  that  the  a  in  water  is  pronounced  like  French  a. 
There  is  little  doubt  that  the  vowel  of  water  was  rounded  by  the  time  at 
which  Mauger  writes,  and  even  if  it  were  already  [5]  as  now,  this  has 
always  been  a  most  baffling  sound  for  French  people  to  apprehend.  If 
Mauger  had  been  referring  to  the  other  pronunciation  of  the  word  he 
would  not  have  hesitated  to  write  it  wfter  for  French  speakers. 

M.B.  u  from  French  ti  [y] ;   and  M.E.  eu ;   eu  [su] ;  m ; 
become  [ju]. 

The  sounds  have  all  been  levelled  in  present-day  English  under  the 
combination  [ju],  which  after  [r,  dz,  tj]  and  sometimes  after  /-  becomes 
[u]  ;  e.g.  due,  duke;  knew,  grew]  dew,  few;  Tuesday,  steward]  blue,  true, 
fruit,  &c.,  &c.  The  O.E.  J>,  where  it  survives  in  the  single  word  bruise 
(cf.  p.  34.  (3)),  has  the  same  history.  The  questions  involved  are  (i) 
when  did  the  levelling  take  place,  (2)  what  was  the  path  of  development 
towards  the  present  sound,  and  (3)  how  long  did  the  old  sound  of 
French  u  [y]  survive,  and  when,  on  the  other  hand,  did  the  present  sound 
appear  ?  The  answer  to  the  first  is,  during  if  not  before  the  fifteenth 
century;  to  the  third,  that  the  old  [y]  still  existed,  apparently,  among 
some  speakers  in  the  sixteenth  century,  possibly  later,  but  it  is  no  less 
(and  no  more)  certain  that  in  the  sixteenth  century  many  speakers  clearly 
pronounced  the  present  sound. 

As  to  the  process,  the  three  diphthongs  probably  became  [iy]  (eu  and 
eu,  having  first  been  levelled  under  the  former  sound),  while  old  long  ti 
also  became  [iy]  or  [jy].  This  stage  was  apparently  reached  in  the 
fifteenth  century.  Then  the  second  element  was  retracted,  giving  [ju], 
which  is  the  present  sound.  Shillingford's  spelling  knywe  [knjy]  '  knew  ',14, 
M.E.  knew,  shows  the  change  in  the  first  element  of  this  diphthong.  All 
words  which  now  contain  this  combination  derive  it  from  one  of  the 
above  sources.  From  the  fifteenth  century,  we  find  in  occasional  spellings 
u,  eu,  ew,  &c.,  written  indifferently  for  the  old  diphthongs  and  French  H. 

Examples  of  this  are : — St.  Editha,  blwe  =  ue  [bljy]  for  M.E.  blew  Pret.  ; 
hue  and  slew,  Robt.  the  Devil,  922 ;  here  the  first  word  is  M.E.  heu  from 
the  O.E.  Pret.  hebw  '  hewed ';  greu  '  grew '  (O.E.  greow)  rhymes  with 
vertu,  Bokenam,  Pr.  Marg.  159,  and  with  isew,  pursew,  Bokenam,  Ann. 
261;  Bewford  'Beaufort',  Gregory,  219;  nyew  'new',  Rewle  Sustr. 
Men.  96.  25 ;  Cely  Papers  have  several  examples  of  French  u  written 


WHEN  DID  FRENCH  SOUND  IN  SURE,  ETC.,  DIE  OUT  ?  243 

ew — sewer  '  sure ',  77,  Dewke  '  Duke ',  112,  dew  '  due ',  112,  continew,  78, 
indewer,  2  7  ;  Q.  Elizabeth  \vritesfortiune,  which  doubtless  represents  the 
type  fortune  with  an  accentuated  second  syllable,  Letters,  27;  Gabriel 
Harvey  has  blue  '  blew ',  Letters,  144,  and  nu '  new ',  ibid.  14;  Mrs.  Sherard, 
Verney  Mem.  iv.  16  (1661),  writes  fortewen  andfortewn,  representing  the 
same  type  as  Q.  Elizabeth's.  Nan  Denton  has  shued  '  showed '  (M.E. 
schewed  O.E.  sceaw-),  Verney  Mem.  iv.  107,  1663;  Mrs.  Sherard  has 
hewmor  'humour',  Verney  Mem.  ii.  392,  1648.  What  vowel  sound  is 
expressed  by  ew,  m,  u,  &c.  ? 

Those  who  appeal  primarily  to  the  Orthoepists  sometimes  get  very 
dubious  answers ;  at  other  times,  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies, some  authorities  state  as  definitely  as  they  are  able  that  the  English 
sound  is  [zu,  ju],  while  others,  with  equal  definiteness,  maintain  that  it  is 
[y,  jy].  The  present-day  writers  who  put  these  old  writers  on  the  rack,  in 
the  endeavour  to  wrest  their  secrets  from  them,  generally  take  sides  in  this 
question.  One  school  backs  the  accuracy  of  observation  and  general 
veracity  of  the — quite  numerous — body  of  old  writers,  going  down  far 
into  the  seventeenth  century,  who  appear  to  assert  that  [y,  jy]  is  the 
sound ;  the  other  school  is  much  perturbed  by  this  attitude  and  stakes 
its  credit  on  [u,  ju].  Apparently  it  must  have  been  one  thing  or  the  other. 
An  enormous  amount  of  learning  and  ingenuity  has  been  expended  by 
both  sides.  Personally  I  am  not  at  all  convinced  that  either  side  has  the 
whole  truth.  Did  the  sound  [y]  exist  at  all  in  English  after,  say,  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century  ?  It  practically  resolves  itself  into  whether  the 
old  grammarians  can  be  trusted  when  they  say  that  French  u  in  sure  was 
identical  with  the  English  sound  in  the  same  word.  Did  they  really  know 
what  the  French  sound  was  ?  When  they  appear  to  be  describing  [y]  are 
they  not  in  fact  attempting  to  describe  something  quite  different  ?  Are 
there  not  plenty  of  Englishmen  at  the  present  day  who  believe,  for 
instance,  that  French  pu  and  English  pew  are  identical  in  every  respect  ? 
It  is  absolutely  certain  that  there  are  many  such,  and  I  think  equally 
certain  that  there  must  have  been  many  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
who  would  have  been  unable  to  distinguish  the  sound  of  these  two  words, 
even  if  the  difference  had  existed,  still  less  to  describe  it.  But  is  it  not 
probable  that  there  were  some  Englishmen  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  who  could  distinguish  between  [ju]  on  the  one  hand, 
and  [y,  jy]  on  the  other  ?  I  think  that  such  men  existed,  and  I  therefore 
believe  the  strong  body  of  testimony  which  asserts  that  what  we  may  call 
the  French  sound  did  still  exist  in  English  well  into  the  seventeenth 
century.  But  I  think  it  is  equally  well  established  that  there  were  other 
speakers  who  did  not  habitually  pronounce  this  sound,  who  in  fact  were 
probably  unable  to  pronounce  it. 

I  know  several  highly  educated,  not  to  say  learned,  Cockney  speakers 
at  the  present  time,  who,  if  they  were  to  give  a  descriptive  analysis  of 
their  '  long  u  '-sound,  would  with  perfect  accuracy  give  a  totally  different 
account  from  that  which  I  should  give  of  my  own  sound  in  boot,  but  not 
different  from  that  which  I  should  give  of  theirs.  I  can  imagine  that  if 
the  students  of  Historical  English  Grammar  in  the  year  2200  should 
dig  up  our  books  from  the  British  Museum,  the  fiercest  war  may  rage 
among  them,  unless  they  realize  that  both  schools  are  perfectly  right, 

R  2 


[jy] 
dou 


244    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE  MODERN  PERIOD 

but  were  describing  two  quite  different  sounds.  They  might  say, 
*  X.  is  a  fairly  reliable  authority  on  the  whole  for  the  pronunciation  of 
his  period,  but  he  has  gone  off  the  lines  here,  and  was  evidently  under  the 
impression  that  the  sound  in  boot  was  almost  identical  with  that  in  German 
hut  (hat).  But  here  are  the  "London  writers"  Smith,  Brown,  and 
Robinson,  who  all  agree  that  the  sound  in  boot,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century,  was  a  diphthong,  and  that  the  second  element  was 
not,  as  X.  asserts,  the  full,  high  back-tense-round,  but  a  back  vowel 
very  much  advanced  and  partially  unrounded.'  A  still  more  disastrous 
attempt  of  the  future  grammarian  would  be  to  try  to  square  the  two 
descriptions  as  referring  to  one  and  the  same  sound,  and  to  check  one 
against  the  other,  with  the  result  that  both  parties  would  be  credited 
with  something  quite  different  from  what  either  had,  quite  rightly, 
described,  and  an  utterly  wrong  statement  would  emerge  from  the 
muddle. 

I  am  certainly  not  inclined  to  repose  blind  faith  in  the  old  grammarians, 
even  in  the  best  of  them,  but  if  I  were  convinced  that  all  of  those  who 
appear  to  describe  the  sound  [y]  were  entirely  wrong,  or  that  they  were  in 
reality  describing  quite  a  different  sound,  I  should  certainly  despair  of 
ever  learning  anything  from  these  old  writers. 

As  for  the  approximate  period  at  which  [ju]  first  appeared,  from  old 
jy],  &c.,  I  do  not  know  when  to  place  it,  but  I  think  there  can  be  no 
oubt  concerning  the  interpretation  of  the  following  spellings  \—yousefull> 
Mary  Verney's  Will,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  17,  1639;  youst  '  used  ',  Mall  Verney, 
ibid.  ii.  380,  1647;  youseg  '  usage',  ibid.  iii.  214,  1655;  youmore 
'  humour  ',  Wentw.  Papers  320  ;  youmored,  ibid.  107,  320  ;  buity  '  beauty  ', 
ibid.  94,  and  Buforde  'Beaufort',  118,  119,  130.  Mrs.  Basire  writes 
ashoure  'assure',  112  (1653),  quewre9  quewored  'cure,  cured',  112 
(J653);  I  take  these  spellings  to  indicate  [a/uXr),  kjua(r)],  &c.  The 
spelling  yewthe  (  youth  '  in  a  letter  of  Richard  Layton  to  Lord  Cromwell, 
Ellis  2.  2.  60,  1535,  is  ambiguous,  as  the  origin  of  the  present  vowel 
in  this  word  is  doubtful.  The  above  spelling  may  either  point  to  an 
early  identity  in  sound  with  the  M.E.  u,  eu,  &c.,  and  suggest  g$g}>  as  the 
original  type,  or  if  we  take  the  present  form  to  be  from  a  Northern 
w-type,  it  points  to  ew,  &c.,  being  a  symbol  for  [ju]  as  early  as  1535. 

M.E.  u  (O.E.  J). 

It  has  been  clearly  stated  (pp.  30.  (3),  34.  (3),  41.  (3),  &c.)  that  O.E. 
y  already  in  the  O.E.  period  was  differentiated  into  e  in  Kentish  and 
South-Eastern,  while  the  old  sound  remained  elsewhere  apart  from 
combinative  unrounding  before  front  consonants  in  the  South-  Western 
dialects.  In  M.E.  both  types  e  and^>  (the  latter  written  u  from  the  twelfth 
century  onwards)  are  found,  but  a  new  type  with  complete  unrounding 
to  i  is  characteristic  of  the  North  and  of  the  E.  Midlands,  and  apparently 
also  of  certain  areas  in  the  South-  West. 

The  London  dialect,  as  we  have  seen  (pp.  9,  53,  57,  &c.),  has  all  three 
types  in  currency  from  an  early  period,  the  E.  Midland  gaining  in  fre- 
quency as  time  goes  on.  The  history  of  the  three  types  falls  under  that  of 
the  vowels  ;',  e,  and  ii  respectively.  We  are  concerned  primarily  here  with  U, 
whose  history  may  be  briefly  summed  up.  It  was  retracted  to  u,  at  any 


DISTRIBUTION  OF  -*-,  -*-,  -w-TYPES  245 

rate  before  the  period  in  which  this  was  unrounded,  and  it  shared  the 
common  fate  of  all  short  ^-sounds  no  matter  what  their  origin.  Thus  we 
have  today  [a]  in  rush  (the  plant),  thrush,  shut,  dull,  bundle,  blush, 
drudge,  clutch,  cudgel,  burden,  hurdle,  and  probably  much  and  such  should 
be  included  here.  The  same  sound  in  French  words,  judge,  just,  &c., 
had  the  same  history.  Cp.  p.  232. 

.Busy  and  Bury  appear  from  their  spelling  to  belong  to  this  type, 
but  the  former  is  pronounced  [bi'zt]  according  to  the  E.  Midland  type, 
and  the  latter  [ben]  according  to  the  South-Eastern.  We  noted  con- 
siderable fluctuation  in  the  distribution  of  the  various  types  in  the  literary 
English  of  the  fourteenth  century  and  later  (pp.  53,  57,  &c.),  but  by  the 
end  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  London  usage  was,  on  the  whole,  pretty 
much  as  at  present,  and  even  provincial  documents  show  the  influence  of 
the  speech  of  the  Metropolis  in  their  distribution  of  these  forms.  On  the 
other  hand,  certain  fluctuations  continue  during  this  and  the  following 
century,  which  show  that  a  certain  latitude  still  existed.  The  following 
lists,  which  do  not  profess  to  be  complete,  will  give  some  idea  of  the 
principal  deviations  from  our  present  distribution  in  Early  Modern. 
I  have  not  enumerated  the  forms,  generally  more  numerous,  which  agree 
with  our  present  usage. 

I  begin  with  some  of  the  provincial  texts,  which  are  roughly  classified 
into  Eastern  (including  Suffolk  and  Essex)  and  Western  (including  South- 
western and  South- West  Midland). 

Eastern  Group. 

Palladius,  burstels  'bristles',  27.  724,  cornel  (  kernel',  56.  332,  curnels, 
98. 1032  ;  besily,  11.28,  werst '  worst ',  14.  356,  wermes '  worms ',  32.  783  ; 
rysshe  « rush ',  the  plant,  4.69. 

Bokenam,  thrust  '  thirst ',  Chr.  444 ;  mech  '  much ',  Pr.  97,  besy,  passim, 
berthe  'birth',  Pr.  Marg.  131,  werst,  Chr.  1015,  kechyn,  Eliz.  899;  Marg. 
Paston,  hyrdillys  'hurdles',  ii.  84,  swich  'such',  passim;  beye  'buy', 
i.  224,  meche,  i.  69,  werse,  ii.  61,  65,  seche,  ii.  130.  9. 

Western  Group. 

Fortescue,  though  a  Devonian,  can  hardly  count  as  a  provincial  writer ; 
his  forms  agree  on  the  whole  with  our  own,  except  for  furst  '  first ', 
sturred '  stirred '. 

St.  Editha, />#//*  '  pit ',  1.  4169 ;  Shillingford  has  myche  *  much ',  ^yuell 
*  evil ',  13,  myry,  myryly,  16,  shitie  P.  P.,  '  shut ',  and  y  shitte,  88  ;  furst, 
stured,  luste  Vb.,  'list',  90;  werche  'work'  Vb.,  O.E.  wyrcan,  ferst 
'  first',  tt^yshette,  86  ;  Reg.  of  Oseney,  mynchons  '  monks '  O.E.  myncen, 
Medehulle,  26,  buturhulle,  26,  brugge,  27  and  49;  Exeter  Tailors'  Guild, 
furst,  318;  Ord.  of  Worcs.,  putts  ' pits',  brugge,  374;  Coventry  Leet, 
to  wurche,  i.  33;  Pecok's  Represser,  yuel,  i.  3,  rische  'rush',  i.  166; 
Reg.  of  Godstow,  werste,  55,  unschette  Inf.,  '  unshut,  open ' ;  ben'ed  agrees 
with  our  pronunciation,  but  not  with  our  spelling. 

I  now  pass  to  the  non-dialectal  sources. 

Hoccleve  has  thursteth,  but  otherwise  seems  to  agree  with  our  present 
usage;  Lydgate,  who  has  certain  East  Country  tendencies,  has  sterid, 
besynesse,  felthe  '  filth  ',  furst]  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  gerddlts,  schet  P.  P., 
91.  36,  schette  'shut',  91.  38,  besily,  93.  3;  Gregory,  who  it  must  be 


246    STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

remembered  was  born  in  Suffolk,  has  lyfte  '  left  hand',  86.  139,  syche, 
131,  schytte  Fret,  'shut',  159;  steryd,  85,  Yelde  halle,  101 ;  Caxton, 
shitte  Pret., '  shut ',  Jason,  48  ;  knetted,  174.  31,  shette  92. 13,  seche  'such ', 
96.  16,  besines,  96.  21;  burthe,  4.  16;  Bk.  of  Quint.,  ^w/z'j  'evils',  10, 
«<r^  'such',  13,  wzir^  'much',  3,  biriede,  2,  sterrid,  n  ;  Skelton,  Magnyf., 
agrees,  apparently,  with  our  present  usage;  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,/**™/,  389, 
/*/?Meft  hand',  391;  Bp.  Knight  (1512),  mych,  Ellis  2.  i.  190;  Rede 
me,  &c.,  fe//  P.P.,  21 ;  Sir  Thos.  More,  wy^,  Ellis  i.  i.  197;  Thos. 
Pery  (1539),  bessy,  Ellis  2.  2.  140;  John  Mason  (1535),  mych,  Ellis 
2.  2.  54,  sick,  ibid.;  Lord  Berners,  hyrdell  '  hurdle',  i.  38,  ,r^i'//i  '  shut' 
P.P.,  i.  155,  yvell,  i.  200;  besynesse,  i.  25,  96,  &c.,  j/Vr^  Vb.,  i.  136, 
&c. ;  Adm.  Sir  Edw.  Howard,  steryd,  Ellis  2.  i.  214;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot, 
ketchyn,  i.  71,  stereth,  i.  145,  sterynge  'stirring',  i.  149,  stere  Inf.,  208, 
kendled,  2.51;  thursty  'thirsty',  i.  189,  thurste,  2.  155;  Bp.  Fisher, 
j/wm?,  372;  Latimer,  sterryng,  204;  slurred,  46,  sturrs,  471;  Machyn, 
wy<:A,  2,  ymberyng  days  'Ember1,  4,  rjw^r  'rushes'  (the  plant);  faro/ 
'buried',  i,  2,  &c.,  &c.,  besiness,  4,  Crepulgatt,  125,  belded  '  built',  174, 
&c.,  kechens,  203  ;  /#r.r/,  2  ;  Cavendish,  wyr/fo,  9  ;  ^r<?  '  stir ',  52,  j&// 
'  shut ',  242 ;  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  suich,  '  such ',  Letters,  Ellis  2.3.  16  ;  furst, 
ibid.  2.  3.  19;  Ascham,  rishe,  Scholem.  54;  Q.  Elizabeth,  ivel  'evil', 
Letters  to  James  VI,  20,  65,  btsy,  Tr.  73;  j/wr,  Letters,  23;  weshing 
'wishing',  Letters,  4  ;  Euphues,  creeple,  creple '  cripple',  131  (butcf.  p.  247, 
below). 

It  is  unnecessary  to  pursue  the  subject  farther.  Throughout  the  six- 
teenth century  we  find  that  these  forms  correspond  exactly  to  our  own 
usage,  and  the  above  exceptions  are  comparatively  insignificant  by  the 
side  of  the  overwhelmingly  larger  number  of  forms  which  call  for  no 
mention  at  all.  It  should  be  pointed  out  that  a  certain  proportion  of  the 
^-spellings  may  in  reality  represent  the  lowering  of  i  to  e  according  to 
the  account  given  on  pp.  207-8,  226-9,  above. 

M.E.  u  from  O.E.^. 

The  long  vowel  was  treated  in  O.E.  and  M.E.  in  the  same  way  as  the 
short,  and  the  three  types  u,  I,  i  also  exist.  In  Modern  Standard 
English,  however,  the  7-type  is  the  only  one  which  survives  with  the 
exception  of  the  single  word  bruise,  O.E.  brysan,  and  the  English  origin 
of  this  is  disputed,  it  being  alleged  that  bruise  is  derived  from  Old  French 
bruser,  which,  however,  is  itself  a  loan-word. 

Some  East  Country  dialects  still  preserve  a  few  /-forms — e.g.  meece 
'mice',  face  Mice'.     Otherwise  the  descendants  of  the  M.E.  J-type  hold 
the  field.    The  development  of  this  vowel  has  been  that  of  all  other  M.E. 
/-sounds,  namely,  that  it  has  been  diphthongized  to  [at]  (cf.  pp.  223-6 
above). 

Words  of  this  origin  are — hide  Vb.  and  Noun,  hive  (for  bees),  bride, 
kind,  fa-file,  fire,  mind. 

All  these  had  y  in  O.E. 

The  dialectal  distribution  of  the  various  types  &,  e,  I  in  M.E.  appears 
to  have  been  pretty  much  the  same  as  that  of  the  corresponding  short 
vowels — i  in  the  North  and  in  the  E.  Midlands  ;  e  in  the  South-East  and 
part  of  the  E.  Midlands,  perhaps  as  far  north  as  Lines. ;  U  in  the  South, 


DIALECTAL   VARIANTS  OF  FIRE,  ETC.  247 

South-West,  and  West  Midlands.  In  the  South-East  both  U  and  e  seem 
to  have  been  current.  The  E.  Midland  J-type  seems  to  have  gained 
ground  in  areas  where  it  did  not  originally  belong,  earlier,  and  more 
rapidly  than  in  the  case  of  the  short  vowel,  and  the  <?-type  is  next  in 
frequency,  u  being  less  widespread  outside  the  South-West  and  West- 
Central  Midlands.  In  the  London  dialect  all  three  types  were  in  use  in 
M.E.,  I  and  e  being  the  commonest,  but  the  latter  was  gradually  elimi- 
nated and  is,  I  think,  not  found  in  Literary  English  much  after  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  long  H  is  often  written  ui  or  uy  in  M.E. 
and  later. 

I  give  a  few  examples  of  survival  of  other  types  than  that  which  we  now 
use,  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

Provincial  Sources. 

East  Country.  Palladius,  bresed  '  bruised  ',  25.  679;  Bokenam,  feer 
'fire',  Agn.  537,  &c.,  also  fyre>  Chr.  629,  rhymes  with  chere,  mende 
'mind',  Ann.  389  ;  Marg.  Paston,  mende,  ii.  362. 

West  and  South-West.  Reg.  of  Oseney,  beeldid  'built',  56;  Ordi- 
nances of  Worcs.,  fuyre  '  fire  ',  371,  372,  huydes  '  skins  ',  374. 

London  Sources  and  Literary  English. 

Hoccleve,  themel '  thimble  ',  Reg.  of  Pr.  682  ;  Lydgate,  fuyre  'fire  ', 
unkende ;  Skelton  has  no  disagreement  with  present-day  usage  in  those 
words  which  survive,  but  the  interesting  archaism  lyther  '  bad  ',  O.E.  lyfor, 
may  be  noted;  fyre  '  fire '  rhyming  byre '  beer',  Rede  me,  &c.,  is  a  phonetic 
spelling  for  the  M.JL./eer  type ;  cp.  also  Bokenam's  rhymes  above ;  Dives 
Pragmaticus  (1563),  heeves  *  hives'. 

I  have  included  crepul,  cre(e}ple  (see  above,  under  Machyn  and 
Euphues)  under  short  U  because  I  take  it  to  be  from  O.E,  crjjpel  from 
*crupil.  It  might,  however,  be  from  Pr.  O.E.  *crupil,  in  which  case 
these  forms  should  come  here. 

In  the  same  way  there  is  a  difficulty  about  build.  The  vowel  in  O.E. 
byldan  was  originally  short,  but  lengthening  generally  takes  place  in  late 
O.E.  before  -Id.  On  the  other  hand,  our  own  present-day  form  is  clearly 
derived  from  an  unlengthened  form.  The  lengthened  form,  however, 
seems  certain  in  beeldid  (Reg.  of  Oseney).  Machyn's  beldyd,  174,  might 
be  either  long  or  short. 

M.E.  at]  ei  in  the  Modern  Period. 

These  diphthongs,  originally  different,  were  pretty  generally  levelled 
under  one  in  M.E.  at  latest  by  the  fourteenth  century.  In  different  dialects 
this  single  sound  may  have  tended  towards  either  [at]  or  [e/].  By  the 
first  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  the  sound,  whatever  it  was,  had 
evidently  been  very  widely  monophthongized,  and  the  single  vowel  thence 
resulting  was  a  front  vowel,  either  [ae]  or  [§].  This  levelling  is  proved 
by  the  occasional  spellings  a,  ea  for  former  at,  ei,  and  further  by  the  fact 
that  at,  ey  are  sometimes  written  for  old  d.  That  the  sound  into  which 
both  ai  and  d  had  developed  was  a  front  vowel  is  shown  by  rhymes  in 
which  old  d  is  coupled  with  old  e  (cf.  discussion  of  the  history  of 
d,  pp.  194-6,  above),  and  by  the  fact  that  ey  is  sometimes  used  for  old 
e  ==  [e  or  e],  and  that  ea  which  is  written  for  old  ai  never  does  nor  could 
stand  for  anything  but  a  front  vowel. 


248    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

The  history  of  at,  ei  should  be  considered  in  connexion  with  that  of  old 
a,  since  from  the  moment  that  they  have  converged  into  a  single  sound, 
whatever  is  true  of  the  one  is  true  of  the  other. 

To  show  the  levelling  of  the  diphthong  with  old  a  and  that  the  same 
symbols  are  used  to  express  both,  the  following  appear  to  me  con- 
clusive : — 

(1)  at]  ei,  written  a  : — sa  '  say',  Mary  Beaufort  (1443-1509),  letter  in 
Ellis  i.  i.  47  ;  Duke  of  Buckingham  (1442-5),  y£//;/#//,  Past.  Letters  i. 
62  ;   panes  'pains  ',  1528,  Anne  Boleyn,  Ellis  i.  i.  306  ;  agane,  1553, 
Q.  Elizabeth,  letter  in  Ellis  2.  2.  213  ;   1642,  pade  '  paid',  Lady  Sussex, 
Verney  Mem.  ii ;  wate  'wait',  ibid.  103  ;  pra  '  pray  ',  Gary  V.,  Verney 
Mem. 

(2)  Old  a  written  02': — 1421,  maid  P.P.,  Cov.  Leet  i.  24;    1529, 
trayvell,   Lord    Berners    i.    222;    1533,   waiter   'water',  Will    of   Sir 
J.  Digby  (Leicestershire),  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  142.  9;    1539,  Letter  of 
Thos.  Pery,  Ellis  2.  2,  spqyke,  141;  bqyde  'bade',  146;  laydinge,  142  ; 
tayking,   146;  mayde  'made',  142;    Q.  Elizabeth,  matk,  Transl.   148; 
maid,  ibid.  143;    1550-60,  stayffes  'staves'  M.E.  staves,  Machyn  51, 
mayde  'made ',  ibid.  53 ;  1642,  saifly,  R.  Verney,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  137  ; 
shairer,  Ed.  V.,  ibid.  141. 

(3)  Rhymes: — Donne  are — dispair,  Heroical  Epistle,  21,  22;   are — 
aire  'air  ',  ibid.  41,  42  ;  faire — compare,  ibid.   15,  16;  Lord  Rochester, 
are — dispair — declare— fair  in  '  Insulting  Beauty  you  misspend  ' ;  Playr*s 
— cares  in  poem  entitled  '  The  Rehearsal '.     Shakespeare,  in  the  song 
'  Orpheus  with  his  lute '  (Hen.  VIII,  Act  in,  Sc.  i),  rhymes  play  with  sea. 

The  evidence  that  at]  ei  had  become  a  front  vowel  as  early  as  the 
fifteenth  century  is  that  in  St.  Editha  (c.  1420)  we  find  deythe  for  death, 
445;  meyle,  iooi,for  meate,  M.E.  mete\  eyer,  2908,  for  ere,  M.E.  er  O.E. 
xr ;  eysterday  for  Easterday,  3104,  3105,  and  that  Shillingford  writes 
feale  for  fail,  p.  19.  Q.  Elizabeth  in  Transl.,  p.  100,  writes  cheane  for 
chain.  Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  waiker  'weaker',  Gouernour  i.  173,  and 
Bp.  Fisher's  weyke  'weak',  Serm.,  p.  312,  may  represent  a  traditional 
spelling  of  the  Scand.  veik — though  this  seems  to  me  extremely  unlikely. 
If  these  forms  represent  the  normal  M.E.  weke  then  they  are  good  illustra- 
tions of  our  point. 

(For  proofs  that  M.E.  a  had  been  fronted  by  1420  or  so,  see  under 
that  heading,  pp.  194-6.) 

As  early  as  1303  Robert  of  Brunne,  in  Handlyng  Synne  (Lines.), 
writes  deyl,  826,  for  M.E.  del '  part ',  and  weyl  for  wel '  well ',  but  it  may  be 
thought  that  this  represents  the  Northern  method  of  expressing  length. 
In  the  North,  O.E.  a  as  well  as  M.E.  a  were  undoubtedly  fronted  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  the  sound  is  often  expressed  by  at,  ei,  but  this 
does  not  concern  us  here. 

At  the  present  day  the  old  diphthong  is  preserved  in  some  dialects,  for 
instance  in  that  of  Oxfordshire;  the  normal  forms  for  rain,  way,  and 
even  for  fair  being  [rain,  wa;',  faz'r  (or  v0*r)].  This  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  Modern  Cockney  pronunciation,  which  is  quite  recent,  but  is  an 
interesting  survival.  It  is  probably  to  this  type  that  Sir  Thos.  Smith  and 
Gill  allude  as  the  '  rustic '  pronunciation,  a  '  fat '  sound.  Unfortunately 
these  writers  appear,  together  with  others  of  their  kind  and  period,  to  assert 


MIDDLE  ENGLISH  at  BECOMES  A  MONOPHTHONG    249 

that  a  diphthongic  pronunciation  [at*]  was  also  the  educated  habit,  the  first 
element,  however,  being  less  '  fat '.  The  French  writers  of  the  sixteenth 
century  who  deal  with  our  pronunciation  often  observe  accurately,  and 
they  give  an  intelligible  account  of  the  facts  when  they  identify  the  sound 
of  English  at  with  French  e  and  ai.  It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  in  detail 
the  ambiguous  or  misleading  statements  of  the  English  grammarians  on 
the  point.  They  may  be  read,  together  with  those  of  the  French,  most 
industriously  collected  and  ingeniously  discussed  by  Zachrisson,  Engl. 
Vowels,  pp.  124  &c.,  190  &c.  As  an  example  of  the  sort  of  help  we  get 
from  them  we  may  quote  one  passage  from  Mulcaster's  Elementarie 
(1582): 

1  Ai  is  the  mans  diphthong  and  soundeth  full,  ei  the  womans  and 
soundeth  finish  in  the  same  both  sense  and  use — a  woman  is  deintie  and 
feinteth  soon,  the  man  fainteth  not  because  he  is  nothing  daintie  ',  p.  119. 
Gill,  Logonomia,  p.  33  (reprint),  asserts  that  [ai]  is  the  proper  pronun- 
ciation, and  that  to  substitute  [e]  for  this  is  an  affected  mode  of  speech. 

Charles  Butler,  in  1634,  says — '  The  right  sound  of  at  .  . .  is  the  sound 
of  the  two  letters  whereof  (it  is)  made.  .  .  .  But  ai  in  imitation  of  the 
French  is  sometime  corruptly  sounded  like  e  as  in  may,  nay,  play,  pray, 
say,  stay,  fray! 

Cooper  says  that  in  bait,  caitiff,  praise  the  diphthong  consists  of  the 
sound  of  a  in  can,  joined  to  that  of  i  pronounced  ee.  This  would 
presumably  mean  [sei].  ei,  ey  in  height,  weight,  convey,  may  be  pronounced 
as  regards  the  first  element  with  either  e  in  km  or  a  in  cane,  which  would 
suggest  either  [e*  or  ei].  But  as  if  to  show  what  nonsense  all  these 
refinements  are,  he  winds  up  with  what  is  clearly  the  simple  truth — 
*  plerumque  autem  in  colloquio  familiari,  neglegenter  loquentes  pronun- 
ciant  at  prout  a  simplicem  in  cane '.  Which  one  may  perhaps  interpret 
to  mean  that  everybody  who  spoke  naturally  pronounced  a  single  long 
front  vowel  in  words  where  ai,  ei  were  written,  but  that  some  rather 
pedantic  speakers,  misled  by  the  spelling,  and  wishing  to  be  very 
'correct',  still  said  [ae*'  or  e/']  in  these  words.  It  must  not  be  taken  as 
certain  that  any  of  the  above-mentioned  grammarians  really  pronounced 
a  true  diphthong,  in  spite  of  their  theories.  Later  on,  under  the  heading 
of  '  a  exilis ',  that  is,  the  development  of  old  long  a,  Cooper  gives  a  list  of 
ai  words  which  have  the  same  sound  as  a  in  cane,  e.  g.  bain  —bane,  main 
— mane,  hail — hale,  maid— made,  tail — tale,  &c.,  &c. 

In  addition  to  the  various  arguments  which  have  been  already  adduced, 
to  show  the  early  monophthongization  of  this  diphthong,  there  is  the  fact 
that  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  seventeenth  centuries  inclusive  a  pronuncia- 
tion [ei]  existed  for  M.E.  J,  present-day  [at].  (See  on  this  point, 
p.  223,  &c.,  above.)  If  we  are  to  assume  that  M.E.  ai,  ei  were  still  pro- 
nounced as  diphthongs  in  the  seventeenth  century  we  shall,  I  think,  land 
ourselves  in  inextricable  confusion. 


M.E.  oi  in  the  Modern  Period. 

It  has  been  shown  above,  p.  224,  in  dealing  with  M.E.  i,  that  early 
in  the  Modern  Period  the  new  diphthong  derived  from  the  latter  was 
identical  in  pronunciation  with  M.E.  oi\  and  that  this  diphthong  was 


25o    STRESSED  VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

probably  [ai],  at  any  rate  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. 
The  accounts  given  by  the  grammarians  of  the  seventeenth  century 
regarding  the  pronunciation  of  old  oi  suggest  that  there  was  more  than 
one  pronunciation.  While,  as  stated  on  pp.  224-5,  tne7  confirm  the  con- 
clusions drawn  from  other  evidence  as  to  the  identity  of  i  and  oi,  the 
sound  thus  described  is  mentioned  under  the  treatment  of  /,  and  additional 
information  regarding  the^pi'onunciation  of  of  is  often  given  under  that 
diphthong  itself.  Mulcaster  on  pp.  117  and  118  of  his  Elementarie 
(1582)  distinguishes  clearly  two  pronunciations  of  oi :  one  '  sounding  vpon 
the  o '  as  \nboie,  enioie,  toy,  anoy,  toy,  and  another  *  which  soundeth  vpon 
the  u ',  or  again,  '  which  seme  to  haue  an  u '  as  in  anoint,  appoint,  foil. 
This  would  appear  to  imply  a  spelling-pronunciation  [o*'j,  here  illustrated 
by  the  larger  number  of  words,  by  the  side  of  another  pronunciation  [a/]. 
Thus  Wallis  says  that  in  noise,  boys,  toys,  oil  (i)  the  sound  is  o  'open, 
clear  but  short'  +y,  that  some  pronounce  either  (2)  u  as  the  first 
element  in  certain  words,  or  (3)  '  u  obscure '.  He  illustrates  two  types 
of  pronunciation — toil,  oil,  or  tuyl,  uyl.  Cooper  groups  together  (i) 
wine,  blind,  wind,  injoin,  broil,  ointment,  &c.,  as  having  the  same  diphthong, 
namely,  the  sound  in  cut  followed  by  i.  This  agrees  with  the  Wallis's 
sound  described  in  (3)  above  and  denotes  [ai].  (2)  Cooper  gives  joy,  coy, 
coif  as  containing  a  diphthong  consisting  of  the  o  of  loss  followed  by  t. 
This  agreesjwiih  Wallis's  (i)  and  refers  to  [pi].  (3)  Cooper  says  that  in 
boil,  moil,  point,  poison  the  sound  is  u  in  full,  or  o  in  fole  (=  '  fool '  ?), 
followed  by  i,  but  that  except  in  these  words  this  diphthong,  '  apud  nos 
non  pronunciatur '.  This  apparently  refers  to  a  pronunciation  [ui]  or  [uY] 
and  corresponds  to  Wallis's  (2). 

These  three  pronunciations  may  be  easily  accounted  for.  The  old 
sound  seems  to  have  been  more  like  [ui]  than  [of]  just  before  its  trans- 
formation. The  first  element  appears  to  have  been  unrounded,  and  to 
have  been  lowered  to  [a],  just  like  old  short  u  (cf.  p.  232).  This  was 
the  diphthong  that  was  levelled  with  that  produced  from  old  I  (p.  224). 
This  unrounding,  however,  did  not  take  place  after  lip-consonants,  hence 
[but'l,  muzl],  &c.  (Cooper's  type  (3)).  This  retention  of  the  rounded  first 
element  after  lip-consonants  was  not  universal,  however  (cf.  Dr.  Denton's 
byled  '  boiled '  [ai],  p.  224). 

The  [oi]  pronunciation  indicated  by  Mulcaster,  Wallis,  and  Cooper 
represents  probably  an  artificially  '  restored '  pronunciation  due  to  the 
spelling,  and  this  is  the  Received  pronunciation  at  the  present  time.  The 
[of]  pronunciation  occurred  among  some  speakers  in  both  [ui]  and  [a/] 
words,  since  in  another  place  Cooper  indicates  it  as  possible  for  join,  toil, 
&c.,  as  well  as  for  boil,  poison,  &c.  The  *  restoring '  tendency  has  been 
carried  too  far  in  boil '  inflamed  swelling '  (M.E.  bile),  and  in  joist  (jzste). 
Jespersen  (N.  Engl.  Gr.,  p.  320)  thinks  that  the  spelling  of  these  words 
cannot  be  explained  in  this  way  because  joyst  occurs  as  early  as  1495, 
and  boyle  in  1529.  But  these  early  spellings  do  not  necessarily  prove 
that  [of]  was  pronounced  in  these  words,  but  merely  that  old  i  and  old  oi 
already  had  a  common  pronunciation,  so  that  they  were  written  indiffer- 
ently to  express  the  same  sound.  See  also  p.  224. 

The  curious  spelling  junant '  joining '  is  found  in  Shillingford,  p.  86, 
&c.,  who  also  writes  joynant,  p.  89,  and  Gregory,  a  few  years  later,  writes 


THE   RHYME  SHINE— JOIN,  ETC.  251 

cunys  for  'coins',  p.  185.  This  may  mark  the  change  of  the  first 
element  to  [u],  but  it  is  not  a  satisfactory  method  of  expressing  [uz]. 

Jones  (1701),  p.  113,  says  that  the  sound  of  u  is  written  o  in  boil,  coil, 
coin,  foil,  moil,  voyage,  &c.  It  is  rather  doubtful  whether  he  means  to 
imply  the  pronunciation  [u/]  or  [at],  but  as  he  includes  in  the  list  words 
without  a  diphthong,  in  which  [aj  was  certainly  the  vowel  intended,  such 
as  mother,  door,  work,  &c.,  it  is  pretty  evident  that  he  intends  to  express 
the  pronunciation  [a/]. 

In  Baker's  Rules  for  True  Spelling  and  Writing  English,  among  a  list 
of  {  words  commonly  pronounced  very  different  from  what  they  are 
written ',  we  find  the  pronunciation  of  coin  expressed  as  quine. 

The  twofold  pronunciation  [o/,  a/']  is  recognized  in  Growth  of  the 
English  Tongue,  published  by  Brightland,  1712  (or  1714?),  attributed  to 
Steele.  In  boil,  toil,  oil  the  first  element  is  said  to  be  *  sometimes  obscure 
u'  (=  [a]).  But — *  I  grant  by  the  pronunciation  of  some  men  open  (o) 
is  used  in  these  words '. 

The  frequent  rhymes  such  as  join — line  which  occur  in  the  eighteenth 
century  (in  Pope  and  other  writers)  show  that  the  'unrestored*  pronun- 
ciation of  oi,  which  identified  it  with  '  long  z",  was  not  an  offence  against 
the  taste  of  the  fastidious.  The  final  adoption  of  [a*',  at]  as  the  Received 
pronunciation  was  a  slow  process,  and  by  some  arbitrary  standard  in 
some  words  the  restored  pronunciation  was  fixed  while  others  were  ex- 
cluded. This  is  seen  by  the  remark  of  Kendrick  (1773)  quoted  by 
Jespersen  (New  Engl.  Gr.,  p.  329),  that  it  is  an  affectation  to  pronounce 
boil,  join  otherwise  than  as  bile,  jine,  and  yet  it  is  '  a  vicious  custom  in 
conversation '  to  use  this  sound  [a/']  in  oil,  toil,  which  thereby  '  are 
frequently  pronounced  exactly  like  isle,  tile  \ 

In  Received  Standard  at  the  present  time  there  is,  so  far  as  I  know,  no 
exception  to  the  [o*']  pronunciation.  One  rather  remarkable  exception 
to  this  rule  used  to,  and  probably  still  does,  occur  in  the  Place  Name 
Foynes,  in  the  County  Limerick.  Twenty-five  years  ago,  when  I  lived 
there,  the  local  peasantry  and  farmers,  and  the  middle  classes  of  Limerick 
City,  pronounced  it  [fomz],  but  the  neighbouring  gentry,  including  the 
landlord  himself,  all  called  the  place  [fozhz]. 

The  type  [uz']  seems  to  have  vanished  after  the  seventeenth  century. 

The  testimony  of  rhymes  during  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  also  confirms  the  evidence  of  the  occasional  spellings  and  of 
the  grammarians  as  to  the  identity  of  oi  and  z  in  the  pronunciation  of 
those  times.  A  few  examples  will  suffice  : — Spenser,  guile — assoyle, 
Prothalam. ;  Shakespeare,  R.  of  L.,  swine— groin,  1115-16;  Suckling, 
in  the  poem  '  There  never  yet  was  woman  made ',  rhymes  find— joined ; 
Habington,  shin'd—joynd,  Castara,  83. 

On  the  development  of  a  lip-glide  afier  a  consonant,  before  oi,  leading 
to  ' twoil\  &c.,  see  p.  310,  below. 

The  M.E.  Diphthong  au  in  the  Modern  Period. 

The  diphthong  au,  which,  besides  its  development  from  -0/-  as 
described  above  (p.  201),  had  various  origins  in  M.E.,  has  long  been 
monophthongized  to  [5].  It  is  not  difficult  to  determine  in  which  words 


252    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

the  diphthong  formerly  occurred,  as  the  old  spelling  au  or  aw  is  gener- 
ally kept,  apart  from  the  cases  of  later  development  before  -/,  and  here 
the  spelling  is  preserved  in  caul,  haul,  &c. 

Examples  are — draw,  hawk,  law,  saw,  gnaw,  slaughter,  cause,  taunt, 
haunch,  &c. 

The  process  of  change  followed  was  probably  [au,  ou,  6M,  DM,  5],  that 
is  to  say,  the  first  element  of  the  diphthong  underwent  rounding  through 
the  influence  of  the  second  element ;  the  former  became  longer  and  more 
important,  and  the  latter  proportionally  weaker  until  it  disappeared 
altogether. 

It  is  naturally  impossible  to  fix  the  precise  period  at  which  complete 
monophthongization  took  place,  but  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
[ou,  D°]  stage  had  been  passed  before  old  u  had  become  [ou]  (see 
pp.  230-1),  otherwise  these  two  diphthongs,  which  must  have  been  closely 
alike  in  sound,  would  have  been  levelled  under  a  single  form,  and  would 
have  shared  an  identical  fate.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  this  did  not 
happen.  On  the  contrary,  the  period  in  which  speakers  tended  to  get  rid  of 
the  second  element  of  such  a  diphthong  as  [5M]  and  to  turn  this  into  some- 
thing which  has  become  [5]  must  have  preceded  that  during  which  the 
speakers  preserved  this  or  a  very  similar  diphthong  (from  old  u),  and 
gradually  unrounded  the  first  element,  thus  producing  approximately  [au]. 
There  is  nothing  to  prevent  us  supposing  that  u  had  become  [ouj  or 
even  [au]  early  in  the  sixteenth  century ;  on  the  contrary,  this  is  highly 
probable  (see  pp.  231-2).  The  older  [ou]  from  au  may  therefore  have 
been  monophthongized  in  the  preceding  century. 

The  occasional  spellings  in  early  documents  which  are  enlightening 
are  of  two  kinds :  (i)  those  which  write  ou  or  o  for  older  au,  showing 
either  that  the  first  element  was  rounded  or  that,  in  addition,  the  second 
element  had  been  lost ;  (2)  those  in  which  au  or  aw  is  used  to  express 
a  sound  which  we  know  could  never  have  been  diphthongic. 

I  see  no  reason  to  distrust  the  obvious  testimony  of  some  of  the  forms 
adduced  by  Zachrisson,  Engl.  Vowels,  E.  St.  53,  pp.  313  and  314 — e.g. 
stolkes  'stalks ',  Cely  Papers  (this  form,  however,  is  of  doubtful  identity) ;  oil, 
1505,  defolte,  ofull  '  awful ' ',  after  1500,  which  are  given  as  from  '  Suffolk 
Records ',  without  further  reference  than  to  '  Binzel  49  ' ;  further,  olso  from 
Sir  Thos.  More,  c.  1535.  Among  my  own  collections  are  these  from 
Machyn  : — hopene  '  halfpenny ',  solmon  'salmon',  170,  ontt  'aunt',  64, 
(all  these  are  mentioned  by  Z.) ;  further,  from  Machyn — a  nobe  62,  c  an 
alb '  =  [5b]  from  aulb.  Surrey  has  the  spelling  fought '  taught '  rhyming 
with ywr ought,  cf.  Tottel,  p.  7,  Compl.  of  a  Louer,  &c.,  n  and  12  ;  and 
Thos.  Sackville  rhymes  wrought — caught,  Compl.  of  Duke  of  Bucking- 
ham, 125,  also  draught — thought— fraught,  ibid.,  127.  Of  spellings 
belonging  to  the  second  class  may  be  mentioned  saufte  '  soft ',  cit.  Zach- 
risson as  being  from  Tyndale,  1525;  I  have  noted  also  caumplet 
'complete',  Machyn,  p.  12,  which  has  not  escaped  the  eagle  eye  of 
Dr.  Zachrisson,  and  clausset  'closet'  in  Latimer,  Seven  Serm.,  p.  38. 
A  much  earlier  spelling  which  has  not  yet  been  mentioned  in  this 
connexion,  but  which  may  well  be  a  case  in  point,  is  y-fole  '  fallen ', 
St.  Editha,  522.  These  spellings  satisfy  me  that  the  writers  no  longer 
pronounced  the  old  au  as  a  diphthong,  but  rather  as  a  single  vowel, 


au  ACQUIRES   ITS   PRESENT   PRONUNCIATION      253 

not  very  different  from  that  we  now  use.  The  French  grammarians 
of  the  seventeenth  century  insist  that  the  sound  in  English  awe  resembles 
or  is  identical  with  French  a  long.  If  this  refers  to  a  sound  like  that  now 
heard  in  French  dpre,  pdte,  the  description  is  as  near  to  that  of  [5]  as 
a  Frenchman  could  be  expected  to  get.  At  the  present  time  French 
provincial  speakers  pronounce  the  vowel  in  pdte,  &c.,  very  low  with 
a  slight  rounding,  so  that  the  sound  is  not  far  removed  from  our  [5],  It 
is  instructive  to  compare  with  the  Frenchman's  statement  the  spelling 
Spaw  of  Sir  R.  Verney,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  23  (1641),  for  Spa,  and  of  Lady 
Elmes,  iv.  120  (1665). 

Other  interesting  spellings  from  the  Memoirs  in  the  present  connexion 
are — Sent  Obornes  '  St.  Albans ',  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  81  (1642) ;  sossy  '  saucy ', 
Pen.  Verney,  ii.  78  (1642);  cose  '  cause  ',  M.  Faulkiner,  ii.  56  (1642)  ;  smol 
'  small ',  Betty  Adams  (ne'e  Verney),  iv.  131  (1665). 

Mrs.  Basire  (Corresp.  of  Dr.  Basire)  writes—  sow  'saw',  108  (1651), 
doter  'daughter',  112  (1653),  colling  'calling',  135  (1654),  also  fool 
'  fall ',  134,  at  the  same  date. 

Otway  writes  Gaud  for  God  in  Soldiers  Fortune,  Act  v,  Sc.  i  (1681), 
which  certainly  implies  the  now  vulgar  pronunciation  [god],  a  pronuncia- 
tion also  exhibited  by  Pope  in  the  lines : — 

Slave  to  no  sect,  who  takes  no  private  road 
But  looks  through  Nature,  up  to  Nature's  God. 

Essay  on  Man,  Epistle  iv,  320, 

and  more  unmistakably  in  : — 

Persist,  by  all  divine  in  man  unawed, 

But  learn,  ye  dunces!   not  to  scorn  your  God. 

Dunciad,  223-4. 

Lengthenings  and  Shortenings  of  Vowels  in  the  Modern 

Period. 

This  whole  question  is  beset  by  various  difficulties.  Lengthening  and 
shortening  of  vowels  has  occurred  at  various  periods  during  the  history  of 
English,  sometimes  under  conditions  which  are  clear  and  can  be  formu- 
lated without  hesitation,  since  the  results  are  found  with  regularity,  and 
the  apparent  exceptions  can  be  explained  by  a  specific  analogy,  sometimes 
under  conditions  which  are  more  or  less  obscure,  since  the  lengthening 
or  shortening  is  apparently  intermittent,  being  present  in  some  words, 
but  absent  in  others  in  which  the  phonetic  conditions  seem  to  be  identical. 
A  further  difficulty,  when  the  quantity  itself  is  sufficiently  clear  from  the 
spelling,  is  to  be  sure  whether  this  or  that  particular  quantity  is  attribu- 
table to  a  M.E.  change  or  to  one  of  later  date.  This  difficulty  arose  in 
discussing  the  various  developments  of  M.E.  01  in  the  Modern  Period. 
(Cf.  pp.  236-9,  above.) 

The  handling  of  these  various  problems  needs  caution,  since  many  of 
them  cannot  be  settled  without  reference  to  other  sound  changes,  and  a 
certain  view  respecting  one  may  involve  much  else  besides. 

Thus  it  would  seem  that  the  lengthening  of  M.E.  o  as  in  lost,  croft  [lost, 
croft]  must  be  later  than  the  change  of  M.E.  o2  from  a  slack  to  a  tense 
sound,  so  that  whatever  approximate  date  we  may  fix  for  the  former  we 


254    STRESSED   VOWELS   IN   THE   MODERN   PERIOD 

are  bound  to  admit  that  by  that  time  the  new  tense  b  must  have  been 
already  in  existence,  since  if  this  were  not  so,  and  if  the  lengthened  M.E. 
o  had  caught  up  M.E.  0*  before  this  had  become  tense,  then  the  process 
of  '  tensening '  must  have  overtaken  both  together  and  we  should  now 
pronounce  lost,  to  rhyme  with  boast,  and  there  would  be  no  distinction  in 
pronunciation  between  cost  and  coast. 

We  may  get  some  guidance  as  to  the  approximate  period  of  these 
Early  Modern  shortenings  if  we  examine  their  effect  on  vowels  whose 
quality  changed  during  Late  M.E.  or  very  Early  Modern. 

Both  M.E.  e1  [e]  and  later  M.E.  e1  [e],  as  we  know,  have  become  [i]. 
Now  in  sick,  silly,  rick  (of  hay),  riddle,  breeches  =  [bn'tjzz],  and  the  now 
vulgar  divvle  '  devil '  we  have  a  vowel  produced  by  the  shortening  of 
M.E.  e1  after  it  had  become  [i]. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  head,  dead,  breath,  sweat,  &c.,  we  have  a 
shortened  form  of  M.E.  P.  In  no  case,  so  far  as  I  know,  have  we  [*]  as 
the  result  of  the  shortening  of  this  vowel.  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose 
that  this  shortening  process,  in  one  and  the  same  dialect,  affected  one 
vowel  earlier  than  the  other.  If  the  shortening  of  both  was  synchronous, 
then  it  is  evident  that  this  took  place  not  earlier  than  the  period  when  e1 
became  [i],  and  not  later  than  that  during  which  <?2  was  still  a  mid-vowel, 
although  it  may  have  become  tense. 

We  have  seen  (p.  206,  above)  that  the  raising  of  P  to  [I]  was  possibly 
a  Late  M.E.  process — it  was  certainly  a  very  Early  Modern  change — and 
we  have  seen  further  (p.  209)  that  <?2  became  tense  very  soon  afterwards ; 
that  in  some  dialects  at  least  it,  too,  became  [i]  before  very  long.  This 
argument  would  place  the  shortening  period  at  least  as  early  as  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  sure  enough  we  have  some  fifteenth-century  spellings 
which  indicate  a  shortening  of  e1  and  that  the  change  to  [I]  had  already 
taken  place.  I  take  Gregory's schyppe  ' sheep',  162,  and  Marg.  Paston's 
kypt  'kept',  ii.  179,  from  the  new  formation  kept,  as  quite  conclusive. 
Marg.  Paston  has  also  kype,  and  keeped  is  a  form  found  as  late  as  Lady 
Wentworth.  Shillingford  has  sike  'sick',  64,  and  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.  has 
the  same  spelling,  89.  19,  but  it  may  be  said  with  reason  that  it  is  not 
absolutely  certain  that  a  short  vowel  is  intended  here.  Coming  to  the 
next  century,  Lord  Berners  has  wyckes  '  weeks',  i.  219,  and  Latimer  has 
the  unambiguous  braincicke,  Seven  Serm.,  28.  Lord  Berners's  form  might 
be  from  M.E.  wtke,  but  this  is  not  nearly  so  common  as  weke  or  woke,  &c., 
in  the  South.  Silte  is  found,  Ascham,  Scholem.  no,  and  sillye,  Euph. 
260.  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  Republ.,  has  divils,  18,  corresponding  to  the 
pronunciation  '  divle ',  now  common  in  Ireland,  fr.  M.E.  devil,  Early 
Modern  [divil],  Thos.  Lever  has  diuilysh,  Serm.  45. 

Another  important  shortening  is  that  of  M,E.  ol  after  it  had  become  fu]. 
The  effects  of  this  process  are  heard  in  the  pronunciation  of  blood,  flood, 
must,  glove,  month,  mother,  &c.  We  have  seen  that  the  change  of  01  to  [u]  was 
accomplished  in  some  dialects  as  early  as  the  fourteenth  century  (cf.  p.  234, 
above).  The  shortening  was  therefore  later  than  this.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  cannot  have  been  later  than  the  other,  isolative  change,  whereby 
all  short  ^-sounds  were  unrounded  to  a  vowel  which  subsequently 
became  [a].  But  this  change,  in  spite  of  the  silence  of  the  grammarians 
until  well  on  in  the  seventeenth  century,  we  have  reason  to  think  had  at 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  VOWEL  SHORTENINGS    255 

least  begun  in  the  fifteenth  century,  even  in  stressed  syllables.  (Cf. 
p.  233,  above.) 

Therefore  the  shortening  of  the  vowel  in  [blud],  &c.,  must  have 
occurred  early  in  this  century.  Thus  we  are  led  to  place  the  shortening 
of  the  three  vowels  we  have  discussed  at  approximately  the  same  period. 
(See  pp.  236-8  for  examples  of  early  shortening  of  ol  and  discussion 
of  probabilities  in  regard  to  this  vowel.) 

In  fixing  the  shortening  of  these  three  vowels  at  such  an  early  date,  it 
is  not  asserted  that  all  speakers  of  all  types  of  English  had  carried  out 
these  changes  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
quite  certain  that  this  was  not  the  case,  otherwise  we  should  have  a  far 
larger  number  of  words  involved  ;  indeed,  all  words  of  each  class,  that  is 
to  say,  wherever  e\  e*t  and  o1  stood  before  d,  v,  th  (voiced  or  voiceless), 
and  so  on.  The  comparatively  small  number  of  words  involved,  and  the 
impossibility  of  formulating  the  conditions  under  which  the  shortening 
took  place,  show  that  we  have  here,  not  a  change  of  universal  scope,  but 
one  which  obtained  in  a  Regional  or  Class  dialect.  From  this  certain 
forms  have  passed  in  Received  Standard,  but  they  have  not  always  been 
the  same  forms. 

What  we  have  tried  to  establish  is  the  approximate  date  at  which 
shortened  forms,  from  which  certain  forms  now  current  in  Received 
Standard  are  derived,  were  in  existence.  The  fact  that  this  or  that  seven- 
teenth-century grammarian  maintains  that  a  certain  form,  which  is  now 
short,  was  pronounced  long  in  his  time  does  not  upset  the  inference  drawn 
above.  In  the  first  place  the  grammarian  may  be  misleading  us  as  to 
the  facts,  and  even  if  he  is  not,  this  simply  means  that  he  is  describing 
a  different  type,  the  possible  existence  of  which  is  not  denied.  Thus  it 
does  not  disturb  us  if  we  are  told  that  in  the  seventeenth  century  the 
vowel  \nfoot  was  long. 

We  suspect  that  already  in  the  fifteenth  century  a  shortened  form  of  this 
word  was  in  existence,  but  we  know  that  this  would  have  produced  [fat] 
in  the  seventeenth  century,  a  form  which  still  survives  at  the  present  time, 
and  that  side  by  side  with  this  there  was  also  a  form  [fut]  with 
unshortened  vowel  which  is  no  doubt  the  ancestor  of  our  [fut]. 

The  following  are  a  few  examples  of  old  longs  (other  than  those 
already  illustrated),  or  possible  longs,  which  may  apparently  be  regarded 
as  shortened  in  the  forms  given.  Some  of  them  are  M.E.  shortenings 
which  we  have  now  lost,  preferring  the  alternative,  unshortened  forms  ; 
others  we  still  use. 

S.  of  Rouen — horshedde ;  Pallad. — woddes  '  woods ',  rhymes  goode  ts, 
93. 1 169  (this  may  be  either  the  old  short  wude  retained  or  a  shortening  of 
wode  ;  the  rhyming  word  in  either  case  must  be  an  early  example  of  the 
shortening  of  the  new  u\  hottest,  64.  275,  watter  'water',  62.  33  (from 
inflected  watres,  &c.),  sonner,  83.  615  (M.E.  shortening;  on  analogy  of 
Comparative),  channge,  86.  708. 

Lord  Berners — A^?'loaP,  i.  52,  roffes  'roofs'  (M.E.  shortening?), 
fludde,  i.  221  (shortening  of  new  [u]  fr.  <?'),  bottes  '  boats',  i.  228,  rodde 
'rode',  i.  350  (M.E.  shortenings?),  Arch  press/,  i.  399  (M.E.  shorten- 
ing); Elyot — hedde,  2.  242,  yocke  'yoke'  (unlengthened  form  fr.  Old 
Nom.) ;  Sir  Thos.  More — cummtn,  Ellis  i.  i.  299  (1533,  retention  of  old 


256    STRESSED  VOWELS   IN  THE  MODERN   PERIOD 

u  or  shortening  of  u  from  o  ?) ;  Latimer — waiter,  86  ;  Edw.  VI  First 
P.R.—cummeth',  Machyn — ;»*•// 'meat',  passim,  swett '  sweat ',  71, '  sweet ', 
136,  310,  heddes  'heads'  138;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey — slrett  'street', 
3  (M.E.  shortening),  Fid  Street,  12;  bak  howsse  'bakehouse',  24 
(M.E.  shortening  before  k  +  h],  botis  'boats',  150,  swett \  Ascham— 
yocke  of  oxen,  Tox.  73  (unlengthened  Nom.);  Euphues — hotte,  41, 
beheaddest,  316;  Lord  Burghley— z«;/fo//  'hot',  Ellis  ii.  3.  99  (1582); 
Spenser — craddle  '  cradle '  (M.E.  absence  of  lengthening  fr.  inflected 
cases  before  d  +  /) ;  Shakespeare,  First  Fol. — smot  P.  P.,  M.  N.  D. ; 
Gabr.  Harvey,  Letters — bridegrumme,  136  (shortening  of  u  fr.  o1),  bind, 
22,  futt,  121  (shortening  of  new  u  fr.  01),  hedd,  68,  halliday  (M.E. 
shortening  of  a  in  first  syll.  of  three  syll.  word),  boddies,  22  (M.E.  absence 
of  lengthening  fr.  bodyes,  before  d  +  y) ;  W.  Roades,  the  Verneys' 
steward — tuck  'took',  V.  Mem.  ii.  275  (1656),  Sir  R.  Verney — suit, 
Mem.  iv.  358  (1686).  The  two  last  forms  are  almost  certainly  early 
shortenings  of  the  new  u  fr.  d\  comparable  to  fludde,  blud,  futt,  in  Lord 
Berners  and  Harvey.  These  would  give  rise  to  present-day  [flad,  blad, 
sat,  fat],  the  two  first  being  the  forms  in  normal  usage  now,  the  two  last 
having  disappeared  from  Standard  usage.  (Cf.  also  pp.  236-9,  on  the 
early  and  later  shortening  of  new  [u].) 

There  is,  however,  evidence  that  by  the  side  of  the  shortened  or  short 
forms  whose  existence  seems  to  be  established  by  the  spellings  quoted, 
there  were  in  existence  at  the  same  time,  among  other  speakers,  or  perhaps 
among  the  same  speakers,  forms  which  maintained  the  length  of  the  vowel. 

It  is  sometimes  taught  that  vowels  were  shortened,  or  not  lengthened 
in  open  syllables,  in  M.E.  before  the  O.E.  suffix  -ig,  body  being  given  as  an 
example.  The  fact  is  the  O.E.  bodi'g  became  normally  body  in  M.E.  in  the 
Nom.,  but  not  in  the  inflected  cases — bodyes,  &c. — where  the  combination 
-dy-  preserved  the  short  vowel.  The  Standard  pronunciation  of  body  is 
derived  from  the  inflected  type.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Nom.  type,  with 
lengthening,  is  seen  in  the  Coventry  Leet  boodies,  boody,  26,  and  in 
Gregory's  boody  s,  in. 

The  unshortened  form  of  head,  as  in  M.E.,  is  seen  in  Lord  Berners's 
beheeddyd,  i.  34,  of  pretty  in  Latimer's  preaty,  85,  of  hot  in  hoate,  293,  &c., 
of  thread  in  Euphues,  threed^  157.  Gabriel  Harvey  has  moonie,  59, 
'  money',  and  coover,  63.  Lengthening  before  r  +  consonant  is  seen  in 
teerm  '  term ',  Bk.  of  Quint.,  24,  in/oorde,  Euphues,  276,  and  in  Gabriel 
Harvey's  kerne,  138;  in  woorse,  woorde,  woorke,  woorthie,  &c.,  in  the 
First  Prayer  Book ;  and  many  other  instances  occur. 

In  M.E.  doublets  arose,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  forms  body— body, 
owing  to  the  different  treatment  of  vowels  in  open  and  close  syllables. 
Words  like  bak  'back'  retained  the  short  vowel  in  the  Nom.,  but 
lengthened  it  in  inflected  forms,  so  that  the  PI.  would  normally  be  bakes. 
Either  or  both  types  might  be  generalized  for  the  whole  declension.  In 
Modern  English  we  have  often  the  type  with  the  lengthened  vowel,  as  in 
dale,  fr.  M.E.  dale, yoke,  ii.yoke,  &c.,  by  the  side  of  the  Nom.  ddl  zrv&yock. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  back,  black,  &c.;  unlengthened.  Traces 
remain  in  Early  Modern  of  long  forms  which  we  have  now  lost.  Thus, 
Palladius  has  saak  'sack',  90.  814,  and  on  his  bake,  rhyming  with  take, 
stook  '  stock '.  Elyot  has  bldke  '  black ',  rhyming  with  quake,  1.47. 


CHRONOLOGY  OF  VOWEL  LENGTHENINGS    257 

Perhaps  the  variants  which  we  have  noted  in  head,  sweat,  &c.,  should 
be  explained  in  this  way.  For  reasons  already  apparent  from  the  dis- 
cussion above  and  on  pp.  235-6,  &c.,  this  principle  cannot  be  extended 
to  the  differences  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  between 
bludd,  &c.,  and  bloud,  &c. 

The  lengthening  of  the  vowel  in  God,  referred  to  on  p.  253,  above,  is 
an  Early  Modern  rather  than  a  M.E.  process.  Pope's  rhyme  of  this 
word  with  road,  however,  may  conceivably  reflect  a  M.E.  lengthening  in 
the  inflected  cases. 

A  very  important  group  of  vowel  lengthenings  took  place  in  the 
Modern  period  before  the  sounds  [f,  s,  \,  $]— f,  s,  th — and  before  these 
consonants  followed  by  another  consonant.  It  is  this  lengthening  which 
has  given  us  after,  laughter  [<zft9,  lafta],  &c.  (see  pp.  203-5,  above).  It 
is  probable  that  the  lengthened  vowel  in  cost,  cough,  froth  [k5st,  kof, 
fr5f>],  &c.,  belongs  to  the  same  period,  and  the  now  old-fashioned  pronun- 
ciation [m5f>]  for  moth,  instead  of  [m^J?].  These  lengthenings,  as  has 
been  said,  are  by  no  means  universal,  even  among  speakers  of  Received 
Standard.  In  Coventry  Leet  crooft  occurs  43  (1422),  and  again  46 
and  47  (1443),  an^  geestes  'guests',  p.  29.  I  have  not  noted  other 
examples  until  we  come  to  Euphues,  in  which  work  we  find  moathes,  34, 
toossed  '  tossed  ',  208 ;  clausset,  Latimer,  Seven  Serm.,  38  ;  Lady  Verney 
writes  moathes,  V.  Mem.  ii.  270  (1647). 

Now  it  would  seem  from  the  above,  that  before  the  middle  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  vowels  were  lengthened  before  ft  and  st,  in  the  dialect  of 
Warwickshire  at  any  rate. 

If  e  and  o  were  lengthened,  why  not  d  too  ?  Cely  Papers  have  marster 
'  master ',  which,  while  it  shows  that  r  could  not  have  been  pronounced 
before  s,  also  shows  that  the  vowel  was  long.  Rede  me,  &c.,  rhymes  after — 
carter,  119-20.  Are  we  to  assume  that  this  lengthened  vowel  was  [a],  or 
[ae]  ?  From  what  has  been  said  above  (pp.  196-201),  we  shall  assume 
the  latter  if  we  think  that  M.E.  a  had  already  been  fronted.  If  we 
reject  this  evidence  and  assume  that  the  lengthened  vowel  was  [d]  we 
shall  find  it  difficult  to  fit  in  the  subsequent  development  with  that  of 
old  d  (cf.  pp.  195-6,  above). 

Are  we  to  assume  that  old  d  had  been  lengthened  before  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  century — among  those  speakers  who  were  affected  by  it — in 
the  whole  group  of  words  where  d  stands  before  s,  f,  tht  that  is,  in  path, 
father,  bath,  grass,  fast,  chaff,  laughter,  &c.,  &c.  ? 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Palladius  has  graas,  4.  69,  and  on  his  baaihe,  40. 
1080.  Are  these  forms  to  be  derived  from  the  inflected  forms,  M.E. 
grdse,  bdpe,  or  are  they  lengthened  by  the  same  process  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  shortly  after  this  time  certainly  produced  crooft,  geestes,  master ', 
and  which,  as  we  know,  assuredly  did  at  some  time  produce  lengthened 
vowels  in  all  these  words  ? 

The  question  is  far  too  difficult,  and  involves  too  many  others  to  be 
settled  hastily.  The  whole  question  of  Modern  lengthenings  and  shorten- 
ings requires  special  investigation,  which  at  present  is  lacking.  Having 
indicated  some  of  the  problems  and  possibilities  we  leave  the  matter 
unresolved  for  the  present. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  VOWELS  OF  UNSTRESSED  SYLLABLES 

FOR  the  student  who  wishes  to  acquire  some  knowledge  of  the  treat- 
ment of  vowels  in  syllables  devoid  of  stress  during  the  Modern  Period, 
it  is  a  great  advantage  that  the  early  writers  on  English  pronunciation 
have  avoided  the  question  altogether.  We  are  thus  spared  the  labour  of 
reading  through,  and  comparing,  a  number  of  statements  which,  to  judge 
by  other  parts  of  the  work  of  these  writers,  would  not  have  been  very 
enlightening.  We  are  even  more  grateful  for  the  absence  of  endless 
discussions  and  explanations  by  more  recent  authorities  of  what  the 
earlier  writers  meant  or  did  not  mean.  Speaking  generally,  we  may  say 
that  it  is  not  until  the  eighteenth  century  that  we  find  direct  accounts  of 
the  pronunciation  of  unstressed  vowels,  and  by  that  time  we  are  in  a 
position  to  know  from  other  sources  many  at  least  of  the  principal  facts. 
The  eighteenth-century  writers  often  describe  the  unstressed  syllables  by 
means  of  a  rough  and  ready  but  quite  intelligible  phonetic  spelling,  and 
these  transcriptions  frequently  establish,  for  the  period  in  which  they  were 
made,  pronunciations  which  we  know  had  been  in  existence  for  centuries 
before. 

The  present  chapter  deals  with  the  subject  as  from  the  fifteenth  century. 
I  have  not  attempted  to  follow  the  weakenings  of  vowels  back  into  the 
M.E.  period.  My  collection  of  material  from  M.E.  sources,  although 
not  inconsiderable,  is  not  yet  by  any  means  adequate  for  generalizations 
of  value  to  be  based  upon  it.  Many  of  the  phenomena  here  exhibited 
are  no  doubt  much  older  than  the  fifteenth  century.  This  is  notably 
true  of  the  weakening  of  the  inflexional  endings  -ed,  -es,  -efi,  -en  to  -id, 
-t's,  &c. 

From  the  material  contained  in  the  following  pages  one  may  venture 
to  formulate  one  or  two  statements  of  a  general  character. 

(1)  At  least  as  early  as  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  vowels  in 
unstressed  syllables  were  shortened,  reduced,  or  confused,  very  much  as 
in  Colloquial  English  at  the  present  time. 

(2)  This  may  be  inferred  from  numerous  occasional  spellings  which 
reveal  either  (a)  a  sound  of  an  undefined  character,  different  from  that 
expressed  by  the  traditional  spelling,  which  the  writer  is  undecided  how 
to  express,  or  (£)  a  definite  sound  different  from  that  expressed  by  the 
traditional  spelling. 

(3)  The  spellings  which  indicate  a  reduction  of  the  unstressed  vowel 
are  not  used  consistently  by  any  writers,  except  in  the  case  of  such 
suffixes  as  -t's,  -id,  &c.,  and  even  here  the  consistency  is  only  relative. 

(4)  While  a  violent  and  definite  departure  from  the  traditional  spelling, 
whether  sporadic  or  habitual,  must  be  taken  to  imply  some  change  in 


GENERAL   TENDENCIES  259 

pronunciation,  the  adherence  to  the  conventional  spelling  does  not  neces- 
sarily imply  that  no  change  has  taken  place.  (N.B.  The  examples  given 
illustrate,  as  a  rule,  only  departures  from  the  older  spelling.) 

(5)  Varieties  in  spelling  may  express  only  indecision  on  the  part  of 
a  writer  in  transcribing  a  sound  (cf.  (2),  above);    but  they  may  also 
indicate  the  existence  of  more  than  one  type  of  pronunciation. 

(6)  Different  types  of  pronunciation  in  the  same  vowel  may  represent 
(a)  the  results  of  different  conditions  of  stress  in  the  same  word,   or 
(3)  they  may  be  due  to  different  tendencies  which  coexisted  among 
different  classes  of  speakers. 

(7)  Examples  of  indecision   in  transcribing  a  vowel  sound   are : — 
-ely  transcribed  in  Cely  Papers  in  four  different  ways  in  the  same  word, 
e.  g.  stapell,  stapyll,  stapal,  stapuL     Here  possibly  -ell  and  -yll  represent 
approximately  one  and  the  same  type  of  pronunciation,  and  -al,  -ul 
another.     The  same  confusion  is  found  in  the  spelling  of  the  unstressed 
ending  -er.     It  is  evident  that  already  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  vowels 
in  -er,  -ar,  -or,  -ur,  -our  were  all  levelled  under  one  sound — [ar]  or 
syllabic  r. 

(8)  Examples  of  varieties  due  to  different  conditions  of  stress  are  : — 
certin  from  M.E.  certein :   certayne,  &c.,  from  M.E.  certein ;  battel  from 
M.E.  bdttaille :  and  battayl  from  M.E.  battdtlle ;  forten,  fortin  from  M.E. 

fSrtune:  fortune,  present-day  [fotjan],  from  M.E.  fortune ;  aventer  from 
M.E.  ave'nture :  aventure  from  M.E.  aventure ;  &c.,  &c. 

(9)  Examples  of  varieties  due  to  different  tendencies  are  : — sesyn,  reasyn 
compared  with  sesoun,  resoun,  &c.     This  difference  of  treatment  of  -OH 
in  unstressed  syllables  is  still  heard  to-day,  when  some  speakers  pronounce 
pigeon  [pidzYn],  others  [pt'dz'dn].     The  type  represented  above  by  sesyn, 
&c.,  has  almost  died  out  in  Received  Standard,  although  formerly  the 
chief  type,  and  has  given  place  to  that  represented  by  resoun,  &c.,  now 

frizn].   Pigeon  is  perhaps  the  only  word  still  commonly  pronounced  with 
m],  and  this  pronunciation  is  considered  by  many  as  old-fashioned. 

(10)  The  differences  which  exist  between  the  pronunciation  of  un- 
stressed vowels  at  the  present  time,  and  that  indicated  by  the  spellings  as 
existing  in  former  centuries,  are  chiefly  due  to  the  adoption  in  recent 
times  of  a  different  type  (cf.  remarks  on  unstressed  -on  in  (9),  above), 
and  not  to  new  developments  in  changes  of  sound.     These  have  hardly 
occurred  since  the  late  sixteenth  century.     Some  of  the  pronunciations 
of  to-day  are  due  to  the  influence  of  the  written  form,  and  the  recent 
efforts  in  some  quarters  to  '  restore '  the  full  forms  of  vowels  in  stressless 
positions,  cf.  the  spelling-pronunciation  [p5p02*z]  instead  of  the  historical 
[popzs]  of  the  one  type,  or  [papas]  of  the  other.     The  distribution  of  the 
different  types  among  the  various  words  in  which  the  same  original  vowel 
occurs  in  an  unstressed  position,  as  well  as  the  selection  of  the  unstressed 
vowels  in  certain  words  for  'restoration',  while  in  others  the  ancient 
historical  reduced  form  is  still  pronounced,  are  matters,  as  it  would  seem, 
of  arbitrary  chance  and  the  fashion  of  the  moment. 

I  now  pass  on  to  give  a  brief  summary  of  the  actual  changes  which 
resulted  from  the  weakening  of  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables,  so  far  as 
these  can  be  gathered  from  the  material,  far  from  adequate,  although  not 
altogether  contemptible,  which  I  have  collected  and  classified. 

S    2 


26o       THE   VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

I  may  say  here  that,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  results  are  the  same, 
provided  a  vowel  is  unstressed,  no  matter  where  it  stands  in  relation  to 
the  principal  stress  of  the  word  or  breath-group  in  which  it  occurs.  The 
nature  of  the  surrounding  consonants  probably  exerts  some  influence, 
but  the  present  material  does  not  suffice  for  formulating  the  conditions 
or  nature  of  such  influence,  except  in  respect  of  vowels  before  -/,  -«, 
and  -r. 
Front  Vowels  are  raised :  a  =•  [ae]  becomes  e  [s]  ;  this  e  levelled  later 

under  original  e  which  becomes  z. 

/  u  and  o  probably  levelled  under  the  same  sound, 
Hounded  Vowels  I      (written  a)  =  [a]  which  becomes  [9]. 

are  unrounded      j  French  u  [y]  becomes  [i,  z'] ;  the  result  of  this  un- 
\     rounding  written  i  and  <?. 

foi  becomes  i  [z'J,  written  e,  t. 
at  (ei)  (which  had  become  [el)  result  in  a  front  vowel 
written  e  or  i,  probably  =  [z'J. 
au,  ou,  monophthongized  to  [0,0]  which  is  unrounded  to  [a] 
written  a ;  this  often  fronted  to  a  vowel  written  e  or  i  (y). 

There  appear  to  be  two  quite  different  tendencies  at  work  from  early 
in  Modern  period  among  different  sections  of  speakers.  One  group  tends 
to  level  all  weak  vowels  under  some  front  vowel,  written  i  or  e ;  the  other 
to  level  all  weak  vowels  under  the  '  obscure '  vowel  [3]  or  some  such  sound, 
written  variously  a,  o,  u.  It  is  probably  safe  to  infer  that  the  symbols  for 
old  back  or  back-rounded  vowels,  a,  o,  u,  generally  imply  some  sound 
corresponding  to  [9]  at  the  present  time,  and  that  the  symbols  for  front 
vowels — i,  e — imply  the  kind  of  vowel  now  heard  in  the  second  syllable 
of  ladies,  here  written  [z],  although  it  may  have  been  the  high-flat-slack 
vowel  [*']. 

The  two  tendencies  above  referred  to  are  specially  observable  in  the 
treatment  of  vowels  before  -n  and  -/.  One  tendency  results  in  developing 
and  preserving  the  '  clear '  vowel,  so  that  we  get  [zh,  zl]  for  earlier  -en,  -el, 
and  even  for  -on  (cf.  (9),  above,  and  pp.  271-2,  274-5,  below).  The  other 
tendency  results  in  [9n,  9!],  which  are  further  weakened  to  syllabic  n  and 
/  respectively  as  present-day  button,  beaten,  cradle^  rebel  (Noun),  &c.  We 
know  both  from  practical  experience  and  from  the  records  of  the  past  of 
the  existence  of  both  these  types,  [in,  zl]  and  [n,  1]. 

As  regards  the  treatment  of  vowels  in  unstressed  syllables  before  -r, 
although  -yr,  -ir  are  common  spellings  for  old  -er,  it  seems  very  doubtful 
whether  the  genius  of  the  English  language  ever  tolerated  such  a  combina- 
tion as  [-zr]  in  actual  speech,  at  least  finally.  On  the  other  hand  such 
spellings  as  fadr,  remembr,  both  fifteenth  century,  suggest  that  a  syllabic  [r] 
was  pronounced.  The  various  spellings  or,  er,yr,  ur,  ar  for  the  same 
syllable  er  seem  to  imply  a  vowel  which  it  was  difficult  to  identify, 
probably  [a,  9].  The  '  murmur '  vowel  [9]  probably  developed  quite 
early  before  -rt  and  [9r]  was  later  reduced  to  syllabic  [r].  This  in  its 
turn  was  weakened  and  gave  place  to  the  present  [9].  We  have  appa- 
rently no  confirmatory  evidence  from  any  living  form  of  English  of  the 
existence  of  an  [zr]  type,  and  the  records  of  the  past  are  ambiguous. 

After  these  general  remarks  I  now  pass  to  consider,  as  briefly  as 


ALTERATION  OF  VOWEL  IN   SUFFIXES  261 

possible,  the  details  which  are  exhibited  in  the  lists.  The  latter  are  for 
the  most  part  so  arranged  as  to  show  the  prevailing  tendencies,  so  far  as 
these  may  be  inferred  by  the  particular  kind  of  departure  from  the 
conventional  spelling  in  each  century.  I  have  tried  to  avoid  needless 
subdivision,  but  a  certain  amount,  especially  under  the  heading  -a  and  -o 
in  unstressed  syllables,  seemed  necessary  and  unavoidable. 


THE  UNSTRESSED  VOWELS  IN  DETAIL. 

e  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

(N.B.  The  reader  of  the  following  brief  comments  may  refer,  if  he 
please,  to  the  lists,  pp.  267-82,  upon  which  the  views  here  set  forth  are 
based.) 

The  Suffixes. 

-ed.  The  suffix  -ed  in  weak  Prets.  and  P.  P/s  appears  as  -id  very 
commonly  in  all  kinds  of  texts  throughout  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  The  Adjective  wretched  appears  with  -id  as  early  as  1451. 
Even  St.  Editha,  alongside  of  the  Western  -ud,  has  not  a  few  -id  endings 
in  Prets.  and  P.P.'s.  This  form  -ud  is  no  doubt  the  ancestor  of  the 
present-day  provincial  or  vulgar  [ad].  It  is  evident  that  the  [Yd]  form, 
now  universal  in  polite  speech,  was  established  very  early.  Coote's 
warning  against  -id  proves  the  existence  of  the  pronunciation  in  his  day, 
although  such  proof  is  quite  superfluous.  His  statement  that  the  pro- 
nunciation is  Scottish  is  sheer  nonsense.  He  might  as  well  have  said 
that  it  was  Devonshire,  and  Norfolk,  and  London,  and  so  on. 

-eth.  The  present  pronunciation  of  this  suffix  [#],  which  only  survives 
in  Liturgical  and  Biblical  language  or  in  Poetry,  was  established  in  the 
fifteenth  century  in  a  wide  circle  and  over  a  large  area. 

-es.  The  present-day  pronunciation  [iz]  was  established  beyond  dis- 
pute from  the  fifteenth  century  onwards.  The  old  Western  -us  repre- 
sents doubtless  the  type  [az],  which  still  exists  as  a  provincialism  and 
vulgarism. 

-est.  The  [-ist]  type  was  evidently  as  widespread  during  and  since 
the  fifteenth  century  as  among  good  speakers  to-day.  The  spelling 
intrust  in  the  Verney  Memoirs  is  the  ancestor  of  present-day  [mtrastl 
which  is  provincial.  The  more  j  polite  forms  are  [?ht(a)nst,  mtrestj. 
Every  other  form  in  the  list  might  stand  for  the  present  pronunciation, 
including  Sir  T.  Elyot's  harm'st. 

-er.  The  early  forms  of  -er  as  an  ending  point  to  at  least  two  types, 
[ar]  and  syllabic  r.  Is  it  possible  that  the  -^--spellings  represent  the 
ancestor  of  the  present-day  vulgar  pronunciation  with  a  tense  vowel  ? 

Lady  Sussex's  spelling  misirabk  stands,  if  we  may  draw  any  conclusion 
from  -ir-t  for  a  type  no  longer  heard.  The  present-day  possibilities  are 
either  [m/zarabl]  or  [mzzrabl]. 

-en,  -em.  The  spellings  suggest  three  types  of  pronunciation : — 
[m,  an],  and  syllabic  [n].  All  three  types  exist  in  present-day  polite 
English,  variously  distributed.  Of  these  [an,  n]  are  perhaps  the  com- 
monest. Still,  most  good  speakers  preserve  ph]  in — woollen,  kitchen , 
chicken,  women,  linen,  Latin,  rosin,  &c.  =  [wulm,  krijVn,  tJVkm,  wf'rm'n, 


262         THE  VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

lihm,  r?zm].  On  the  other  hand  we  have  [9n]  or  syllabic  n  in— golden, 
earthen,  wooden,  even,  often,  sudden,  children,  heaven,  and  in  P.  P.'s  in  -en, 
such  as  forgotten. 

-em,  as  in  solemn  and  'em,  is  now  usually  [9m].  Note  Sir  R.  Verney's 
solome,  which  doubtless  expresses  this  pronunciation. 

-el.  The  early  spellings  show  a  preponderance  of  -yl  forms,  with 
a  few  -ul  —  [si],  and  Sir  Thos.  More's  Russll  =  syllabic  /.  This  is  the 
prevailing  type  at  the  present  day,  after  consonants,  whether  in  words  like 
evil,  devil,  fossil,  where  [Yl]  is  also  heard,  or  in  those  spelt  -le.  It  is 
probable  that  many  speakers  who  wrote  -yl  in  earlier  centuries  often 
pronounced  [9!,  1]. 

After  a  vowel  the  best  usage  on  the  whole  now  favours  [Yl],  as  in  cruel 
(cf.  also  forms  from  Verney  Memoirs  in  lists,  fuel,  towel \  vowel). 

Other  Suffixes  and  Endings  containing  -e-. 

-less.  Now  always  [Iz's]  in  Received  Standard.  This  pronunciation 
is  established  in  the  fifteenth  century  by  Marg.  Paston's  spelling  harmlys. 
The  provincial  [las]  and  the  spelling-pronunciation  [Iss]  may  often  be 
heard. 

-ness.  Present-day  [nis],  I  have  not  noted  any  spellings  with  -nis 
earlier  than  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  makes  frequent  use  of  them. 

[is]  is  also  the  normal  pronunciation  of  -ess,  as  in  mistress,  &c. 

-Chester.  The  spelling  Rochister  of  the  Wentworth  Papers,  1710, 
agrees  with  present-day  usage  in  this  and  other  similar  names — Chichester 
[tptJVstal  Manchester  [msentJYsta],  &c. 

-le(d)ge.  Knowledge,  college  are  pronounced  [n^h'dz,  k^l/dz]  at  the 
present  time.  This  pronunciation  of  the  weak  vowel  in  the  former  word 
dates  at  least  from  the  fifteenth  century,  that  of  the  latter  word  I  have 
not  found  recorded  earlier  than  Gabriel  Harvey.  The  1482  spelling 
collage  of  the  Bury  Wills  corresponds  to  the  present-day  provincial 
[U9dz]. 

-et.  This  ending  is  pronounced  [*']  after  consonants,  in  covet,  helmet, 
bullet,  blanket,  &c.,  but  [9]  in  diet.  These  conditions  are  expressed  by 
the  sixteenth -century  spellings  given  in  the  lists. 

e-.  Unstressed  e-  followed  by  strong  stress  is  now  usually  pronounced 
[t],  as  in  estate,  escape,  elect,  erroneous,  &c.  =  [Ystez't,  z'ske/p,  zlekt,  troimjds], 
&c.  The  spellings — fairly  numerous  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries 
— ascape,  astate,  &c.,  apparently  imply  a  pronunciation  with  [9]. 

-a-  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  early  spellings,  and  even  the  late  spellings  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  show  a  more  widespread  tendency  to  weaken  a  to 
\f\  than  at  present  prevails  in  Received  Standard.  Many  of  the  spellings, 
from  each  of  the  centuries,  represent  pronunciations  which  it  is  true  still 
obtain  in  English,  but  only  in  Regional  or  Class  dialects.  The  mere  fact 
that  a  is  weakened  to  a  sound  written  i  or  e  is  not  in  itself  surprising, 
when  we  consider  that  one  of  the  sounds  for  which  a  stood  was,  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  in  many  areas,  especially  in  the  E.  Midlands  and  South- 
East,  in  process  of  being  fronted.  This  process  may  well  have  begun 


TREATMENT  OF  -a-  IN  VARIOUS  COMBINATIONS    263 

earlier  in  unstressed  positions.  It  is  most  probable  that  an  antecedent 
stage  to  the  front  vowel,  written  e,  or  more  often  i,  was  [ae].  This  was 
apparently  raised  to  a  sound  intermediate  between  [e,  /  J,  and  from  this 
stage  the  differentiation  into  a  full  [i]  on  the  one  hand,  or  [al  on  the 
other,  took  place.  Received  Standard  has  now  adopted  the  [a]  type  in 
most  of  the  cases  illustrated  in  the  lists.  Attention  may  be  drawn  to  the 
spelling  Up-  for  Ap-  quoted  from  Capgrave.  This  form  shows  that  u  in 
unstressed  syllables  was  already  unrounded,  and  that  the  symbol  expresses 
[a]  or  [3]  when  used  for  a  vowel  in  this  position. 

I  note  first  the  points  of  agreement  in  type  between  the  early  spellings 
and  present-day  usage.  Both  agree  in  having  [a]  in  the  following : — as 
when  unstressed  in  sentence ;  cf.  os  in  Cely  Pprs. ;  -mass  in  Christmas, 
&c.,  cf.  Machyn's  form  in  -mus,  and  Lady  Sussex's  crismus  in  1639;  in 
-as,  Thomas,  &c.,  cf.  Gary  Verney's  tomos  in  1642;  -an,  musician,  &c., 
cf.  musition,  Italionated  in  Euphues  ;  -ac  as  in  stomach,  cf.  Gabr.  Harvey's 
stummock. 

Present-day  usage  agrees  with  the  early  spellings  in  having  [Y]  for 
unstressed  -a- : — 

-ange,  messenger  (M.E.  messager),  cf.  fifteenth-century  form  messynger ; 
-ac,  in  obstacle,  character  =  [j?bzt?"kl,  kaerzktd],  cf.  obsticle,  Verney  Mem. 
1647,  and  carecter,  Wentw.  Pprs.;  -age  in  cottage,  courage,  marriage, 
advantage,  message,  &c.  =  [k0tidz,  kaendz,  maendz,  advantzdz],  cf.  Lever's 
cotingers  which  implies  *cotige,  Lady  Sussex's  corige,  Cranmer's  and 
Roper's  marriges,  &c.,  and  Mrs.  Sherard's  advantig.  The  pronunciation 
[tf/z*'k]  still  survives,  indeed  it  is  my  own,  but  probably  [#/zak]  (from  the 
spelling)  is  now  more  usual.  Note  Baker's  Izic  for  Isaac.  Many 
speakers,  including  present  writer,  pronounce  [d.?nkista],  with  which 
compare  Donkisitr  in  Verney  Mem.  1665.  \  also  say  [sembaesz'da],  cf. 
Cavendish's  ambassiter,  though  many  now  pronounce  [aembaesada]. 
As  regards  -ate,  we  say  [praivit  tpkah't],  &c.,  cf.  pryvit  chockolet  in 
Wentw.  Pprs. 

Present-day  usage  favours  [a]  for  old  -#-,  in  the  following  words  and 
their  likes,  where  earlier  spellings  have  i : — 

as,  in  unstressed  positions  =  [az],  but  cf.  es  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries  ;  -an  =  [an]  in  company,  -land,  -man,  but  cf.  Machyn's  com- 
peny,  Lady  Sussex's  compiny,  and  inglende,  and  Lady  Rochester's  Bridge- 
men^  where  we  have  [kampan;,  ingland,  bndzman]. 

-as  in  purchase,  Thomas  =  [pAtJas,  tomas]  with  which  compare 
Gabr.  Harvey's  purchise,  and  Lady  Sussex's  tomis.  I  remember  hearing 
[pXtfzs]  in  my  boyhood  from  excellent  speakers  who  preserved  the  habits 
of  an  earlier  generation. 

-ac  as  in  stomach  =  [stamak],  but  cf.  Anne  Lee's  stomichers  in  Verney 
Mem.,  and  Baker's  spelling  stomick.  I  have  heard  the  latter  word  so 
pronounced  by  very  old  speakers  whose  speech  was  merely  old-fashioned 
though  it  contained  no  vulgarisms.  At  the  present  time  [stamzV]  survives 
chiefly  in  lower-class  speech.  In  almanac  we  have  *  restored  '  [aek]  in 
final  syllable.  I  have  heard  [olmzhzk],  cf.  form  in  Cely  Pprs. 

-ant : — we  now  say  [infant]  with  which  cf.  C.  Stewkley's  infints  in 
Verney  Mem. ;  -ark  in  Southwark,  now  =  [saftak],  but  cf.  Baker's 
Southwick,  probably  =  [saoYk], 


264       THE   VOWELS   OF   UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

The  spellings  -er  for  -ar  probably  show  no  more  than  that  -er  and  -ar 
were  levelled  under  one  form  [a(r)J. 

The  only  example  where  [e]  is  suggested  for  a  where  we  now  pro- 


nounce  \i\  is  passengers  (earlier  passager)  in  Cely  Papers. 

Initial  a-  followed  by  the  strongest  stress,  which  is  now  always 
in  annoyed,  anoint,  &c.,  was  apparently  sometimes  weakened  to  fe]  or 


[t]  (?)  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries.     Cf.  enoyd,  enointed,  &c., 
p.  275,  below. 

o  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

The  early  spellings  indicate  (i)  that  o  when  unstressed  was  unrounded, 
and  (2)  that  in  a  large  number  of  words,  chiefly,  though  not  exclusively, 
before  -«,  and  -/  in  the  same  syllable,  this  unrounded  vowel  was  fronted. 
The  simple  unrounding  is  expressed  in  the  fifteenth-century  spellings — 
dysabey,  sa  (—  '  so'),  abedyenses,  Byshap,  &c.,  and  in  the  sixteenth  century 
men  a  warre,  apinions,  tenne  a  clocke,  &c.,  &c.  This  vowel,  which  was 
either  [a]  or  [a],  has  survived  at  the  present  time  when  we  still  say  [akbk, 
maen  9  w5,  dz'sabez,  bzjap],  though  a  rounded  vowel  is  generally  pro- 
nounced in  obey,  and  often  in  opinion  and  obedience. 

More  interesting,  and  remarkable,  are  the  fairly  numerous  forms  of 
the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth  century,  in  which  a  front  vowel  is  clearly 
intended,  although  we  now  pronounce  [3]  in  Received  Standard. 

Taking  first  the  words  in  which  -on  occurs  finally,  we  find  a  consider- 
able number  of  spellings  of  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and 
eighteenth  centuries  which  point  unmistakably  to  a  front  vowel,  generally 
written  -yn,  -in,  but  also  occasionally  -en.  Of  this  class  the  only  ones 
which  retain  the  old  pronunciation  in  Received  Standard  at  the  present 
time  are  pigeon,  widgeon,  and  even  in  these  the  usual  [an]  is  probably 
now  more  common.  Several  other  words,  however,  retain  [Vn]  in  vulgar 
speech,  e.g.  wagon,  ribbon,  cushion,  &c.,  though  the  schools  are  fast 
eliminating  these  old  forms  from  the  language  altogether.  As  a  boy 
I  knew  several  old  people  whose  English  was  the  Received  Standard  of 
the  beginning  of  last  century,  who  pronounced  [m]  in  luncheon,  puncheon, 
cushion,  surgeon,  dungeon,  to  my  clear  recollection,  and  possibly  in  other 
words  also  which  I  never  heard  from  them,  or  which  I  have  now  forgotten. 
I  remember  noticing  at  the  time  the  difference  between  these  old  people 
and  myself  in  respect  of  the  words  just  mentioned.  I  notice  that  Baker 
gives  inin  as  the  pronunciation  of  onion.  Whether  this  was  not  a  vul- 
garism already  in  his  day  it  is  impossible  to  say,  but  it  apparently 
represents  a  pronunciation  [azhm]  which  I  know  is  used  at  the  present 
moment  by  at  least  one  man,  a  labourer,  in  Oxfordshire.  At  an  earlier 
period  of  my  life  I  remember  hearing  [n'bmz,  pad/h,  padirj]  from 
domestics.  Passing  to  words  of  other  classes,  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  I  have  heard  [prjvist]  comparatively  recently,  but  I  am  unable  to 
indicate  the  position  of  the  speaker. 

Faggot  is  still  pronounced  [faegzt]  by  some  vulgar  speakers  (cf.  Lady 
Hobart's/tfg^/f,  1663),  and  carrots  is  [ksents]  in  the  same  circles. 

Unstressed  -o-  in  the  middle  of  words  is  now  either  [a]  or  [0],  e.  g. 
accommodate,  &c.,  but  cf.  Lady  Sussex's  acomidasyon  and  sorifull.  In  the 
last  word  '  sorry '  may  have  influenced  the  form,  now 


ALTERATION  OF  ^ROUNDED   VOWELS  265 

Unrounding  of  Unstressed  u  and  ou  =  u. 

The  unrounding  of  this  vowel  perhaps  took  place  earlier  in  weak  than 
in  stressed  syllables.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  in  such  spellings  as 
apon,  sapose,  anethe,  a  vowel  without  lip-rounding  is  indicated.  Unstressed 
o  and  u  were  levelled  under  a  single  vowel,  which  ultimately  became  [a]. 
So  far  as  I  know,  there  is  no  evidence  to  show  that  u  in  unstressed 
syllables  was  fronted  after  being  unrounded.  The  spellings  /aver,  semer 
(Seymour),  &c.,  of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  merely  indicate 
that  '-our  together  with  -er  had  become  [a(r)]. 

Unrounding  of  French  u  =  [y]  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

This  process  is  a  simple  one,  and  its  results  are  repeatedly  traceable  in 
the  collection  of  spellings  given  below  from  documents  of  the  fifteenth, 
sixteenth,  seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries.  On  the  forms  in  -tr 
(feutir  '  future ',  &c.)  and  in  -in  (fortin  '  fortune '),  see  remarks  below, 
pp.  277-8,  at  the  end  of  the  lists. 

The  present-day  types  [fotjan,  vsntja,  vaeljw,  rspjwtezjn],  &c.,  which 
have  taken  the  place  of  the  old  forms  [fot/h,  vsnta,  vseh',  repitefn],  &c., 
demand  a  few  words.  It  is  possible  to  explain  all  these  new  forms  as 
due  to  the  influence  of  the  spelling,  but  I  am  inclined  to  agree  with 
Jespersen  that  this  cannot  be  the  explanation  in  all  cases.  I  have  already 
propounded  an  explanation  of  the  double  forms  (Short  Hist,  of  English, 
§  265,  and  in  Mod.  Lang.  Teaching,  June  1915)  which  still  appears  to  me 
to  be  sound.  It  is  briefly  this.  The  only  normal  forms  developed  when 
there  was  no  stress  on  the  -«,  are  those  in  *',  or  its  subsequent  develop- 
ments [sr]  and  sometimes  [an],  by  the  side  of  [m].  Forms  such  as 
[fotfan,  ventja,  vaelj#],  &c.,  are  due  to  a  different  type  of  accentuation,  in 
which  u  was  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  unstressed  at  all,  but  fully  stressed — 
fortune,  valu,  aventure,  under  which  circumstances  French  u  became  iu 
[jfi]  in  Early  Modern  English,  as  in  duke,  virtue  (from  vertue),  &c.,  &c.  \ 
This  type  coexisted  with  the  other,  possibly  into  the  early  sixteenth  century,  j 
At  any  rate  its  descendants,  so  far  as  the  vowel  is  concerned,  survived,  \ 
and,  after  fSrtune  had  already  become  for  tin,  fortune  survived  in  the  form 
for/tune,  although  by  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  if  not  earlier, 
this  type,  too,  had  very  likely  been  assimilated  to  the  commoner  (English) 
mode  of  accentuation,  so  that  it  was  pronounced  fSrtiune.  The  com- 
bination -ti  became  [tj]  (cf.  p.  293,  below);  hence  we  got  [f6rtjun, 
f6rtjun,  f6rt/9n].  This  theory,  which  is  based  on  known  facts,  explains 
the  present-day  pronunciation  of  all  the  words  of  this  class.  The 
adoption  of  this  type  wholesale  in  Received  Standard  may  well  have  been 
encouraged  by  the  fact  that  it  seemed  to  agree  better  with  the  traditional 
spelling.  In  some  words  analogy  helped,  e.  g.  reputation  on  the  pattern 
of  repute. 

While  it  so  happens  that  I  have  found  a  fair  number  of  spellings  which 
show  the  unrounding  of  French  u,  it  stands  to  reason  that  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases  the  traditional  spelling  is  preserved,  This  has  no  value 
for  our  purpose,  since  many  who  pronounced  'fortin*  from  habit  and 
training  continued  to  write  fortune,  &c.,  and  while  we  may  be  certain  as 


266       THE   VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

to  which  type  is  intended  when  the  former  spelling  is  used,  we  cannot  tell 
whether  the  latter  really  implies  that  the  writer  pronounced  the  word  with 
the  accent  on  the  final  syllable,  and  therefore  also  pronounced  the  vowel 
in  that  syllable  as  [ju]  or  not. 

There  are,  however,  among  the  forms  collected  in  the  lists  a  few  whose 
spelling,  while  departing  from  the  tradition,  seems  to  imply  a  type  of 
pronunciation  derived  from  the  accentuation  of  the  final  syllable.  Such 
are  Queen  Elizabeth's/0r//««^  Lady  Verney's  pictuer,  Mrs.  Eure's  cretuers, 
and  Mrs.  Sherard's  fortewen.  I  regard  these  spellings  as  definitely 
expressing  [ju]  in  the  final  syllable,  or  at  least  the  type  of  pronunciation 
derived  from  this.  It  is  probable  that  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  still  more  so 
that  the  Verney  ladies,  already  pronounced  [f<?(i  )tjan,  p/ktJ9(r)z,  krltj9(r)z], 
that  is  to  say  that  they  used  the  same  type,  and  pronounced  it  in  the  same 
way,  as  we  do  now. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  any  importance  is  to  be  attached  to  the  statements 
of  the  grammarians,  it  seems  certain  that  during  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  [pz'kta,  krita],  &c.,  were  chiefly  in  vogue.  It  is 
enough,  however,  if  we  can  establish  the  coexistence  of  the  other  type  in 
the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  as  this  would  go  far  to  prove  that 
our  modern  pronunciation  is  not  wholly  new  and  inspired  by  the  spelling, 
but  rather  that  it  is  the  survival,  now  in  universal  use,  of  a  type  which  has 
always  existed  alongside  of  that  which  has  now  been  discarded. 

The  forms  volupteous,  Wilson  and  Cavendish ;  verteous,  vertious,  Roper 
and  Lady  Wentworth ;  sumptious,  &c,,  Cavendish,  may  owe  their  e  or  i 
to  confusion  of  the  suffixes  -uous,  -ious,  and  -eous.  That  can  neither  be 
definitely  proved  nor  disproved.  It  is  quite  certain,  however,  that  vertious 
is  a  perfectly  normal  development — vertue  becomes  [vXtJw],  ve'riuous 
becomes  [vert&s]. 

Lady  Wentworth's yousyal  'usual'  [juzzal]  seems  an  excellent  example 
of  the  unrounding  process. 

The  process  also  affects  French  unstressed  u  when  final,  and  this 
is  well  illustrated  by  Machyn's  newys  '  nephews ',  and  by  Lady  Sussex's 
valy  '  value '  (Vb.),  and  Lady  Wentworth's  vallyed.  It  is  wonderful  what 
education  has  done  for  us  nowadays ;  nevy  '  nephew '  hardly  survives 
outside  the  pages  of  comic  writers,  and  vally,  I  suppose,  is  now  never 
heard,  and  has  ceased  even  to  be  a  traditional  vulgarism. 

THE  DIPHTHONGS. 

ai,  or  ei  (=at).  When  this  diphthong  stood  before  /,  n,  as  in  travail, 
battail,  counseil,  certain,  villain,  &c.,  it  was  first  reduced  to  [/],  giving  -i7, 
-in,  and  these  combinations  eiiher  remain  or  are  further  weakened  to  syllabic 
[1,  n]  or  to  [al,  on]  respectively.  Thus  we  say  either  [kawnsl]  or  [kaansz'l] 
and  either  [sAln]  or  [sAtm].  On  the  other  hand  the  early  spelling  battle 
has  left  no  choice  in  pronunciation  even  to  the  most  fastidious.  We  have 
differentiated  travail  at  the  present  time  in  spelling,  pronunciation,  and 
meaning,  travel  and  travail  being  now  felt  as  quite  independent.  The 
pronunciation  of  travail  as  [traeve/1],  while  partly  due  to  the  spelling,  may 
also  be  accounted  for  by  assuming  that  it  represents  the  form  which 
would  naturally  occur  in  the  verb  when  this  was  followed  by  an  inflexional 


REDUCTION  OF  at,  of  TO  f  IN  WEAK  SYLLABLES    267 

syllable,  with  the  accent  on  the  second  syllable — travdille  (N.).  The 
form  so  accentuated  would  survive  the  weakening  undergone  by  trdvaille. 
Later  on  the  accent  was  shifted  back  to  the  first  syllable  without  further 
altering  the  now  unstressed  vowel. 

Before  other  consonants  the  unstressed  syllable  is  \i\  in  Received 
Standard,  [a]  in  other  forms,  cf.  [pseh's,  paebs]. 

oi.  Not  much  comment  is  needed  beyond  pointing  out  that  we  have 
now  'restored'  the  diphthong  oi  in  nearly  all  words  except  chamois 
leather,  and  the  family  name /<2rz>/'.r  (horn  fervotse). 

It  is  satisfactory  to  find  shammee  gloves  in  Sir  Ralph  Verney's  letter  of 
1685. 

We  learn  from  Spenser's  spelling  how  the  name  of  the  author  of  the 
Steele  Glasse  was  pronounced  by  his  contemporaries.  The  form  Gaskin 
still  survives  as  a  name  by  the  side  of  the  more  usual  Gascoigne,  pro- 
nounced [gsesk0m]. 

Our  present  pronunciation  of  turquoise  [tXkwoz,  tAkwozz]  is  shown  to 
be  quite  recent.  The  only  possible  lineal  descendant  of  Milton's  turkis 
would  be  [tAkzs]. 

The  early  forms  of  this  word,  as  well  as  that  of  tortoise,  show  the  two 
tendencies  which  are  found  in  nearly  all  unstressed  syllables  in  English — 
towards  [z's]  and  towards  [as].  The  present-day  usage  favours  [as]  in 
porpoise  and  tortoise^  but  we  may  note  Gregory's  porpys,  and  the  two 
types  tortes  and  tortus  in  the  Verney  Memoirs.  We  may  regard  [totoi'z, 
popwz]  as  mere  schoolmaster's  pronunciations.  It  is  possible  that  iortis, 
&c.,  should  be  placed  in  the  list  illustrating  the  unrounding  of  French  u, 
as  there  is  a  M.E.  tortuce,  cf.  Jespersen  9.  332.  The  form  quoted  from 
Euphues  at  any  rate  shows  that  the  ending  might  equally  well  have  been 
-ois.  There  may  have  been  two  forms,  one  in  -uce  and  one  in  -ofs.  The 
early  spellings  might  represent  the  reduction  of  either  of  these. 

Note.  This  process  is  apparently  identical  with  that  assumed  to  have 
taken  place  in  Primitive  Aryan,  whereby  ei,  of  appear  as  *  in  the 
'Reduced  Grade',  cf.  Gk.  oid-  and  18-  corresponding  to  Gothic  watt, 
wit-  from  *woid-,  *wid-. 

The  Pronunciation  of  the  Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

Examples  of  Occasional  Departures  from  Traditional  Spelling. 

FLEXIONAL  SYLLABLES. 

i$th  Century. 
-ed  (Pret.  and  P.  P.),  &c. 

St.  Editha  (1420).  clepud  P.P.,  50;  dwellyd,  46  (corrected  from 
dwelt),  scomfytyd,  67 ;  y-cronyd,  60. 

Archbp.  Chichele  (1418).     assentyd,  Ellis  i.  i.  5. 

Card.  Beaufort  (c.  1420).     belovid,  Ellis,  Letter,  i.  i.  8. 

jth  Lord  Level's   Will  (1455).     beeldid  'built',  Line.  Dioc.  Docs., 

PP-  76-  37>  77-  23. 

Bp.  Pecok.    feelid,  schewid,  strengthid,  hurtid,  i.  no. 

Sir  T.  CumberwortK s  Will  (Lines.  1451).  L.  D.  D.,  wrechid,  45.  6; 
accordid,  46.  4;  offendid,  46.  13. 


268       THE  VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

Sir  J.  Fortescue.     keepid,  callid,  109,  tredit  'treated',  109. 

Marg.  Pas  ton.  gid*'t,  ii.  241;  pardonyd  P.P.,  i.  115;  -yd,  the  usual 
form  of  this  suffix. 

Gregory  s  Chronicle,     i-callyde,  61,  i-halowyde,  65, 

Capgrave  (Chronicle),     punchid,  291. 

Rewk  of  Sustris  Menour -esses  (c.  1450).  bilouid,  81.  i,  encresid,  81.  7, 
blessid,  81.  12,  &c.,  &c. 

Bury  Wills,  1480.     blessid,  fotyd,  23,  steryd,  15,  &c.,  &c. 

Cely  Papers  (Essex,  1475-88).     -yd  by  far  commoner  than  -ed,  e.g. 
depertyd,  31;  blessyd,  33;  whelbelovyd,  34;  mendyt,  35;  alectyd,  162; 
derectyd,  274. 
-red. 

Bokenam.     hundryd,  980. 

i6th  Century. 

Admiral  Sir  Edw.  Howard  (1513).     steryd,  Ellis  i.  i.  214. 

Dr.  Knight  (Bp.  of  Bath  and  Wells),  1512,  to  Wolsey.  -id,  -yd  more 
frequent  than  -ed. 

Sir  Thos.  Elyot  (Gouernour).     causid  P.  P.  2.  51  (generally  -ed). 

Sir  Rauf  Verney's  Will  (152$).     aduisi'd,  bequeth/d. 

Anne  Boleyn  (1528).     preservyd,  Ellis  i.  i.  306. 

R.  Pace  to  Wolsey  (Ellis  3.  i ;  16  Hen.  VIII).     contentidde,  195. 

Sewers'  Froissart  (1523-5).     (Generally  -ed),  also  -id,  -yd. 

Cavendish  (Life  of  Wolsey).     providyd,  commandyd,  &c.  (also  -ed). 

Latimer  (Sermons}.     Generally  -ed. 

Thos.  Levers  Sermons  (1550).     Nearly  always  -ed. 

Gabriel  Harvey  (Letter  Book,  1573-80).  offendid,  13,  persuaded,  13, 
reiectid  'rejected',  14,  &c.,  &c. 

Q.  Elizabeth  (Letters-,  Trans!.).  Generally  -id]  -ed  rarer;  preventid, 
acquaintid,  L.  3. 

Sir  Thos.  Smith  (Letters  ;  De  RepuU.  AngL).  -id,  -yd  frequent,  but  -ed 
more  usual. 

Euphues.    Very  conventional  in  spelling,  unstressed  syllable  always  -ed. 

Ascham.  Generally  -ed,  auoyded,  &c.,  sometimes  syllable  dropped — 
mardt. 

Puttenham.     -ed,  counted,  &c. 

ijth  Century. 

Coote,  English  Schoolmaster,  1627.  'Take  heed  that  you  put  not  (id) 
for  (ed)  as  unitid  for  united  which  is  Scottish  ',  p.  27. 

Vowels  in  Unstressed  Positions. 

FLEXIONAL  SYLLABLES. 
M.E.  -e)>  =  -ith.  ifth  Century. 

1420  Palladius.     wexiih,  51.  193  (PL). 
T425-3°  Paston  Letters,     namyth,  i.  19;  affermnh,  semyth,  ibid,  (all 

fr.  Letter  of  Wm.  P.,  Judge). 

1443  Coventry  Leet  Book.      holdithe,  47,  streechith,  50,  holdyth,  50, 
&c.,  &c. 


THE   SUFFIXES   -eth,   -es  269 

1443  Bokenam.     always  -yth. 

1447-50  Shillingford 's  Letters,     menyth,  p.  12. 

1447  Bp.  PecoKs  Represser,     him  likith,  i.  113. 

Marg.  Paston.     sendyth,  faryth,  &c. 
1450  R.  of  Sustris  Menouresses.     fey  etrih,  in,  17  ;  redith,  116.  17 

and  20  ;  singif>,  no.  9. 

1455  Will  of  ^th  Lord  Lovel.     folowith,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  72-4. 
147-  Sir  J.  Fortescue.     makyth,  109;  praisith,  no. 
1470,  &c.  Cely  Papers,    camyth,  146. 

1480  Bury  Witts,     foluith,  16,  longith,  16,  stretchith  (PL),  20. 
1494  Cr.  of  Dk.  of  York  Knt.  of  Bath.    Letters  and  Papers,  endentith, 

i.  388,  purposith,  justithe,  389,  gevyth  (PI.),  398. 
1496  Jut.  Berners,  Treaty se  of  Fysshynge.     folowyth,  makyth. 

i6th  Century. 

1513  Sir  R.  Wing  field  to  Hen.  VIII.     dwellith,  Ellis,  Letters,  ii.  i. 

167,  holdith,  ibid. 

1525  R.  Pace  to  Wolsey.     makyth,  Ellis,  Letters  iii.  i.  196. 
1533  Sir  J.Digbys  Will  (Leic.).    appen'th,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  142.  34. 
1560  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     extendyth,  14,  tornyth,  assuryth,  15, 

&c.,  &c. 
1573-80  Letter  Bk.  of  Gabriel  Harvey,     askith,  16. 

Q.  Elizabeth  (Letters  toj.  VI).     bestoith  ;  burnith,  Transl.  13. 

-es.  i$th  Century. 

c.  1420  Siege  of  Rouen,     clerkys. 

1420  St.  Editha.     monnys,  8;  goddis  (Possess.),  1056;  thingus,  7; 

my^tus  (PL),  2. 

1443  Cov.  Leet.     mannys,  51,  croftys,  47,  fellys,  49. 
1450  Rew.  Sustr.  Men.     massis,  no.  16  ;  versis,  in.  7. 
1455  Lord  Level's  Will,     chargis,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  77.  31. 
147-  Cely  Papers,     -ys  far  outnumbers  other  forms. 

i6th  Century. 

1512  Dr.  Knight  (Chaplain  to  Hen.  VIII).     fortresses,  Ellis  ii.  i.  193. 

1 6  Hen.  VIII,  R.  Pace  to   Wolsey.      Hostag/s,  Ellis  iii.   i.  195; 

causz's,  ibid.  196. 

1530  Sir  Thos.  More  (Letter),     promesszs,  Ellis  i.  i.  209. 
1530  Sir  T.  Elyofs  Gouernour.      princ/s,  i.  44;  horszs,  i.  63  ;  sicke- 

nesszs,  i.  169;  placz's,  i.  45,  &c.,  &c. 

1532  Cranmer.     barg/s,  Ellis  i.  2.  36. 

1533  Leic.  Will,     hallo wys,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  161.  10. 
1560  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     horses,  ^s,  7;  cross/s,  35. 

Q.  Elizabeth,     scus/s,  Letters,  109  ;  practis/s,  ibid.  60. 

ijth  Century. 

1629  Mrs.  Wiseman,     necis  (PL),  Verney  Papers  144. 
1642  Mrs.  Eure  in  Verney  Mem.  ii.    justis/s,  p.  86  (1642);  tax/'s  91 ; 
Mrs.  Isham,  ibid.,  purss/s;  Pen.  Verney,  expenses,  354  (1644). 


270      THE   VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

i8th  Century. 

1705-11  Lady  Wentworth.     Jarsz's,  St.  Jams/s,  47  (Possess.);  glasszs, 
n i ;  oringis  (PI.),  107;  freezzs,  in. 

-est  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 
=  2nd  Pers.  Pres.  of  Vbs.  and  Superl.  Suffix,  &c. 

-est.  ijth  Century. 

Bokenam  (1443).     clepyst  (Vb.),  Pref.  Marg.  281. 

Bp.  Pecok  (1449).     studiedist,  enhauncidist. 

Northants  Will  (1450).     In  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.,  grettist. 

Gregory's  Chron.  (1450-70).     eldyste,  101. 

Cr.  of  Dk.  of  York  a  Knt.  of  Garter  (Letters  and  Papers  ii),  1490, 

fairyst  (Superl.),  p.  389. 
Will  of  Richard  Welby  (Lines.,  1465),  L.  D.  D.     eldist,  123.  2. 

i6th  Century. 

Anne  Boleyn  (1528).     humblyst,  Ellis  i.  i.  305. 

Lord  Berners'  Froissart  (1529).     weky st,  i .  1 6 1 . 

Sir  T.  Elyots  Gouernour  (1533).     kepist,  2.  76  ;    askidist,  2.   76  ; 

haruist,  2.  256. 
Gabriel  Harvey  (Letter  Bk.,   1578-80).     dearist,    13;    deadist,    12; 

surist,  14;  hardist,  14  ;  haruist,  14;  honist,  14,  &c.,  &c. 
Q.  Elizabeth  (Letters  and  Transl.).     expertist,   L.  29;    largist,   50; 

fullist,  Transl.  4 ;  hottist,  Transl.  97. 

i*]th  Century. 

Anne  Poyntz,  Alleyne  Pprs.     honyst,  31  (1605). 

Verney  Memoirs,  vol.  ii.      eldist,  Marg.  V.'s  Will,  18  (1639)  ;  gretist, 

Gary  V.,  71  (1642);  sadist,  ibid.;  greatist,  121,  Lady  Sussex;  also 

intrust  'interest',  M.  V.'s  Will,  p.  18. 
Mrs.  Basire.    greatist,  140(1658). 

i8th  Century. 
Wentworth  Papers  (1705-39).      deanst,   passim;    modist  'modest', 

IJ3- 
-er.  i$th  Century. 

Bokenam.      aftyr,  Pr.  54,  &c. ;  phylosophyr,  Pr.  54 ;  mynystyr,  Marg. 

978  ;  lengur,  Ann.  438  ;  wondurful,  Ann.  641. 
Marg.  Paston.     fadr,  i.  544;  massangr,  ii.  390;  remembr,  ii.  419. 
Bury  Wills,     ovyr,  15;  fadir,  modir,  29;  powdyr,  15;  anothir,  17; 

aftir,  17  ;  bettyr,  20;  tymbyr,  20,  &c.,  &c. ;  also  preyours  'prayers', 

21  (1463);  soupar  'supper',  21. 
Gregory's  Chron.     ovyr. 
Fortescue.     remembr,  123,  124;   vndr,   135;    but  also  aftir,  undir, 

passim. 


THE  ENDINGS   *r,   -en  271 

Caxton  (Jason),     murdre,  12.  35,  36;  watre,  78.  5;  vndre,  96.  21; 

writars,  3.  22  ;  helpars,  13.  31. 
Cely  Papers,      bettyr,    6 ;    nwmbyr,    33 ;    ovyr,   6 ;    dowttyr,    105 ; 

remembyr,  28;  lettyrs,  33;  manner  <  manner',  69;    annsor,  78; 

sumor,  9;  octobor,  21  ;  dynar,  76;  manar,  17;  wryngar,  7;  finar, 

30;  answare,  8;  brocur,  24. 

i6th  Century. 

Q.  Elizabeth,     sistar,   Ellis  i.    2.    163-4  (1549);    bettar,  Letters  to 
James  VI,  13 ;  murdar,  ibid.  19. 

ijlh  Century. 
In  middle  of  word'. — misirable,  Lady  Sussex,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  88. 

-en  and  -en  +  Cons.  i$th  Century. 

St.  Editha.     y-writon  P.P.,  367;  lokedone,  285,  throngedone,  461 

mournedone,  461,   burydone,  462  ;    prayden,   287,   putten,   1880, 

deden,  1888,  &c. 

Bokenam.     oftyn,  Pr.  205  ;  Inf.  in  -yn. 
Marg.  Paston.     eronds,  i.  201;  Infinitives: — askyn,  i.  49;  heryn,  i. 

67;  getyn,  i.  68;  tellyn,  i.  68;  sellyn,  i.  69;  Pres.  PI.: — owyn, 

i.  68  ;  Pret.  PI. : — ze  badeyn,  i.  69 ;  zedyn,  i.  70  (z  =  j) ;  haddyn, 

i.  no. 
Bury  Wills,     gravyn,  15;  euyn,  19  (Adv.);  wretyn,  19;  opynly,  18; 

erthin,  22.     (Also  -en  forms.) 
Shillingford.     aunsion,  10. 
Pecok.     thousind,  i.  215. 
Rewle  Sustr.  Men.     opunli,  100.  22  ;  opynli,  no.  30;  songoun  P.P., 

105-  7- 
Sir  T.  Cumberworth's   Will  (Lines.,  1451),  L.D.  D.     opyn,  45.  8; 

kechyn,  49.  12,  24. 
Fortescue.     writun,  130,  gotun,  137. 
Cely  Papers,     wryttyn  P.  P.,  35  ;  gevyn,  26  ;  hosyn  (N.),  28  ;    lynyn 

(N.),  200;  happen,  30;  hofton  'often',  81. 
Cr.  Duke  of  York,     evyn,  389,  brokyn  (P.  P.),  395. 
-ent.     Cely  Papers,     carpyntter,  180. 

i6th  Century. 

Lord  Admiral  Sir  Edw.  Howard  to  Hen.  VIII  (1513).     burden,  Ellis 

ii.  i.  216. 
State  of  Ireland  (St.  Pprs.,  Hen.  VIII.  i  (1515)).     waypyn  'weapon', 

1 8. 

Lord  Berners  Froissart.     havyn,  i.  33  ;  opyn,  passim. 
Inventory  of  J.  Asserley  (Lines.,  1527),  L.  D.  D.      wholyn  'woollen1, 

i35-i8;  kytchyn,  135.  30. 
Sir  Thos.  Mores  Letters.     Ellis  i.  2  ;  hevyn,  52. 
Thos.  Lever  s  Sermons,    chikynnes,  56. 


272       THE   VOWELS   OF   UNSTRESSED    SYLLABLES 

Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     opyn,  15;  tokyn,  19;  hosyn,  88;  rysyn, 

116;  Latten  'Latin',  71. 

Gabr.  Harvey  (Letters),     chickins,  31  ;  tokins,  150. 
Q.  Elizabeth,     heauin  '  heaven  ' ,  Transl.  6 1 . 

ijth  Century. 

Gary  Verney.     takin  (P.  P.),  V.  Mem.  ii.  70  (1642). 
Mrs.  Isham.     childrin,  V.  Mem.  ii.  220;  suddnly,  ibid.  200. 
Mrs.  Eure.     wimin  (PI.),  V.  Mem.  ii.  86  (1642). 
-em.     Sir  R.  Verney.     solome,  V.  Mem.  ii.  67  (1642). 

i8th  Century. 
Lady  Sir  afford,    kitching,  Wentw.  Pprs.  540. 

igth  Century. 

John  Kemble  said  sentimmt,  innoczht,  conshmce  according  to  Leigh 
Hunt,  Autobiogr.  i,  p.  180. 

-el.  ijth  Century. 

Bokenam.     appyltre,  Ann.  441 ;  lytyl,  Pr.  55,  &c. 

Marg.  Paston.     tempill,  i.  81  ;  unkyll,  i.  202. 

Bury    Wills,      litil,    20;    bokyll,    16;    nobil,    17;    candylstikke,    19; 

pepill,  19;  sympil,  21  ;  stepyll,  19;  ladyll,  23;  tharchangill,  62. 
Rewle  Sustr.  Men.     dobel,  107.  25,  dubbil,  107.  12,  double,  107.  18. 
Will  of  Sir  T.  Cumberworth  (Lines.,  1451)  L.  D.  D.     stabul,  50.  4. 
Will  of  Richard  Moulton  (Lines.,  1465)  L.  D.D.     stabull,  124.  37. 
Caxton  (Jason),     sadyl,  7.  34  ;  sadle  (Inf.),  n.  29;  litil,  13.  22,  &c.  ; 

nobole,  12.  i,  noble,  12.  4,  &c. 
Cely  Papers,      myddyll,  34;  saddyl,  34;  stapyll,  5;  craddyll,   157  ; 

medell,  ii;  stapell,  6;  fardel,  71  ;  stapal,  4;  stapul,  77. 

i6th  Century. 

Skeltons  Magnyfycence.      startyl,  sparky  1,  741 ;  dyvyls,  944  ;  clevyll, 

941. 

Inventory  of  J.  Asserley  (Lines.,  1527).     tabyl,  L.  D.  D.  135.  28. 
Sir  Thos.  More  (Letters,  Ellis  i.  i).     Sir  John  RusslI,  205. 
Machyn.     postyll  '  apostle  ' ;  castyl  '  castle  ',  1 1. 
Sir  Thos.  Smith  (1583).     evangill,  Rep.  123, 

ijth  Century, 
Doll  Leake.     cruilty,  V.  Mem.  ii.  213  (1644). 

-e  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 
i$th  Century. 

•less.     1465.     Marg.  Paston.     harmlys,  ii.  226. 
-mest.     1447-50.     Shilling/ord.     utmyst. 


REDUCTION  OF   -*-   IN   VARIOUS  ENDINGS         273 

i6th  Century. 

-ness.     Q.  Elizabeth,      kindm's,  Letters  40  ;  wekenis,  L.  4 1  ;  happim's, 
L.  50,  &c.,  &c. ;  darkems,  Transl.  4  ;  businis,  Transl.  126. 

I'jth  Century. 
-ess.     Shakespeare,  First  Fol.     mistn's,   passim. 

Habington's  Castara  (1630-40).     mistris,  51,  &c. 
-ness.     Doll  Leake.     bisnis,  Verney  Mem.  iv.  114  (1665). 

l8th  Century. 

-ester.     1710.     Wentworth  Papers.     Ld.  Roch/ster,  p.  118. 
-ess.     1701.    Jones,     mistriss,  p.  62.     Lady  Wentworth.     dutchiss,  W. 
Pprs.  45. 

i$th  Century. 
-lege  (-leche)  and  original  -lege. 

Marg.Paston.     knowlych,  ii.  185. 

Bury  Wills,     collage,  66  (1480). 

Shillingford.     knowliche,  67. 
-et.     Cely  Papers,     markyt,  17. 

-et.  i6th  Century. 

Lord  Berners1  Froissart.     helmyttes,  i.  362. 

Thos.  Lever's  Sermons,     couitous,  84. 

Euphues.     dyot 'diet ',  276. 

Gabr.  Harvey,     interprit,  Letters  15. 
-lege.     Gabr.  Harvey  (Letter s\    collidg,  54. 

-ledge  (earlier  -leche).  17 ih  Century. 

Betty  Verney.     acknowliges,  Verney  Mem.  iv.  21  (1661). 
-et.     Lady  Lambton.     inter pritt,  Basire  Corresp.  80  (1649). 

i8th  Century. 

-et.      Wentworth  Papers,     bullits,  81;  blanckitt,  62. 

Initial  e'-.     astate  'estate',  Bokenam,  Pr.  Marg.  877  ;  Fortescue,  143; 

Gregory,  132  ;  Elyot,  passim;  Berners,  passim;  alectyd,  Cely  Pprs. 

162;   ascuse  'excuse',  Cely  Pprs.  9;   ascapyn  'escape',  Bokenam, 

Marg.  877  ;   ascaped,  Lord  Berners,  i.  72  ;    aronyous  'erroneous', 

Machyn,  81. 

-a  +  consonants.  i$th  Century. 

-ac.     Will.  Paston,  Jun.     stomechere,  Paston   Letters,  iii.  237  (1478); 

'Cely  Papers,     almyneke^  1 56. 
as.     Cely  Papers,     os  'as',    i.  30;    Cr.  Duke  of  York,    ys  —  as — for 

as  moche  ys  (=  'as')  at  so  noble  feast,  &c.,  389. 

T 


274       THE  VOWELS   OF   UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

-ave.     John  Russe.     Seynt  Olejfes,  Paston  Letters,  ii.  112  (1462). 
-age  (-ange).    Siege  of  Rouen,  mesyngers,  31.    Gregory,  messyngere,  124  ; 
longege  '  language  ',  214. 

Cely  Papers,    passengers,  153. 

State  of  Ireland  (St.  Pprs.  Henry  VIII,  iii).     messengers,  14. 

Will  of  R.  Astbroke  (Bucks.,  1534).     messynger  (Pers.  N.),  L.  D.  D. 

169.   21. 

ap1.     Capgraves  Chron.     Uphowel,  96  (=  Ap-). 
-a-.     Bury  Wills,     testement,  15.  43  (1463). 

-ar-.  i6ih  Century, 

Archbp.  Cranmer  (Letters),    particulerly,  Ellis  i.  2.  172  (1549). 

Lyly,  Euphues.    perticulers,  234. 

Machyn.     secretery,  10. 

Spenser,  Pres.  State  of  Ireland,     schollers,  626.  2. 
-a-.     Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     ambassiter,  7. 
-aster.     Machyn.    Lancaster,  244. 
-mas.     Machyn.     Cryustynmus,  122. 
-an-.     Machyn.     compeny,  303. 

Euphues.     must/ion,  213,  Italtonafed,  314. 
-ac.     Gabr.  Harvey  s  Letters,     slummock,  14. 

as,  -as.     es  =  as,  Sir  Thos.  More's  Letters,  Ellis  ii.  i  ;   such  entreprises 
es  shold  if  they  mought,  &c.,  289. 

Gabr.  Harvey's  Letters,    purchisse  Vb.,  67. 


Century. 

-ant.     infints.     C.  Stewkley,  V.  Mem.  iii.  433  (1656). 

-man.     Bridgemen.     Lady  Rochester,  V.  Mem.  iii.  466  (1660). 

-an-,     compiny.     Lady  Sussex,  V.  Mem.  ii.  133  ;  mglende,  Lady  Sussex, 

V.  Mem.  ii.88  (1642). 

-aster.  Donkister.     Verney  Mem.  iv.  121  ;  Lady  Elmes  (1665). 
-ac-.     stomtchers,  Anne  Lee,  V.  Mem.  ii.   235  (1646);  obsticle,  Sir  R. 

Verney,  Mem.  ii.  357  (1647);  carictor,  C.  Stewkley,  Mem.  iv.  226. 
-mas.     crismus,  Lady  Sussex,  Verney  Pprs.  205   (1639);   mickelmust, 

M.  Falkiner,  V.  Mem.  ii.  52  (1642);  Doll  Leake,  crismus,^.  Mem. 

iii.  287  (1656). 
-as-.     Sir   tomis  Chike,   Lady  Sussex,   Verney  Mem.  ii.   153  (1643); 

Sir  tomos,  Cary  Verney,  V.  Mem.  ii.  68  (1642). 
-a-,     contrydicting,  ibid. 

i8th  Century. 

-ac-.     stomtck,  Iztc  =  Isaac,  Baker,  Rules  for  True  Spelling  (1724); 

carecter,  Wentw.  Pprs.  50. 
-ark.     Southwick  for  South  wark,  Baker  (1724). 
-ave.     (St.)  Olive  =  S/.  Olave,  Jones  (1707),  p.  59. 
-able.     '  Sounded  abusively  ',  •$/<?  in  Constable,  Dunstable,  Jones,  p.  59. 
-ate.    pryvit,  Lady  Went  worth,  Wentw.  Pprs.  94  (1709),  chockolet,  Lady 

Strafford,  Wentw.  Pprs.  213  (1711). 
-dale.    Dugdets  Baronage,  Peter  Wentworth,  Wentw.  Pprs.  88  (1709). 


o  UNROUNDED  AND  OFTEN  FRONTED     275 

-age.  i6th  Century. 

Archbp.  Cranmer,  Letters,     maneges,  Ellis  i.  2.  36  (1533). 
Roper's  L.  of  More  (1556).     marriges,  xliv.  10. 
Tho  s.  Lever's  Sermons,     co  fingers,  82. 

John  Alleyne.     Alleyne  Pprs.,  marrige,  15,  incurrich  'encourage',  16 
(159-?);   Ph.  Henslow  in  Alleyne  Memoirs,  spenege  spinach,   28 


ijth  Century. 

Vicaridge,  Agreement  for  purchase  of  the  Manor  of  Dulwich,  Alleyne 

Memoirs,  191  (1605). 
corige  'courage',  Lady  Sussex,  ii.   38   (1641),  disadfantige,  mesege; 

advantig,  Mrs.  Sherard,  iii.  317  (1657)  (all  m  Verney  Memoirs); 

vicaridge,  Dr.  Basire,  303  (1673). 
Saucidg  and  cabbidg  are  mentioned  by  Cooper. 

Initial  &.  i$th  and  i6th  Centuries. 

Cely  Papers,  enoyd  'annoyed  ',  106  ;  Elyot,  enointed,  2.  235  ;  Ascham, 
emonges,  Tox.  37. 

O  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 
^on.  i$th  Century. 

St.  Editha.     caren  '  carrion',  4328. 
Marg.  Paston.     sesyn  'season',  v.  i.  201. 
Gregory's  Chron.     Devynshyre,  216;  -un-t  Aryndelle,  101. 
Cely    Papers,      questyans,    153;     ressenabull,    74;     rekenyng,    34; 

resenably,  14. 
-o:.     Marg.  Paston.    dysabey,  i.  252  ;  sa  m^ch,  ii.  308. 

Cely  Papers,     abedyensses,  69. 
-og.     C  ax  ton.     genelagye,  Jason,  336,  38. 
o'-.     Short  Engl.  Chron.  (1465,  Cam.  Soc.).     toward,  62. 
-ost.     Marg.  Paston.     provest,  ii.  187  (perhaps  survival  of  Early  Engl. 

form). 
-op.     Bokenam.     bysshape,  Elev.  Thous.  Virg.  108,  no. 

l6th  Century. 

-on.     Dr.  Knight  (Chaplain  to  Hen.  VIII).     reasyn  'reason'  (1512), 

Ellis  ii.  i.  203. 

Sir  Thos.  Elyot  (1528).     burgine  Vb.,  '  bud  ',  Gouern.  i.  30. 
Rede  me,  &c.  (1529).     mutten  '  mutton'. 
Richard  Layton  to  Lord  Cromwell  (i  538).   Marten  Colege  (=  Merton), 

Ellis  ii.  2.  60. 

Thos.  Pery  (1539).     commyshin,  Ellis  ii.  2.  140. 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     waggans,  88. 
Bishop  Latimer.      dungen,  Seven  Serms.  (1549),  119. 
Gabriel  Harvey's  Letter  Bk.    (1573-80).     duggin    'dudgeon',    29; 

to  reckin,  16. 
Edm.  Spenser,     scutchin,  F.  Q.,  Bk.  iii.  7.  30. 

T  2 


276       THE  VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

John    Alleyne,   Alleyne    Pprs.    (159-?).      posshene    'portion',    16; 
fashenges,  'fashions',  16. 

Sir  Thos.  Smith  (1583).     recken,  Republ.  76. 
of.     Lord  Berners*  Froissart.     men  a  warre,  i.  156. 

Machyns  Diary.    Justus  a  pesse,  122. 

Gabr.  Harvey's  Letters,     seaven  a  clocke,  72  ;  tenne  a  clocke,  129. 
-ord.     Inventory  o/J.  Asserley  (Lines.,  1 52 7)  L.  D.  D.    Cobberdes,  1 36.  i . 
^o-.     Bishop  Latimer,  Seven  Sermons  (1549).     riatous,  51. 
-ost.     Ely  of s  Will,     provest,  311.^ 
o-.     Machyn.     apinions,  81. 


ijth  Century. 

-on.     Chapman's  All  Fooles.     fashin'd  'fashioned'  (1605). 
Verney  Memoirs. 

parden,  Mall  V.,  ii.  381  (1647);  surgin  'surgeon',  Pen.  V.,  iii.  201 
(1657),  ribins,  Doll  Leake,  iv.  66  (1664);  fashing,  Mrs.  Edm.  V., 
iv.  71  (1664);  priszVzer,  Sir  R.  V.,  ii.  122.  Lady  Verney  has  the 
inverted  spelling  reasons  for  raisins,  ii.  285  (1647). 

-o-.     sonfull,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  121. 

-o'-.  acorm'dasyon,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  153;  and  Mrs.  Basire,  opperf unity, 
.104  (1651),  abay  'obey',  ibid.  135  (1654);  Sir  ^rlandoe  Bridgmen, 
Lady  Rochester,  iii.  466  (1660). 

^ot.  fagets,  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  46  (1663)  ;  Pigit  (Piggot),  Pen.  V.,  Lady 
Gardiner,  iv.  327  (1685) ;  Cham?t  (?),  Edm.  V.,  iv.  397  (1687) 

l8th  Century. 

-on.  Jones,  1701.  'Sound  of  e  written  io  in  carrion,  clarion,  contagion, 
cushion,  fashion,  lunchion,  opinion  ',  p.  45.  Truncheon  —  trunsheen, 
p.  102. 

Peter  Wentworth.  beckinged  'beckoned',  W.  Pprs.  108  (1710); 
Lady  Wentworth,  Comten  f  Compton  ',  W.  Pprs.  98  (1709) ;  Baker, 
1724,  sturgin,  dungin  'dungeon',  punchin  'puncheon',  flaggin 
'  flagon ',  cooshin^  carrin  '  carrion ',  inin  '  onion '. 

-ot.  Jones,  chariot,  p.  45  ;  somewhat  sounded  som'at  (=  [samst]), 
Jones,  p.  26. 

-oard.     cubberd,  Jones,  33. 


Early  Forms  ^Cushion. 

It  is  doubtful  how  far  the  forms  of  this  word  which  end  in  -in  are  to 
be  regarded  as  weakenings  from  -on-.  Both  endings  may  have  been  in 
use  from  an  early  period. 

Bury  Wills  (1463) — kusshownes,  cusshonys,  23 ;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot's 
Will — cusshyns,  311 ;  Thos.  Pery — kwsching,  Letter,  Ellis  ii.  2.  50, 
I539;  Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey — cusshons,  16,  cusshens,  65; 
Knaresborough  Wills— qwhissinges,  29  (30  Hen.  VIII);  Wm.  Baker 
(I725) — cooshin. 


REDUCTION   OF  FRENCH   u  TO   i  OR  9  277 

French  u  in  Unstressed  Syllables, 
l^th  Century. 

-ur.     to  paster,  St.  Ed.  3767  (c.  1420);   moister,  Palladius  (1420)  29. 

773;  a  venter,  Cely  Papers  5,  the  venter,  C.  P.  6. 
-un.     commyne,  $hillingford  Papers  (1447-50);  comynlaw,  Shillingford 

40;  comyned  togeder,  12,  comyners,  comeners,  Gregory's  Chron. 

64. 
-ut.     savecondyte,  C.  P.  45  (-condute,  ibid.   163);    condytte,  Gregory 

71   ('conduit');   byskitt,  C.  P.  182;    mym'te  'note'.      Statement 

concerning  Edm.  de  la  Pole  (1501),  Letters  and  Papers  i.  147. 
-us.     letuse,  Bk.  of  Quint.  22. 
-u-.     reputation,  Marg.  Paston,  P.  L.  ii.  340. 
-u-.     argument,  Shillingford  10. 

i6th  Century. 

-un.     comyne  (Vb.)  (1503),  Negotiations  of  Ambassadors,  Letters  and 

Papers  i.  205,  &c.,  &c. ;  comyngcasion,  Wolsey  to  Hen.  VIII,  L. 

and  P.  i.  446 ;  mysseforten,  Machyn's  Diary  139  (c.  1550). 
h\&o:—fortiune,  Q.  Elizabeth,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI.  27. 
-ur.     unscripterlye,  Latimer's   Sermons,  Arber,  7.  48 ;   jointer,  E.  of 

Bath,  Ellis,  Letters  ii.  2.  157  ;  venterous,  venturer,  Machyn  67,  161 ; 

jointer,    Roper's  L.  of  Sir  T.  More  (1556),  xliii.   18;  venterous, 

Euphues,  Arber,  39  ;  manuring  (the  ground),  Wilson,  Arte  of  Rhet., 

Oxford  Ed.  53;  tortering,  ShaJkespeare  (First  Fol.),  Titus  Andron.; 

John  Alleyne,  gointer  'jointure',  Alleyne  Pprs.  16  (1593?). 
-uous.    verteous,  Roper's  L.  of  More  (1556),  vi.  29 ;  volupteous,  Wilson 

73;  voluptious,  Cavendish,  L.  of   Wolsey  116;   sumptiously,    3; 

sumptious,  ibid.  25;  tortious,  Spencer,  F.  Q.,  Bk.  vii.  7.  14. 
-u-.     newys  c nephews',  Machyn  302;  momment,  Spenser,  Globe  Ed., 

F.  Q.,  Bk.  U.  7.  5;  cit.  Elyot's  Gouernour  ii.  375,  Wks.,  vol.  v,  p.  51. 

ijth  Century. 

-ur.      Verney  Memoirs,     venturous,  Gary  Verney,  ii.  70  (1642);  jointer, 

Mrs.  Isham,  ii.  74  (1642);  venter  (Noun),  Mrs.  I.,  ii.  203  (1643); 

ventir,  Lady  Warwick,  iii.  313  (1657);  feutir,  Mrs.  Sherard,  iii.  324 

(l657);  futer>  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  66  (1664). 
Also: — picktuer,  Lady  V.'s  Will,  ii.  18(1639) ;  cretuejs,  Mrs.Eure,  ii. 

96;  lesuer,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  31  (1641). 
-une.     misfortin,  Gary  V.,  ii.  70  (1642)  ;    fortine,  Mrs.  Isham,  ii.  220 

(1645)  ;  fortin,  Pen.  V.,  ii.  353  (1644);  unfortunate,  Gary  V.,  iii.  439 

(1659);    fourtin,   Lady   Hobart,  iv.   56    (1664);    fortme,    forting, 

Mrs.  Isham,  iv.  108  (1663). 

Also: — fortewen,  fortewn,  Mrs.  Sherard,  iv.  16  (1661). 
-u-.      miraczlous,   Edm.   V.,  iv.    233   (1677);    continual,   W.   Roades 

(Steward),  iii.  234  (1655). 
u-.     m^nishone,  ii.  56,  '  munition '. 
-u.     valy  (Vb.),  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  87  (1642),  'to  value';  neuie  'nephew 

Mrs.  Basire,  142  (1655). 


278       THE   VOWELS   OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

i8th  Century. 
-u-.     Lady  Wentworth.     vertious,  vallyed,  Wentw.  Pprs.  52 ;  yousyal,  84, 

'  usual ',  ibid.  84. 
-une.     Goldsmith,  '  She  Stoops  to  Conquer ',  Act  n.      Tony  Lumpkin  : 

'  If  I'm  a  man,  let  me  have  my  for  tin! 
-lire.     Jones  (1701).      '  "  er  "  written  -ure  when  it  may  be  sounded  -ur 

better  than  -er',  p.  52,  as  in  debenture,  accwrate,  saturate;  *  when 

it   may   be   sounded   -er't   adventure,   azure,   censure,   conjecture, 

cincture,  conjure,  culture,  departure,  failure. 

Wentw.  Pprs.  erectors,  475  (Capt.  Powell) ;  /or/er,  64,  picturs^  63. 
Fr.  u  =  [y]  is  unrounded  already  in  the  fifteenth  century  in  unstressed 
syllables,  and  written  i  or  e.  The  inverted  spelling  profutez  '  profits  '  in 
Lord  Level's  Will,  1455,  L.  D.  D.  73.  21,  shows  that  in  unstressed  sylla- 
bles u  was  pronounced  like  i.  Before  -r  this  short  front  vowel  probably 
becomes  [3]  pretty  early  in  common  speech,  as  is  suggested  by  Machyn's 
venturer,  and  later  by  Gary  Verney's  ventaros. 

The  seventeenth-century  venttr,  feutz'r  are  probably  not  indicative  of 
a  pronunciation  with  /,  any  more  than  is  -i'rt  -yr  for  earlier  -er,  which  is 
so  common  in  the  fifteenth  century  and  later.  Before  -n  the  front  vowel 
was  probably  preserved,  though  there  was  doubtless  a  tendency  in  certain 
speakers  to  reduce  -in  to  [an]  or  simply  to  [n].  See  remarks  on  pp.  264-5 
on  the  fondness  for  the  [in]  types  generally,  down  to  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  beyond. 

Back  Vowels  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

uA.     apon,   Shillingford  6;    Fortescue   123;    Gregory   107,  238,   259; 

Cely  Pprs.  14,  47  (twice),  203;  Machyn  12. 
-un ;  un-.     Swythan  '  Swithun  ',  St.  Editha  188 ;  anethe  '  hardly  '  (O.E. 

unepes\  Bokenam,  Marg.  971;  Aryndelle,  Gregory  101. 
^our.     Gregory,  faverynge,  134;  Cely  Pprs.,  faverabull,  137;  Ascham, 

unsauery,  Tox.  76 ;  Machyn,  Semer,  27  (=  Seymour)  ;  Mall  Verney, 
faver,  V.  Mem.  ii.  381  (1647). 

-ous.     Ph.  Henslow,  greavesly,  Alleyne  Memoirs  28,  c.  1593. 
-aw,  -ow.     Bokenam,  felas,  Agn.  377,  395;  Cely  ¥$r.s.,feleschyppe,  120, 
felyschepe,  ^fellyschyp,  6. 

Shortening  of  Vowels  in  Final  Unstressed  Syllables. 

-ite.  Shakespeare  (First  Fol.).  Muscouits  (rhymes  witts\  L.  Lbr's  Lost ; 
Lady  Wentworth,  infenitt. 

-ile.  Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey,  fertill,  1 1 ;  Shakesp.  (First  Fol.), 
stirrill '  sterile ',  First  Pt.,  Hen.  IV,  4.  i. 

-meal.  Dr.  Denton,  oatmell '  oatmeal ',  Verney  Mem.  iii.  209  (1657)  ; 
Wm.  Baker,  Rules  for  True  Spelling,  &c.  (1723)  also  gives  the  pro- 
nunciation of  this  word  as  otmell,  in  this  case  apparently  implying 
also  a  shortening  of  the  vowel  in  the  first  syllable. 

-night.  Gary  Stewkley,  senet,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  434  (1656);  fortnet, 
Mrs.  Basire  132  (1654);  (Roger)  L'Estrange  his  Appeal,  that  day 
sennet  'se'nnight',  56  (1681). 


REDUCTION   OF  DIPHTHONGS  279 

-u.  Marg.  Paston  often  writes  zu  '  you  '  in  unstressed  positions  —  e.  g. 
i.  67  ;  otherwise  generally  zow,  yaw,  &c.  This  may  express  the 
shortened  form  in  a  weak  position. 

M.E.  ai,  ei  in  Unstressed  Syllables. 

i$th  Century. 
-ein,  'ain.     St.  Editha.     vyleny,  2.  384. 

Shilling  ford  (1447-50).     certyn,  53. 

Marg.  Paston.    meynten,  ii.  83. 
-ain-,  ein-.     Shillingford.     synt  Stevyn,  9;  sent  Paull,  n. 

Gregory's  Chron.  (1450).     Syn  Le'narde,  61  ;    Syn  J6hn,  94;    men- 
tayne,  86. 

Cely  Papers,     bargen,  40. 

Letters  and  Papers,  ii.     certen,  59  ;  abstinence  (?). 
-ei.     Shillingford.     curtessy,  20. 

Cely  Papers.     Calis  '  Calais  ',  200. 

-ail,  -eil.  St.  Editha.  coiinselle,  3;  consyler,  725;  bdtelle,  35; 
vftel. 

Shillingford.     counselle,  18. 

Sir  J.  Fortescue  (1470).     ve'sstflls,  123,  vltalles,  132  (also  vessdilles, 


Capgraves  Chron.  councelle,  171. 
-eir.  Gregory  s  Chron.  devyr,  152. 
4ai.  Cely  Papers.  Thursdfl,  12. 


-ail.  i6th  Century. 

Lord  Berners  Froissart.     battel,  1.121,  batelles,  i.  19  ;  counsell  (N.), 

i.  34;  ve'ssdl,  i.  36,  r&scalle,  i.  50;  travdl,  i.  222;  trayvell  (N.), 

i.  222,  traveled  (P.P.),  i.  222;  applied,  i.  43  (also  batayle,  i. 

121);  vitaylle,  i.  33;   aparailed,  i.  30;   counsaile  (Vb.  and  N.), 

i.  28. 

Ascham.     battell,  Tox.  76  (also  battayle,  Tox.  73). 
Sir  Thos.  Smith,  Rep.  Angl.     councils,  15;  battell,  15,  63. 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     council,  5;  travelled  'worked',  57;  travel 

(present-day  sense),  62. 

-ain,  -ein.     Lord  Berners'  Froissart.    certenly,  i.  194;  capten,  i.  255. 
Thos.  Lever's  Sermons,     bargms,  p.  96;  citizms,  101. 
Roper's  Life  of  Sir  2.  More  (1566).     certyne,  vi.  35;  Ann  Bullen, 

xx.  7. 

Ascham.     mdynteners. 

Sir  Thos.  Smith,     villens,  Rep.  Angl.  130;  forren,  Rep.  Angl.  59. 
Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey.    chappekns,  25  ;  certyn,  90  (also  chapeleyn, 

4). 

Q.  Elizabeth,     vilanous,  Letters  53;  Transl.  14. 
-ais,  -eis.    Lord  Berners'  Froissart.     curtesy,  i.  30  ;  burgesses,  i.  205, 

&c.,  &c.  ;  unharn^st,  i.  46. 
Sir  Thos.  Smith.     Rep.  Angl.  128,  courtzsie. 
Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey.     palzce,  77  ;  Calice  (Place  N.),  67. 


28o       THE  VOWELS   OF   UNSTRESSED    SYLLABLES 

-ai,  -ei.     Gabriel  Harvey  s  Letter  Bk.    Mundy  (day  of  week),  40 ;  ther 

'their',  23. 
Q.  Elizabeth,     the  '  they ',  usual  form. 

ijth  Century. 
-ain,  -ein.     Verney  Memoirs,  vol.  ii.     sartinly,  Lady  Sussex,  82  (1642); 

captin,  Lady   Sussex,  103;    chapkn,  Lady  Sussex,  152.     Vol.  iii. 

villin,  Pen.  Denton,  228  (1655). 
-ail.     Aubrey  s  Lives,     travills,  ii.  15.     (A  letter  from  Isaac  Walton 

said  to  be  in  his  handwriting.) 
-air,  -eir.     Vol.  ii.     the  'they',  Lady  Sussex,  81  (1642);  ther  '  their', 

Sir  J.  Leeke,  48  (1641). 
-ai,  -ei.     Vol.  ii.     Fridy,  Lady  Sussex,  156  (1642);  Mundy,  Mall  V. 

380  (1647). 

Summary. 

The  diphthongs  at" 'and  ei,  already  in  M.E.  probably,  levelled  under 
[aez]  or  [ei']  in  stressed  syllables,  are  simplified  in  unstressed  syllables  to 
a  simple  front  vowel,  probably  [A  written  sometimes  e,  sometimes  ;",  at 
least  as  early  as  the  first  half  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

Before  /  and  n  the  spelling  is  also  generally  e  or  i,  the  latter  becoming 
increasingly  more  frequent  in  course  of  time.  Certain  speakers  seem  to 
tend  to  [a]  expressed  by  a,  cf.  vitolles  (Sir  J.  Fortescue) ;  rascfllle  (Lord 
Berners);  viknous  (Q.  Elizabeth).  Present-day  usage  leans,  on  the 
whole,  to  [9]  or  syllabic  /  in  [v/tlz,  bsetl],  &c.,  but  keeps  [/']  before  n  [v/'lm, 
kaeptih],  &c. 

Finally,  we  find  a  =  [3]  in  Cely  Papers — Thursda — but  more  fre- 
quently [/'],  as  at  present — written  y  by  Gabriel  Harvey  and  the  ladies  of 
the  Verney  family. 

In  the  unstressed  prefix  saint  =  [sn]  or  [san]  we  get  apparently  the 
type  corresponding  to  the  Early  Modern  an  in  \i\an-ous  [vibn-as],  the 
old  forms  syn  [sm],  &c.,  only  surviving  in  St.  John,  St.  Clair  (or  Sinclair), 
St.  Leger  as  family  names  [smdzan],  &c.,  where  the  stressing  of  the  first 
syllable  is  clearly  more  recent  than  the  unstressed  forms  in  which  [sm] 
arose. 

Machin  has  selenger,  and  must  have  stressed  the  first  syllable,  since  the 
intrusive  -«-  (cf.  messenger,  &c.)  is  only  found  in  unstressed  syllables. 

See  p.  329  for  weak  forms  of  old  they,  theym,  theyr. 

M.E.  oi  in  Unstressed  Syllables, 
ijth  Century. 

-ois.     Gregory's  Chron.     Camyse  <  Camoys ',  178;  porpys  'porpoise', 

141. 

Bury  Wills  (1501).     toorkes  <  turquoise  ',91. 
-oir.     Will  of  Joan  Raleghe  (Oxf.,   1455).     [my   maner   of  Ilvenden, 

L.D.D.  68.  14. 

Will  of  Lord  Lovel  (Oxf.,  1455).     manoirs,  L.  D.  D.  74.  9  ;  manourys, 
ibid.  73.  i. 


CONFUSION   OF   SUFFIXES— LOSS  281 

l6th  Century. 

-ois.     Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey.     turkkas  '  turquoise',  167. 
Thos.  Wilson  (1560).     turcasse,  206. 
Euphues.     torteyse,  61. 

-oin.  Machyris  Diary.  Gaskyn,  292  ;  Spenser,  Close  to  Shep.  Cal., 
1  Mr.  George  Gaskin,  a  wittie  gentleman,  and  the  very  chefe  of  our 
late  rymers '. 

ijth  Century. 

-oin.  Verney  Memoirs,  vol.  ii.  Borgin  (Burgoyne),  Gary  V.,  71  (1642). 
-ois.  Vol.  ii.  torteshell,  Lady  V.,  315  (1648). 

Vol.  Hi.     tortus  shell,  Mrs.  Spencer,  50  (1652). 

Vol.  iv.  Shammee  Gloves,  Sir  R.  V.,  327  (1685);  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn — 
Lucky  Chance  (1686),  2.  i,  has  shammy  breeches. 

Miltoris  Comus,  Sabrina's  Song,     turkz's. 

Sir  Thos.  Browne,  Vulgar  Errors,     porposes,  bk.  iii,  ch.  26. 

Marstoris  Eastward  Ho.     porpice. 

Confusion  0/"-eous,  -ous;  -iour,  -our,  &c. ;  -ier,  -er. 

Cely  Papers,     marvylyusly ,  165. 
Jul.  Berners.     laborous. 

Sir  T.  Ely  of.     labor  ousely,  2.  275. 

Latimer's  Serm.     rightuous,  181. 

Ascham.     barbariousnes •,  Tox.  28. 

Shakespeare,  First  Fol.     ieallious,  Merry  Wives,  iv.  5. 

Lady  Hobart.  serus  ( serious ',  Verney  Mem.  iv.  41  (1663);  Sir 
R.  L'Estrange,  stupendous •,  Dissenters  Sayings,  pt.  2.  56  (1682). 

Weniworth  Pprs.     covetious,  102,  mischevyous,  174. 

Reg.  for  Council  of  the  Nth.  mysbehavors,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.,  i.  57 
(1484). 

Lord  Berners'  Froissart.     behavour,  1.69. 

Sir  T.  Elyot.     hauour  'good  behaviour',  2.  409. 

Q.  Elizabeth,     behavor,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  28.  • 

We  may  note  that  Lady  Wentworth's  mischevyous  [m/stjivzbs]  is  now  one 
of  the  worst  possible  vulgarisms,  and  covetious  would  run  it  pretty  close. 

Much  has  been  written  on  the  confusion  of  these  suffixes,  cf.  Jespersen, 
Mod.  Engl.  Gr.  9.  82,  &c.,  and  Muller,  Engl.  Lautlehre  nach  James 
Elphinston,  §§  208-1 2. 

Lord  Berners'  Froissart.  fronters,  i.  72,  i.  125;  barrers,  i.  129; 
currers,  i.  137. 

Loss  of  Vowel. 
Initial  weak  syllable. 

St.  Editha — scomfytyd,  67;    Pecok — pistle\   Cely  Pprs. — pwoyniment, 

71  ;  Lord  Berners — poyntment,  i.  215  ;  a  great  rayne  and  a  clyps,  i. 

297;    Latimer — poticaries,    86,   leauen  'eleven',   102;    Ascham — 

spence   l  expenditure ' ;    Machyn — posiyll  '  apostle  ',   salt  '  assault ', 

282;  Q.  Elizabeth — scusis  'excuses'. 

Lady  Hobart.     'amel (  enamel',  Verney  Mem.  iii.  25  (1650). 
Peter    Wentworth.      Querry    'equerry'    (now    generally    [ekwan']), 

Wentw.  Pprs.  409,  433,  443  (twice). 


282       THE  VOWELS  OF  UNSTRESSED   SYLLABLES 

Loss  of  -i  before  -ah  followed  by  suffix. 

Bokenam — embelshyn  'embellish',  Ann.  341;  Capgrave's  Chron. — 
banchid  '  banished ',  187,  punchid  '  punished  ',29. 

Loss  of  vowel  (-i-)  in  super L  suffix. 

Siege   of  Rouen — ryalste    '  royalest ',  27;    Lord  Berners — the  moost 
outragioust people,  i.  311 ;  Q.  Elizabeth — carefulst,  Lttrs.  48,  thank- 
fulst,  ibid.  66 ;  Otway — ungrateful?  st,  Friendship  in  Love. 

Loss  of  vowel  immediately  after  chief  stress,  before  -n. 
Cely  Papers,     reknyng,  145. 

Loss  of  -e-,  &c.,  before  -r  +  vowel. 

Marg.  Pastbn — Margretys,  i.  236  ;  Elyot — robry,  Gou.  i.  273,  ii.  86; 
Latimer — Deanry,  67  ;  Lever's  Sermons — robry  >  27,  brybry,  34  ; 
Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs. — trechrously,  73. 

Loss  of  vowel  (-i?)  before  -n. 

Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs. — reasnable,  13;  Edw.  Alleyn — parsnage, 
Alleyne  Pprs.,  p.  xiii  (1610). 

(a)  Loss  of  vowel  after  and  before  another  cons. ;  (b)  also  after  -r  and 

before  a  vowel,  with  shifting  of  stress. 
(a)   Bokenam—  spyrtys   'spirits',    Pr.    Marg.   48;    Capgrave — barnes 

'barons',  171  (twice). 
(£)  Latimer — shriues  '  sheriffs ',  154. 

Loss  of  vowel  following  first,  stressed  syllable,  between  consonants. 

S.  of  Rouen — enmys,  24;  singler,  Cov.  Leet  72  (1424);  Marg. 
Paston-^/aw/^y,  ii.  83  ;  Gregory,  cytsyn  '  citizen ',  64 ;  Doll  Leake — 
bisnis,  Verney  Mem.  iv.  113  (1665);  Wm.  Baker,  Rules  for  True 
Spelling  (1724) — medson  '  medicine',  venzin  'venison'. 

Loss  of  vowel  immediately  after  stressed  syllable,  before  weak  vowel  or  (h-). 
Gregory,     unt  hym  (unto),  218. 

Loss  of-i-  after  front  vowel. 

Marg.  Paston.    payt '  pay  it ',  i.  256. 

Other  losses  after  stressed  syllable. 
Marg.  Paston.    yts  'it  is',  ii.  386. 

Loss  of  syllable  in  the  middle  of  words. 

Machyn.     Barmsey  '  Bermondsey ',  Chamley  '  Cholmondeley '. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL  SOUNDS 

THE  consonantal  changes  which  we  have  now  to  consider  are  remark- 
able in  that  while  the  results  were  undoubtedly  characteristic  of  English 
speech  for  several  centuries,  a  very  large  number  of  those  pronunciations, 
the  existence  of  which  can  be  proved  by  occasional  spellings  oft-times 
repeated,  by  rhymes  and  by  the  statements  of  the  grammarians,  have, 
during  the  last  hundred  years  or  so,  been  eliminated  from  polite  speech, 
and  survive  only  in  Provincial  or  Vulgar  forms  of  English.  Such  are 
the  added  -d  in  gownd,  or  -/  in  sermont,  &c.  Others,  again,  survive  in 
what  is  rapidly  becoming  archaic  usage,  although,  like  '  the  dropping  of 
the  g '  in  shilling  &c.,  they  are  still  widespread  among  large  classes  of  the 
best  speakers,  no  less  than  among  the  worst.  Yet  other  tendencies  in  the 
pronunciation  of  consonantal  combinations  are  repudiated  altogether  by 
purists  as  slipshod,  while  many  persons  who  slip  into  them  quite  naturally 
in  rapid  speech  would  disavow  any  such  habits  if  questioned  upon 
the  subject.  To  this  class  belongs  the  dropping  of  /  in  mostly,  roast 
beef,  &c. 

If  we  could  recall  speakers  from  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies it  is  probable  that  what  would  strike  us  most  would  be  the  pranks 
that  even  the  most  refined  and  well-bred  persons  would  play  with  the 
consonants.  From  this  point  of  view  the  English  of  these  periods  would 
appear  to  us  with  our  modern  standards  as  a  mixture  of  rusticity,  slip- 
shodness,  and  vulgarity.  It  is,  I  think,  impossible  to  doubt  that  speakers 
who,  from  their  education  or  their  social  experience,  or  both,  must  have 
been  among  the  most  irreproachable  of  their  time,  who  could  and  did 
mingle  with  the  great  world,  really  did  speak  in  what  we  should  now 
consider  a  most  reprehensible  manner.  The  testimony  from  all  sources 
is  too  strong  to  be  ignoted.  We  might  disbelieve,  or  hesitate  as  to  the 
interpretation  of  any  one  authority,  if  unsupported  by  other  evidence,  but 
when  all  tell  the  same  tale,  when  we  find  Pope  rhyming  neglects  with  sex, 
the  Verney  ladies  and  Lady  Wentworth  writing  respeck,  prospeck,  strick, 
and  so  on,  and  the  writers  on  pronunciation  before,  after,  and  contem- 
porary with  these  personages  deliberately  stating  that  final  /  is  omitted  in 
a  long  list  of  words  which  includes  the  above,  then  we  must  admit  that 
if  all  this  is  not  conclusive  evidence  on  the  point,  it  will  be  impossible 
ever  to  get  any  reliable  information  regarding  the  modes  of  speech  of  past 
ages. 

But  the  case  for  taking  these  various  indications  seriously  becomes 
stronger  when  we  discover  that  the  existence  of  many  of  these,  to  us, 
peculiar  pronunciations*  is  established  by  occasional  spellings  reaching 


284  CHANGES   IN  CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

far  back  to  the  fifteenth  century,  and  beyond  that  into  the  M.E.  period 
itself. 

In  fact  the  more  persistently  the  records  of  English  speech  are  studied, 
the  more  it  becomes  apparent  that  the  same  general  tendencies  of  change 
which  are  even  to-day  in  force  have  been  active  for  centuries.  This  is 
nowhere  truer  than  of  consonantal  changes,  but  it  holds  good  also  of 
the  treatment  of  vowels  in  unstressed  positions,  and,  to  some  extent  also, 
of  the  isolative  changes  in  vowels  in  stressed  syllables. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  earlier  in  this  book  that  down  to  far  on  in  the 
eighteenth  century  the  natural  tendencies  were  allowed  more  or  less 
unrestricted  play,  and  this  among  speakers  of  the  Received  Standard  of  the 
period  no  less  than  among  the  more  uneducated.  Purists,  as  we  know, 
existed,  who  protested  against  this  or  that  usage,  but  few  listened  to 
them.  Standards  of  refinement  were  certainly  recognized,  there  were 
fashionable  tricks  which  had  a  vogue  and  died  away,  vulgarisms  and 
rusticities  were  unquestionably  clearly  perceived,  and  laughed  at  by  those 
who  had  the  entrance  to  the  beau  monde  and  were  conversant  with  its 
usages.  But  the  standards  of  this  class  of  speakers  were  not  those  of  the 
self-constituted  authorities  on  '  correctness '  who  abound  from  the  seven- 
teenth century  onwards.  Habits  of  speech  which  provoked  the  mirth  of 
the  former  because  they  were  not  those  of  persons  of  quality  and  fashion, 
were  not,  in  most  cases,  the  kind  of  *  errors '  which  came  under  the  lash 
of  the  purists.  It  is  characteristic  of  those  who  set  out  to  instruct  the 
public  at  large  how  they  ought  to  pronounce,  that  they  almost  invariably 
fix  as  subject  for  their  censure,  among  other  things  it  is  true,  upon 
those  very  features  in  the  natural  speech  of  their  time  which  are  most 
deeply  rooted  in  traditional  habit  and  destined  to  remain  as  bases  for  the 
language  of  the  future.  This  is  true  of  Gill  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  to  some  extent  of  Cooper  in  the  last  quarter  of 
the  same  century,  of  Swift  early  in  the  following  century,  and  of  Elphin- 
ston  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  With  all  respect  be  it 
said,  it  is  true  of  Mr.  Bridges  in  his  heroic  if  unavailing  onslaughts  upon 
the  present  treatment  in  ordinary  English  of  the  vowels  of  unstressed 
syllables,  grounded  as  this  is  upon  tendencies  which  have  prevailed  in  our 
language  from  its  earliest  history. 

Among  all  the  writers  on  pronunciation  during  the  eighteenth  century, 
Jones,  in  the  Expert  Orthographer,  1701,  appears  to  be  one  of  the  least 
censorious.  He  records  unblushingly,  and  without  hostile  comment, 
omissions  and  additions  of  consonants  which  we  know  from  other 
sources,  indeed,  were  habitual,  but  which  it  must  have  made  some  of  his 
colleagues  in  the  art  of  English  speech  extremely  angry  to  see  set  down  in 
this  cool  matter-of-fact  way.  Jones's  business  is  primarily  to  teach  English 
spelling,  but  his  method  of  introducing  each  rule  with  the  words  '  When 
is  the  sound  of  such  and  such  a  letter  written  in  such  and  such  a  way  ? ' 
enables  him  to  shed  an  amount  of  light  upon  the  genuine  pronunciation 
of  his  time  which  greatly  exceeds  that  thrown  by  mo^t  other  books  of  the 
kind  before  and  for  a  long  time  after  him.  Now  nearly  all  Jones's  state- 
ments are  shown  to  be  true  to  fact  by  the  enlightening  spellings  of  the 
Verney  family  and  of  Lady  Wentworth,  to  say  nothing  of  the  rhymes  of 
good  poets,  but  they  must  have  appeared  very  outrageous  to  those  whose 


THE   NEW   'CORRECTNESS'  285 

main  object  was  to  get  as  far  away  as  possible  from  realities,  and  to 
construct  a  fantastic  form  of  English  from  the  spelling. 

But  if  the  protests  of  the  purists  passed  unheeded  among  '  the  wits  of 
either  Charles's  days'  and  those  of  James  II,  Anne,  and  the  first  two 
Georges,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  grammarians  came  to  their  own  at 
last — up  to  a  point.  The  process  of  '  improvement ',  so  far  as  one  can 
see,  but  it  is  absurd  to  attempt  great  preciseness  in  these  matters,  began 
roughly  in  the  third  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  has  gained  in 
force  and  volume  ever  since. 

But  if  the  triumph  of  the  pedagogue  is  thus  unquestionable,  the  success, 
as  has  been  suggested  repeatedly  in  this  book,  must  be  set  down  rather 
to  social  causes  than  to  a  sudden  capacity  on  the  part  of  the  Orthoepist 
to  persuade  those  to  whom  he  had  so  long  preached  in  vain.  It  was 
assuredly  not  the  Verneys  and  Wentworths,  the  Lady  Hobarts,  or  '  my 
sister  Carburer '  who  first  adopted  the  new-fangled  English.  These  and 
their  like,  and  long  may  they  flourish,  have  hardly  done  so  completely  at 
the  present  time.  It  was  the  new  men  and  their  families,  who  were 
winning  a  place  in  the  great  world  and  in  public  affairs,  who  would  be 
attracted  by  the  refinements  offered  by  the  new  and  '  correct '  system  of 
pronunciation  which  they  learnt  from  their  masters  of  rhetoric,  or  from 
their  University  tutors.  That  this  new,  wealthy,  and  often  highly 
cultivated  class  should  gradually  have  imposed  upon  society  at  large  the 
gentilities  of  the  academy  of  deportment,  and  have  been  able  to  insist 
with  success  upon  gown  instead  of  ' gownd ',  strict  instead  of  '  strick ', 
vermin  instead  of  *  varmint ',  richest  instead  of  '  richis ',  and  so  on,  would 
have  seemed  incredible  to  Lady  Wentworth  and  her  friends.  But  so  it 
has  come  about.  Possibly  the  relations  of  Dr.  Johnson  and  Mrs.  Piozzi 
are  types  of  the  process  at  its  best,  and  one  may  suppose  that  the  great 
man  would  not  hesitate  to  correct  what  he  took  to  be  improprieties  of 
speech  in  his  circle,  and  that  pronunciations  which  received  his  sanction 
would  rapidly  gain  currency  far  and  wide.  In  fact,  it  is  not  wholly 
fanciful  to  attribute  in  no  small  measure  to  the  personal  prestige  of 
Johnson,  a  prestige  of  a  very  peculiar  kind,  more  powerful  perhaps  than 
that  possessed  by  any  purely  learned  man  before  or  since,  the  very 
marked  reaction  in  favour  of  a  certain  type  of  '  correctness '  in  speech 
which  set  in  about  this  time,  and  which  has  continued  ever  since  to  make 
fresh  inroads  upon  established  tradition.  But  even  so  mighty  a  force  as 
Samuel  Johnson  required  suitable  social  conditions  in  which  to  exert  his 
influence. 

The  gradual  penetration  of  those  circles  of  society  whose  speech  con- 
stitutes the  Received  Standard  with  something  approaching  the  ideals  of 
elegance  and  correctness  maintained  by  the  purists  has  been  a  slow 
process,  and  though  each  generation  probably  sees  something  of  the  old 
usage  given  up,  there  are  many  strongholds  of  ancient  habits  which  still 
resist  the  encroachments  of  innovation.  '  EcFard\  '  husbari\  '  edjikate', 
1  Injun ',  '  ooman ',  '  masty'  (mastiff), ( pagin '  (pageant),  and  the  like,  have 
gone,  but  [gnh/dz,  n.?n'dz,  ofn,  l/tratja,  bousan],  and  many  others,  survive 
from  the  wreckage.  These  natural  and  historic  forms  are  growing 
steadily  less,  and  every  '  advance '  in  education  sweeps  more  of  them 
away.  It  will  be  interesting  to  see  what  fresh  pranks  the  rising  genera- 


286  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL    SOUNDS 

tion  will  play,  and  with  what  new  refinements  they  will  adorn  our 
language. 

As  regards  the  dialectal  origin  of  the  consonantal  changes,  it  is  difficult 
to  assign  any  specific  Regional  starting-point  to  most  of  them.  It  seems 
probable  that  the  loss  or  assimilation  of  consonants  in  groups,  the  drop- 
ping of  final  consonants,  the  development  of  parasitic  consonants  between 
certain  combinations,  and  so  on,  belong  to  the  universal  tendencies  of 
English  speech.  We  find  evidence  of  all  these  changes  East,  West,  and 
Centre  in  the  dialects  of  the  South  and  Midlands,  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
An  examination  of  the  early  forms  of  Place  Names  would  certainly  reveal 
earlier  examples  of  these  and  other  processes  than  any  given  below,  and 
might  also  enable  us  to  say  in  which  areas  they  were  most  prevalent. 
Other  changes,  such  as  the  loss  of  initial  w-  before  rounded  vowels,  the 
development  of  w-  before  certain  other  rounded  vowels,  the  development 
of  initial  y-  [j]  before  certain  front  vowels,  might  be  localized  with  more 
precision  were  our  knowledge  of  the  distribution  of  Regional  dialect 
features  during  the  Late  M.E.  and  Early  Modern  periods  more  complete 
than  it  is  at  present. 

Whatever  be  the  area  whence  these  various  consonant  changes 
started,  nearly  all  of  them  are  found  fairly  early  in  the  London  dialect, 
and  later  in  Received  Standard. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  it  has  seemed  best  to  deal  with  the  various 
phenomena  in  groups,  according  to  the  general  nature  of  the  process 
involved,  rather  than  by  taking  every  consonant  separately  and  discussing 
everything  that  may  happen  to  it. 

The  following  general  classification  of  consonant  changes  includes  under 
its  several  heads  most  of  the  chief  points  that  demand  attention. 


(4 


A.   Isolative  Changes  without  either  Loss  or  Addition. 

-h  becomes  -f- ;  (a)  final,  (b)  in  combination,  -ht. 
-ng  becomes  -n,  i.  e.  [n]  becomes  [n]. 


ft1 


(5 


th  [J>]  becomes/;  and  PS]  becomes  z>,  initially,  medially,  or  finally. 
-s-  becomes  -sh,  i.e.  [sj  becomes  [|],  medially  and  finally. 
Interchange  of  w-  and  v-,  and  of  v-  and  w-. 


B.    Combinative  Changes  involving  neither  Loss  nor  Addition. 

(1)  ty,  i.e.  [tj]  becomes  [tj]  initially  and  medially. 

(2)  [sj]  becomes  [f]  initially  and  medially. 


djl  becomes  Tdz]  initially  and  medially. 
Yjj  becomes  [z]  medially. 
Assimilation  of  -nf-  to  -/»f-. 

C.   Loss  of  Consonants. 


.     (i)  Loss  of  initial  h-\  (a)  stressed,  (b)  in  unstressed  syllables. 
^  (2)  Loss  of  w- :  (a)  in  stressed,  (b)  in  unstressed  syllables. 

(3)  Loss  of  -/-  before  certain  consonants,  immediately  following. 

(4)  Loss  of  r :  (a)  medially  before  a  following  consonant,  (b)  finally. 

(5)  Loss  of  consonants,  especially  of  d,  /,  when  final,  immediately  pre- 
ceded by  another  consonant. 


MAPPING   OUT  THE   GROUND  287 

(6)  Loss  of  consonants  between  vowels,  or  after  a  consonant  before 
a  following  vowel. 

(7)  Loss  of  back  or  front-open-voiceless  consonant,  written  h  or  gh 
(a)  finally,  (b)  in  combination  with  -/  (written  -gh/). 

(8)  Loss  of  final  -f. 

(9)  Loss  of  n  before  other  consonants,  in  unstressed  syllables. 

D.    Addition  of  Consonants. 

(  i  )  Of  w-  before  rounded  vowels. 
) 


(2)  Ory-  [j]  before  front  vowels. 

Of  [j]  after  £-,  g-  before  front  or  originally  front  vowels. 

(4)  Of  </,  medially  in  combination  -nl-  ;  of  b  in  combination  -ml-. 

(5)  Of  -d-  or  -/-  finally  after  -r,  -n,  -/,  -s,  -/. 

(6)  Of  h-  initially  before  vowels. 

E.  Voicing  of  Voiceless  Consonants. 

(1)  Of  initial  wh-  =  [w]. 

(2)  Of  other  consonants:   (a)  initially,   (b)  medially;    (i)   between 
vowels,  (2)  after  a  voiced  consonant  before  a  vowel. 

F.  Unvoicing  of  Voiced  Consonants. 


It  will  be  observed  that  the  terminology  employed  in  the  above  system 
of  classification  is  not  in  all  cases  strictly  accurate  from  the  phonetic 
point  of  view.  Thus  h-  the  aspirate  is  not  a  consonant,  but  a  '  rough 
breathing',  or  stressed-breath-on-glide.  Again,  when  gown  is  pro- 
nounced gownd  there  is  in  reality  no  '  addition '  of  a  consonant  at  the 
end ;  all  that  happens  is  that  denasalization  takes  place  before  the 
tongue-position  of  -n-  is  dissolved.  The  effect  to  the  ear  is  that  a  new 
and  different  consonant  is  added  to  the  -n  ;  but  from  the  phonetic  point 
of  view  there  is  a  diminution,  not  a  renewal  of  activity.  Similarly,  we 
talk  popularly  of  '  dropping  *  a  final  consonant  when  husban*  instead  of 
husband  is  pronounced.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  that  happens  in  the 
former  case  is  that  nasalization  continues  to  the  end  of  the  articulation. 
With  this  warning  there  can,  I  think,  be  no  danger  in  adopting  for  the 
sake  of  convenience  a  popular  terminology  which  regards  the  acoustic 
effect  upon  the  listener,  rather  than  the  actual  activities  of  the  speaker. 


A.  Isolative  Changes  without  either  Loss  or  Addition. 
M.E.  -(g)h  becomes  [-f]. 

M.E.  h,  gh  (back-open-voiceless  cons.),  at  the  end  of  a  syllable,  or 
before  -/,  either  disappears  altogether  in  the  South  or  becomes  -f.  For 
the  disappearance  see  p.  305. 

The  change  to  /is  the  result  of  a  strong  lip-modifying  ('  labializing') 
tendency,  which  at  last  was  so  pronounced  that  the  back  consonant 
which  it  accompanied  was  gradually  weakened  and  finally  lost  altogether, 


288  CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL  SOUNDS 

leaving  presumably  a  lip-open  consonant,  which  generally  tends  to 
become  the  lip-teeth  [f].  In  some  dialects  the  latter  sound  was  probably 
developed  in  M.E.  It  cannot  have  been  fully  formed  in  London  English 
much  before  the  fifteenth  century  or  it  would  have  been  perpetuated  in 
the  spelling  of  some  words  at  least.  The  following  examples  in  some 
cases  show  -f  in  some  forms  which  in  present-day  Received  Standard 
have  lost  the  consonant  completely.  Some  of  the  examples  are  from 
documents  which  may  show  Regional  usage  differing  from  that  of  the 
London  Standard  of  the  period.  The  spelling  Edyngburth  '  Edinburgh  ', 
in  Berners'  Froissart  i.  85,  shows  that  the  old  sound  still  preserved  in 
the  North  was  unfamiliar  to  him. 

Spellings  with  -f  are  : — thorf  'through',  M.  Paston  ii.  197,  1465; 
troff* trough',  1553,  R.  Bradley' s  Will  (Leics.),  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  164. 
14  ;  to  laffe,  Letter  of  Barnabe  Googe,  Arber,  p.  12,  1563  ;  Az^?  rhymes 
distaff e,  Gabr.  Harvey's  Letter  Bk.  117,  1573-80;  troffe  rhymes  skoffe, 
ibid.  ;  '  hold  their  hips  and  loffe,  Shakesp.,  First  Fol.,  1621,  Midsummer 
N.  D.  i.  i ;  *  and  coffing  drowns  the  parson's  saw ',  L.  L.  Lost  (Song  at 
end  of  Play)  ;  also  chuffes,  First  Pt.,  Hen.  IV,  Act  11,  Sc.  ii  ;  Butler,  1634, 
'  laugh,  cough,  tough,  enough  commonly  sound  like  laf,  cof,  tuf,  enuf  ' ; 
'I  laft  at  him',  Mall  V.,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  379,  1647  ;  Cooper,  1685, 
notes  -f  in  rough,  trough,  and  that  enough  as  a  '  numeral '  is  '  pronounced, 
and  better  written  enow '. 

It  seems  clear  from  the  above  that  -f  was  pronounced,  from  early  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  in  those  words  of  this  class  in  which  we  now  use 
the  sound.  (For  the  vowel  sound  and  the  spelling  of  laugh  cf.  p.  205.) 
No  doubt  other  words  were  included  by  some  speakers.  It  is  probable 
that  thofivc  though,  which  Fielding  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Mrs.  Honour, 
Sophia  Western's  waiting- woman  in  Tom  Jones  (1748),  was  at  that  time 
provincial  or  vulgar. 

-ht-  becomes  ft. 

The  curious  spelling  unsoffethe  'unsought*,  Gregory's  Chron.  192, 
1450-70,  is  undoubtedly  put  for  '  unsoft'.  The  rhyme  manslaughter — 
laughters  Roister  Doister,  1553,  is  ambiguous. 

Marston  rhymes  after — daughter,  Eastward  Hoe,  v.  i,  1 604 ;  the 
Verney  Papers  have  dafter  (e\  1629,  Mrs.  Wiseman,  p.  143  ;  Butler,  1634, 
'  daughter  commonly  sounded  dafter ' ;  Verney  Mem. — dafter,  ii.  203, 
Mrs.  Isham,  1645,  "°-  m-  3X5  (three  times),  1657,  and  again,  iii.  232, 
1655;  Jones,  1701 — 'some  sound  daughter,  bought,  naught,  taught, 
nought,  &c.,  as  with  an/j  saying  daufter,  boft* ,  &c.,  pp.  54  and  55.  It  is 
hard  to  say  how  far  Jones  is  to  be  trusted  not  to  include  provincialisms 
or  vulgarisms  among  his  pronunciations.  Mrs.  Honour,  the  waiting- 
woman  in  Tom  Jones,  writes  soft  'sought'  in  a  letter.  Probably  by 
Fielding's  time,  at  any  rate,  many  of  the  -ft  pronunciations  given  by 
Jones  were  becoming  antiquated  among  the  best  speakers.  To  judge 
from  the  statements  of  the  grammarian,  and  the  evidence  of  the  occa- 
sional spellings,  it  certainly  looks  as  though  throughout  the  seventeenth 
century  the  usage  was  not  definitely  fixed  as  regards  the  distribution  of 
the  various  types,  so  that  dater,  daughter,  dafter  [dsetar,  dotar,  dseftar, 
slsetar,  sloter,  slsefter,  toft,  b5t],  &c.,  were  all  in  use. 


'DROPPING   THE  g>  IN   FINAL   -ing  289 

There  is  no  assignable  reason  beyond  the  fortunes  of  apparently 
arbitrary  selection  from  among  the  various  types  why  we  should  say 
[slots]  on  the  one  hand,  and  [l^fta]  on  the  other. 

Substitution  of  -th  [J>]  for  -gh  =  [x]  or  [j], 

We  sometimes  get  a  substitution  of  [))]  for  the  old  voiceless  back  or 
front  open  consonants,  where  these  still  survive  among  an  older  genera- 
tion, or  occur  in  words  introduced  from  another  dialect.  I  take  the 
spelling  Edyngburth  'Edinburgh',  Berners'  Froissart  i.  85,  and 
Machyn's  Luthborow  '  Loughborough ',  309,  to  be  examples  of  such 
a  substitution,  and  likewise  Peter  Wentworth's  Usquebath  '  Usquebaugh  ', 
W.  Pprs.  196,  1711;  Jones's  sith  for  sigh  must  also  be  a  survival  of 
such  an  imitative  pronunciation.  The  same  is  true  of  the  modern 
pronunciation  [kij>l/]  for  Keighley,  Yorks.,  the  younger  generation  of 
the  district  no  longer  using  the  old  sound,  and  finding  it  more  convenient 
to  adopt  one  which  can  be  mastered  by  speakers  from  farther  south. 

Substitution  of  \_-ni\for  [rj],  popularly  known  as  '  dropping  the  g  '  in 
the  Suffix  -ing. 

Such  pronunciations  as  hunting  shilling  &c.,  which  for  some  reason  are 
considered  as  a  subject  of  jest  in  certain  circles,  while  in  others  they  are 
censured,  are  of  considerable  antiquity,  as  the  examples  which  follow  will 
show.  The  substitution  of  '  n '  for  '  ng '  [rj]  in  Present  Participles  and 
Verbal  Nouns  was  at  one  time  apparently  almost  universal  in  every  type 
of  English  speech.  At  the  present  time  this  habit  obtains  in  practically 
all  Regional  dialects  of  the  South  and  South  Midlands,  and  among  large 
sections  of  speakers  of  Received  Standard  English.  Apparently  in  the 
twenties  of  the  last  century  a  strong  reaction  set  in  in  favour  of  the  more 
'  correct '  pronunciation,  as  it  was  considered,  and  what  was  in  reality  an 
innovation,  based  upon  the  spelling,  was  so  far  successful  that  the  [rj] 
pronunciation  ('  with  -ng')  has  now  a  vogue  among  the  educated  at  least 
as  wide  as  the  more  conservative  one  with  -n. 

It  is  probable  that  a  special  search  would  reveal  far  more  numerous 
and  earlier  forms  of  the  -n  spellings  than  those  I  have  noted. 

Norf.  Guilds  (1389),  holdyn,  63,  drynkyn,  59,  66,  1389;  Marg.Paston, 
wrytyn  (N.),  i.  49,  1443,  g^yn  (N.),  ii.  74,  dyvysen  (N.),  ii.  92,  hangyn 
(Part.),  ii.  124;  Agn.  Paston,  walkyn,  Past.  Lttrs.  i.  114, 1450;  Gregory, 
I45°-7o>  blasyn  sterre  'comet',  80,  hayryn  'herring',  169;  Guild 
of  Tailors,  Exeter,  hyndryn,  317,  1466;  Sir  Richard  Gresham,  1520, 
hanggyns,  Ellis  iii.  i.  234,  235;  Machyn,  1550-,  syttyn,  33,  rydyn, 
183,  standyn,  191,  syngyne,  281;  Q.  Elizabeth,  besichen^  Letter  to 
James  VI,  60. 

The  following  are  taken  from  Verney  Memoirs : — seem,  missin,  ii.  63, 
betn,  70,  comin,  71,  plondarin,  71,  all  written  by  Gary  Verney,  1642; 
I  may  go  a  beggin,  a  beggen,  Mrs.  Isham,  ii.  207,  220,  1645;  shillms, 
Doll  Smith,  iii.  409,  1657;  disoblegin,  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  55,  1664; 
lodgens,  Lady  Elmes,  iv.  121,  1665,  lodgins,  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  126, 
1665. 

u 


29o  CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

Cooper,  1685,  includes  among  words  having  the  same  sound  though 
differently  spelt,  coming  —  cummin,  coughing  —  coffin,  jerkin—  jerking',  Lord 
Rochester,  1647-80,  rhymes/tfrMz>^  —  \)Z2cc-garden  [fserdan],  in  'Against 
Disturbers  of  the  Pit*. 

Lady  Wentworth  has  takin,  dynin-room,  47,  lodgins,  45,  levin  '  living', 
54,  Feeldin,  58,  approachm,  66,  buildin,  84,  Haystins,  56,  devertin  tricks, 
tf,  prancin  along,  57,  ingagin,  60,  digin  'digging',  6i,fardm,  99,  want 
of  dungin  '  dunging  ',  iii,mornin,  113,  stockins,  126,  wr  tints,  275,  the 
Anthem  for  the  Thanksgivin,  321.  Swift  in  the  Introd.  to  Polite  Con- 
versations puts  learnen  among  the  words  'as  pronounced  by  the  chief 
patterns  of  politeness  at  Court,  at  Levees',  &c.,  to  which  he  objects. 
Pope,  1713,  rhymes  gardens—  -farthings  -,  Epigr.  to  Lord  Radnor,  where 
the  latter  word  is  doubtless  pronounced  as  by  Lord  Rochester  and  Lady 
Wentworth.  Walker,  Rhet.  Gr.,  3rd  ed.,  1801,  hedges  a  good  deal.  He 
says  that  he  can  assert  that  the  best  speakers  do  not  invariably  pronounce 
-ing  to  rhyme  with  king,  but  rather  as  in.  He  recommends  -in  in  the 
Present  Participles  of  words  like  sing,  fling,  ring,  but  prefers  -ing  in 
others.  '  Our  best  speakers  universally  pronounce  singm,  Iringin,  flinging 
After  saying  '  What  a  trifling  omission  is  g  after  n  ',  he  goes  on  :  *  Trifling 
as  it  is,  it  savours  too  much  of  vulgarity  to  omit  -g  in  any  words  except 
the  -ifl^-type.  Writing,  reading,  speaking  are  certainly  preferable  to 
writin,  readin,  speakin,  wherever  the  language  has  the  least  degree  of 
solemnity.'  Walker  is  here  trying  to  run  with  the  hare  and  hunt  with  the 
hounds. 

-ng  written  for  -n. 

The  pronunciation  implied  by  this  spelling  may  be  heard  occasionally 
at  the  present  time,  sometimes  from  those  speakers  who  '  leave  out  the  -g  ' 
in  the  ending  -ing.  A  few  scattered  spellings  of  this  kind,  one  from  the 
fifteenth  and  others  from  the  sixteenth  century  onwards,  may  be  recorded. 

Lupinge  '  lupin  ',  the  plant,  Palladius  46.  60  ;  kusshing  '  cushion  ',  Thos. 
Pery,  1539,  Ellis  ii.  2.  150;  slouinglie,  Latimer  55,  'slovenly';  evyngsong, 
Machyn,  119,  &c.,  &c.;  J.  Alleyne,  Alleyne  Papers  16,  159-?,  fachenges 
'fashions';  chicking  'chicken',  Sir  R.  Verney,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  115, 
1653;  forting  'fortune',  otherwise  fortin,  cf.  p.  277;  lining  'linen', 
Lady  Hobart,  iii.  305,  1657;  Mrs.  Isham,  ibid.  iv.  108,  1663;  chapling 
1  chaplain  ',  Gary  Stewkley  (Verney),  ibid.  iv.  35,  1662  ;  fashing  '  fashion  ', 
Mrs.  Edm.,  ibid.  iv.  71,  1664;  childering  *  children',  Pen.  Denton, 
ibid.  iv.  469,  1692.  Lady  Wentworth,  early  in  the  following  century, 
writes  '  Lady  Evling  Pirpoynt  ',  and  her  daughter-in-law  Lady  Strafford, 
kttching,  W.  Papers  540,  her  son  Peter,  becktnged  l  beckoned  ',  108,  1710. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  how  far  some  of  these  are  not  inverted  spellings 
implying  that  -ng  has  for  the  writer  the  same  value  as  -n,  and  how  far,  on 
the  other  hand,  they  represent  genuine  pronunciations  with  [n].  Such 
pronunciations  undoubtedly  do  exist. 


Among  very  vulgar  speakers  —  not  in  London  alone  —  we  sometimes  hear 
noihink'  for  nothing  at  the  present  time.    Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  1557, 


/  INSTEAD   OF   th  291 

writes  hankyng,  p.  97,  and  Q.  Elizabeth,  in  1548,  ' brinkinge  of  me  up', 
and  'our  brinkers  up',  Ellis  i.  2.  154. 

This  pronunciation  is  referred  to  by  Elphinston,  1787,  who  remarks 
*  a  common  Londoner  talks  of  anny  think  else,  or  anny  thing  kelse',  and 
again,  '  English  vulgarity  will  utter  anny  think  (dhat  iz,  thingK) '. 

Assimilation  of\rj\  to  [n]  before  point-consonants — d,  t,  th. 

Shillingford  has  ley  nth  '  length ',  85 ;  Elyot's  Gouernour  has  strenthe, 
237;  Lady  Sussex,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  90,  has  kaindom  'kingdom'. 
Elphinston  regards  lenth,  strenth  as  *  the  Scottish  shiboleth ',  and  Walker 
as  '  the  sure  mark  of  provincial  pronunciation '. 

Change  of  th  [J>]  to  f ;  [$]  to  v. 

The  results  of  these  changes  are  heard  sporadically  at  the  present  time. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  such  pronunciations  as  [tif,  fri],  &c.,  for  teeth,  three, 
&c.,  are  characteristic  of  any  Regional  dialect  as  a  whole.  They  appear 
to  belong  rather  to  individuals  here  and  there,  and  they  seem  to  occur  more 
frequently  in  the  speech  of  the  lower  strata  of  London  speakers  than  else- 
where, though  they  may  survive  as  uncorrected  faults  of  childhood  among 
individuals  in  all  classes  and  belonging  to  any  region.  I  have  not  found 
any  very  early  examples,  but  the  following  are  of  some  interest. 

Finally,  Bk.  of  Quint.,  erf  =  ' earth ',  18,  1460-70;  Gregory  has 
Lambeffe  for  Lambeth,  229;  initially,  Machyn  \&&  frust  for  thrust,  21, 
and  Frogmorton  for  Throgmorton ;  medially,  Q.  Elizabeth,  bequived  ( be- 
queathed', Transl.  149;  and  finally,  John  Alleyne,  Alleyne  Papers,  helfe, 
15  and  1 6  (159-?),  and  Middleton,  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside,  has 
'neither  kiff  nor  kin',  Act  iv,  Sc.  i  (1630);  Mrs.  Isham  has  lofte  for 
loathe,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  220,  1645.  In  the  last  instance  the  -/  is  a  typical 
addition,  cf.  p.  309,  and  does  not  concern  us  for  the  moment. 

Elphinston,  in  1787,  refers  to  'the  tendency  of  the  low  English  to 
Redriph  and  loph  instead  of  Rotherhithe  and  loath',  cf.  Muller,  §  252. 
Readers  of  Cowper's  correspondence  are  familiar  with  his  pet  name 
' Mrs.  Frog'  for  Mrs.  Throgmorton,  which  shows  that  a  pronunciation 
of  the  name  similar  to  that  used  by  Machyn  still  existed. 

Lady  Wentworth  writes  threvoles  for  frivolous,  127,  which  rather  sug- 
gests that  she  pronounced  '  th '  as  '/* '. 

Final  and  medial  a  becomes  '  sh '  =  [J]. 

This  isolative  change  does  not  appear  to  be  widespread,  but  I  include  it 
because  I  find  that  I  have  a  few  early  examples  noted  among  my  collec- 
tions, and  it  is  referred  to  as  a  vulgarism  by  Elphinston  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  This  fact  makes  it  probable  that  the  early  forms  mean  some- 
thing, and  are  not  mere  scribal  vagaries. 

The  following  are  the  examples  I  have  noted : — R.  of  Brunne,  Handlyng 
Sinne,  1302,  reioshe  'rejoice',  2032,  vasshelage,  4610;  Bokenam,  1443, 
vertush,  Ann.  248,  mossh  'moss',  Ann.  360,  reioysshyng  ' rejoicing ',  Agn. 
401,  dysshese  'disease',  Agn.  614;  Engl.  Register  of  Oseney,  1460, 
blesshyng,  p.  13;  M.  Paston,  a  powter  vesshell,  ii.  75,  1461;  Caxton, 
kysshed  '  kissed',  Jason  85.  35 ;  Machyn  has  the  pry nc  he  of  Spaine,  51,  52, 

u  2 


292  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

66;  Henslow's  Diary  (1598),  Henshlow,  213;  Sir  J.  Leake,  Verney 
Mem.,  burgishes  *  burgesses',  ii.  218,  1645;  Lady  Lambton,  hushband, 
Basire  Corresp.  79  (1649);  Mrs. Basire, parshalles,  in  (1653);  '  touch'd 
a  gall'd  beast  till  he  winch' d\  Congreve's  Old  Batchelor,  Act  v,  Sc.  xiii 

(1693). 

Elphinston  notes  the  vulgar  cutlash,  nonplush,  frontishpiece,  Poarch- 
mouth.  In  the  last  word  the  change  is  propably  combinative ;  an  earlier 
example  of  this  'vulgarism'  is  Porchmouth,  Sir  T.  Seymour,  St.  Pprs. 
Hen.  VIII,  i.  pp.  775,  776  (twice),  1544  ;  the  same  spelling  is  used  by 
C.  Verney,  V.  Mem.  iv.  136,  1665. 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  Martin  Chuzzlewit  will  remember  Mrs. 
Gamp's  vagaries  in  respect  of  substituting  '  sh '  for  '  s '. 

Interchange  ofv-  and  w-  ;  v-for  w-,  and  vr-for  v-. 

This  was  formerly  a  London  vulgarism,  but  is  now  apparently  extinct 
in  the  Cockney  dialect.  Personally,  I  never  actually  heard  these  pro- 
nunciations, so  well  known  to  the  readers  of  Dickens,  Thackeray,  and  of 
the  earlier  numbers  of  Punch.  My  time  for  observing  such  points  begins 
in  the  late  seventies  or  early  eighties  of  the  last  century,  and  I  never 
remember  noticing  this  particular  feature  in  actual  genuine  speech,  though 
I  remember  quite  well,  as  a  boy,  hearing  middle-aged  people  say  weal  for 
veal  and  vich  for  which,  jocularly,  as  though  in  imitation  of  some  actual 
type  of  speech  with  which  they  were  familiar.  I  used  to  wonder  why 
these  people  introduced  this  peculiarity  in  jest,  and  whose  pronunciation 
it  was  supposed  to  imitate.  I  have  since  come  to  the  conclusion  that  my 
boyhood's  friends  must  have  heard  these  pronunciations  in  their  youth — 
say  from  twenty  to  thirty  years  before  my  time,  which  would  bring  us 
back  to  the  forties  and  fifties  of  last  century.  Another  possibility  is  that 
the  generation  to  whom  I  am  referring  did  not  as  a  matter  of  actual 
personal  experience  hear  this  interchange  of  v-  and  w-,  but  that  they  took 
them  over  from  Dickens. 

The  forms  which  I  have  noted  are  the  following,  though  I  have  come 
across  many  others  from  the  fifteenth  century  onwards : — Palladius,  1420, 
vyves  ' wives',  25.  669;  Bokenam,  1441,  valkynge,  Ann,  540,  veye,  Ann, 
565  ;  avayte '  await ',  Marg.  Paston,  ii.  249. 1465  ;  Lord  Level's  Will,  vyne 
'  wine ',  L.  D.  D.  17.  12,  Oxf.,  1455  ;  Prynce  of  Valys,  Gregory,  1450-70, 
192;  Reception  of  Cath.  of  Ar.,  1501,  vele  'weal',  415;  Machyn,  the 
Cockney  Diarist,  has  vomen,  56,  59,  &c.,  Vohake  '  Woolsack ',  91,  veyver 
'weaver',  83,  Vestmynster,  86,  Vetyngton  '  Whittington ',  96,  voman,  98, 
Vosseter  'Worcester',  102,  Voderoffe,  otherwise  Woodroffe,  303. 

Elphinston  notes  the  habit  of  confusing  v  and  w  among  Londoners, 
but,  while  disapproving,  does  not  assert  that  it  is  confined  to  vulgar 
speakers  only ;  Walker  regards  the  practice  as  '  a  blemish  of  the  first 
magnitude ',  but  says  that  it  occurs  among  the  inhabitants  of  London, 
1  not  those  always  of  the  low  order '. 

I  have  noted  the  following  early  examples  of  w-  for  original  v- : — 
St.  Editha,  wex  'vex',  47,  awowe  'avow',  864;  Bokenam,  wenger 
*  avenger ',  Ann.  476,  wyce  '  vice ',  Fth.  42  ;  Marg.  Paston,  wochsaf,  i.  49, 
i»  354;  Gregory,  wery  'very',  192;  Cely  Papers,  were  'very',  50, 


ANTIQUITY  OF  <  sh-  'SOUND  FOR  -/*-,  •«-,  ETC.      293 

whalew  'value',  73,  Wy  liars  'Villiers',  76;  Machyn,  welvet  ' velvet',  6, 
u,  12,  19,  &c.,  walance  'vallance',  wqyce  'voice',  58,  wetelle  'victuals', 
wacabondes,  69,  wergers,  141,  waluw,  186,  wue  'view',  293. 

B.  Combinative  Changes  without  Loss  or  Addition, 
-si-,  -ti-,  that  is  [-si-,  -sj-],  also  su  =  [sju],  become  '  sh  '  [/]. 

The  examples  date  from  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.  Marg. 
Paston — sesschyonys  '  sessions  ',  i.  178,  1450,  conschens  '  conscience ',  ii. 
364,  366,  1469  ;  Cely  Papers— prosesschchon,  113,  pertyschon  '  partition', 
57,  partyshon,  133,  fessychens,  23,  restytuschon,  152,  oblygaschons,  114, 
commyngaschon,  5,  derecschons,  137;  Letters  and  Papers  i — huisshers 
'ushers',  136.  1501;  Admiral  Sir  Thos.  Seymour — instrocshens,  St. 
Pprs.,  Hen.  VIII,  i.  779.  1544;  Thos.  Pery  to  Mr.  R.  Vane — cornmy- 
shin,  Ellis  ii.  2.  140.  1539;  Gabr.  Harvey's  Letters — ishu  'issue',  13. 
1573-80;  Q.  Elizabeth,  Letters  to  James  VI  (1582-1602) — alteragon,  2, 
expectation,  3,  execufon,  3;  Marston,  What  you  Will,  1607 — caprichious, 
Act  v,  Sc.  i.  The  following  are  all  from  the  Verney  Memoirs  : — indis- 
creshons,  disposishons,  Mall  V.,  ii.  380.  1647  ;  suspishiously,  Lady  V.,  ii. 
245.  1646;  condishume  'condition',  Mrs.  Isham  ii.  206;  menishone, 
M.  Faulkiner,  ii.  56;  fondashon,  Lady  Sydenham,  ii.  101  ;  mentshoned 
'  mentioned',  Lady  Sydenham,  ii.  162  ;  hobblegashons,  ibid.  ii.  125,  'obli- 
gations';  adishon,  Mary  V.,  iii.  28.  1650;  condishon,  Mall  V.  (Sir 
Ralph's  sister),  iii.  213.  1655;  possession,  Gary  Stewkley  (Verney),  iii. 
434.  1656;  pashens,  Lady  Hobart  iv.  56.  1664.  Cooper,  1685,  notes 
that  ct\  ce,  ti  have  the  sound  of  sh  in  antient^  artificial,  conscience^  magician, 
ocean,  Egyptian,  essential,  pacience,  &c.  Jones,  1701,  says  that  ocean  is 
pronounced  oshan,  and  sh  also  in  issue.  Lady  Wentworth  writes : — 
Queen  of  Prushee,  63,  expressions,  50,  pation  'passion',  49,  fation 
'fashion',  169,  Prutia,  1 18,  Prution  (Lady  Strafford),  243.  Baker,  in  True 
Spelling,  says  that  dictionary  is  pronounced  dixnery.  This  last  form 
indicates  a  pronunciation  now  extinct  so  far  as  I  know.  The  above 
examples  are  quite  sufficient  to  establish  the  early  development  of  the 
present-day  pronunciation. 

Initial  su-  =  [sju]  becomes  -'  shu- '  =  [ju]. 

The  earliest  examples  of  sh-  spellings,  initially,  which  I  can  record,  date 
only  from  the  late  sixteenth  and  middle  seventeenth  centuries.  The  first  is 
found  in  the  Alleyne  Papers — sheute  'suit',  J.  Alleyne,  159-,  p.  16;  the 
next  are  from  the  Verney  Memoirs  : — shur  '  sure  ',  Gary  V.,  ii.  71. 1642  ; 
shuer,  Lady  Sydenham,  ii.  101;  shuite  (of  clothes),  Luce  Sheppard,  iii. 
1653;  shewer,  Mrs.  Sherard,  iii.  324.  1657;  shewtid  'suited',  ibid.  iii. 
325.  1657.  Mrs.  Basire  writes  ashoure,  112  (1653),  shut  'suit',  132 
(1654).  Cooper  mentions  the  pronunciations  shure,  shugar,  'facilitatis 
causa'.  Jones  says  that  sh-  is  pronounced  in  assume,  assure,  censure, 
consume,  ensue,  insure,  sue,  suet,  sugar. 

The  careful  pronunciation  '  according  to  the  spelling '  has  been 
restored  now  in  some  of  the  above,  such  as  suit,  suet,  consume,  &c. 


294  CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

-di-  [dj]  becomes  [dz]. 

Present-day  usage  varies  considerably  as  to  the  pronunciation  of  this 
combination  in  different  words.  Thus,  while  soldier,  grandeur  are  pretty 
generally  pronounced  [souldzo,  grsendza]  we  do  not,  for  the  most  part, 
say  [/midzYt,  zhdzsn,  z'dzat,  oudzas]  for  immediate,  Indian,  idioty  odious. 
The  '  careful '  artificial  pronunciation  of  these  and  other  words  which  is 
now  generally  affected  is,  however,  quite  recent. 

I  am  only  able  to  offer  comparatively  few  spellings,  and  only  one  of 
these  earlier  than  the  seventeenth  century — Machyn's  sawgears  'soldiers', 
302 — to  prove  the  [dz]  pronunciation.  The  Verney  Memoir^  furnish 
the  following: — teges '  tedious ',  Mall  V.,  ii.  381.  1647  ;  sogers  '  soldiers  ', 
Lady  Sussex,  ii.  105,  153.  1642. 

Jones,  1701,  says  that  contagious,  soldier,  Indian,  are  pronounced 
contages,  soger,  In/an.  Lady  Wentworth  writes  sogar  'soldier',  113, 
emedgetly  'immediately'.  Bertram,  1753,  transliterates  (for  Danes) 
soldier,  Indian,  could  you,  had  you,  as  soldsjer,  indsjan,  kudsju,  hdedsju. 
The  last  two  examples  are  interesting  as  showing  the  same  colloquial 
pronunciation  of  final  -d,  followed  by^/  [j]  in  the  next  word  of  a  sentence, 
as  we  now  employ — [kwdzw,  hsedzw]. 

Walker,  Rhet.  Gr.,  3rd  ed.,  1801,  says  that  polite  speakers  always 
pronounce  edjucate,  verchew,  verdjure,  and  that  they  ought  also  to  say 
ojeous,  insidjeous,  Injean.  John  Kemble,  according  to  Leigh  Hunt, 
Autobiogr.  i.  180,  said  '  ojus\  '  hijjus' ,  'perfijjus'. 

[zj]  becomes  [z]. 

This  occurs  chiefly  in  such  words  as  pleasure,  measure,  where,  origin- 
ally, u  was  pronounced  [ju],  and  in  hosier,  brasier,  &c.,  though  in  the 
latter  group  probably  [houzza,  brezzza],  &c.,  are  more  common.  Gary 
Verney,  Mem.  ii.  62.  1642,  writes  pleshar,  plesshur,  and  Jones  says  that 
1  sh  ' — here,  clearly  [z] — is  pronounced  in  measure,  leisure,  brasier, 
glasier,  hosier. 

-nf-  becomes  -mf-,  -kn-  becomes  -tn-. 

The  assimilation  of  the  point  -n-  to  m  before  a  following  lip-consonant 
is  a  natural  one,  and  may  be  heard  even  at  the  present  time  from  persons 
who  are  not  careful  speakers,  in  rapid  utterance.  Thus,  one  may  occa- 
sionally hear  €  all  om  board ', '  he 's  im  bed ',  &c. 

The  following  examples  are  worth  noting  as  showing  the  tendency  at 
work  in  the  middle  of  words : — imphants  '  infants  ',  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet. 
52.;  Lady  Wentworth  writes  comfution  '  confusion',  W.  Pprs.  113. 
1710;  Twittenham  'Twickenham*  is  found  in  Verney  Mem.  iv.  417. 
1687;  Lady  Wentworth  writes  Twitnam,  W.  Pprs.  49.  1705,  and  this 
form  is  common  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  often  found  in  Pope's 
poems  and  letters;  Lady  W.  writes  Lord  Bartly  for  Berkley,  174. 
1711. 

C.    Loss  of  Consonants. 

Loss  of  the  Initial  Aspirate. 

In  discussing  this  question  we  must  distinguish  between  h-  in  stressed 
syllables  and  in  unstressed,  and  further  between  words  of  pure  English 


' DROPPING   THE  h-'  295 

origin  and  those  from  French  or  Norman  French.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
the  latter  were  pronounced  with  an  initial  aspirate  originally.  As  regards 
words  of  English  origin,  it  is  only  in  respect  of  stressed  syllables  that  the 
question  of  '  dropping  the  h- '  arises.  In  unstressed  syllables,  e.  g.  the 
second  element  of  compounds,  and  words  such  as  Pronouns  and  Auxili- 
aries, which  more  often  occur  in  unstressed  positions  in  the  sentence,  the 
loss  of  h-  is  very  early,  and  at  least  as  early  as  the  thirteenth  century  is 
frequently  shown  by  the  spelling  to  have  taken  place  in  Pronouns  (madim 
for  made  him)  in  the  second  elements  of  compounds  (-ham  and  -urn,  &c., 
often  confused  in  early  forms  of  PI.  N.s).  The  question,  then,  is  when 
did  the  tendency  arise  to  pronounce  'ill  for  hill,  or  'ome  for  home,  &c., 
when  these  and  other  words  occur  as  independent  words  in  the  sentence  ? 
Norman  scribes  are  very  erratic  in  their  use  of  h-  in  copying  English 
manuscripts,  and  we  therefore  cannot  attach  much  importance  to  thirteenth- 
or  even  to  early  fourteenth-century  omissions  of  the  letter  which  occur 
here  and  there.  The  forms  in  Norf.  G.'s  (1389),  alf  a  pound,  80,  and 
alpenny,  98,  seem  genuine.  I  have  found  comparatively  few  examples  in 
the  fifteenth'century  of  spellings  without  h- ;  even  the  Celys,  although  they 
write  h-  where  it  is  not  wanted,  do  not  omit  it  so  far  as  I  have  noted.  An 
unmistakable  '  dropping '  seems  to  be  ov)sold  '  household ',  in  the  Will 
of  Sir  T.  Cumberworth,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  1451 ;  Margaret  Paston  has 
astely,  ii.  143.  1463.  She  also  writes  traftyr  'hereafter',  i.  530.  1460, 
but  as  she  does  not  write  ere  for  here,  the  loss  of  h-  in  the  former  word  is 
probably  to  be  set  down  to  lack  of  stress.  The  form  erefter  also  occurs 
in  a  letter  of  Q.  Mary  of  Scotland  (daughter  of  Hen.  VII),  in  1503,  Ellis 
i.  i.  42,  and  the  same  letter  contains  the  spelling  oulde  for  hold,  a  genuine 
instance  of  '  dropping  the  h '.  Fifty  years  later,  the  Cockney  Machyn 
has  a  fine  crop  of  ^-less  forms : — ede  '  head ',  29,  alff  '  half,  13,  19,  ard, 
107,  yt  'hit',  139,  alpeny,  7,  Amton  courte,  9,  elmet  'helmet',  Allalows 
'All  Hallows',  6 1. 

Cooper  does  not  include  the  loss  of  initial  h-  among  his  traits  of 
'  barbarous  dialect '. 

I  have  not  noted  any  examples  in  the  Verney  Mem.  except  ombel 
'  humble ',  Gary  V.,  ii.  63,  and  yumer  *  humour ',  where  the  absence  of 
the  h-  in  pronunciation  was  normal ;  Lady  Wentworth  also  writes  Umble, 
W.  Pprs.  47,  for  Humble,  a  family  name,  doubtless  on  the  analogy  of 
the  Adjective,  zndyoumorc,  ^2o,_youmoredt  107,  320.  The  restoration  of 
an  aspirate  in  the  last  word  is  a  trick  of  yesterday,  and  I  never  observed  it 
until  a  few  years  ago,  and  then  only  among  speakers  who  thought  of  every 
word  before  they  uttered  it. 

Mrs.  Honour,  in  Tom  Jones,  writes : — '  mite  not  ave  ever  happened '  ; 
'  that  as  always  ad',  the  last  word  being  the  only  one  stressed,  except  at 
ome.  This  phrase  is  still  pronounced  [atoum]  by  excellent  speakers,  and 
at6m  is  found  as  early  as  Layamon,  c.  1 200. 

In  the  letter  written  by  Mr.  Jackson's  fiance'e  in  Roderick  Random, 
chap,  xvi,  there  is  not  a  single  h-  left  out,  although  several  are  wrongly 
introduced,  neither  is  there  any  in  the  letter  written  by  Mr.  Jonathan 
Wild  to  Letitia  in  Fielding's  Life  of  that  gentleman. 

Later  in  the  century  Elphinston,  1787,  notes  that  'many  Ladies, 
Gentlemen  and  others  have  totally  discarded '  initial  h~  in  places  where 


296  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

it  ought  to  be  used;  Walker,  1801,  also  draws  attention  to  the  habit, 
which  he  attributes  chiefly  to  Londoners,  and  Batchelor  does  the  same. 

The  above  evidence  is  too  slight  to  found  much  upon,  but  so  far  as  it 
goes,  and  its  negative  character  is  of  some  value,  it  would  appear  that  the 
present-day  vulgarism  was  not  widespread  much  before  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  gap  in  the  evidence  between  Machyn  and  two 
hundred  years  later  is  remarkable.  The  practice,  which  apparently  did 
exist  in  Machyn's  day  in  London,  must  have  been  confined  to  a  limited 
class.  The  evidence,  from  the  spelling,  for  the  wrongful  addition  of  h- 
is,  as  we  shall  see,  far  more  copious. 

It  may  be  remarked  that  the  habit  of  omitting  initial  h-  is  common  to  all 
Regional  dialects  except  those  of  the  North.  In  Modified  Standard  also, 
this  was  very  widespread  when  I  was  a  boy,  even  people,  below  a  certain 
rank  in  society,  who  were  fairly  well  '  educated '  being  very  shaky  in 
this  respect.  This  state  of  things  has  been  very  noticeably  altered  in  the 
last  few  decades,  presumably  by  the  efforts  of  the  schools. 

Loss  of  w. 

Initially  before  rounded  vowels. 

Alice  Crane  (cousin  of  the  Fastens)  signs  herself  to  Marg.  Paston, 
*  Youre  pore  bede  oman  and  cosyn  ',  Past.  Lttrs.  i.  343  (1455). 

Machyn  writes  Odam  for  Woodham,  80. 

Jones,  1701,  says  '  the  sound  of  o-  written  wo-  when  it  may  be  sounded 
wo- '  in  ivolf,  Wolverhampton,  worry,  womb,  woman,  wonder,  work,  word, 
worse,  worthy,  woven,  would,  wound.  Woad,  he  says,  is  pronounced  ode. 
Mrs.  Honour,  Sophia  Western's  waiting-woman,  writes  uman  '  woman '  in 
a  letter. 

Tuckwell,  Reminiscences  of  Oxford,  records  that  Dr.  Pusey's  mother, 
Lady  Lucy  Pusey,  who  died  well  over  90  in  1859,  always  said  '  ooman* 
for  woman. 

-w-  lost  after  a  consonant  before  rounded  vowels. 

Agnes  Paston — sor  'swore',  Past.  Lttrs.  i.  219  (1451);  John  Alleyne, 
Alleyne  Pprs.  15,  has  sord  'sword'  (159-?);  sowlen  <  swollen ',  Thos. 
Watson,  Teares  of  Fancie,  Sonnet  35.  1593;  Daines,  1640,  says  w  is 
scarcely  pronounced  at  all  in  swound  '  swoon ',  and  but  moderately  in 
sword,  swore,  51 ;  Sir  R.  Verney  writes  sourd  'sword ',  V.  Mem.  ii.  32, 
84  (twice),  164  (twice),  1641  ;  Gary  Stewkley,  V.  Mem.  iv.  341.  1685, 
writes  sord;  Cooper,  1685,  says  (w  quiescit'  in  sword,  sworn  ;  Vanbrugh 
writes  gud  soons  =  God's  wounds,  Journey  to  London,  1726;  Baker, 
1724,  gives  the  pronunciation  of  swoon  as  sound;  Cooper,  1685,  says  that 
quote  is  pronounced  like  coat ;  Jones  gives  sord,  solen,  sorn,  &c.,  as  the 
normal  pronunciations. 

Qu-  —  [kw]  becomes  k- : — ' coting  of  ye  scriptures',  Euph.  320; 
Jones  says  k-  for  qu  in  banquet,  conquer,  liquid,  quote,  quoth. 

Loss  of-w-  before  an  unstressed  vowel. 

This  must  be  very  old,  cp.  uppard,  Trinity  Homilies,  p.  in  (c.  1200). 
Hammard '  homeward '  occurs  several  times  in  S.  Editha. 

Except  in  PI.  N.s  Harwich,  Greenwich,  &c.,  -w-  has  usually  been 
'  restored ',  from  the  spelling,  in  this  position — e.  g.  Edward,  forward. 


LOSS   OF  /-SOUND  BEFORE  CONSONANTS          297 

Mrs.  Basire  writes  forard,  Corresp.  137  (1654);  Mrs.  Alphra  Behn 
writes  aukard,  Sir  Patient  Fancy,  Act  n,  Sc.  i ;  awkard  is  also  found  in 
Mountfort's  Greenwich  Park,  Act  5.  Sc.  2,  1691;  Lady  Lucy  Pusey, 
according  to  Tuckwell,  still  called  her  famous  son  Ed'ard. 

Loss  of -I-  before  Consonants. 

At  the  present  time  -/-  is  no  longer  pronounced  in  normal  speech 
before  lip-consonants,  as  in  calf,  half,  balm,  calm,  &c.,  nor  before  back- 
consonants,  as  in  walk,  stalk,  folk,  &c.  Before  other  consonants  it  is,  on 
the  whole,  retained,  e.  g.  malt,  salt,  &c. 

The  evidence  for  the  loss  of  this  consonant,  so  far  as  my  experience 
at  present  goes,  begins  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The  loss  of  the  sound 
itself  is  doubtless  older  than  the  earliest  spellings  which  omit  the  letter. 

Bp.  Bekinton,  1442,  has  behaf  'behalf,  p.  86;  Short  Engl.  Chron., 
1465,  Fakonbrige,  p.  70;  Gregory,  1450-7°,  sepukyr,  233;  Cely Papers, 
1475,  &c.:— -fawkyner,  81,  Tawbot  'Talbot',  46,  Pamar,  15,  soudears, 
soudyears  'soldiers',  146;  fawkener,  Jul.  Berners,  1496;  Ascham,  mouled 
'moulted',  Tox.  26;  Gabr.  Harvey,  Letters,  Mamsey,  144;  Mulcaster, 
Elementarie,  p.  128,  enumerates  as  examples  the  following  words  in  which 
/  is  not  pronounced : — calm,  balm,  talk,  walk,  chalk,  calf,  calms,  salues, 
'as  though  cawm,  bawm',  &c.  Q.  Elizabeth,  Transl.  20,  1593,  writes 
stauke  (N.);  Machyn  writes  hopene  'halfpenny',  swone  'swollen',  226, 
Northfoke,  149  (three  times),  sawgears  'soldiers',  302;  Surrey,  ti547, 
rhymes  bemoan — swolne,  Tottel's  Misc.  28,  thus  justifying  Machyn's 
spelling. 

From  Verney  Memoirs  come : — sogers,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  105, 153,  Sent- 
arbornes '  St.  Albans ',  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  104,  my  \mfafakeland,  Lady  Sussex, 
ii.  104,  hop  'holp',  Pret.,  W.  Roades  (Steward),  iii.  274,  1656,  Norfuck, 
Edm.  Verney,  iii.  282,  1656,  Mamsbury,  Lady  Bridgeman,  iii,  1660. 
Cooper,  1685,  notes  that  there  is  no  /  in  Holborn\  Jones,  1701,  says 
that  /  is  lost  in  Bristol  (Bristow  being  the  old  type,  and  showing  really 
no  loss  of  I),  folk,  Cholmondeley,  Holborn,  Holms,  holp,  holpen  (  =  'hope, 
hopen '),  Leopold,  Lincoln,  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  soldier,  yolk.  Lady  Wentworth 
writes  sogars,  sougar,  113.  Jones,  1701,  besides  the  ordinary  words 
without  -/  mentions  Mulgrave,  pronounced  Moograve. 

The  pronunciation  of  should  and  would  without  -/-  may  be  due  to 
absence  of  stress  in  the  sentence.  I  have  noted  the  following  early 
examples: — shudd,  Elyot's  Gouernour  70,  1531,  shudd,  Gabr.  Harvey, 
Letters,  3,  shud,  Gary  Verney,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  71  (twice),  1642,  wode 
'would',  Lady  Sussex,  ibid.  iii.  103,  wood,  W.  Roades,  ibid.  iii.  275; 
Isaac  Walton,  in  Aubrey's  Lives  ii.  15;  sha't  is  written  for  shalt,  Con- 
greve's  Way  of  the  World,  Act  i,  Sc.  ix  (1700). 

At  the  present  time  soldier  is  no  longer  pronounced  without  /,  though 
I  knew  an  old  cavalry  officer,  now  dead,  born  about  1817,  who  always 
said  [sodza],  and  the  same  old  gentleman  also  pronounced  falcon  as 
[fokan],  and  spoke  of  having  followed  the  sport  of  [fokann]  in  his  youth. 

The  '  restoration '  of  /  in  these  words  is  a  modern  refinement.  Swone 
of  Surrey  and  Machyn,  two  extremes  of  the  social  scale,  has  passed  into 
the  limbo  of  forgotten  pronunciations,  and  I  have  not  found  the  form  in 
the  following  centuries,  though  it  may  well  have  existed. 

I  have  noted  two  interesting  examples  of  the  loss  of  /  in  unstressed 


298  CHANGES   IN  CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

syllables  before  following  consonants: — sepukyr,  Gregory  283,  and 
hosieries  '  hostelries ',  Lord  Berners,  i.  77.  Aubrey  writes  Marybon 
'  Marylebone',  Lives,  i.  67. 


The  chief  interest  for  our  present  purpose  concerning  this  consonant 
lies  in  the  conditions  under  which  the  sound  is  lost  or  retained. 

The  quality  of  the  sound  itself  varies  in  different  dialects.  In  Received 
Standard,  at  any  rate  in  the  South,  the  sound  has  a  very  weak  consonantal 
character — that  of  a  weakly  articulated  point-open  consonant,  generally 
voiced,  but  unvoiced  after  another  voiceless  consonant,  e.g.  in  fright, 
pride,  &c.  =  [frfl/t,  pr<w'd] ;  in  the  true  Regional  dialects  of  the  South — 
from  East  to  West — it  is,  or  was  until  quite  latterly,  an  inverted  point- 
open,  rather  more  strongly  consonantal  than  in  Received  Standard ;  in 
Northumberland,  and  among  isolated  individuals  all  over  the  country, 
a  back  -r,  with  slight  trilling  of  the  uvula,  is  heard ;  in  Scotland  the  sound 
is  a  strong  point-trill. 

The  conditions  under  which  the  sound  is  retained  or  lost  in  Received 
Standard  are  the  following : — it  is  retained :  initially,  and  when  preceded 
by  another  consonant,  before  vowels — run,  grass ;  in  the  middle  of  words 
between  vowels — starry,  hearing,  &c.;  and,  though  this  is  not  always 
true  of  the  speech  of  the  younger  generation,  at  the  end  of  words  when 
the  next  word  begins  with  a  vowel  and  there  is  no  pause  in  the  sentence 
between  the  words— /0r  ever,  over  all,  her  ear,  &c. 

R  is  lost : — in  the  middle  of  a  word  before  all  other  consonants — hard, 
horse,  bird  =  [had,  hos,  bXd],  &c.,  &c. ;  at  the  end  of  words  unless  the  next 
word  in  the  sentence  begins  with  a  vowel. 

There  is  evidence  that  r  was  lost  in  the  South,  before  consonants,  at 
least  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century,  and  it  will  be  noted  that  so  far  as 
the  occasional  spellings,  and,  very  rarely,  the  rhymes,  throw  light,  it  is  lost 
earliest  before  -j,  -sh. 

The  following  is  the  evidence  I  have  collected,  covering  the  period 
from  the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth  centuries  inclusive.  Bokenam  (1441) 
rhymes  adust— wurst,  St.  Lucy  60  and  61 ;  in  the  Will  of  J.  Buckland, 
1450,  cf.  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.,  p.  41.  15,  the  spelling  Red  wosted  qwisshens 
occurs;  Cely  Papers  has  passell  'parcel',  pp.  31,  178,  and  the  word 
master  is  written  marster,  p.  156,  and  farther  for  father,  p.  83;  Gregory 
has  mosselle,  234,  'morsel';  church  rhymes  with  such,  Rede  me,  &c.,  39, 
(1528);  skaselye  'scarcely',  Robinson's  transl.  of  Sir  T.  More's  Utopia 
(I556),  skasely,  Sir  T.  Seymour  (1544),  State  Papers,  Hen.  VIII,  vol.  i, 
p.  781;  Machyn  (1550-2)  writes  Wosseter,  46,  Dasset  'Dorset',  48,  57; 
Masselsay  'Marshalsea',  255,  &c.;  Surrey,  in  Tottel's  Misc.,  rhymesfursf— 
dust,  first — must]  Roper  (1*1578),  in  his  Life  of  Sir  T.  More,  writes  farther 
for  father  (this  work  not  published  till  1626  in  Paris);  dryardes  '  dryads' 
occurs,  p.  14,  in  Laneham's  Lttr.  (1575);  John  Alleyne,  posshene 
'portion',  Alleyne  Papers,  16,  159-?;  Sir  Edm.  Verney  (the  Standard 
Bearer)  writes  Fottscue  and  Fottescue '  Fortescue '  (i  635-6),  Verney  Papers, 
p.  170;  the  Verney  Memoirs  have  the  following  spellings: — from  vol.  ii: 
quater  'quarter',  M.  Faulkner,  54  (1642),  dose/  'Dorset',  Lady  Sussex 
(1642),  102,  Senetabornes  'St.  Albans',  where  clearly  no  r  was  pro- 


EARLY  LOSS   OF  -r-  BEFORE   CONSONANTS        299 

nounced,  Lady  Sussex,  155  (1642),  passons  'persons'.  Mrs.  Isham,  203 
(1642),  'my  sister  Alpotts'  —  'AlportV,  Lady  V.,  245  (1646),  wood 
'word',  Mall  V.,  380  (i 647),  fust  'first',  Mrs.  Isham,  200,  208  (1642); 
vol.  iii :  P  aster  ne  =  '  Paston ',  Sir  R.  V.,  244  (1655),  <no  father  then 
Oxford',  Sir  R.  V.,  292  (1656);  vol.  iv:  quater,  Doll  Leake,  113 
(1665),  drawers  —  'draws',  Dick  Hals,  307  (1674).  Cooper (1685)  says 
that  wusted  represents  the  pronunciation  of  worsted.  Jones  (i  70 1 )  indicates 
the  pronunciation  minus  r  in  Woster,  hash,  mash  for  '  harsh ',  '  marsh '. 
Lady  Wentworth  (1705-11)  writes  Gath,  63,  271,  for  the  name  of  the 
physician  Garth,  and  other  correspondents  write  Albemal  Street,  274, 
extrodinary,  321,  Doichester,  153,  A  uthor  =  '  Arthur ',  77,  398,  399, 
Duke  of  Molbery,  113,  &c.  The  spelling  Dower ger  =  'Dowager',  464, 
shows  that  the  symbol  r  might  be  written  without  being  pronounced. 
Baker,  in  Rules  for  True  Spelling,  &c.,  1724,  says  that  nurse,  purse,  thirsty, 
Ursula,  sarsanet  are  pronounced  nus,  pus,  thusty,  Usly,  sasnet.  Jespersen 
quotes  German  writers  on  English  pronunciation  of  1718  and  1748,  who 
assert  that  r  is  not  pronounced  in  mart,  parlour,  partridge,  thirsty^  but 
says  that  Walker  in  1775  is  the  first  Englishman  '  to  admit  the  muteness 
of  -r\  In  Bertram's  Royal  English-Danish  Grammar,  1753,  r  is  said  to 
be  'mute'  in  Marlborough,  harsh,  purse.  Batchelor,  1809,  speaking  of 
the  vowel  in  burn,  says  it  is  difficult  to  ascertain  what  portion  of  the  sound 
belongs  to  r,  as  the  vowel  appears  before  -r  to  be  only  slightly  different 
from  that  of  u  in  nostrum.  In  other  words,  the  vowel  is  lengthened  and 
the  r-sound  has  disappeared.1 

In  the  more  rustic  forms  of  English,  r  before  consonants  retained  a  more 
or  less  strong  consonantal  quality  longer  than  in  the  East.  This  is 
indicated  by  such  a  spelling  as  morun  'morn',  Shillingford,  p.  6,  and 
baron  '  barn ',  in  the  Will  of  R.  Astbroke  (Bucks.),  Line.  Dioc.  Docs. 
167.  35  (1534).  At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  Cr.  Duke  of  York  has 
sundery,  389,  and  therell  'the  earl',  392.  To  summarize  the  above  evi- 
dence, it  would  appear  that  the  weakening  and  disappearance  of  r  before 
another  consonant,  especially,  at  first,  before  [s,  J],  had  taken  place  by  the 
middle  of  the  fifteenth  century  at  any  rate  in  Essex  and  Suffolk ;  that 
a  hundred  years  later  London  speakers  of  the  humbler  sort  (Machyn),  as 
well  as  more  highly  placed  and  better  educated  persons  in  various  walks 
of  life,  pronounced  the  sound  but  slightly,  if  at  all ;  that  the  tendency  is 
more  and  more  marked,  not  only  before  [s,  J],  but  before  other  con- 
sonants also,  until  by  the  middle  of  the  next  century  it  seems  that  the 
pronunciation  among  the  upper  classes  (the  Verneys  and  their  relatives) 
was  very  much  the  same  as  at  present.  The  later  evidence,  from  the 
eighteenth  century  onwards,  confirms  this  view. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  eighteenth-century  pronunciations  [nas, 
pas],  &c.,  which  are  clearly  foreshadowed  in  the  rhymes  of  Bokenam,  and 
later  of  Surrey,  the  Verneys,  &c.,  have  been  ousted  by  another  type  [PAS, 
nA"s,  &c.],  in  which  the  r  was  not  lost  until  after  lengthening  had  taken 
place.  The  modern  semi-humorous  vulgarisms,  written  cuss,  bust  for 
curse,  burst,  represent  the  older  type.  The  lack  of  confirmation  from  the 
fifteenth-  and  sixteenth-century  Orthoepists  of  the  loss  of  r  before  con- 
sonants has  no  significance,  since  many  people  at  the  present  time  are 

1  The  rhyme  after—  carter  w  Rede  me,  &c.,  119,  must  represent  [seta— kseta],  and  at 
least  shows  that  r  was  not  pronounced  in  the  latter  word. 


300  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

unable  to  realize  that  they  no  longer  pronounce  -r-  in  this  position,  being 
obsessed  by  the  spelling. 

Note. — The  spelling  dace,  the  name  of  the  fish,  shows  that  r  must  have 
been  lost  early  before  -s\  Dame  Jul.  Berners,  however  (1496),  still  has 
darse  in  Wynkyn  de  Worde's  print  of  her  Treatyse  of  Fysshynge. 

Loss  of  Final  -r. 

I  have  very  little  early  evidence  regarding  this,  but  have  noted  the 
spelling  Harflew  in  Bp.  Pecok's  Represser  (1449),  i-  258>  and  in  Shake- 
speare's Hen.  V,  First  Fol.,  n.  i ;  Lady  Wentworth's  spellings,  Operer,  66, 
Bavavior,  90,  Lord  Carburer  =  Carbery,  must  express  the  sound  [a]  in 
the  final  syllable,  and  indicate  that  an  -r  in  this  position  expressed  no 
consonantal  sound. 

The  vowel  murmur  [a],  developed  from  the  suffixes  -er^  -or,  &c.,  as  in 
better  [beta],  may  probably  be  regarded  as  a  simple  weakening  of  a  syl- 
labic -r,  which  is  still  heard  in  provincial  dialects.  There  are  occasional 
spellings  in  which  the  termination  is  written  without  a  vowel : — remembr, 
Sir  J.  Fortescue,  124,  125,  undr,  ibid.  135,  and  Dr.  Knight's  modre,  1512, 
Ellis  ii.  i,  probably  indicate  [nmsmbr,  undr,  mudr]  respectively. 

Development  of  Murmur -vowel  after  Long  Vowel +  r. 

After  old  long  vowels  and  diphthongs  formerly  followed  by  -r  we  have 
now  [a],  the  long  vowel  being  partially  shortened — thus  bear,  hear,  fire 
become  [bea,  hi?,  few].  It  was  formerly  supposed  that,  as  in  the  instances 
just  considered,  the  murmur-vowel  was  merely  a  weakening  of  -r.  There 
is  reason,  however,  to  suppose  that  [a]  developed  between  the  vowel  or 
diphthong  and  the  following  -r,  before  the  loss  of  the  latter. 

The  following  sixteenth-century  spellings  appear  to  prove  this  : — Anne 
Boleyn  (1528),  /  desyerd,  desyer,  requyer,  all  on  p.  306,  Ellis  i.  i;  Sir 
Thos.  Elyot,  hiare  'to  hire',  Vb.,  i.  113;  Will  of  Sir  J.  Digby  (1533), 
Leic.,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  147.  16,  desyoring\  Gabriel  Harvey's  Letters 
(1572-80),  devower,  \2%,fyer  'fire',  i^Q.youers  'yours',  139;  Countess 
of  Shrewsbury,  Letter,  Ellis  ii.  2.  66,  duaring  (1581);  Q.  Elizabeth, 
1 desiar,  Letters  to  James  VI,  13,  and  Transl.  122,  hiar  'hear',  Tr.  76, 
fiars  '  fires ',  Transl.  76.  Of  these  possibly  hiar  might  be  questioned,  the 
ia  might  be  put  for  ea,  but  the  others,  I  think,  quite  certainly  point  to 
[azar,  uar,  ouar].  I  have  not  pursued  the  investigation  farther,  and  can 
only  offer  one  example  of  such  a  spelling  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
desiar,  Gary  Verney,  in  Verney  Mem.  ii.  68  (1642).  Dr.  Watts,  True 
Riches,  has  the  couplet — 

Or  she  sits  at  Fancy's  door 
Calling  shapes  and  shadows  to  her 

where  it  is  evident  the  rhyme  is  [dua — tua].  Baker,  1724,  Rules  for 
True  Spelling,  says  words  ending  -re  are  pronounced  as  though  with  -ur, 
fire,  hire,  mire,  &c.  =  [fo/a],  &c. 

Metathesis  O/T. 

In  Received  Standard  we  use  many  metathesized  forms,  such  as  wright 
O.E.  wyrhta,  through  Q.E.J>urh,  wrought  O.E.  worhte,  third  O.E.firidda. 


METATHESIS-LOSS  301 

The  metathesized  forms  are  probably  E.  Midland  (Norfolk  and  Suffolk) 
in  origin,  to  judge  by  M.E.  In  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  other 
metathesized  forms  besides  those  heard  to-day  were  in  use,  thus  Marg. 
Paston  has  drust '  durst ',  ii.  191 ;  Cr.  of  Duke  of  York  a  Knight  of  the 
Garter,  wrothey,  '  worthy ',  399 ;  Peter  Wentworth,  crutid  '  curbed J,  W. 
Papers  236, 1712;  gurge  '  grudge '  occurs  in  1515,  State  of  Ireland,  State 
Papers,  Hen.  VIII,  i,  p.  23;  brust  'burst',  G.  Harvey's  Letters  33, 
1573-80;  Queen  Elizabeth,  shirlest  'shrillest',  Transl.  46. 

On  the  other  hand,  thorf  through '  is  written  by  Marg.  Paston,  ii.  197  ; 
'  a  silke  gridyll ',  Will  of  Sir  T.  Comberworth  (Lines.),  Line.  Dioc.  Docs. 

50.  6,  and  strike  '  stirk',  ibid.  50.  5  (1451),  and  thrid  in  Rewle  of  Sust. 
Men.  107.  36,  and  Kyrstemes  'Christmas'  in  Cely  Papers  22  (1479). 

Cooper  notes  that  (r  is  sounded  after  o'  in  apron,  citron,  environ, 
gridiron,  iron,  saffron,  'as  though  written  apurn,  &c.'  He  also  notes 
the  very  common  sixteenth-  and  seventeenth-century  form  hunderd  as 
being  pronounced  'facultatis  causa '.  Baker,  Rules  for  True  Spelling 
(1724),  transcribes  apron  as  apurn,  Katherine  as  Katturn,  saffron  as 
saffurn.  The  Wentworth  Papers  have  Kathern,  Lady  Strafford,  305 
(1712),  childern,  Peter  W.,  68  (1709),  Chirstmas  [kXstmas],  Lord  Went- 
worth (a  child),  462  (1730). 

With  regard  to  the  general  question  of  the  loss  of  r  medially,  before 
consonants,  and  finally,  a  curious  passion  for  eye-rhymes  long  obtained 
among  poets,  and  to  some  extent  still  exists. 

To  describe  such  rhymes  as  higher — Thalia  or  morning — dawning  as 
Cockney  rhymes  is  foolish  and  inaccurate.  The  former  is  made  by  Keats, 
the  latter  by  so  fastidious  a  poet  and  gentleman  as  Mr.  Swinburne.  This 
prejudice  is  gradually  dying  out  among  poets.  If  this  or  that  poet  still 
dislikes  and  avoids  such  rhymes,  perfect  though  they  be  according  to 
normal  educated  English  pronunciation,  simply  on  account  of  the  r  in  the 
spelling,  that  is  his  affair  and  his  readers  need  not  complain.  If  they  are 
objected  to  on  the  ground  that  the  rhyme  is  not  perfect,  and  that  it  is  only 
in  vulgar  pronunciation  that  -r-  is  not  heard  in  morn,  &c.,  this  is  not 
consonant  with  fact. 

Loss  or  Assimilation  of  Various  Consonants  in  Combination. 

Loss  of  d  before  and  after  other  cons. 

Hocdzve—freenly,  Reg.  of  Pr.  2064  ;  St.  Editha,  1420 — bleynasse 
'blindness',  2 93 *j,pounsel pounds',  213;  Shillingford,  1447-50 — Wensday, 

51,  myssomer  yeven,  65;  Marg.  Paston — Quesontyde  '  Whitsun ',  i.  43. 
1440,  Wensday,  ii.  201. 1465  ;  Cely  Papers — hosbanry,  43;  Gregory,  1450- 
70 — Wanysday,$6\  Elyot — chylhode,  Gouernour,  Pr.  cxcii ;  Latimer— 
Wensday e, Ploughers  %o,frensheppe,i2%]  Machyn,  i$$o—granefather,  274, 

granser,  169,  Wostrett '  Wood  Street',  242,  Wyssunmonday,  158;  Lever's 
Sermons— -frynshyp,  no;  Shakesp.,  R.  of  L.,  rhymes  hounds — downs, 
677-8;  John  Alleyne,  Alleyne  Pprs. — stane,  stannes  still,  hanes  'hands', 
16  (159—);  Verney  Pprs. —  Wensday,  Sir  Edm.  V.,  229,  242.  1639; 
grannam  'grandam',  Dr.  Denton,  242.  1639;  Verney  Mem. —  Wenesday, 
Lady  Sussex,  ii.  123,  also  Dr.  Denton,  iii.  207.  1656,  and  Wensday,  Gary 
Stewkley  (Verney),  iv.  136.  1665;  hinmost,  Dr.  Denton,  iv.  227.  1674; 


302  CHANGES   IN  CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

Lord  Rochester  (died  1680),  rhymes  wounds — lampoons,  Rehearsal; 
Vanbrugh,  in  Journey  to  London,  1726,  makes  Lady  Arabella  say  gud 
soons  =  wounds ;  Jones,  1701 — Wensday,  and  omits  d  in  intends,  com- 
mands, &c.,  '  men  being  apt  to  pass  over  d  in  silence  between  -n-  and 
another  consonant ' ;  Lady  Wentworth  writes  Wensday  twice,  49, 
hansomly,  Clousley  for  Cloudsley,  Baker,  1724,  notes  absence  of  d  in 
hansone.  Jones  also  says  that  d  is  not  pronounced  in  landlord,  landlady, 
friendly,  handmaid,  candle,  chandler,  dandle,  handle,  kindle,  fondle,  and 
other  words  in  -ndl- ;  further,  in  children  ( =  [tjYlran]). 

The  pronunciation  of  London  as  [lanan],  which  persisted  among  polite 
speakers  far  into  the  nineteenth  century,  deserves  a  few  words.  The 
process  was  probably  [landn — lann — lanan] — the  assimilation  of  -d-  when 
flanked  by  n.  The  earliest  examples  I  have  found  are  from  Mrs.  Basire, 
who  writes  Lonan,  pp.  133,  135,  137  (1654),  and  Lonant,  147  (1656). 
Gray,  in  a  letter  to  Horace  Walpole  (July  n,  1757),  says  '  if  you  will  be 
vulgar  and  pronounce  it  Lunnun  ...  I  can't  help  it  \ 

Elphinston,  in  his  works  from  1765  to  1787,  says  'we  generally  hear 
Lunnon '. 

Loss  of-t-  before  and  after  other  consonants. 

St.  Editha— -fonstone  —  '  font-stone  ' ;  Marg.  Paston — morgage,  i.  69. 
1448;  Machyn — Brenfford  l Brentford',  57;  Q.  Elizabeth — attemps, 
Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  23,  accidens,  ibid.  23,  off  en  '  often';  Edw.  Alleyne  has 
wascote,  Alleyne  Mem.  26.  1593;  Verney  Pprs. — wascott  '  waistcoat', 
Mrs.  Poultney,  261.  1639;  Chrismas,  Lady  Sussex,  205.  1639;  Verney 
Mem. — crismus,  Doll  Leake,  iii.  287.  1656;  Coven  Garden,  Gary  V.,  ii. 
64.  1642;  Sir  Philip  Warwick,  Memoires  of  Charles  I — busling  'bust- 
ling', p.  141.  1701  ;  Lady  Wentworth — Crismass,  66.  1708,  Wesminstor, 
62,  crisned,  62,  Taufs  =  '  Tofts ',  the  singer,  66 ;  Shasbury  =  Shaftsbury, 
59,  198.  Jones  notes  loss  of  -/-  in  the  pronunciation  of  Christmas, 
costly,  ghastly,  ghostly,  Eastcheap,  lastly,  beastly,  breastplate,  gristle,  bristle, 
whistle,  &c. ;  listless,  mostly,  roast  beef,  waistband,  wristband,  christen, 
fasten,  glisten,  &c.,  and  further  in  coifs  foot,  maltster,  saltpetre,  saltcellar, 
Wiltshire. 

Most  of  the  above  pronunciations  may  still  be  heard  in  rapid  unstudied 
speech ;  to  some,  such  as  the  omission  of  /  in  mostly,  roast  beef,  &c., 
purists  might  object.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  Q.  Elizabeth  pro- 
nounced often  without  a  /,  as  do  good  speakers  at  the  present  time.  The 
pronunciation  [rftn,  5ftn],  now  not  infrequently  heard,  is  a  new-fangled 
innovation. 

Loss  of  b  between  other  consonants  ;  also  between  another  consonant  and 
a  vowel. 

I  have  only  noted  a  few  examples  of  this  : — assemlyd,  Cely  Pprs.  145 ; 
tremlyng,  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey  234.  1557;  nimlest  'nimblest', 
Q.  Elizabeth,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  29.  Camerwell  occurs  in  a  memo,  of  sale 
of  a  house,  Alleyne  Mem.  83.  1607. 

Machyn  has  Cammerell '  Camberwell ',  300.  The  loss  of  -w-  before 
an  unstressed  syllable  is  normal  (see  p.  296).  Lameth  'Lambeth'  occurs 
in  a  letter  of  Cranmer,  1534  (see  p.  304,  below).  This  particular  form 
may  well  be  mentioned  here. 


DROPPING  OF  FINAL  CONSONANTS  303 

Loss  of  -n  +  consonant. 

Westmysier,  Gregory's  Chron.  142,  and  passim,  1450-70;  Westmester, 
Short  Engl.  Chron.,  passim,  1465;  Westmester,  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  L.  and 
Pprs.  i.  388.  1493  )  Wasmester,  Mrs.  Basire,  140(1655);  both  Jones,  1701, 
and  Baker,  1724,  indicate  Westmuster  as  the  pronunciation. 

Loss  <2/*-n-  after  a  vowel  followed  by  a  consonant. 

Son  y  lawe  ( son-in-law ',  Marg.  Paston,  ii.  195;  Sune  elaw,  Machyn, 

3°3- 

maUicholie  (twice),  Shakespeare,  L.  L.  L.,  Act  iv,  Sc.  iii,  said  by 
Berowne. 

Loss  of  Final  Consonants. 

The  omission  of  final  consonants,  especially  -/,  -d  after  another  con- 
sonant, but  also  occasionally  after  vowels,  and,  to  a  less  extent,  of  other 
final  consonants,  seems  to  have  been  a  common  practice  among  all 
classes  far  into  the  eighteenth  century.  Most  of  these  final  consonants 
have  now  been  restored  in  the  usage  of  educated  speech. 

Apart  from  combinative  treatment,  in  which  respect  our  natural  rapid 
speech  does  not  greatly  differ  from  that  of  earlier  centuries,  in  dropping 
final  consonants  before  another  word  beginning  with  a  consonant — 
[rousbif,  bisli],  &c. — the  loss  of  -b  after  -m-  (lamb,  &c.)  is  the  principa. 
survival  of  the  tendency  to  eliminate  final  consonants,  once  so  widespread. 

Loss  of  -d. 

blyn  'blind',  Norf.  Guilds  35.  1389  ;  'God  of  Hevene  sene  jou',  &c. 
=  'send',  Constable  of  Dynevor  Castle,  temp.  Hen.  IV,  Ellis  ii.  i.  16; 
husbon,  Marg.  Paston  i.  42,  hunder,  do.  ii.  201 ;  my  tor,  Cely  Pprs. 
63;  Edwar  the  iiij,  Gregory  223;  rebowne  'rebound',  Rede  me,  &c. ; 
blyne  'blind',  Machyn,  105,  cole  harber  'cold-',  do.  74;  yron  Mowle 
1  mould ',  Euphues  152,  ole  drudge  '  old ',  ibid.  317  ;  Verney  Mem.— -friten 
P.  P.,  ii.  53.  1642 ;  Cooper  gives  thouzn  as  the  pronunciation  of  thousand '• 
Lady  Wentworth  haspoun  '  pound ',  62,  thousan,  55,  Sunderlin  '  Sunder- 
land',  1 1 8,  own  '  owned',  93,  Rickmon,  scaffeh  *  scaffold',  100;  her  son 
Peter  writes  Northumberlain,  418  ;  Jones  notes  '  the  sound  of  n,  written 
-nd,  when  it  may  be  sounded  in  almond,  beyond,  Desmond,  despond,  diamond 
(cf.  Lady  W.'s  dyomons,  57),  Edmond,  Ostend,  Raymond,  riband,  Richmond, 
waistband,  wristband,  scaffold,  Oswald,  &c. ;  Baker,  1724,  says  that 
almond  is  pronounced  almun. 

Loss  of  -t. 

Seynt  Johan  j?e  babtis,  Norf.  Guilds  27.  1389;  nex,  Marg.  Paston,  ii. 
82,  &c. ;  excep,  Cely  Pprs.  58,  nex,  ibid.  68;  JBraban,  Gregory's  Chron. 
80;  uprigh,  Reception  of  Cath.  of  Aragon,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  ii.  415. 
1503  ;  Beamon  '  Beaumont',  Lord  Berners,  i.  21.  1520;  Egype,  Machyn, 
262;  prompe,  Ascham,  Tox.  26  and  39;  stricklier,  W.  Norris,  Alleyne 
Pprs.  35.  1608;  Verney  Pprs. — respecks,  Mr.  Wiseman,  143.  1629; 
respeck,  Mrs.  Isham,  262.  Verney  Mem.  have  the  following : — gretis 
(Super!.),  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  123,  Papeses  'Papists',  Mrs.  Isham,  iii.  230. 
1655,  horn's  'honest',  Lady  Hobart,  iv.  52.  1664  ;  Mundy  nex,  Mall  V., 
ii.  380.  1647;  n*x>  Lady  Rochester  (Sussex),  iii.  467.  1660;  respeck^ 


3o4  CHANGES  IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

Lady  Hobart,  iii.  305.  1657  ;  the  res  of  our  neighbours,  Mrs.  Basire,  1 10. 
1651. 

According  to  Jones,  1701,  -/  is  omitted  at  the  end  of  rapt,  script, 
abrupt,  bankrupt,  corrupt,  manuscript ;  distinct,  strict,  direct,  afflict,  reflect, 
respect,  sect,  &c.,  &c.  He  gives  the  pronunciation  of  pageant  as  pagtn,  or 
pagem. 

Lady  Went  worth — prospeck,  62;  Peter  W.< — strick  'strict',  255; 
Lady  ^.—richis  <  richest ',  Lord  Dyzer  '  Dysart ',  tex  '  text ',  Lady  W. 
221.  1711;  Baker,  1724 — Egip,  poser ip,  ballas  '  ballast ';  Pope  rhymes 
sex — neglects,  Epilogue  to  the  Satires,  Dial.  I,  15-16.  1738. 

Elphinston  says  that  /  cannot  be  clearly  heard  in  distinct,  but  has  not 
quite  disappeared  in  distinctly. 

Loss  of  final  -f. 

kerchys  'kerchiefs',  Bokenam,  St.  Cecil.  862.  1441;  kersche  and 
nekkerchys,  M.  Paston,  ii.  342. 1469 ;  Sant  Towleys  '  St.  Olaves ',  Machyn, 
118;  masties  'mastiffs',  G.  Harvey's  Lttrs.  18.  1573-80;  Marston — 
handkerchers,  Ant.  and  Mell.,  Pt.  ii,  Act  n,  Sc.  i,  1602  ;  masty,  Middle- 
ton's  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One,  i.  4  (1608);  Lady  Sussex — baly, 
Verney  Mem.  ii.  156.  1642  ;  Baker,  1724 — handkercher,  mastee  'mastiff'; 
Jones,  1701 — mastee ',  bailee,  hussee,  or  hussy  '  housewife  '. 

Loss  of  final  -b. 

We  no  longer  pronounce  -b  in  comb,  lamb,  jamb,  &c.,  nor  in  inflected 
forms  of  these  words  before  a  vowel,  such  as  combing,  lambing,  &c.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  have  restored  the  b  in  Lambeth,  originally  LambheJ* 
with  the  South-Eastern  or  Kentish  form  of  O.E.  hyp,  a  landing-place  or 
wharf.  As  early  as  1418  Archbishop  Chichele  writes  Lamhyth,  Ellis  i.  i. 
5;  and  in  1534  a  letter  from  Archbishop  Cranmer,  though  not, 
unfortunately,  preserved  in  his  own  handwriting,  contains  the  form 
Lameth,  Ellis  iii.  2.  319;  lameskynnes  occurs  in  Rewle  of  Sustr.  Men., 
1450.  49  ;  to  clyme  '  climb',  Euphues,  185.  1580. 

lamme,  Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs.  135,  lamskin,  ibid.  14.  1573-80;  to 
come  it  =  'comb',  Pen.  Verney,  V.  Mem.  ii.  177.  1642. 

Cooper,  1685,  notes  that  -b  is  lost  in  climb,  dumb,  lamb,  limb,  thumb, 
tomb,  womb. 

In  limb  and  thumb  the  b  is  unhistorical,  the  O.E.  forms  being  lim, 
puma.  The  explanation  of  the  spelling  in  these  two  words  may  possibly 
be  that  the  final  -b  was  once  pronounced,  having  been  developed  accord- 
ing to  the  tendencies  illustrated  on  p.  309,  below. 

Loss  of  Consonants  between  Vowels,  or  after  Consonants  before 

a  following  Vowel. 
Loss  of  open  consonants. 

St.  Editha,  1420 — senty  'seventy',  414,  swene  =  sweven  'dream  ',  906, 
godmores  'godmothers',  2215,  pament  'pavement',  2027;  Caxton, 
Jason — pament,  166.  27.  1477;  Machyn — Denshyre,  39,  Lussam 
'Lewisham';  Marston — 1  marie  'marvel',  E.  Hoe  3.  2.  1605;  Jones 
gives  Dantry  as  the  pronunciation  of  Daventry ;  Cary  Stewkley — senet 
'seven  nights,  se'nnight',  Verney  Mem.  iv.  434.  1656;  Aubrey,  Lives 
(1669-96),  has  Shrineham  '  Shrivenham '  Berks.,  ii.  47,  Clark's  Ed. 


LOSS   OF  'yfc'IN  NIGHT  AND  BROUGHT,   ETC.     305 

/"  d  between  vowels. 
The  form  la' ship  for  ladyship  occurs  in  Congreve's  Way  of  the  World, 
Act  in,  Sc.  iv,  said  by  a  mincing  waiting-woman,  and  in  Tom  Jones, 
said  by  Mrs.  Honour,  Sophia  Western's  waiting-woman.  As  this  is  the 
only  evidence  I  can  produce  for  this  form,  it  is  probably  to  be  regarded 
as  a  vulgarism. 

Loss  of  h  +  t. 

We  must  distinguish  between  the  treatment  of  the  combination  -ht — 

(a)  when  preceded  by  original  front  vowels,  e.  g.  in  night,  light,  &c.,  and 

(b)  when  preceded  by  back  vowels,  e.  g.  in  daughter,  bought,  &c. 

In  the  former  case  the  sound  represented  by  -h-  disappeared  in 
Southern  English  at  least  as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century,  in  spite  of  the 
statements  of  some  of  the  seventeenth-century  Orthoepists  ;  in  the  latter 
case  there  were  two  developments — (i)  total  disappearance  of  the  con- 
sonant before  -/,  and  (2)  a  change  to  the  sound  /-.  The  latter  develop- 
ment is  treated  above,  p.  288. 

The  disappearance  of  the  consonant  is  shown  in  the  occasional 
spellings,  both  by  the  omission  of  the  letter  -h-  in  words  where  it 
belongs  historically,  and  by  the  introduction  of  -h-  or  -gh-  in  words 
where  no  sound  ever  existed  between  the  vowel  and  the  following  -/ — 
wright  for  '  write ',  abought  for  '  about '. 

(a)  Loss  of  h  before  t  when  preceded  by  a  front  vowel. 

Curiously  enough,  the  earliest  proofs  I  have  found  of  the  disappearance 
of  the  consonant — here  a  front-open-voiceless  [j] — in  the  combination 
-ight,  consist  of  the  introduction  of  the  consonantal  symbols  where  they 
do  not  historically  belong.  In  the  following  list  the  two  types  of  spelling 
are  enumerated  indiscriminately,  in  chronological  order,  since  they  both 
go  to  establish  the  same  thing. 

Marg.  Paston — wright '  write ',  ii.  29,  1461,  &c.,  &c.,  also  E.  of  Surrey, 
Letter  to  Wolsey,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  pt.  ii.  39,  1520,  Sir  Thos.  More, 
Ellis  i.  i.  199;  quight,  Rede  me,  &c.,  1528;  lyte  'light',  Elyot's  Gouer- 
nour  2.  355  ;  whight  'white',  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  23,  1557  ;  baight 
1  bate  ',  Whetstone's  Remembr.  of  Gascoine,  Steele  Glasse,  p.  24,  1577  ; 
weight  rhymes  fate,  Habington's  Castara  134,  height  rhymes  state,  ibid. 
96,  1634;  Henry  Verney — to  wrygh^Vtrwy  Pprs.  190,  1637;  Spenser 
constantly  writes  quight,  bight '  bite  ',  &c.,  and  rhymes  fight,  &c.,  indiffer- 
ently with  white,  &c.,  or  with  quite,  &c. 

(b)  Loss  of~h-  +  t  when  preceded  by  a  back  vowel 

My  evidence  for  this  is  earlier  than  for  (a).  Already  in  the  thirteenth 
century  broute  ( brought '  is  found  in  Lajamon,  and  naut  '  naught '  in 
Hali  Meidenhed,  1225,  dowter  'daughter 'in  Songs  and  Carols,  1400, 
while  the  spelling/^/*  'foot'  is  found  in  W.  of  Shoreham. 

Marg.  Paston  has  kawt  'caught',  i.  no,  1450,  abowght  'about',  ii. 
29,  1461,  ought  'out',  ii.  341,  1469,  abaught,  ii.  362,  1499;  dowttyr, 
Cely  Papers  105;  Henry  VIII  writes  abought  in  1515,  Ellis  i.  i. 
126;  Elyot's  Gouernour — dought  'doubt',  i.  35,  cloughts,  i.  247; 
Gabr.  Harvey— droute  'drought',  Lttrs.  72,  and  thoat ' thought ',  ibid.  15; 
J.  Alleyn,  Alleyn  Pprs.—dater,  datter,  p.  15,  159-;  Anne  Denton, 
Verney  Mem.  iii.  >j$—dater  'daughter',  1650;  Wm.  Roades,  V.  Mem. 


3o6  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

iii.  274 — slater  'slaughter*,   1656.     Mrs.  Basire  has  doter  < daughter*, 
112  (1653). 

D.   Addition  of  Consonants. 
Development  of  w-  initially  before  M.E.  62. 

The  word  one  and  its  old  Gen.  the  Adv.  once  [wan],  &c.,  are  curiosities 
in  Received  Standard,  being  the  only  forms  of  their  kind.  The  normal 
development  of  O.E.  an  is  heard  in  on-\y  and  a\-one,  and  it  is  evident  that 
the  corresponding  form  of  one  [on]  was  in  use  in  the  Standard  English  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  alongside  the  other  type,  that  from  which  our 
present  form  is  derived.  The  pronunciation  [wan]  or  its  equivalent,  at 
any  rate  a  pronunciation  with  initial  w-,  seems  to  be  the  sole  form  now 
in  use  in  stressed  positions  in  the  various  rustic  dialects  apart  from 
those  of  the  North,  which  are  [en,  Jen],  &c.  In  some  it  is,  no  doubt, 
indigenous,  in  most  it  must  have  been  borrowed  from  Received  Standard. 

The  development  of  the  form  [wan]  is  not  altogether  easy  to  follow. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  it  owes  its  main  feature — the  initial  '  w- ' — to 
what  is  called  a  strong  rounded  on-glide,  which  in  time  became  a  defi- 
nite independent  lip-back  consonant.  It  is  strange  that  this  word  should 
be  the  sole  survivor  of  its  type  in  Received  Standard,  strange  also  that  it 
is  not  recognized  in  the  official  spelling.  The  first  point  may  strike  us 
as  yet  more  remarkable  when  we  call  to  mind  the  words  only  and  alone, 
which,  though  almost  completely  isolated  from  their  parent  by  form  and 
meaning,  were  formerly  closely  associated  with  it  by  both  of  these  ties ; 
the  second  is  the  more  astonishing  when  we  note  that  a  very  similar 
tendency  which  overtook  o*  preceded  by  h-  (in  holy,  hot),  &c.,  actually  has 
been  recorded  in  the  orthodox  system  of  spelling  in  the  words  whole, 
whore,  although  no  trace  of  any  lip  consonant  (w)  survives  in  any  form  of 
Standard  English,  in  any  words  of  this  class.  But  although  at  the  present 
time  there  is  only  one  word  which  retains  the  u;-type  which  began 
originally  with  5-,  and  none  originally  beginning  with  ho-,  we  shall  see 
that  down  well  into  the  seventeenth  century  at  least,  other  words,  as  one 
would  expect,  also  show  this  type  of  pronunciation,  so  far  as  can  be 
judged  by  the  occasional  spellings. 

We  may  well  ask  where  our  solitary  [wan]  came  from,  and  to  a  great 
extent  Echo  answers — where  ?  From  what  Regional  dialect  the  tendency 
arose  we  cannot  say  at  present. 

The  earliest  spelling  of  the  wone  form  I  have  found  so  far  is  in  St.  Editha 
(Wilts.),  and  other  instances  of  the  w-  spellings  in  this  and  other  words 
will  be  found  below  from  other  fifteenth-century  texts  of  Westerly  origin. 
But  do  we  seek  to  draw  any  conclusions  from  this,  behold  the  Cely 
Papers,  in  the  same  century,  written  for  the  most  part  by  Essex  people, 
also  furnish  examples.  Still  it  is  true  that  most  of  my  fifteenth-century 
examples  are  from  texts  written  in  the  West  of  England,  and  we  may 
make  what  we  can  of  that  fact.  If  wfc  turn  to  the  facts  of  the  Modern 
dialects,  as  they  are  recorded  in  Wright's  Engl.  Dial.  Gr.,  they  do  not,  I 
think,  point  to  anything  definite — the  7fl-forms  of  words  like  oats,  &c., 
seem  to  be  peppered  about,  more  or  less  at  random,  among  the  Regional 
dialects.  This,  like  so  many  other  problems  of  its  kind,  will  never  be 


PRONUNCIATION   OF   <  ONE'  307 

settled  by  limiting  our  investigation  to  the  Modern  dialects.  Not  until 
we  know  much  more  than  is  known  at  present  of  the  details  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  dialectal  peculiaries  in  the  M.E.  period  and  in  the  fifteenth  century 
will  these  questions  be  solved. 

The  words  of  which  I  have  found  spellings  with  w-  before  original 
initial  o  are  M.E.  oon  '  one  ',  oonly  '  only ',  othe  '  oath  ' ;  while  those  with 
an  initial  h-  of  which  I  have  found  wh-  spellings  are  hool  '  whole  ',  hoom 
1  home  ',  hoot '  hot '.  I  put  them  into  two  separate  lists. 

Forms  with  w-  of  '  one ',  $c.,  '  oath ',  tyc. 

St.  Editha,  1420 — won  'one',  1835,  2302,  3086,  3103;  wonlyche, 
3529,  wothe,  2100  ;  Audelay's  Poems,  1426 — won,  p.  38  ;  Exeter  Tailors' 
Guild,  1466 — won,  322,  woth,  322;  Cely  Pprs.,  1475 — whon,  ^whone, 
24,  'one'  (the  Celys  often  write  wh-  for  w-,  cf.  p.  313);  Henry  VIII, 
Letters,  Ellis  i.  i — won,  p.  126,.  1515,  and  won,  woon,  i.  2.  130,  1544; 
Thos.  Pery,  Letters — wone,  Ellis  ii.  2.  140,  143,  1549;  Latimer's  Ser- 
mons— such  a  wone,  5,  7,  32;  Machyn,  1550-63 — won,  125;  Q. 
Elizabeth,  Transl. — won,  74,  wons,  4,  1593;  W.  Faunte,  Alleyn  Pprs. — 
shuch  a  on  (=  w-\  p.  32,  159-;  Verney  Mem. — a  meane  wan,  SirR.  V. 
ii.  76,  1642;  won's  'one's',  Lady  Sydenham,  ii.  100,  1642;  Wentw. 
Pprs.,  Lady  Strafford — won,  213,  214,  1711,  280,  1712.  Cooper,  1685, 
includes  wuts  '  oats'  among  his  list  of  dialectal  forms. 

Forms  with  who,  $c.,  for  old  ho-. 

St.  Editha— wholle  'whole',  3368;  'Bp.  Bekinton,  1442 — whome 
'home',  Lttrs.,  p.  80;  Syr  Degrevaunt — whome,  1.  929;  Sir  J.  Fortes- 
cue — whome,  153;  Cely  Pprs. — woldelQ\&',  22,  1479;  Rede  me,  &c.r 
1528 — whore,  whoredom,  passim,  whoate,  51,  'hot',  whole,  wholy,  61, 
wholines,  85,  86,  wholy '  holy  ',  1 16,  &c. ;  Latimer's  Serin. — whomlye,  134, 
whore,  whoredom,  160  ;  Lever's  Serm. — whot '  hot',  126,  1550  ;  Ascham, 
Scholemaster — whoh'e  '  wholly  ',  92,  1563-8;  Lord  Burghley,  Letters — 
whott  'hot',  Ellis  ii.  3.  99,  1582;  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  Rep.  Angl. — 
whot,  70,  1565  ;  Peele,  Edw.  I,  Malone  Soc. — whot,  2389,  whote,  1212, 
1591;  Q.  Elizabeth,  Lttrs.  J.  VI — wholy,  27,  1593;  Spenser — whott, 
F.  Q.,  Bk.  ii,  Cant.  v.  18  ;  Mulcaster,  1583 — 'mere  ignorance  writeth  so 
unwarielie  whole  for  hole  which  (ought)  to  begin  with  h- ',  Elementarie, 
p.  155;  Henry  Verney,  V.  Mem.  ii.  355,  356,  writes  whome  'home', 
1647. 

Cooper,  1685,  notes  hwutter  'hotter'  as  belonging  to  'barbarous 
dialect '  and  to  be  avoided. 

The  Combination  so1-  becomes  swo ;  scou-  [sku]  becomes  [skwu-]. 

Bp.  Pecok's  Represser,  1449,  has  the  form  swope  '  soap ',  i.  127.  This 
must  be  regarded  as  a  purely  Regional  form  of  a  type  which  apparently 
never  got  a  footing  in  the  London  dialect  or  in  Common  Literary  ^English. 
Pecok's  English  is  decidedly  Western  in  type,  in  so  far  as  it  departs  from 
the  London  form. 

Cooper  records  the  pronunciation  squrge  '  scourge ',  '  facilitatis  causa '. 

X    2 


3o8  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

61-  initially  becomes  wo  [wu]  ;  ho1-  becomes  who  [whu-]. 

Whatever  may  be  the  case  in  Regional  dialects,  the  instances  are  rare 
in  the  London  dialect  and  Literary  English.  I  have  noted  wother  'other*, 
Rede  me,  &c.,  1528,  22,  27,  32,  &c. ;  also  in  a  letter  from  Thos.  Pery, 
Ellis  ii.  2.  146,  1539. 

Under  this  heading  may  be  mentioned  Wolster  l  Ulster ',  St.  of  Ireland, 
St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  p.  7,  1515. 

In  Gabriel  Harvey's  Lttr.  Bk.  'hood  '  is  written  whudd,  p.  125.  I  re- 
member, as  a  boy,  hearing  a  domestic  pronounce  '  Red  Riding  Wood*  = 
Hood.  In  Chapman's  Mons.  d'Olive,  Wks.  i.  246,  whoote  occurs  for 
'hoot',  1606. 

Development  of  y  [j]  initially  before  Front  Vowels. 

A  certain  number  of  words  occur  written  with  y-  in  various  writers, 
between  the  fifteenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  inclusive.  I  do  not  propose 
to  deal  with  M.E.  forms  here.  This  feature  is  perhaps  more  character- 
istic of  the  Western  dialects,  but  traces  of  it  are  found  in  Cely  Papers, 
and  it  penetrates  into  the  London  dialect  and  the  Received  Standard  of 
the  sixteenth  and  following  centuries.  One  form — -yearth — as  will  be  seen 
from  the  particulars  below,  is  very  persistent,  and  may  perhaps  be 
regarded  as  a  Kentish  or  South-Eastern  form  originally — cf.  M.E. 
(Kentish)  yerthe,  &c.,  where  ye  represents  the  old  diphthong  eo.  I  have 
noted  the  following  examples  of  y-  forms : — 

St.  Editha — ^ende  'end',  1.  1846;  Coventry  Leet  Bk.,  1430,  $euery 
'every',  p.  131;  Bokenam— -yorth  'earth';  Shillingford— -yerly  'early/, 
i6,yeuen  '  even ',  1 6,yese  '  ease  ',  40 ;  Cely  Papers— yelles  '  ells  ' ;  Recept. 
Cath.  of  Ar.,  1501— -yest  'east',  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i.  394;  Thos.  Pery — 
yending,  Ellis  ii.  2.  140,  1539;  Latimer's  Serm. — -yere  'ere',  56, yearth 
'earth',  52;  Edw.  VI,  First  P.  B. — yer  'ere',  Joh.  viii,  yearth,  Venite, 
Te  Deum,  &c.,  &c.  ;  Machyn  has  yerl '  earl '  frequently  throughout  his 
Diary;  Lever's  Serm.,  \$$p—yearthe,  43,  yearthly,  61 ;  Butler,  1634, 
warns  against  yer  '  ere '  and  yerst  '  erst ' ;  Mall  Verney—yearnesfly, 
V.  Mem.  ii.  381,  1647  >'  Mrs.  Isham— -yeare  'ear',  V.  Mem.  iv.  118.  1665  ; 
Cooper,  1685,  puts  yerb  'herb'  and  yearth  under  his  forms  which  illus- 
trate 'Barbarous  Dialect';  in  1749  (Letter  195),  Lord  Chesterfield 
mentions  yearth  as  an  example  of  the  pronunciation  of  the  Vulgar  Man, 
which  '  carries  the  mark  of  the  beast  along  with  it ' ;  Goldsmith,  in  the 
Essay  'Of  Various  Clubs',  Busybody,  1759,  makes  a  Club  member  tell 
a  story  of  what  a  noble  Lord  said  to  him — '  There 's  no  man  on  the  face 
of  \hs  yearth',  &c. ;  young  Squire  Malford,  in  Humphrey  Clinker,  1771, 
writes  yearl  '  earl '  (in  italics)  in  a  letter,  evidently  indicating  a  con- 
temporary pronunciation  which  he  did  not  use  himself;  Elphinston,  1787, 
mentions  yearth  and  yerb  as  current  both  in  Scotland  and  England, 
though  not  in  good  usage. 

It  is  evident  that  some  of  these  forms  were  once  fairly  widespread,  and 
that  not  only  in  provincial  usage.  At  the  present  time,  the  only  one 
which  still  survives  among  good  speakers  is  year  for  ear,  and  that  is  fast 
becoming  archaic,  and  is  heard  less  and  less. 


ADDITION  OF  FINAL  AND  MEDIAL  CONSONANTS  309 

Addition  of  Consonants. 
Finally,  especially  after  -r,  -n,  -m,  -1,  -s,  -f. 

Palladius,  1420 — Spaniald  'Spaniard'  for  Spanyol,  75.  409;  St. 
Editha— -faylardes,  2923,  to  past  away;  Bury  Wills — wochsaft,  17; 
Capgrave's  Chron. — lynand  '  linen ',  108,  ylde,  257;  Sir  J.  Paston — tide 
'  aisle  ' ;  Marg.  Paston — wyld  (  will ',  i.  83,  combe  Vb.  Inf.,  iv.  78  ; 
Short  Engl.  Chron.,  1465 — Lymoste,  65,  'Limehouse';  Gregory's 
Chron.,  1450-70 — losie,  215,  patent  'paten',  86;  Cely  Pprs.—  Clifte 
'Cleave'  PI.  N.  Glos.  161;  Cr.  of  Knt.  of  Bath— felde,  397;  R.  Pace  to 
Card.  Wolsey — synst,  Ellis  iii.  i.  199;  Lord  Berners'  Froissart — knekd 
downed,  i.  25  ;  St.  of  Irel.,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii — whylde  '  while ', 
p.  18,  1513;  Thos.  Pery — varment  'vermin',  Ellis  ii.  2.  148,  sermonte 
'sermon',  154;  Machyn,  1550-63 — Sake/eld  '  Sackville ',  153;  Gabr. 
Harvey,  Lttrs.,  1573-80 — surgiant  'surgeon',  23;  Ascham,  Tox. — 
grafte  Vb.,  earlier  graffe,  p.  56;  Wilson,  Arte  of  Rhet. — gallands 
'gallons',  155;  Euphues—  visard,  319,  lombe  'loom',  293,  margent,  270, 
mushrompe,  62;  E.  of  Shrewsbury — orphant,  Ellis  ii.  3.  60,  1582; 
Q.  Elizabeth,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI— -for  the  nones/  '  nonce  ',91.  1593  5  Marston, 
Anton,  and  Mell.,  Pt.  2,  Act  ii,  Sc.  iv — orphant,  1602;  Shakespeare, 
First  Fol.— vilde  '  vile  ',  Mids.  N.  Dr.  i.  i,  Merry  W.  iv.  v,  Hen.  IV,  Pt.  i,  3, 
&c.,  &c. ;  vildely,  Second  Pt.,  Hen. IV,  i.  ii,  n.  ii;  Spenser — vylde,  F.  Q., 
Bk.  vi,  Cant.  i.  i,  and  it  rhymes  milde,  Bk.  iii,  Cant.  viii.  34,  &c. ;  Donne 
(1573-1631)  rhymes  vilde  'vile' — child,  Elegie  xiii.  7  and  8;  Verney 
Mem. have: — schollards,  Sir  R.  V.  ii.  21,  1641 ;  micklemust,  M.  Faulkiner, 
ii.  52,  1642;  generald  'General',  ii.  91,  1642;  Mrs.  Eure;  the  hold 
yeare  '  whole ',  Pen.  Denton,  iii.  229, 1655 ;  lofte  '  loathe ',  Mrs.  Isham,  ii. 
220,  1645;  lemonds,  Luce  Sheppard,  iv.  29,  1662;  night  gownd,  Gary 
Stewkley,  iv.  442,  1688;  homb  'home',  Gary  Stewkley,  iv.  35,  1663; 
Butler,  Hudibras,  Pt.  i,  919-20,  rhymes  wound — swound  '  swoon',  1664 ; 
Swift  rhymes  ferment — vermin,  The  Problem;  Jones,  1701,  seems  to 
"take  clift  as  the  normal  form,  but  says  it  may  be  written  cliff  \  Wentw. 
Pprs.,  Peter  W. — 'made  the  house  laught\  &c.,  in,  1710,  'not  soft 
('  safe ')  for  me ',  103,  ibid.,  sarment,  P.  W.  221,  1711,  and  321,  Lady  W., 
1713,  gownds,  284,  Lady  Stafford,  1712  ;  lost  of  time,  P.  W.  200,  1711 ; 
— '  were  liked  (like)  to  have  obtained',  P.  W.  104,  1710;  Lord  Harvey, 
Mem.  of  Reign  of  George  II,  often  writes  Hulst  for  Sir  Edward  Hulse, 
cf.  iii.  302,  315,  316;  Elphinston  puts  down  sermont,  drownd  (Inf.), 
gownd,  scollard,  wonst  'once',  as  vulgarisms;  Pegge,  1814,  regards  as 
London  vulgarisms  verment^  serment,  nyst,  margent. 

Addition  of  Parasitic  Consonants  between  Groups  of  Consonants. 
Already  in  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  we  find  dempt  'deemed', 
Gen.  and  Ex.  2038,  drempte  dremes,  ibid.  2049.  Later  examples  are : — 
sumptyme  '  sometime ',  St.  Ed.  1 4 ;  Cely  Pprs. — Montgwmbre  '  Mont- 
gomery ',  80,  rembnant,  75 ;  St.  of  Ireland,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii — 
Lymbryk,  p.  8,  1513 ;  Archbp.  Cranmer — combly  '  comely',  Ellis  i.  2.  37, 
1533;  Thos.  Lever,  Serm. — Humbles  =  Homilies,  65,  1550;  Gabr. 
Harvey,  Letters,  1573-80 — maltconceived  l  malconceived  ',  p.  67  ;  Verney 
Mem. — clendlynes,  Lady  Hobart,  iii.  78,  1644;  Peter  Wentworth — Duke 
of  Hambleton  =  'Hamilton ',  Wentw.  Pprs.  238,  1712. 


3io  CHANGES   IN   CONSONANTAL   SOUNDS 

Introduction  of  -w-  (a  lip-glide)  between  Consonant  and  following 
Rounded  Vowel. 

St.  Editha  has  twoile,  2274,  2277;  Cely  Pprs.  have  apwoyntydy  116, 
pwoyntement,  71;  Bury  Wills,  gwory,  84  (1501);  Butler,  1634,  gives 
pronunciation  bwoe  for  'boy/;  Wallis,  1653,  Sa7s  ^at  a^ter  P  anc*  ^> 
before  o%  w  is  pronounced,  but  not  by  all  speakers,  nor  in  all  words — 
pwot '  pot ',  bwoil '  boil ',  bwoy  '  boy '. 

Lady  Wentworth  writes  twilete  l  toilette '  =  [tw^il/'t],  perhaps  in  imita- 
tion of  French  pronunciation. 

Development  of  front-glide  beliveen  g-,  k-,  and  following  Front  Vowel. 

This  may  be  expressed  by  Lady  Hobart's  spelling  gearl  =  [gjcrl]  ?, 
V.  Mem.  iv.  54,  1644,  but  I  give  the  form  tentatively. 

Wallis,  1653,  says  that  can,  get,  begin  are  pronounced  cyan,  gyet, 
begyin. 

Elphinston  affirms  that  kyind,  gyide,  and  the  introduction  of  'y ' 
before  the  vowel  in  sky,  can,  card,  skirt,  guard,  &c.,  are  essential  to  a 
polite  pronunciation.  Walker,  1801,  is  very  definite  about  the  intro- 
duction of  a  '  fluent,  liquid  sound  after  k,  c,  or  g  hard  before  a  and 
i,  which  gives  a  smooth  and  elegant  sound  to  ...  and  which  distin- 
guishes the  polite  conversation  of  London  from  that  of  every  other  part 
of  the  island '.  Walker  expresses  the  pronunciation  referred  to  by  the 
spellings  ke-ind,  ke-ard,  rege-ard.  The  words  '  which  require  the  liquid 
sound '  are  : — sky,  kind,  guide,  gird,  girt,  girl,  guise,  guile,  card,  cart,  cap, 
carpenter,  carnal,  cartridge,  guard,  regard. 

I  used  to  hear  the  pronunciations  [kjad,  gjadn],  &c.,  as  a  boy,  from  a 
very  near  relation  of  mine,  a  most  fastidious  speaker,  a  lady  born  in  1802, 
who  died  in  1886.  (Note  in  card,  &c.,  the  glide  developed  while  a  still 
represented  a  front  vowel ;  in  kind,  &c.,  it  must  have  developed  at  some 
stage  such  as  [ksezhd  <  kjsezhd].) 

Aspiration  of  Initial  Vowels,  popularly  called  l  put  ting  in  an  h*. 

The  '  incorrect '  aspiration  of  initial  vowels,  one  of  the  commonest  of 
vulgarisms,  appears  to  be  confined  not  merely  to  stressed  words  or  syl- 
lables, but  chiefly  to  those  which  have  extra-strong  stress  in  the  sentence. 
It  is  rarely  heard  before  words  that  are  weakly  stressed.  The  habit  seems 
always  to  have  been  considered  a  vulgarism,  and  the  few  examples  I  have 
recorded  are  nearly  all  from  provincial  sources,  or  from  the  writings  of 
persons  who  otherwise  show  signs  of  defective  education  and  vulgar  habits 
of  speech.  Norf.  Guilds  have  her  the  '  earth ',  35,  a  garland  of  hoke  leaves, 
117,  &c.  Another  considerable  number  of  instances  occur  in  St.  Editha 
(1420).  These  are: — houjt  '  out ',  54,  Hyryssche  '  Irish ',  48,  heyndynge 
'ending',  i,  hende,  515,  herlyche  'early',  270,  hynon  'eyes',  1892,  hevelle 
1  evil ',  32,  34,  Hyronesyde  '  Ironside ',  3279,  harme  '  arm ',  4129.  Bokenam 
has  her  and  '  errand  ',  Marg.  1081,  and  hangyr  '  anger  ',  Ag.  485.  The 
Will  of  Sir  T.  Cumberworth,  Lines.,  1451,  has  faulkVb.,  Line.  Dioc. 
Docs.  49. 13;  Gregory's  Chron.,  hasche  (the  tree),  200 ;  Cely  Papers,  howlde 
'old',  48;  Marg.  Paston,  howyn  'own',  i.  438,  hour  'our',  i.  439, 
howeih  *  oweth ',  ii.  26,  461,  haskyd,  ii.  26,  hondyrstonde,  ii.  32,  the  hone  '  the 


'DROPPING  THE  hl  IN    WHITE,  ETC.  311 

one',  ii.  62,  hewers  i ewers ',  ii.  75,  herand,  ii.  215.  Machyn  furnishes 
more  examples  than  any  other  source,  and  has  one  excellent  instance  of 
the  h-  occurring  in  a  strongly  stressed  word  at  the  end  of  a  sentence — 
'a  gret  dener  as  I  haue  be  hat*  '  at ',  p.  2,  which  might  be  said  at  the 
present  time  by  a  certain  kind  of  speaker,  has,  139,  hunder shaft,  116, 
harme  (of  the  body),  85,  haskyd,  205,  hanswered,  242,  hetten  'eaten',  16, 
hoyth  'oath',  25,  herth  'earth',  6,  here  'ear',  40,  Hambrose,  48.  John 
Alleyn  has  hernest '  earnest ',  Alleyn  Papers  16,  159-. 

Lady  Sydenham  writes  hobblegashons  '  obligations ',  Verney  Mem.  ii.  125. 

The  evidence,  such  as  it  is,  does  not  point  to  this  habit  being  very 
widespread  before  the  eighteenth  century.  The  grammarians  of  the  six- 
teenth, seventeenth,  and  early  eighteenth  centuries  do  not  utter  warnings 
against  it,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  not  found  in  the  English  of  Ireland  or 
America  also  suggests  that  it  gained  currency  rather  late.  Smollett,  in 
Roderick  Random,  ch.  xvi,  makes  Mr.  Jackson's  fiance'e — '  a  charming 
creature — writes  like  an  angel' — introduce  h-  in  her  letters  in  hopjack 
'  object ',  keys  '  eyes  ',  harrows  '  arrows  ',  harms  '  arms ',  which  shows  that 
when  this  book  was  written  in  1771  the  practice  was  a  recognized  and 
common  vulgarism. 

E.    Voicing  of  Voiceless  Consonants. 

Voicing  of  Initial  wh-,  i.  e.  \iv<  wl     Popularly  called  '  leaving  out 

'   the\a\ 

At  the  present  time  in  the  Received  Standard  as  spoken  in  the  South 
and  Midlands,  and  in  the  Regional  dialects  of  these  areas,  no  distinction 
is  made  between  whine  and  wine,  between  which  and  witch,  white  and 
Wight,  &c.  The  only  exceptions  are  those  speakers  who  have  been  sub- 
jected to  Scotch  or  Irish  influence,  or  who  have  deliberately  chosen  to 
depart  from  the  normal  practice  for  their  own  private  satisfaction. 

In  the  South  and  West  we  find  w-spellings,  instead  of  wh-  or  hw,  from 
an  early  period  in  M.E.  In  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  which, 
white,  &c.,  are  the  usual  spellings  in  the  London  documents,  though  in 
1494  we  find  wich,  388,  wen,  391,  werof,  388,  in  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath.  We 
may,  I  think,  dismiss  the  form  wich  as  having  probably  arisen  in  positions 
of  weak  stress  as  a  Relative  Pronoun,  but  the  others  seem  to  illustrate  the 
voicing.  The  form  wich  is  very  common  in  letters,  wills,  and  other 
private  and  public  documents  in  this  and  the  following  century,  and  it  is 
suspicious  because  it  is  so  often  the  only  spelling  of  its  kind.  For  instance, 
Marg.  Paston  writes  wich(e),  but  otherwise  wh-,  and  even  qu-,  a  spelling 
which  must  have  penetrated  from  the  N.E.  Midlands  or  lower  Northern 
area,  where  it  is  usual,  and  was  probably  intended  to  express  a  particularly 
strong  form  of  the  voiceless  consonant.  Wete  '  wheat '  occurs  in  Will  of 
J.  Buckland,  Northants,  1450,  L.  D.  D.  42.  13.  The  Celys,  in  Essex, 
might  have  been  expected  to  pronounce  '  ivite ',  &c.,  but  such  spellings 
seem  not  to  occur  in  their  letters,  though  wh-  for  original  w-  is  frequent, 
and  is  indeed  one  of  the  features  of  these  documents.  The  evidence  is 
slight  so  far  as  the  fifteenth  century  is  concerned. 

In  the  next  century  Machyn  has  wyped '  whipped ',  8,  warff'  wharf ',  13, 
and  the  inverted  spelling  whent  is  common.  In  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey, 


312     CHANGES  IN  CONSONANTAL  SOUNDS 

I  have  noted  wyght  '  white  ',  148,  wye  '  why  ',  157,  and  the  inverted  whear 
hi  wear,  154.  In  the  Verney  Papers  I  have  noted  only  wich  (1629) 
without  h\  in  the  Verney  Memoirs,  which  begin  in  the  forties  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  we  have  any  ware,  Mary  Gardiner,  ii.  334,  1644,  and 
wig  'whig',  Edm.  V.,  iv.  267,  1683.  It  is  remarkable,  if  the  habit  of 
voicing  was  well  established,  that  such  independent  spellers  as  the  Verney 
family  should  not  have  recorded  it  oftener.  It  should  be  said  that  all  the 
seventeenth-century  writers  on  pronunciation  assert  that  '  h  '  is  pronounced 
in  wh-t  a  French  writer  (Alphabet  Anglois,  1625)  giving  houitch  as  the 
pronunciation  si  which.  Wallis,  1653,  Howel,  1662,  and  Cooper,  1685, 
to  mention  no  more,  all  declare,  in  various  ways,  that  wh  is  pronounced 
hw,  &c.  Lady  Wentworth  in  1  709,  W.  Papers  99,  writes  wig  '  whig  '. 
Elphinston,  in  his  various  writings  from  1765-87,  admits,  while  he 
deplores,  the  complete  '  disappearance  of  h  '  in  whale  ^  what,  &c.  Dr,  John- 
son in  1765  still  believes  that  he  '  hears  the  h  '.  Walker  notes  with  regret 
the  London  use  of  w-  for  wh-.  It  would  appear  from  the  above  that  the 
voicing  of  wh-  was  not  unknown  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  that  this 
became  more  and  more  widespread,  though  for  a  long  time  not  universal 
in  London  and  the  surrounding  counties.  There  were  perhaps  always,  as 
now,  a  certain  number  of  speakers  who  prided  themselves  on  '  pronouncing 
the  h  '. 

Voicing  of  Voiceless  Consonants  ;  Medially  :  between  Vowels  ;  between 
a  Vowel  and  a  Consonant;  Finally. 

Some  of  the  examples  of  voicing  between  vowels  persist  to  the  present 
day  among  some  speakers.  The  forms  are  arranged  chronologically 
without  sub-classification. 

St.  Editha,  1420,  crebulle  'cripple',  432,  4347,/edryd  '  fettered',  2301, 
hondynge  'hunting',  447,  4453,  drongon  'they  drank',  520,  thyngeth 
1  seems  '  for  thynketh,  thongedon  '  thanked  '  PI.,  461,  thonged,  4372,  y  thenge 
'I  think',  3247,  dronge  'drank',  1642,  shalde  'shalt',  532,  servaunde, 
2342,  '  servant  ',  y-graundyd  '  granted  ',  809,  peyndynge  '  painting  ',  1780, 
peyndud  'painted',  1781,  &c.,  Egberde,  201,  parde  'part',  517  (rhymes 
whoderwarde\  comforde  Pret.,  1537,  Dorsed  'Dorset',  2549  ;  Bury  Wills, 
M^S*  jebardy,  163,  164,  165;  Sir  J.  Fortescue,  treded  'treated',  109, 
145,  entreded,  135;  Bk.  of  Quintessence,  Jubiter,  8,  18  (twice);  Gregory's 
Chron.,  1450-70,  radyfyde  '  ratified  ',  64,  depudyd,  131,  dalmadyke,  166, 
priest's  dalmatic;  Cely  Papers,  jeberdy,  163,  jebardy,  164,  165;  Letters 
and  Papers,  i,  \^\,  juberte,  397,  endendith  '  indenteth  ',  388;  Caxton, 
Jason  7,  Jubyter;  Bury  Wills,  cobard,  98,  1504;  Rede  me,  &c.,  122,  1528, 
Constantinoble  ;  Sir  Tnos.  More,  Jubardy,  Letters,  Ellis  ii.  i.  289;  Line. 
Dioc.  Docs.,  Will  of  J.  Asserley,  1527,  cobber  des  '  cupboards  ',  13.  61  ;  ibid., 
Will  of  R.  Bradley,  Leics.,  1533,  coberd,  161.  15  ;  Bp.  Fisher's  Sermons, 
t  Constantinoble,  335;  Machyn,  1550-63,  sagbottes  'sackbuts',  78, 


hundyd,  292,  elevant,  137,  cubard,  206,  drynges  'drinks',  208;  J.  Alleyn, 
comford,  Alleyn  Papers,  16;  Verney  Papers,  debutye,  Sir  R.  V.,  p.  56; 
Dullege  'Dulwich'  is  written  by  Ch.  Massye,  Alleyn  Mem.  109,  1613; 
Verney  Mem.:  —  prodistants,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  88,  1642,  combeanion, 
Pen.  V.,  ii.  129,  coberd,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  162,  medigate  'mitigate',  iii.  317, 
Mrs.  Sherard,  1657  \  I  thang  God,  Gary  Stewkley  (Verney),  iii.  437,  1656, 


VOICING  AND  UNVOICING  313 

Debity,  Mrs.  Isham,  iv.  33,  1662;  temberall,  Mrs.  Basire,  141  (1655), 
comford,  134  (1655).  Cooper,  1685,  says  that  s  in  casement  —  z;  Jones, 
1701,  says  '6  and  p  being  like  in  sound,  and  b  the  easier  and  sweeter 
p  does  sometimes  take  the  sound  of  b,  as  in — Baptism,  capable^  culpable, 
passport  (  =  '  pass-board ') !  Cupid,  Deputy,  Gospel,  Jasper,  Jupiter,  napkin  '. 
Jones  also  notes  '  Cubbard,  nevew,  Steven,  and  proves?'  =  prophecy. 

Lady  Wentworth  writes  prodistant '  protestant',  W.  Papers  50,  1705; 
Peter  W.,  cenzure,  100,  1710,  and  Lady  S tr afford,  prodtstation,  208,  1712. 
In  the  comic  letter  of  Mr.  Jackson's  fiance'e  in  Roderick  Random,  ch.  xvi, 
the  lady  writes  Cubit  for  '  Cupid '.  Elphinston  mentions  the  pronuncia- 
tions proddestant,  padrole,  pardner  as  London  vulgarisms.  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw,  in  John  Bull's  Other  Island,  makes  one  of  his  Irish  characters  say 
*prodestant\  but  I  doubt  whether  the  d  in  this  word  is  confined  to  Irish 
speakers  of  English.  I  hasten  to  add  that  Mr.  Shaw  does  not  assert  that 
it  is. 

F.   Unvoicing  of  Consonants. 

A  certain  number  of  instances  of  unvoicing  occur  scattered  through 
the  texts  I  have  examined.  Some  of  these  appear  to  be  of  the  nature  of 
dissimilative  changes,  to  use  an  unsatisfactory  term,  due  perhaps  to  an 
unconscious  attempt  at  distinctness ;  others  may  be  due  to  some  obscure 
analogy,  while  others  are  altogether  inexplicable,  unless  they  may  be  set 
down  as  Regional  peculiarities.  Some  of  these  changes  might  appear 
hardly  worth  recording,  but  in  some  cases  the  same  voiceless  form  appears 
in  widely  separate  sources,  and  is  therefore  probably  genuine;  other 
isolated  examples  are  recorded  in  the  hope  that  future  investigations  may 
reveal  more  of  them  and  throw  light  on  their  origin. 

Unvoicing  of  Initial  Consonant  (at  beginning  of  word,  and  at  beginning 
of  stressed  syllable). 

Fochsave  'vouchsafe',  Gregory  no;  felwefte  'velvet',  ibid.  208;  file 
'vile',  Lady  Sussex,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  107;  disadfantige,  ibid.  108  ;  full 
tifaniiy,  ibid.  85,  1642;  Fox  hall  '  Vauxhall',  J.  Verney,  Veraey  Mem. 
iv.  357,  1685. 

Unvoicing  of  Final  Consonant. 

St.  Editha  \—y  clepyt,  44  (two  syllables),  clepyt,  43  (two  syllables),  encreset, 
190,  scarmysshute  (Pret.),  282  ;  aspyet '  espied '  P.  P.,  554 ;  twelffe '  twelve ', 
624;  ayschette  'asked',  872;  hulte  (Pret.)  'held',  1277,  &c.;  byche  'to 
buy'  =  bigge,  1305,  1397  ;  y-tolte  (Pret.)  'told',  1830;  feynte  'fiend', 
2145;  bleynte  'blind'  Adj.,  2731;  Gregory,  Wardroper,  196;  Letters 
and  Papers,  ii.  72,  Keper  of  the  gret  Warderop,  1485  ;  incurrich,  Alleyne 
Pprs.  1 6,  1591  ;  Mrs.  Elmes,  Verney  Mem.,  twenty  thousent  etc.,  ii.  82. 
1641;  Lady  Strafford,  Wardrope,  W.  Papers,  314,  319,  1713;  Peter 
Wentworth,  becken't1  beckoned',  W.  Papers,  431,  1714;  senting,  202,  1711. 

Medial  Unvoicing. 

Ambassiter,  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  p.  7,  probably  owes  /  to  the 
influence  of  the  preceding  s\  optayne,  'obtain',  Fortescue  144,  Ascham, 
Tox.  103,  is  a  combinative  change  before  -/;  puplishe,  Letters  and  Papers, 
ii.  388,  may  be  due  to  the  analogy  ofpuple,  a  common  spelling  of  people] 
nefew,  Doll  Leake,  Verney  Mem.  iv.  291,  1655,  is  probably  a  spelling- 
pronunciation  in  origin,  here  popularly  expressed;  it  may  still  be  heard. 


CHAPTER   IX 
NOTES  ON   INFLEXIONS 


NOUNS. 

Possessive  Case  of  Nouns. 

IN  fourteenth-century  London  English  the  ordinary  suffix,  as  written  by 
the  professional  scribes,  is  -es.  In  Feminines  this  suffix  is  sometimes 
omitted,  cf.  Chaucer's  In  hope  to  stonden  in  his  Ladye  grace,  &c. 

During  the  fifteenth  century  the  suffix  -es  tends  to  be  written  more  and 
more  as  -ys,  -is,  both  in  private  letters  and  official  and  literary  documents. 
This  is  observable  not  only  in  Eastern  texts  but  also  in  London  docu- 
ments. See  on  this  point,  p.  269,  above.  More  or  less  rustic  productions 
of  the  West,  such  as  St.  Editha,  often  write  -us.  The  ^-forms,  however, 
while  characteristic  of  Eastern  texts  from  an  early  date  in  M.E.,  are  very 
common  everywhere  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

Since  the  vowel  is  often  omitted,  even  in  M.E.,  it  appears  that  the 
suffix  ceased  normally  to  be  pronounced  as  a  separate  syllable — except, 
as  now,  after  -s,  -ch,  &c. — in  Colloquial  English  by  the  beginning  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  On  the  other  hand  there  were  circumstances  which 
tended  to  restore  a  syllabic  pronunciation  of  the  suffix,  as  -is  —  [iz],  well 
on  into,  perhaps  to  the  end  of,  the  century,  and  in  poetry  an  occasional 
syllabic  pronunciation  is  revealed  by  the  rhyme  and  metre  for  two  hundred 
years  longer. 

The  main  points  to  be  considered  here  are  the  confusion  of  the  old 
Possessive  suffix  with  the  Possessive  Pronoun^-,  the  weak  or  unstressed 
form  of  hys ,  his ;  the  omission  of  the  suffix  -ys,  -s,  &c.,  in  any  form ;  the 
various  constructions  in  the  inflexion  of  groups  of  words — e.  g.  the  King 
of  England? s  son,  &c. 

Confusion  of  Possessive  Suffix  with  the  Possessive  Pronoun  Masculine. 

From  the  moment  that  on  the  one  hand  the  Pronoun  his  had  lost  the 
aspirate  in  unstressed  positions,  and  on  the  other  the  Possess,  suffix  had 
become  -is,  -ys,  there  could  be  no  distinction  in  pronunciation  between 
a  Noun  inflected  with  the  latter  suffix  and  the  same  Noun  followed  by 
the  weakened  form  of  his.  Thus  confusion  arose,  and  is  revealed  by  the 
detachment  of  the  suffix  -ys  from  the  Noun  to  which  it  belongs,  and  then 
by  the  spelling  of  this  latter  hys  or  his.  The  kyng  hys  sonne,  &c.,  was 
felt  as  a  definite  construction  and  therefore  so  written.  While  this  came 
to  exactly  the  same  as  the  kyngys  sonne,  the  two  constructions  were 


HIS  INSTEAD   OF  POSSESSIVE   SUFFIX  315 

doubtless  recognized  as  distinct  by  the  more  careful  speakers  and 
writers. 

On  the  other  hand  the  less  critical  scribes  were  often  doubtful  whether 
to  write  the  suffix  -ys  joined  on  to  the  Noun  or  whether  to  detach  it,  and 
in  this  case  whether  to  write  ys  as  they  and  every  one  else  pronounced, 
or  hys  to  show  that  they  knew  what  it  meant.  The  result  of  the  new 
construction  was  that  what  was  meant  as  a  genuine  inflected  Possessive, 
e.  g.  kyngys,  &c.,  retained  the  vowel  in  pronunciation  long  after  this  had 
normally  disappeared  in  such  words.  Thus  as  late  as  Shakespeare's 
Z.  Z.  Lost,  we  find,  '  To  shew  his  teeth  as  white  as  Whakr  bone ',  Act  iv. 
It  is  probable  that  this  occurred  also  in  colloquial  speech,  helped  also  by 
the  analogy  of  Possessives  likejamesys.  But  after  all,  the  construction 
with  his,  and  the  Noun  with  the  old  inflexion,  were  absolutely  indis- 
tinguishable in  pronunciation,  and  most  speakers,  possibly  well  into  the 
seventeenth  century,  would  have  been  hard  put  to  it  to  say  exactly  which 
they  intended. 

We  find  traces  of  the  construction  with  his  as  early  as  Genesis  and 
Exodus  (c.  1250),  where  the  suffix  is  already  separated,  though  joined  to 
the  Noun  by  a  hyphen — adame-is  sune,\w$,  3at  dune-is  siden  '  the  sides  of 
the  hill ',  1 295.  This  text  is  noteworthy  for  constantly  writing  the  weak 
forms  of  the  Pers.  Prons.  without  h-. 

Again,  in  the  fourteenth  century  this  construction  is  found,  e.g.  in 
Trevisa  (c.  1387),  to  play  with  a  chyld  hys  brouch.  From  the  early 
fifteenth  century  onwards  the  construction  is  common,  and  it  will  be 
remarked  that  ys  is  used  indifferently  after  Masculine  and  Feminine 
Nouns : — 

St.  Editha  : — Wortynger  is  tyme,  51,  seynt  Dunstone  his  lore,  751 ;  Shil- 
lingford  : — seynt  Luke  is  dey,  5,  Calston  isfayre,  5,  my  lord  of  Excetre  is 
tenants,  14;  Marg.  Paston  : — Harlesdonys  name,  ii.  191,  the  knythys  sonne, 
ii.  240,  my  moder  ys  sake,  ii.  364;  Gregory's  Chron. : — Seynt  Edmondeys 
Bury,  91,  the  queneys  modyr,  232,  no  schoo  apon  no  man  ys  fote,  238,  my 
Lorde  of  Warwyckeys  brother,  230 ;  Register  of  Oseney,  oure  lord  }>e  pope-is 
commaundments,  61;  Cely  Papers: — Margaret  ys  doughter,  117;  Earl  of 
Desmond  (Lttr.  to  Henry  VII,  c.  1489-93),  therle  of  Ormond  is  deppute 
(Lttrs.  and  Pprs.,  i,  p.  382;  Thos.  Lord  Dacre,  1521:— her  Grace  is 
requeste,  Ellis  ii.  i.  282  ;  Archbp.  Cranmer,  1536  : — the  Busshop  of  Rome 
his  power,  Ellis  ii.  3.  27,  the  Busshoppe  of  Rome  his  lawes,  Ellis  iii.  3.  25  ; 
Machyn  : — one  ys  ere  'one  his  ear',  64,  the  penterysnam,  105,  the  Bishop 
of  London  and  Coventre  ys  wiff,  229;  Ascham,  Toxophilus  : — on  a  man 
his  tiptoes,  47,  the  Kinge  his  wisdome,  38,  an  other  his  heeles,  47,  the  Kinge 
his  foole,  50;  Euphues: — Philantus  his  faith,  57,  Fidus  his  loue,  277. 
Such  phrases  as  for  Jesus  Christ  his  sake  are  familiar  in  the  Prayer  Book. 
Sir  Thos.  Smith,  Republ.  Angl.,  1583,  has  the  daulphin  of  Fraunce  his 
power,  19.  A  few  examples  from  the  seventeenth  century  must  suffice  to 
illustrate  the  survival  of  this  construction.  Dr.  Denton  has  Dr.  Read  his 
treatise  on  wounds,  Verney  Pprs.,  1639;  Edmund  Verney,  Verney  Mem. 
ii,  p.  130,  has  my  lord  Parsons  his  sonne,  1641,  and  Sir  Ralph  V.  has 
St.  James  his  House,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  236,  1655.  In  these  cases  his  may 
be  written  as  the  most  satisfactory  way  of  inflecting  words  ending  in  -s 
and  to  avoid  Parsonses,  Jameses.  Lady  Went  worth  has  the  Prim  his 


3i<5  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

buirying,  but  makes  no  difficulty  about  writing  Si.  Jamsis,  47.  Lady 
Plyant  in  Congreve's  Double  Dealer,  1693,  says,  '  I  am  in  such  a  twitter  to 
read  Mr.  Careless  his  letter ',  Act  iv,  Sc.  Hi. 

When  this  construction  was  well  established  and  recognized  as  con- 
taining the  Pron.  his,  the  process  was  extended  to  the  Fern,  and  the  PL 
We  get  Juno  hir  bedde,  Euphues,  86 ;  Mrs.  Francis  her  manage,  Lady 
Verney,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  378,  1647  >  and_>>0#  should  translate  Canterbury 
and  Chilling-worth  their  books  into  French,  Dr.  Denton,  Verney  Mem. 
ii.  222,  1645. 

The  Omission  of  the  Possessive  Suffix  in  Nouns. 

In  M.E.  the  suffix  -es,  -ys,  &c.,  is  used  commonly  to  inflect  Nouns  of 
all  genders,  but  is  sometimes  omitted.  This  occurs  most  frequently  in 
the  M.E.  period — (a)  after  names  ending  in  -s,  such  as  Moses ;  (b)  in  old 
Feminines  like  ladye,  where  the  -e  is  a  survival  of  a  Fern.  Genitive  suffix ; 
(c)  as  a  survival  of  old  Weak  Nouns  whose  Gen.  ended  in  -a«,  M.E.  -en, 
but  which  have  lost  the  -n  of  the  ending ;  (d)  occasionally  in  old  Nouns 
ending  in  -r,  brother,  fader,  &c.,  which  originally  had  no  -es  suffix. 

All  these  cases  of  flexionless  Possessives  occur  in  the  Modern  period, 
and  there  are  certain  additional  categories  which  arise,  viz.  there  is  an 
extension  of  class  (a)  to  words  like  hors(e),  and  there  are  other  instances 
of  omission  which  cannot  be  brought  under  any  of  the  above  classes. 

We  may  summarize  the  classes  of  flexionless  Possessives  as  follows : — 

The  suffix  is  often  omitted — (a)  in  words  ending  in  -s,  where  we  now 
preserve  it  as  a  full  syllable  [f z] ;  (b)  before  a  word  beginning  with  s- ; 
(c)  in  old  Feminines,  of  which  we  have  now  only  a  few  survivals  in 
stereotyped  phrases — Lady  Chapel,  &c. ;  (d]  in  groups,  when  we  should 
inflect  the  last  word  of  the  group — the  duke  of  Somerset  dowther  (which 
see  below) ;  (e)  in  old  -r  words— -father,  brother,  &c. ;  (f )  in  other  words 
where  no  special  reason  can  be  assigned. 

It  must  be  understood  that  in  nearly  all  the  above  classes  the  inflected 
forms  are  more  frequent,  but  the  examples  of  omissions  are  sufficiently 
numerous  to  deserve  recording.  Some  of  the  examples  might  be  classified 
under  more  than  one  head. 

(a)  Omission  of  Possessive  Suffix  in  Words  ending  in  -"B. 

Siege  of  Rouen  (c.  1420),  hors  quarter,  horse  hedde,  18  ;  Marg.  Paston, 
my  lord  of  Clarance  man,  ii.  372  (this  might  fall  under  (d));  Machyn, 
sant  James  par ke,  166;  Ascham,  horse  feete,  Tox.  157,  for  conscience  sake, 
Scholem.  68;  Webbe,  1586,  Achilles  Tombe,  24,  a  horse  necke,  85;  Lord 
Burghley,  1586,  ther  Mastriss  crymes,  Bardon  Pprs.  43. 

[Note.  After  [dz],  where  we  either  pronounce  [iz],  or  omit  the  suffix 
altogether,  as  in  bridge  head,  College  gate,  Pecok  writes  -is — collegis 
gate.} 

(b)  Omission  of  Suffix  before  Words  beginning  with  s-. 

St.  Editha,  his  sowle  sake,  382,  for  synne  sake,  813;  my  housbond 
sowle,  Will  of  J.  Buckland,  Northants,  1450,  L.  D.  D.  43.  9 ;  my  wyff  soule, 
WillofSirT.Cumberworth,  L.  D.  D.  53.28,  1451  ;  Ascham,  Robin  Hoode 
seruant,  Tox.  44,  for  earnest  matter  sake,  Tox.  44,  for  his  country  sake, 
Tox.  94,  for  his  pleasure  sake,  ibid.  94,  for  maner  sake,  Sch.  68 ;  Lady 


OMISSION  OF  POSSESSIVE  SUFFIX  317 

Mary  Gray  (daughter  of  Duke  of  Suffolk),  for  god  sake,  Ellis  ii.  2.  310, 
1566 ;  David  Rogers  to  Burghley,  theyounge  kinge  stomacke,  Ellis  ii.  3. 147, 
1588;  Will  of  Ralph  Wooton,  Bucks.,  1533,  my  father  and  mother  soules } 
Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  159.  20;  Machyn,  the  quen  syster,  63,  a  hossear  sune, 
121,  master  Godderyke  sune,  258,  in ys father  stede,  258  (perhaps  under  (<?))  ; 
Sir  R.  L'Estrange,  for  Brevity  sake,  A  Whipp,  a  Whipp,  1662. 

(c)  Omission  of  Suffix  at  the  end  of  Old  Feminine  Nouns. 

St.  Editha,  seynt  Wultrude  soule,  3068;  Bp.  Pecok,  modir  tunge,  i.  159; 
Shillingford,  oure  lady  belle,  94;  Gregory,  Mary  Mawdelyn  Evyn,  103; 
Lord  Berners,  our  lady  day,  i.  105,  Mary  Maudlyn  day,  i.  70  ;  Sir  J. 
Paston,  Ewhelme  my  Lady  Suffolk  Place  in  Oxenforthe  schyre,  iii.  33  ; 
Bp.  Latimer,  My  Ladye  Elizabethe  grace,  117;  Machyn,  the  quyn  grace, 
167,  my  Lade  Elsabeth  grace,  167,  Lade  Mare  grace,  30  (three  times),  &c., 
&c. ;  Lord  Burghley,  1586,  the  Scotish  Quene  letter,  Bardon  Pprs.  46; 
D.  Rogers  to  Burghley,  the  Scottis  Quene  cryme,  ibid.,  p.  47.  Machyn's 
construction  my  lade  grasys,  &c.,  37,  is  normal  in  omitting  the  suffix  of 
the  first  Noun,  but  as  the  second  Noun  is  inflected  the  first  might  in  any 
case  tend  to  be  uninflected  in  this  sentence.  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey, 
our  Lady  mattens  ;  Edmund  Verney,  our  Lady  Day  last,  Verney  Mem.  iv. 
404,  1688  =  '  Our  Lady's  Day '.  (It  may  be  mentioned  that  in  E.  Mid- 
land Fern.  Nouns  took  the  -s  suffix  in  the  Possess,  very  early;  cf.fies 
cwenes  canceler  'this  queen's',  Laud  Chron.  1123,  written  about  1154.) 

(d)  Omission  of  Suffix  in  Group  Construction. 

Marg.  Paston,  my  lorde  ofClarance  man  (should  possibly  come  under  (a) 
as  already  indicated);  Machyn,  bishop  of  London  palles,  204,  the  duke  of 
Somerset  dowther,  253  ;  Sir  R.  Verney,  my  Lord  of  Essex  Army,  Verney 
Mem.  ii.  122,  1641. 

(e)  Omission  cf  Suffix  in  old  Words  ending  in  -r. 

St.  Editha  : — his  fader  wyffe,  23%, fader  gulte,  2491 ;  Marg.  Paston  :— 
hyr  broder  advice,  ii.  26.  The  construction,  cited  under  (£),  above,  may 
also  be  explained  under  the  present  heading — my  father  and  mother  soules, 
I533;  Machyn: — hys  brodur  horse,  22,  in  ys  father  stede,  258,  already 
cited  under  (6)  may  equally  well  belong  to  the  present  category;  the 
same  may  be  said  of  Lord  Berners'  by  the  father  syde,  i.  181 ;  '  \hzfather 
good  will',  John  Alleyn,  Alleyn  Pprs.  15,  159-. 

(f)  Omission  of  Suffix  in  other  cases. 

St.  Editha  : — 1  heuene  kynge,  395,  may  perhaps  be  due  to  the  analogy  of 
an  old  Weak  N. — O.E.  heofon  itself  is  occasionally  weak  in  L.O.E.,  and 
this  may  well  be  due  to  the  analogy  of  eorpe;  Will  of  J.  Buckland,  1450, 
Northants,  Richard  Clave/1  wyff,  L.  D.  D.  44.  7 ;  Will  of  R.  Astbroke, 
Bucks,  1534,  the  sayde  Willy  am  Astbroke  chyldren,  L.  D.  D.  169.  2  ;  Lord 
Hastings,  c.  1470,  my  brother  Roaf  assent  and  agrement,  Paston  Lttrs.  iii. 
108;  Cr.  of  Duke  of  York — Henry  Wynslow  horse,  399, 1494;  Machyn — the 
kyng  grace,  *i*\,my  lord cardenall  commyng,  77,  the  bucher  wyff,  8,  a  shreyff 
wyff,  22,  a  prest  wyff,  32.  Thos.  Lord  Sackville  : — the  Cardinal!  use, 
Letter,  Appendix  to  Wks.,  p.  xxxiii.  Thos.  Lever's  Sermons: — the  harte 
bloud,  125;  this  may  be  a  survival  of  the  old  Weak  Gen.  her  fen — herte,  it  is 

1  This  construction  is  common  in  Middle  English. 


3i8  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

also  an  old  Fern. ;  Cavendish  also  has  my  hartblode,  251.  Lady  Wentworth 
writes  my  sister  Batthurst  offer,  43,  and  Peter  Wentworth,  a  parson 
widdoe,  85. 

The  Inflexion  of  Groups. 

Such  constructions  as  the  King  of  England's  power,  the  Bishop  of 
Worcester's  palace,  and  so  on,  are  thoroughly  established  in  the  best 
colloquial  and  literary  usage,  and  in  the  former  there  is  practically  no 
limit  to  the  length  of  the  group  which  the  genius  of  the  language  permits 
to  be  inflected  as  a  whole,  by  the  addition  of  the  suffix  to  the  last  element. 
While  the  evidence  shows  that  this  construction  was  used  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  there  appears  to  have  been,  for  a  long  time,  a  feeling  that 
it  was  inelegant,  and  various  devices  are  employed  to  avoid  it.  The 
usual  M.E.  type  of  construction  is  well  represented  by  the  title  of  the 
well-known  song — The  Bailiffs  daughter  of  Islington,  and  this  form 
survives  here  and  there ;  for  instance,  Gregory  writes  the  dukys  doughter  of 
Northefolke,  140  ;  Lord  Berners : — thekynges  doughter  of  Englande,  i.  319  ; 
even  when  two  nouns  are  in  apposition,  as  in  Lord  Neville's  wife,  the 
inflexion  of  the  second  in  this  order  is  sometimes  avoided  ;  thus  Gregory 
writes  the  Lordys  wyfe  Nevyle,  140,  and  Machyn — Master  Godderyke 
sune  the  goldsmith,  258,  instead  of  —  Godderyke  the  goldsmiths  sune.  A 
curious  construction  occurs  in  a  letter  of  Henry  V,  1418 — a  man  of  the 
Dues  of  Orliance,  Ellis  i.  i.  i. 

Another  slight  modification  is  to  write  -is  or  his  instead  of  the  ordinary 
Possess,  suffix — e.  g.  my  lord  of  Excetre  is  tenantis,  Shillingford,  44  (cf. 
p.  315,  above).  In  Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey,  the  abbots  of  Westmin- 
ster, 199,  is  used  absolutely.  Lastly,  the  suffix  is  sometimes  omitted 
altogether,  although  the  word-order  is  the  same  as  though  it  were 
present.  This  has  already  been  illustrated  under  (d)  above.  The 
following  early  examples  of  group  inflexion  are  confined  to  cases  where 
the  suffix  occurs  joined  to  the  last  word  of  the  group  which  it  inflects. 

St.  Editha— J)eerle  of  Wyltones  wjf,  139  ;  Cr.  of  Duke  of  York — Sett 
in  like  maner  as  therle  of  Suffolkts,  396  ;  Recep.  of  Cath.  of  Ar. — the 
Archebishoppe  of  Cantreburys  barge,  the  Abbot  of  Westmynsters  barge,  405; 
St.  of  Irel.  (St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  \\\)—the  Erie  of  Kyldares  sonnes,  p.  24, 
1515  ;  Bulmer  (Lttr.) — my  Lorde  of  Richemoundes  Affairs,  my  Lorde  of 
Richmounds  landes,  Ellis  iii.  2.  122,  124,  1527  ;  Latimer — Ladye  Maryes 
grace^  Serm.  117,  our  holy  e  father  of  Romes  eares,  107;  Machyn — my 
lord  of  Cante rberes  plasse,  49  ;  Q.  Elizabeth  (Letter,  1553) — my  Lorde  of 
Bedfords  mynde,  Ellis  ii.  2.  211 ;  Lord  Berners — the  Kynge  of  Englandes 
homage,  i.  78,  the  Lorde  of  Mannes  quarrell,  i.  254,  Sir  Gaultier  of 
Marines  fader,  i.  254  the  Kyng  of  Englandes  doughter,  i.  3 19 ;  Cavendish, 
L.  of  Wolsey — Kyng  Herre  the  Vlllths  sister,  72,  ayenst  the  kyng  and  my 
lords  commyng,  81,  my  Lord  of  Shrew sburyes  servaunts,  215;  Sir  Thos. 
Smith,  Republ.  Angl. — King  Richarde  the  secondes  time,  1 4 1 ,  King  Henrie 
the  eights  time,  104,  King  Henrie  the  thirds  time,  123;  in  T.  S.'s 
Letters — the  duke  de  Montpenciers  son>  Ellis  ii.  3.  13.  A  hundred 
years  later  we  find  in  Aubrey's  Lives — *  He  (Bp.  Wilkins)  was  one  of 
Seth  Lord  Bishop  of  Sarums  most  intimate  friends  ',  ii.  301. 


PRONUNCIATION  OF  PL.   SUFFIX  -«  319 

Strong  Plurals :  in  -es,  -s,  &c. 

The  great  majority  of  nouns  in  English  take  an  -s-  suffix  in  the 
Plural.  The  old  so-called  strong  suffix  is  generally  written  -es  by  good 
scribes  in  London  documents  of  Chaucer's  day.  Throughout  the  fif- 
teenth century,  however,  the  form  -ys  or  -is,  originally  apparently  chiefly 
characteristic  of  Eastern  texts,  becomes  more  and  more  common,  not 
only  in  documents  of  all  kinds  written  in  the  Eastern  counties,  but  also 
in  those  from  more  westerly  areas.  Before  the  end  of  this  century  -ys  is 
frequently  written  in  London  official  and  other  documents.  At  the  present 
time  the  vowel  of  the  suffix  is  lost  except  after  words  ending  in  -s,  -sh, 
-dge,  and  in  these  cases  the  Plural  ending  in  Received  Standard  is  [iz],  so 
that  although  we  write  fishes,  asses,  causes,  bridges,  we  pronounce  [fzjiz,  0s/z, 
k5zzz,  bn*d£fz].  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  pronunciation  of  this  suffix 
is  the  direct  descendant  of  the  forms  written  -ys,  &c.,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  it  is,  to  my  mind,  quite  certain  that  not  only  in  Received 
Standard  but  in  many  Regional  dialects  this  pronunciation  has  obtained 
for  not  much  less  than  500  years.  Some  years  ago  the  question  was 
raised  whether  this  present-day  pronunciation,  and  the  fact  that  Caxton 
often  writes  -ys  in  the  Plural,  were  not  proofs  that  Literary  English  and 
Standard  Spoken  English  were  both  influenced  by  what  was  called 
the  '  Oxford  type '  of  English,  that  is,  by  a  more  westerly  type,  as 
opposed  to  the  usual  East  Midland  character  which,  on  the  whole, 
dominates  the  Literary  and  the  Spoken  language.  Here  was  indeed 
a  very  pretty  mare's  nest,  which  apparently  arose  chiefly  because  it  was 
noticed  that  Bishop  Pecok,  in  his  Represser  (1449)  and  other  works, 
makes  copious  use  of  the  -ys  form.  Where  the  bishop  got  his  suffix  is 
another  story,  but  it  is  quite  certain  that  it  is  more  characteristic  of  the 
East  than  of  the  West.  In  the  latter  area  a  very  common  form  of  the 
ending  is  -us,  but  even  so  definitely  Regional  a  dialect  as  that  of 
St,  Editha  (Wilts.),  written  about  thirty  years  before  the  Represser,  often 
uses  -ys,  which  form  was  rapidly  becoming  common  both  East  and 
West.  It  is  rather  doubtful  how  far  we  can  take  the  spelling  -ys,  -es,  &c., 
seriously  in  the  fifteenth  century  as  representing  a  syllable,  except  after 
words  ending  in  the  consonants  above  mentioned.  We  may  be  certain, 
however,  that  it  was  at  least  pronounced  as  a  syllable  in  those  cases 
where  we  now  so  pronounce  it,  and  if  we  find  causis  written,  it  is  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  a  pronunciation  identical  with  our  own,  so  far  as  the 
suffix  is  concerned,  is  intended.  It  is  probable  that  -ys  was  pronounced 
as  a  syllable  in  poetry  long  after  it  was  lost  in  colloquial  speech,  as  we 
still  pronounce  Prets.  and  P.  P.'s  in  -ed  [id],  Cf.  Hoccleve's  rhyme — 
werkys — derk  is,  Reg.  of  Pr.  277,  278  ;  and  Spenser's  '  Then  her  embracing 
twixt  her  armes  twaine ',  F.  Q.  Bk.  VI.  xii.  1 9.  In  the  London  area  -es  was  the 
traditional  spelling,  and  when  the  scribes  depart  from  this  it  must  mean 
something.  If  a  scribe  often,  or  even  usually,  writes  -es,  but  occasionally 
-ys,  we  are,  I  think,  justified  in  believing  that  in  the  former  case  he  is 
merely  following  tradition,  but  that  in  the  latter  he  is  recording  the  usual 
pronunciation.  In  the  sixteenth  century  it  is  certain  that  the  vowel  of 
the  suffix  was  only  pronounced  where  we  now  pronounce  it,  and  while 
-es  had,  strangely  enough,  become  the  orthodox  printers'  spelling,  more 


320  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

and  more  adhered  to  by  educated  writers,  there  are  enough  divergencies 
from  the  convention,  and  just  in  those  words  where  the  vowel  of  the 
suffix  was  pronounced,  to  show  what  the  pronunciation  was  in  such  cases. 
It  is  immaterial  that  most  writers  use  the  spelling  -es  ;  that  was  natural, 
and  tells  us  nothing  as  to  the  pronunciation.  What  is  significant  is  that 
so  many  also  write  -ys. 

In  the  fifteenth  century,  among  Western  writers  who  have  forms  in  -ys 
are  St.  Editha,  Bishop  Pecok,  Shillingford,  and  we  may,  if  we  please, 
include  Fortescue,  although  his  dialect  has  very  few  Regional  character- 
istics. Among  the  specifically  Eastern  writers  we  have  Palladius,  the 
Bury  Wills,  the  Fastens,  the  Celys,  and  the  Suffolk  Londoner,  Gregory. 
This  list  pretty  well  disposes  of  the  i  Oxford '  myth.  Coming  to  less 
markedly  provincial  documents,  all  the  more  or  less  official  records  in 
Letters  and  Papers,  vol.  i,  occasionally  write  -ys ;  so  do  the  Book  of 
Quintessence,  Capgrave,  Caxton,  and  the  Rewle  of  Sustr.  Men.  Caxton's 
expensis,  and  the  Rewle's  versis,  messt's,  are  significant. 

Passing  to  the  sixteenth  century,  a  very  large  number  of  books  and 
private  letters,  &c.,  write  -ys.  I  mention  a  few  of  these  sources,  quoting 
only  forms  in  which  the  vowel  of  the  suffix  was  unquestionably  pro- 
nounced, although  many  other  instances  of  the  spelling  occur.  In  printed 
books  the  form  -es  becomes  more  and  more  fixed  as  the  century  goes  on  ; 
the  occasional  departures,  both  here  and  in  private  documents,  are  therefore 
the  more  noteworthy. 

The  form  -ys  occurs  in  all  the  following : — Elyot's  Gouernour — horsis, 
placis,  versis,  sickenessis]  Pace,  Letter  in  Ellis  ii.  i.  1513 — hostagis, 
causis ;  Lord  Berners — chargis ;  Cranmer  (Letters) — bargt's ;  Cavendish, 
Life  of  Wolsey — Worst's,  crossis ;  Q.  Elizabeth — practisis,  scusis  ; 
Machyn — horsis,  branchy  s,  torchys]  Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs. — causis, 
coursis. 

The  various  writers  in  Verney  Papers  and  Verney  Mem.  sometimes 
write  -is — e.g.  Mrs.  Pulteney,  richis,  1639.  Lady  Wentworth  writes 
glassis,  torsi's,  oringis,  &c.  (On  this  suffix  see  also  pp.  269-70.) 

For  the  extension  of  the  -es  PI.  suffix  to  words  of  other  types  cf.  p.  322. 

Weak  Plurals  :  in  -en. 

This  class  of  Pis.,  once  very  large,  has  shrunk  in  present-day  English 
almost  to  the  vanishing  point,  the  only  survivor  being  oxen.  Brethren 
and  children  fall  under  the  Irregulars,  which  see  pp.  323-4,  below. 

In  M.E.  a  considerable  extension  of  the  -en  suffix  took  place,  notably 
in  the  dialects  of  the  South  and  South-East,  but  to  some  extent  also  in 
the  Midlands.  See  a  brief  account  of  the  M.E.  conditions  in  my  Short 
Hist,  of  English,  §112.  A  fairly  large  number  of  Weak  Pis.  still 
survive  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and  they  are  not  confined 
to  provincial  writers,  though  these  have  the  larger  share  of  them.  The 
following  list  shows  the  principal  Plurals  of  this  type,  with  references  to 
the  writers,  or  works  in  which  they  are  found.  At  the  present  time, 
primrosen,  housen  may  be  heard  in  provincial  dialects,  and  I  have  even 
heard  foxen  from  an  old  woman  in  a  Berkshire  village. 

Honden,  Hondon  '  hands ',  St.  Editha. 


SURVIVAL  OF   WEAK   PLURALS  321 

fan  '  foes ',  St.  Editha. 

knen  l  knees  ',  St.  Editha. 

appullon  '  apples ',  St.  Editha. 

eyen,  &c.,  '  eyes ' : — hynon,  St.  Editha  ;  eghen,  eyon,  Palladius  ;  yeen, 
S.  of  Rouen ;  i$en,  Pecok ;  y$en,  Sustr.  Men. ;  eyen,  Caxton  ;  yen,  eyen, 
Lord  Berners ;  iyen,  Lord  Buckhurst. 

treen  'trees',  Pallad.;  Lord  Buckhurst,  Induction,  2,  rhymes  green — 
been. 

oxen,  Pallad.,  Pecok,  Gregory,  &c.,  &c. ;  exon,  Palladius. 

eldron  '  parents ',  Pall. 

fleen  <  fleas ',  Pall. 

deen  '  claws ',  Pall. 

streen  '  straws ',  Pall. 

kyn(e),  &c.,  *  cows ',  Pecok,  kyn ;  Gregory,  kyne ;  Caxton,  kyen,  kene ; 
Lord  Berners,  kyen ;  Latimer,  kyne. 

bothen  '  booths  ',  Shillingford,  1 2. 

shon  '  shoes  ',  Marg.  Paston,  ii.  125  ;  Gregory,  shone ;  Caxton ;  Wilson ; 
Elyot ;  Gabr.  Harvey,  Lttrs. 

All  Sowlen  (College),  Elyot's  Will,  i.  310  ;  R.  Layton,  1535,  Ellis  ii. 
2.  60 — All  Sowllen  College. 

Al  Sawlyn  (day),  Shillingford,  17. 

Al  Halwyn,  &c.,  Shillingford,  16,  Al  Halwynyeuen ;  Sustr.  Men.  86.  19. 
109.  8 — alle  Halwyn',  Ord.  of  Worcester — alle  halowen  day,  397,  1467  ; 
Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i.  55 — Alhalowentyde  (Instr.  to  Northumb.),  1483; 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey — Allhalonday,  222,  Hallhalonday,  223. 

Housen  'houses',  Bury  Wills — almesse  howsyn,  112  (1509);  Ascham, 
Toxophilus,  i.  121. 

Hosyn  (  hose  ',  Caxton  ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  88. 

Horson  '  horses  ',  Cely  Papers,  67. 

Peason  '  pease  ',  Wilson,  53 ;  Gabr.  Harvey,  Lttrs.  124. 

Ewen  '  ewes ',  W.  of  J.  Buckland,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  42.  143  (North- 
ants,  1450). 

Aischen  '  ashes',  Bk.  of  Quint.  8,  &c. ;  Hoccleve — ashen,  Reg.  of  Pr. 
287. 

Invariables :  Nouns  without  Suffix  in  Plural. 

This  class  is  represented  in  present-day  English  by  sheep,  deer,  and 
these  words  belonged  in  O.E.  to  a  large  class  of  Neuters,  which,  being 
long  monosyllables,  had  no  suffix  in  the  Nom.  and  Ace.  PI.  Many  of 
these  words  preserved  this  characteristic  in  M.E.,  some  practically  uni- 
versally, some  occasionally,  in  certain  dialects,  but  more  were  swept  into 
the  large  class  of  Pis.  in  -es.  With  this  type,  however,  were  commonly 
associated,  in  Middle  and  Modern  English,  words  expressing  number, 
weight,  measure,  time,  and  mass,  also  certain  names  of  animals.  Of  the 
words  thus  uninflected  in  the  PI.  some  were  original  uninflected  Neuters, 
while  others  belonged  to  other  classes.  Sheep,  deer,  and  swine  may  be 
omitted  from  the  list,  as  these  forms  are  universal  and  still  survive.  We 
may,  however,  note  in  passing  that  Machyn  has  several  remarkable  Pis. 
in  -s,  including  velles  *  veals ',  n,  swtnes,  ii,  and  one  or  two  others 
recorded  elsewhere  (p.  322). 

Y 


322  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

Year.  Fortescue — viiyere  ;  Shillingford,  68,  69  ;  Caxton — syxe  score 
yere,  Jason,  52.  36;  Sir  Thos.  Smith — xxj  yere  old,  Rep.  120;  Edm. 
Verney — 2  yeere,  V.  Mem.  ii.  134,  1641. 

Winter.     Wilson — thirtie  winter,  186. 

Foot  Pallad. — seven  fote ;  Shillingford — ix  fote  long,  85;  Gregory; 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey — xvfoote  thyke,  8. 

Finger.     Pallad. — sexfyngre  thicke. 

Fathom.     Gregory — iiij fethem. 

Mile.     Lord  Berners — xxiii  Englisshe  myle,  i.  491. 

Mark.     Fortescue — an  c.  marke. 

Pound.  Wilson — three  thousand  p ounde  •  Latimer — L  pounde  ;  Lady 
Went  worth — three  hundred  thousand  pound. 

Shilling.  Lady  Wentworth — ten  shilling  a  pound,  fifty  shilling  a 
chaldrent  62. 

Sturgeon.     Machyn,  n. 

Lamb.  Will  of  W.  Wolhede,  Bucks.,  1533— ij  lambe,  L.  D.  D.  153. 
16. 

Horse.  Shillingford,  5,  Cr.  Duke  of  York ;  Lord  Berners— a  thousand 
horse  (=  soldiers  here),  i.  77  ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey — vi  of  the  beste 
horse,  285. 

Apple.  Euphues — to  bring  forth  apple,  113.  No  doubt  used  collect- 
ively. 

Thing.  Gregory — alle  thinge  •  Lord  Berners — to  love  god  of  whome  we 
have  all  thinge,  ii.  190. 

Thank.  Q.  Elizabeth — the  two  gentilmen  I  trust  shal  receave  your 
thanke,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  65. 

Lady  Wentworth  has  this  twoe  last  poste,  and  ten  wax  candle.  The 
former  word  perhaps  owes  its  uninflected  form  to  the  consonantal  com- 
bination— possibly  Lady  W.  even  pronounced  it  without  the  final  -/  (cf. 
P-  3°3) — tne  latter  may  be  used  collectively,  referring  to  a  bundle  or  group 
of  candles. 

A  curious  instance  of  an  uninflected  PL  after  the  word  pair  is  a  payre  of 
coberd  'cupboards',  in  the  Will  of  R.  Bradley,  Leicestershire,  1533, 
L.  D.  D.  161.  75. 

Exceptional  Plurals  in  -s. 

I  have  noted  the  following  exceptional  use  of  the  -s  suffix  : — 
hosys  (instead  of  hosen,  hosyri),  Will  of  Sir  Thos.  Cumberworth,  Lines., 
1451,  L.  D.  D.  51.  23  \fotes  'feet',  Palladius,  8.  200;  Machyn — mottuns 
' sheep '  (cf.  also  Pope — )velles  'calves',  n,  swines,  ii,  samons,  n,  ees 
'eyes',  204.  This  form  is  usually  weak.  Sir  Edm.  Verney,  in  1639, 
actually  writes  in  spight  of  our  teeths,  Verney  Pprs.  244. 

The  word  riches,  now  taken  as  a  PL  (having  no  Sing.),  is  in  reality  the 
French  richesse.  Bp.  Pecok  inflects  it  regularly  in  the  PL — ricchessis, 
i.  296,  297. 

The  Change  of/  to  v  before  the  Suffix  of  the  Possessive 
and  of 'the  Plural. 

At  the  present  time  we  do  not  make  this  change  in  the  Possess.  Sing., 
except  in  the  phrases  calves  head,  calve' s  foot,  but  say  calfs,  wife's,  wolf's, 


INTERCHANGE  OF/  AND  ».IN  SINGULAR  AND  PLURAL  323 

&c.  On  the  other  hand,  we  pronounce  the  voiced  ending,  and  express  it 
in  the  spelling,  in  the  Plurals,  loaves,  wives,  wolves,  calves,  &c.,  and  usage 
varies  in  roofs,  while  in  the  PL  of  hoof,  hooves  is  felt  as  archaic  and  more 
suited  to  poetry  (cf.  Lady  of  Shalott)  than  to  colloquial  speech.  There 
is  no  historical  reason  for  the  distinction  between  the  Possess.  Sing,  and 
the  Plural.  In  O.E.  voiceless  open  consonants  (•?,//)  were  voiced  between 
vowels,  so  that  normally  all  inflected  cases,  Sing,  and  PI.,  of  the  above  words 
would  have  -»-,  which  in  the  Possess.  Sing,  and  in  the  PI.  would  produce  the 
forms  [wwlvz,  k#vz,  w<wvz],  &c.,  when  the  vowel  of  the  suffix  disappeared, 
and  left  -vs  in  contiguity.  Our  usage  now  has  generalized  the/ for  the 
whole  Singular  and  v  for  the  Plural,  apart  from  those  words  where  the 
Singular  type  has  been  extended  to  the  Plural  as  well. 

This  is  convenient  and  provides  descriptive  grammarians  with  their 
rule  that  'words  ending  in  -/form  their  Plural  in  -ves*.  The  habit  was 
by  no  means  fixed,  however,  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  and 
the  examples  show  that  some  speakers  generalized  /  everywhere,  both 
Sing,  and  PI.,  while  others  adhered  to  the  ancient  practice  of  voicing 
the/ in  the  Possess.  Sing,  and  in  the  Plural  alike.  A  few  examples  will 
suffice  to  show  how  unsettled  was  the  usage. 

Plurals  in  -f(e)s. 

Lord  Berners,  wifes,  i.  352  (but  lyves,  i.  356,  wyves,  i.  404);  Elyot, 
wolfes,  i.  22,  lyfes,  i.  no,  our  selfes,  i.  138;  Machyn,  beyffes  'beeves', 
n,  wyeffes,  74;  Machyn  also  writes  a-lyffe  'alive',  75;  Cavendish,  lyfs, 
56,  selfs,  passim,  beafes,  97  ;  Ph.  Henslow,  wtfes,  Alleyn  Mem.  29, 1593; 
Lady  Verney,  wifes,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  271,  1647. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  voiced  type  is  the  more  usual,  and  Shillingford 
includes  under  it  the  French  word  strife,  of  which  he  has  a  PI.  form 
stryves,  98. 

Possessive  Singular  in  -v(e)s. 

Marg.  Paston,  wyvis,  ii.  365  ;  Wilson,  wiues,  56,  206 ;  Q.  Elizabeth,j/0«r 
liues  peril  (Sing.),Lttrs.  to  James  VI,  7 1;  Euphues,  wolues,  3 2 2 ;  Shakespeare 
(First  Fol.),  wiues,  Merry  Wives,  iv.  5.  The  form  oflyue  in  Lord  Level's 
Will,  1455,  L.  D.  D.  8.  4,  14,  may  be  considered  either  as  the  survival  of 
an  inflected  form  (after  of),  or  at  least  as  based  on  the  analogy  of  the 
inflected  forms. 

Irregular  Plurals. 

Under  this  head  we  include  children,  brethren,  and  several  other  Pis.  of 
the  same  kind  which  are  still  found  in  Early  Modern. 

Children  is  remarkable  for  having  both  the  PI.  -r-  suffix — O.E.  cildru, 
M.E.  childre — and  the  weak  PI.  suffix  -en.  Brethren  has  a  mutated  vowel 
in  the  base  and  the  weak  PI.  suffix.  Several  other  words,  mostly  old 
Neuters,  show  in  M.E.  a  PI.  suffix  -ren,  that  is  a  combination  of  the  old 
-ru  suffix,  with  the  addition  of  -en.  Such  are  O.E.  lamb — lambru,  M.E. 
lambre,  lambren]  O.E.  calf—calfru,  M.E.  calfre,  calfren;  O.E.  xg 
'  egg ',  PI.  degru,  M.E.  eire,  eiren. 

The  group  of  words  expressing  family  relationships,  O.E./deder,  modor, 
brdfror,  s(w)ustor,  dohtor,  all  favour  PI.  forms  in  -en  in  the  South  in  M.E. 
The  weak  sustren  survives,  as  we  shall  see,  well  into  the  sixteenth  century. 

Y    2 


324  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

A  few  examples  are  given  to  illustrate  the  variety  of  usage  with  regard 
to  some  of  these  Pis.  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

M.E.  eyren,  &c.,  ' eggs';  Palladius,  eyron]  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  eyrin, 
86.  31;  Bk.  of  Quint.,  eyrm,  4;  Caxton,  in  the  well-known  Preface 
to  the  Aeneid,  uses  eyren  to  illustrate  that  this  archaic  form  was  still  in  use, 
but  the  London  innkeeper  in  the  story  did  not  understand  what  was 
wanted  until  eggys  were  asked  for.  Gregory  has  eggys. 

Sislren,  &c.  St.  Editha,  sustren\  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.  sustryn,  -in,  105. 
27,  &c.  (sustn's  is  the  more  frequent  form);  Pecok,  stslren;  Wilson, 
sisterne. 

Brethren.  St.  Editha,  britheren ;  Pecok,  bretheryn ;  Gregory,  bretheryn ; 
Fortescue,  brotheryn,  137  ;  Elyot,  brethern,  Gou.  100,  bredern,  E.'s  Will, 
313;  Berners,  bretherne ;  Latimer,  bretherm ;  Machyn,  bredurne ;  Wilson, 
bretherne;  Cavendish,  bretherne. 

Children.  Childeren,  childeryn,  St.  Editha,  Pecok,  Fortescue,  &c.; 
Machyn,  Euphues,  chylderne,  childerne\  Elyot's  Will,  childre,  which  is 
a  survival  of  the  O.E.  and  M.E.  forms  ;  Coverdale  has  a  Gen.  PI.  chtlders, 
and  Edw.  VI  First  P.  B.  has  childers  children  in  the  Marriage  Service. 
The  spelling  childre  doubtless  stands  for  [t/ildr]. 

The  rather  rare  PI.  deytron  '  daughters '  occurs  in  St.  Editha.  This  shows 
mutation  of  the  vowel  (M.E.  dehter),  and  the  Wk.  -en. 

II 

ADJECTIVES. 

The  inflexion  of  Adjectives,  as  regards  case,  has  disappeared  by  the 
beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century,  or,  if  it  survives  in  poetry  here  and 
there  for  the  sake  of  the  metre,  it  must  be  regarded  as  archaic. 

A  belated  Genitive  PI.  occurs  in  the  phrase  God  our  alter  Creatour 
from  a  letter  of  Richard  III  to  James  III  of  Scotland,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i, 
P-  53»  where  aller  represents  M.E.  allre,  sometimes  written  alder,  O.E. 
allra. 

French  Plurals. 

The  addition  of  -s  to  the  PI.  of  Adjectives,  on  the  French  model,  which 
is  rare  in  M.E.,  though  there  are  a  few  instances  in  Chaucer  (cf.  Short 
Hist,  of  Eng.,  §  319).  In  the  fifteenth  century  I  have  found  a  not  incon- 
siderable number  of  these  Plurals,  chiefly  in  legal  and  official  documents. 
Some  of  the  following  are  certainly  more  or  less  technical  (legal)  phrases, 
and  are  presumably  taken  straight  from  French  legal  documents.  Others, 
again,  are  not  to  be  explained  in  this  way.  Apparently  the  usage  was 
extended  from  the  legal  cliches  by  certain  writers,  with  a  view  to  special 
elegance  and  correctness.  It  will  be  observed  that  the  inflected  Adj. 
usually  follows  the  Noun,  as  in  French,  though  this  is  not  always  the  case. 
We  may,  I  think,  regard  these  -j  Plurals  as  the  result  of  a  literary  whim. 
They  can  hardly  have  had  a  real  existence  in  uttered  speech.  The  cases 
I  have  noted  are : — 

Palladius,  children  clennes,  9.  229;  Shillingford,  letters  patentz,  77, 
I3I  (legal  documents);  Will  of  Sir  Thos.  Cumberworth  (Lines.,  1451), 
prestes  seculers,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  53.  35 ;  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  Ministris 


PLURAL  AND   COMPARISON   OF  ADJECTIVES      325 

prouinciallis,  117.  36,  gode  maneris  and  hones  tes,  101.  14,  cer taints 
wommen,  roi.  12,  greuousis  trespasses,  101.  24,  deuowtes  handmay  denes, 
98.  T,  ii  of  the  most  demur es  and  wise  sistris,  90.  26,  ii  sistris  vise,  sad,  and 
vertuouses  of  the  Couent,  92. 13,  massis  conuentuales ,  no.  16,  at pe  secunde 
euynsonges  offestis  doublis,  114.  \^,festis  simplis  or  lasse  be  pofestis  which 
be  nat  dowbles,  113.  ^,  festis  half  doubles,  no.  5;  Sir  John  Fortescue, 
Lordes  of  the  lande  both  spirituellis  and  temporelles,  145,  privatis  personis, 
147;  E.  of  Salisbury,  'the  kings  moste  noblez  lettrez* ,  Past.  Lttrs.  i.  421 
(1458);  Reg.  of  Godstow,  diuinis  seruices,  18;  Caxton,  yong  children 
masks,  Jason  86.  3;  Instructions  to  Lord  Montjoie,  Lordes  spirituelx 
and  temporelx,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i.  12  (1483);  Cr.  of  Knight  of  Bath, 
lettres  missives,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  ^88,  jus  tes  ('jousts')  roiaulx,  397;  Will 
of  Lord  Lovel,  heires  males,  Line.  Dioc.  Docs.  82.  24,  27  (1455);  Irish 
Documents,  Lordes  spirituels  and  temporels,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i.  379  and  381 
(c.  1489-93);  Lord  Berners,  letters  patents,  i.  81 ;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot's  Will, 
heires  males,  314.  Note  that  while  E.  has  such  constructions  as  beastes 
sauage,  i.  22,  actes  martial,  37,  spirites  vitall,  169,  &c.,  he  omits  the  -s 
except  in  the  instance  cited.  Queen  Elizabeth  has  clirristz  days  '  clearest ', 
Transl.  19. 

The  Forms  of  the  Comparative  and  Superlative. 

This  is  the  main  centre  of  interest,  so  far  as  Adjectives  are  concerned, 
in  the  Modern  Period.  The  chief  points  to  be  considered  are :  (i)  com- 
paratives with  vowel  shortened  by  a  M.E.  process  before  the  suffix  -re, 
when  the  Positive  ends  in  a  consonant ;  this  shortened  vowel  is  sometimes 
extended  by  analogy  to  the  Superlative,  where  it  could  not  normally 
develop,  and  even  to  the  Positive;  (2)  the  survival  of  Comp.  and  Superl. 
forms  with  mutated  vowel ;  (3)  the  pleonastic  use  of  more  and  most  before 
Adj.  already  inflected  respectively  with  the  Comp.  or  Superl.  suffixes; 
(4)  certain  irregularities  consisting  either  in  the  use  of  an  entirely  new 
form,  cf.  badder  under  4,  below,  or  in  the  addition  of  the  Comparative 
or  Superlative  suffixes  to  words  which  we  should  not  now  thus  inflect, 
preferring  rather  to  prefix  more,  most. 

Survival  of  Comparatives  with  Shortened  Vowels. 

Gretter  'greater',  Palladius,  Shillingford,  n;  Fortescue,  122  ;  Gregory, 
277;  Caxton,  Jason  16.  33.  The  Superl.  form  grettist  (-est)  is  found  in 
Fortescue,  119,  &c. ;  Gregory,  115;  Jul.  Berners  and  Machyn.  The 
Positive  grett(e]  occurs  in  Fortescue,  121;  Gregory,  83;  Machyn,  passim. 

Depper  'deeper',  Palladius,  52.  239;  sonner  'sooner',  Pall.  83.  115; 
swetter  '  sweeter ',  Pall.  84.  644 ;  swettist,  in  Pecok,  i.  67. 

Uttrist,  Pecok ;  Caxton,  Jason  71.11.  The  positive  of  this  word  is  in 
reality  a  Comparative — O.E.  ute,  with  a  Comp.  suffix  added. 

Survivals  of  Mutated  Comparatives  and  Superlatives. 

The  only  surviving  members  of  this  class  at  the  present  time  are  elder •, 
eldest,  which  are  no  longer  used,  as  formerly,  as  the  Comp.  and  Superl.  of 
old,  but  in  a  special  way,  applied  only  to  the  members  of  a  family,  society, 
or  group. 


326  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

Pecok  has  eeldir  dam  'former  days',  i.  107;  Palladius,  elder  'older', 
28.  760;  elder  as  an  ordinary  Comp.  of  old  occurs  in  1579  in  'E.  K.V 
Epistle  Dedicatory  to  the  Shepherds'  Calendar;  and  a  little  later  in 
Euphues,  208 — *  You  are  too  young,  and  were  you  elder  .  .  . '  In  Con- 
greve's  Way  of  the  World  (i>joo)  the  phrase  occurs,  'I  suppose  this  Deed 
may  bear  an  elder  Date  than  what ',  &c.,  Act  v,  Sc.  xiii. 

Of  the  other  words  formerly  mutated  in  Comparison,  long  and  strong 
appear  to  be  the  only  survivors  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 
unless  we  include  Gregory's  grytter,  227  (O.E.  grutra),  but  this  is  much 
more  probably  to  be  explained  otherwise  (p.  212). 

The  Comp.  strenger  is  found  in  Pecok,  i.  46  ;  Jul.  Berners  (Adv.,  the 
Adjective  is  stronger) ;  Lord  Berners,  i.  84.  The  Superl.  strengest  I  have 
found  in  Caxton,  Jason  70.  7  and  26.  Lenger  is  found,  Marg.  Paston, 
i.  176;  Sustr.  Men.  93.  29;  Gregory,  233;  Lord  Berners,  i.  310  (-ar, 
Adv.) ;  Latimer,  72 ;  Lord  Edw.  Howard,  Ellis  ii.  i.  215  (1513);  Ascham, 
Tox.  64;  Gabr.  Harvey,  Lttrs.  20.  Lengest  I  have  noted,  Palladius, 
88.  772  ;  Pecok,  i.  133 ;  Marg.  Paston,  i.  250. 

Use  of  More  and  Most  before  Comparative  and 
Superlative  Forms. 

Every  one  knows  Shakespeare's  *  most  unkindest  cut  of  all ',  Jul.  Caesar, 
Act  in,  Sc.  ii.  The  following  are  a  few  examples  from  works  written 
before  and  up  to  Shakespeare's  time. 

Comparatives: — more  better,  Gregory,  200;  Monk  of  Evesham  (1482), 
more  worthior  47,  more  surer  56,  more  gladder  101 ;  more  larger,  Jul.  Ber- 
ners; moregretter,  Caxton,  Jason  63.  30;  more  stronger,  Lord  Berners,  i.  59, 
the  more  fresher,  ibid.  i.  295  ;  more  diligenter,  Latimer,  53  ;  the  more  fitter, 
Euphues,  87,  more  swifter,  ibid.  152. 

Superlatives  \-~-pe  most  streytest,  Shillingford,  9  ;  the  most  best  wyse, 
ibid.  18;  the  most  gentellyst,  Gregory,  200,  most  parjytyste,  ibid.  230;  most 
strengest,  Caxton,  Jason  70.  7 ;  mooste  byttyrste,  Mnk.  of  Ev.  43 ;  moost 
hardest,  Jul.  Berners;  moost  nerest  and  secrettest,  Lord  Berners,  i.  27, 
moost  outragyoust  people,  ibid.  i.  211,  moost  ungracyoust  of  all. 

Dryden,  in  his  Essay  on  the  Dramatic  Poetry  of  the  Last  Age,  says  : — 
'  I  think  few  of  our  present  writers  would  have  left  behind  them  such 
a  line  as  this — "  Contain  your  spirits  in  more  stricter  bounds  ".  But  that 
gross  way  of  two  comparatives  was  then  ordinary,  and,  therefore,  more 
pardonable  in  Jonson/ 

Various  Peculiarities  and  Irregularities  of  Comparison. 

The  most  remarkable  '  irregularity '  in  Comparison  which  I  have  found 
is  perhaps  badder,  in  Lyly's  Euphues  of  all  books.  The  passage  in  which 
it  occurs  is  worth  quoting  for  various  reasons.  It  is  typically  Euphuistic 
in  character,  it  is  interesting  as  giving  Lyly's  opinion  concerning  a  famous 
seat  of  learning,  and  the  context  seems  to  explain  why  the  author  took 
such  a  liberty  with  English  grammar. 

The  passage  occurs  in  the  message  '  To  my  verie  good  friends  the 
Gentlemen  Schollers  of  Oxford ',  at  the  end  of  the  first  part  of  Euphues. 

'  The  Estritch  that  taketh  the  greatest  pride  in  her  feathers,  picketh 


DISAPPEARANCE  OF  ENGLISH  PERSONAL  PRONOUNS  327 

some  of  the  worst  out,  and  burneth  them :  there  is  no  tree  but  hath  some 
blast,  no  countenance  but  hath  some  blemish,  and  shall  Oxford  then  be 
blamelesse  ?  I  wish  it  were  so,  but  I  cannot  think  it  is  so.  But  as  it  is  it 
may  be  better,  and  were  it  badder,  it  is  not  the  worst.' 

'  I  thinke  there  are  fewe  Uniuersities  that  haue  lesse  faultes  then  Oxford, 
many  that  haue  more,  none  but  haue  some',  p.  208. 

Lyly  could  not  resist  the  alliteration  and  assonance  of  better  and  badder. 

Pecok  preserves  rathir  with  its  original  force  as  the  Comparative  of 
rath  '  early',  and  contrasts  it  with  latt'r,  i.  94.  Lord  Berners  has  the  old 
Superl./*rm/  '  farthest ',  the  vowel  of  which  has  mutation.  Elyot  uses 
moost  in  the  old  Adjectival  sense  of  'greatest' — hir  moost  discomforte, 
2.  147.  Latimer  uses  -lye  as  a  living  Adjectival  suffix — byshoplye  duties 
and  wordes,  25,  unscripterlye,  48.  Far  into  the  seventeenth  century  many 
words  which  we  should  not  now  inflect  appear  with  the  Comp.  and 
Superl.  suffixes.  I  give  only  a  very  few  examples  among  many.  Openist, 
Pecok,  i.  77;  greuouser,  Latimer,  191 ;  willinger,  Ascham,  Scholem.  23  ; 
delicatest,  Euphues,  35 ;  naturalest,  Sir  Thos.  Smith,  Rep.  22  ;  pacienter, 
Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs.  137;  ungratefull 'st,  Otway's  Friendship  in  Love. 
A  few  more  Superlative  suffixes  to  words  of  this  kind  will  be  found  on 
p.  282  to  illustrate  the  loss  of  the  vowel. 

Ill 

PERSONAL  PRONOUNS. 
The  Personal  Pronouns  in  the  Plural. 

The  Old  English  Personal  Pronouns  hie,  heora,  heom  appear  in  M.E. 
in  the  South  and  a  great  part  of  the  Midlands  as  At,  here,  hem,  &c.  In 
the  London  dialect  these  forms  are  gradually  ousted  by  the  forms,  of 
Scandinavian  origin,  fiey,  J>eir,  J>eim,  &c.,  which  get  into  this  dialect  from 
the  North  through  the  East  Midlands. 

The  Nom.  hii  is  the  first  to  go,  and  is  not  found  after  the  time  of 
Davie.  Chaucer,  his  contemporaries,  and  followers  invariably  write  /«", 
fiey,  thei>  they,  &c.  Some  provincial  works  like  St.  Editha  still  preserve 
the  archaic  hee,  hoe.  There  is  nothing  more  to  be  said  about  the  strong 
forms  of  the  Nom.  after  the  first  quarter  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

The  weak  forms  will  be  discussed  later. 

The  next  of  the  h-  forms  to  disappear  is  her(e),  and  I  know  no 
examples  of  it  after  the  third  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century,  except  in 
the  Nut-brown  Maid,  c .  1 500,  and  in  Surrey.  The  th-  forms  do  not  appear 
in  the  London  dialect  before  the  fifteenth  century,  and  they  seem  to  come 
in  rather  reluctantly  and  very  gradually  during  this  century,  generally 
accompanied  by  the  older  forms.  Except,  however,  as  occasional, 
probably  deliberate,  archaisms,  the  old  Possess,  her  may  be  said  to  dis- 
appear from  literature  by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

The  history  of  hem  is  rather  curious.  It  survives  in  constant  use 
among  nearly  all  writers  during  the  fifteenth  century,  often  alongside 
the  th-  form.  I  have  not  noted  any  sixteenth-century  example  of  it  in 
the  comparatively  numerous  documents  I  have  examined,  until  quite 
at  the  end  of  the  century.  It  reappears,  however,  in  Marstbn  and 


328  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

Chapman  early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  the  form  'em 
occurs,  though  sparingly,  in  the  Verney  Mem.  towards  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  where  the  apostrophe  shows  that  already  it  was 
thought  to  be  a  weakened  form  of  them.  During  the  eighteenth  century 
'em  becomes  fairly  frequent  in  printed  books,  and  it  is  in  common  use 
to-day  as  [am].  It  is  rather  difficult  to  explain  the  absence  of  such  forms 
as  hem  or  em  in  the  sixteenth  century,  since  the  frequency  at  a  later 
period  seems  to  show  that,  at  any  rate,  the  weak  form  without  the  aspi- 
rate must  have  survived  throughout.  The  explanation  must  be  that  em, 
though  commonly  used,  was  felt,  as  now,  to  be  merely  a  form  of  them. 

Survivals  0/"here,  <Jr. 

Hoccleve,  here,  hir  ;  Lydgate,  her,  here. 

St.  Editha,  hure,  here\  Audelay,  here\  Bokenam,  hyr,  here  (and 
ther}',  Constable  of  Dynevor  Castle,  her,  har  ;  Bp.  Pecok,  her;  Sir 
J.  Fortescue,  her  (occasionally,  usually  thair)  ;  Marg.  Paston,  her, 
passim  (and  ther)\  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  her,  here;  Bk.  of  Quintessence, 
her  (and  per]  ;  Ord.  of  Worcester,  hur  (and  ther]  ;  Engl.  Reg.  of 
Godstow,  her  (and  more  rarely  their)  ;  Engl.  Reg.  of  Oseney,  here  (and 
there,  pere)  ;  Gregory,  her,  hir,  here  (and  there  rarely)  ;  Caxton,  Jason, 
her  (rarely,  generally  their)  ;  Nut-brown  Maid,  her,  line  6. 

I  have  noted  one  certain  example  of  her  *  their  '  in  Surrey's  poems,  Tottel, 
p.  24.  Other  cases  are  very  doubtful. 

Mr.  Henry  Bradley,  however,  in  Shakespeare's  England  mentions  the 
following  undoubted  examples  of  her  :  Hen.  VI,  Pt.  I,  i.  i.  83  ;  Othello, 
in.  iii.  66  ;  Troilus,  i.  iii.  1  1  8.  The  first  occurs  in  all  the  Folios,  the  second 
in  all  Quartos  and  Folios,  the  third  in  F1. 

All  later  works  which  I  have  examined  have  the  th-  forms  only. 


Survivals  fl/'hem,  <Jr. 

It  would  probably  be  correct  to  say  that  down  to  the  end  of  the  first 
quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century  most  texts,  except  those  of  the  Northern 
and  North-East  Midlands,  use  hem  only.  After  that  date  th-  forms  appear 
very  widely  alongside  the  others,  though  many  still  have  no  examples 
of  the  latter. 

Audelay,  St.  Editha,  Wm.  Paston  (the  Judge,  1425-30),  Hoccleve  (has, 
however,  themselfe  in  Minor  Poems),  Lydgate,  Myrc,  Bk.  of  Quint., 
Bp.  Pecok,  Const,  of  Dynevor,  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  J.  Buckland's  Will 
(Northants,  1450),  appear  to  have  no  th-  forms  ;  the  following  have  hem 
by  the  side  of  less  frequent  th-  forms  :  —  Siege  of  Rouen,  Hen.  V.  (in 
Letter,  1421),  Shillingford,  Fortescue,  Marg.  Paston  (the  Bp.  of  Exeter's 
letter  in  St.  Pprs.  has  only  hem),  Lord  Level's  Will,  1450,  Ordinances  of 
Worcester,  Engl.  Registers  of  Godstow  and  Oseney  Abbeys,  Gregory, 
with  whom  th-  forms  are  rare,  and  who  has  the  weak  form  em  —  ax  of  em 
that  felde  the  strokys,  236,  and  Caxton.  'Hem  occurs  in  Ben  Jonson's 
Every  Man  in  his  Humour,  1598;  Marston's  Eastward  Hoe,  1604; 
'Goe  Dame,  conduct  -am  in',  Chapman's  All  Fooles,  1605,  p.  136; 
'em  is  in  frequent  use  in  the  colloquial  dialogue  of  the  later  seventeenth- 


WEAK  FORMS  OF  PRONOUNS        329 

century  comedies,  and  occurs  occasionally  in  the  letters  of  the  Verney 
family  towards  the  end  of  the  century — e.g.  John  V.,  Mem.  iv.  349,  1685, 
and  Nancy  Nicholas,  iv.  428  (three  times),  1688.  It  is  common  in 
serious  poetry  and  prose  in  the  eighteenth  century. 


Unstressed  Forms  of  the  Plural  Pronouns. 

The  full  stressed  forms  of  these  are,  originally,  generally  pet,  pay,  ihei, 
thai ;  peir,  pair,  their,  thair ;  peim,  paim,  theim,  thaim,  &c. 

The  only  one  of  these  that  certainly  survives  in  pronunciation  is  they  ; 
their  [Sea]  is  doubtful,  though  it  may  very  possibly  represent  old  their ; 
them  is  certainly  derived  from  the  old  weak  form. 

From  the  fifteenth  century  onwards  spellings  such  as  the,  ther,  tham, 
them  are  found  fairly  frequently,  and  these  are  weak  forms,  which  show 
the  normal  monophthonging  of  ei,  at  in  unstressed  positions.  (On  this 
point  see  further  particulars,  pp.  279-80.) 

We  have  now  lost  the  old  the,  which  would  have  become  [£e,  cV],  and 
we  use  the  old  strong  form  in  all  positions,  though  this  no  doubt  some- 
times undergoes  a  slight  reduction  when  unstressed. 

The  old  weak  form  ther  survives  in  the  form  [tfe],  which  is  now  rather 
falling  into  desuetude.  The  old  weak  them  survives  as  a  strong  form, 
being  used  in  stressed  positions — '  They  have  forgotten  me,  but  I  have 
not  forgotten  them'  From  this  we  have  formed  anew  weak  form  [tfom], 
which  we  habitually  use  in  unstressed  positions. 

Examples  of  weak  the. 

This  is  the  least  frequent  of  the  weakened  forms,  but  it  occurs  in 
Shillingford,  e.g.  p.  62,  Gregory,  and  frequently  in  the  letters  of  Queen 
Elizabeth. 

Examples  of  weakened  ther  (thyr). 

Marg.  Paston,  ther}  Bk.  of  Quint.,  per;  Gregory,  there  (rarely); 
Ordinances  of  Worcester;  State  of  Ireland  (St.  Pprs.,  1515),  ther ; 
Skelton's  Magnyficence,  thyr',  Q.  Elizabeth  (in  Lttrs.  and  in  Transl.), 
ther ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  ther.  Most  of  these  writers  generally  use 
their  or  thair,  &c. 

Strong  and  Weak  Forms  of  them. 

Already  in  the  fifteenth  century  several  texts  write  them  only,  and  this 
may  be  due  to  the  influence  of  hem,  which  also  occurs  in  these  documents. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  spellings  theim,  theym  are  found  far  into  the  six- 
teenth century. 

Hoccleve  has  hardly  any  th-  forms,  but  themselfe  in  Minor  Poems; 
Sir  J.  Fortescue  has  thaim,  them  ;  Shillingford,  tham ;  Ord.  of  Worcester, 
them  ;  Lord  Level's  Will,  theym ;  Marg.  Paston,  them ;  Gregory,  them  ; 
Cr.  of  Duke  of  York,  thaym,  them-,  State  of  Ireland  (St.  Pprs.,  1515), 
them-,  Skelton,  them-,  Rede  me,  &c.,  theym,  passim;  J.  Mason  (Letter, 
Ellis  iii.  2),  them-,  Sir  Thos.  More  (Letter,  1523),  theym  more  frequently 
than  them ;  Lord  Berners,  theym,  them ;  Elyot,  theym,  them ;  Latimer, 
theym,  them ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  theym  and  them ;  Euphues,  them. 


330  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

You  and  Ye. 

Down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  writers  generally  dis- 
tinguish between  Nom.  ye  and  Ace.  D&t.you.  The  PI.  forms  already  in 
M.E.  are  used  in  respectful  address  to  a  single  person. 

While,  for  instance,  Sir  Thos.  More  and  Lord  Berners  distinguish 
between  jv  and^>0w,  Bp.  Latimer,  Ascham,  Cavendish,  and  Euphues  use 
both  forms  indifferently  for  the  Nom.  Q.  Elizabeth  appears  to  employ 
you  alone  for  Nom.  and  oblique  cases,  Sing,  and  PI.  On  the  whole,  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  while  you  is  common  as  a  Nom.,  ye  is  much  rarer 
as  an  Ace.  or  Dat. 

Ye  is  sometimes  introduced  merely  for  variety,  cf.  Ascham — '•you  that 
be  shoters,  I  prayj/0«,  what  meanjwa  whenjv  take',  &c.,  Tox.  101. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  you  is  far  commoner  than  ye  in  Nom., 
though  the  latter  is  not  infrequent.  Sir  Edmund  Verney,  in  1642,  uses 
ye  after  a  preposition — any  of  ye,  V.  Mem.  ii.  136. 

A  distinction  was  formerly  made  between  thou,  thee,  and  you,  in  the 
sense  that  the  former  was  used  by  superiors,  or  seniors  in  addressing  their 
inferiors  or  juniors,  and  in  the  familiar  and  affectionate  speech  of  parents 
addressing  their  children. 

Sir  Thos.  More's  son-in-law,  Roper,  in  his  Life  of  that  famous  man, 
represents  him  as  addressing  the  writer — '  Sonne  Roper' — as  thou,  thee,  but 
himself  as  using  jwi*  in  speaking  to  Sir  Thomas  More. 

The  Weak  a  for  he. 

This  form  scarcely  survives  at  present  except  in  the  archaic  literary 
quotha. 

Ha  and  a  are  fairly  common  in  M.E.  in  texts  of  the  South- West  and 
South- West  Midlands — e.  g.  quofiha,  St.  Juliana  (MS.  Royal) ;  a  is  used 
by  Trevisa  as  a  Neuter  or  Masculine  ;  other  Southern  texts  use  ha  as  a 
PI.  Nom.  The  Constable  of  Dynevor  Castle  (temp.  Hen.  IV)  uses 
a  both  for  he  and  they,  Ellis  ii.  i.  16;  Latimer,  Sermons,  writes  'here 
was  a  not  gyltie  ',  153. 

Henry  Verney  writes,  in  1644 — c  a  dyed  one  newersday  a  is  tomorrow 
caryed  to  his  own  church ',  V.  Mem.  ii.  204,  and  in  1647 — '  a  proves  by 
fits  very  bad',  Mem.  ii.  361. 

hit  and  it. 

The  old  spelling  hit,  hyt,  persists  nearly  to  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  although  the  weak  it  is  found  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century  in 
E.  Midland,  and  in  the  London  dialect  in  the  poems  of  Davie  (c.  1327). 
Hit  or  hyt  is  still  the  only  spelling  in  many  sixteenth-century  documents, 
while  in  others yt,  &c.,  preponderates,  and  in  others  again  hit  or  hyi  is  the 
more  frequent.  Sir  Thos.  Elyot  has  hit  more  frequently  than  /'/  in  his 
Will,  but  the  conditions  are  reversed  in  the  Gouernour;  Machyn  uses 
hyt  but  rarely ;  Queen  Elizabeth  writes  hit  with  very  great  frequency  in 
her  Letters  and  Translations  alike,  yt  being  only  occasionally  used. 

It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries 
the  aspirate  was  lost  in  unstressed  positions,  and  the  spelling  h-  was  an 
archaism.  At  the  same  time  it  is  possible  that  some  speakers  still  pro- 


ITS  AND  HER  331 

nounced  hit  when  the  word  was  stressed.  Since  the  other  Personal 
Pronouns  which  began  with  h-  all  had  both  strong  and  weak  forms,  there 
is  no  reason  why  the  old  strong  form  of  the  Neuter  Pronoun  should  not 
also  have  been  retained.  By  the  end  of  the  century,  apparently,  the  h- 
form  had  disappeared  from  ordinary  colloquial  English. 

The  Possessive  Neuter  its. 

I  have  found  no  trace  of  the  present-day  its  during  the  sixteenth 
century,  my  earliest  reference  being  in  Charles  Butler's  English  Grammar 
of  1634,  p.  40.  As  Butler  was  born  in  1560,  it  seems  probable  that  its 
was  in  use  in  his  youth,  since  it  is  unlikely  that  he  would  incorporate, 
without  comment,  a  form  which  was  a  recent  innovation. 

At  the  same  time,  the  form  was  evidently  felt  as  a  colloquialism  at  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  for  it  is  avoided  in  the  Authorized  Version. 
Queen  Elizabeth  uses  his  of '  the  matters  '  (Letters  to  J.  VI,  3),  Euphues 
has  his  referring  to  '  learning '.  Shakespeare  does  not  use  its. 

Ascham,  we  may  note,  uses  he,  hym,  speaking  of  a  bow,  Tox.,  p.  116. 

The  Forms  hir  and  her. 

The  old  form  of  the  oblique  cases  of  the  Fern.  Pronoun  is  represented 
by  the  M.E.  and  Early  Modern  hir,  hyr,  and  these  forms  persist  until 
towards  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Latimer,  Ascham,  Euphues, 
and  Lord  Burghley  in  his  letters,  all  have  hir  and  hyr,  and  these  on  the 
whole  are  the  more  usual  forms  in  letters  and  printed  books  throughout 
the  greater  part  of  the  century,  though  in  many  her  is  found  also.  The 
spelling  her,  which  may  represent  a  lowering  of  the  vowel  in  unstressed 
positions,  before  -r,  a  process  which  may  have  been  helped  by  the  ana- 
logy of  the  Nom.  he  in  those  M.E.  dialects  which  employed  this  form  for 
she,  is  found  very  commonly  in  M.E.  by  the  side  of  hir,  but  the  more 
careful  scribes  distinguish  between  the  Possess.,  &c.,  Fern.,  and  the 
Possess.  PI.,  keeping  her  for  the  latter  and  hir,  &c.,  for  the  former.  In 
the  fifteenth  century  Hoccleve  has  hir  only ;  her  is  found  in  the  London 
official  documents,  in  the  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  which  text  often  distinguishes 
the  cases — her,  Ace.,  here,  Possess,  and  Dat. — in  Lydgate's  Poems,  Lord 
Lovel's  Will,  Marg.  Paston — herr,  here,  hers,  by  the  side  of  hyr.  Caxton 
has  both  forms.  Cely  Pprs.,  Gregory,  the  Will  of  Sir  Thos.  Cumber- 
worth,  Lines.,  1451,  all  have  hir,  hyr.  Sir  J.  Fortescue  has  huyr. 
Hen.  VIII,  in  a  letter  of  1515,  writes  har,  Ace.  and  Possess.,  a  survival 
of  a  M.E.  unstressed  form  often  found  in  the  South-Eastern  dialect. 

Edward  VI,  First  P.  B.,  seems  to  have  her  only.  Hir  is  still  very 
common  in  the  Verney  Memoirs ;  see  especially  the  letters  of  Sir  Ralph. 

The  weak  form  without  the  h-  is  rather  rare;  however,  hoselder 
( houselled  her '  occurs  in  St.  Editha,  and  carry er  '  carry  her '  in  Verney 
Mem.,  Henry  V.,  Mem.  ii.  366,  1647. 

Indiscriminate  use  of  I  and  me. 

It  is  not  uncommon  at  the  present  time  to  hear  /  used  instead  of  me 
after  a  Verb  or  Preposition,  as  though  the  speaker  wished  to  avoid  the 
latter  form.  '  What  have  they  to  do  with  you  and  I  ?  '  writes  Sir  John 


332  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

Suckling  in  a  letter  to  Aglaura,  Wks.,  ii,  p.  198.  The  phrase  between  you 
and  I  is  used  by  Tom  Verney,  V.  Mem.  iii.  173,  1657,  and  by  Lady 
Hobart,  V.  Mem.  iv.  57,  1664  ;  //  must  all  light  upon  Heartfree  and  I  is 
said  by  Belinda  in  Vanbrugh's  Provok't  Wife,  Wks.  vol.  ii,  363. 

In  1734  Lady  Strafford  writes  Lady  Anne  Harvey  invited  my  love  and 

1,  Wentw.  Pprs.  499. 

A  habit  more  characteristic  than  the  above,  of  illiterate  speakers,  is  the 
use  of  me  as  a  Nom.  Susan  Verney  writes,  in  1645,  Sis  peg  and  me  got 
an  opportunity,  &c. 

Miss  Austen  makes  that  rather  underbred  young  woman,  Miss  Lucy 
Steele,  say  Anne  and  me  are  to  go  there  later,  Sense  and  Sensibility,  i, 
ch.  24. 

IV 

THE  ARTICLES. 
Survival  of  M.B.  thoo. 

The  form  thoo,  J>5,  &c.,  originally  the  PI.  of  the  Def.  Article,  O.E.  j>a, 
survives  into  the  sixteenth  century,  generally,  it  is  true,  with  a  rather  more 
definite  Demonstrative  sense  than  belongs  to  the  Article,  sometimes  with 
the  full  force  of  the  Demonstr.  those.  See  my  Short  Hist,  of  EngL, 
§  287,  for  details  of  the  late  M.E.  use  of/J. 

Pecok  appears  to  use  the  form  practically  as  the  PI.  of  the  Art.  in  tho 
writingis,  tho  deedis  to  be  doon,  Repr.  i.  23  ;  alle  tho  whiche,  ibid.,  is  more 
definitely  Demonstrative.  The  form  occurs  in  the  Bk.  of  Quintessence, 
J>o  men,  in  the  Will  of  J.  Buckland,  in  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.  (J>oo\  in 
Gregory — one  ofihoo,  140,  thoo  that,  233,  and  in  Caxton. 

The  latest  example  I  have  found  of  thoo  is  in  a  list  of  ships  of 
Hen.  VIII's  time,  1513,  in  the  sense  of  those,  Ellis  ii.  1.218. 

Indefinite  Article. 

The  stressed  M.E.  form  oo  survives  in  Gregory — oo  place,  153. 
A  instead  of  an  is  sometimes  used  before  vowels — a  Englyssche  squyer, 
Gregory,  184;  a  increasing,  a  ivelname,  Q.  Elizabeth  in  a  letter,  Ellis  i. 

2.  157.  1549- 


V 

VERBAL  ENDINGS. 
Ending  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Singular  Pres.  Indicative. 

In  M.E.  the  Southern  dialects  have  universally  -ef>  and  -ip.  The 
E.  Midland  has  almost  exclusively  the  -/,  -th  ending,  except,  very  occasion- 
ally, -es,  -is,  and  then  chiefly  in  rhymes.  W.  Midland  has  the  -s  ending 
far  more  frequently.  Chaucer  seems  to  have  -es  only  once,  and  then^in 
a  rhyme. 

In  the  fifteenth  century  the  -th  forms  (-yth,  -ith,  -etK)  very  largely  hold 
their  own  in  the  South,  the  E.  Midlands,  and  in  the  London  dialect,  with 
occasional  outcrops  of  sporadic  -s  forms. 


THIRD  PERSON   SINGULAR  IN  -eth  AND  -es        333 

Thus,  the  essentially  provincial  and  usually  archaic  St.  Editha,  while 
generally  preserving  -eth  as  the  usual  form,  writes  also  comys,  617,  he 
louys,  2028.  The  E.  Midland  Bokenam  has  only  -yth,  &c.,  with  the 
rarest  exception,  and  even  some  of  the  Lincolnshire  Wills  of  the  fifteenth 
century  write  -ith  as  the  usual  type,  with  rarer  -eth,  but  -es  very  rarely 
indeed,  though  Sir  T.  Cumberworth's  Will  has  several  -s  forms,  and 
apparently  no  -th,  L.  D.  D.  45.  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  a  Will  of  1465 
ligges  occurs,  apparently  as  the  only  form  of  its  kind.  This  appears  to 
be  a  lapse  into  dialect  as  regards  the  form  of  the  word  (tig  =  '  lie '), 
with  a  Northern  suffix  retained  to  avoid  the  incongruity  of  h'ggeth. 

Wm.  Paston,  the  judge,  has  only  -yth.  Marg.  Paston  has  few,  if  any, 
forms  of  ending  other  than  -yth ;  Palladius  has  -ej>,  Pecok  only  -ith ; 
Fortescue,  and  Shillingford,  and  Ord.  of  Worcester,  -yth,  -ith,  with  occa- 
sional -eth  ;  the  Wills  from  Bucks.,  Oxfordshire,  and  Northants  only  -yth, 
-eth.  Cely  Papers  have  -yth  as  a  rule,  though  the  younger  members  of 
the  family  often  use  -es,  -ys  as  well. 

Passing  to  London  English,  the  fifteenth-century  official  documents 
have  an  overwhelmingly  large  proportion  of  -ith  forms,  with  a  trifling 
number  of  -s  forms,  which  might  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand. 
Other  prose  documents  which  show  no  particular  Regional  influence 
generally  agree  with  this,  but  poetical  writers,  for  purposes  of  metre  or 
rhyme,  begin  to  use  forms  in  -s.  Thus,  while  Lydgate  (a  Suffolk  man) 
has  in  his  poems  frequent  forms  in  -es,  and  Siege  of  Rouen  has  putty  s,  32, 
asfysse,  33,Capgrave,  according  to  Dibelius,  has  only  one  such  form,  and 
the  Bk.  of  Quintessence  and  the  Rewle  of  Sustr.  Men.  have  -ith,  -ip  only. 

In  the  sixteenth  century,  apart  from  poetry,  -ith,  &c.,  is  practically 
universal  in  literary  prose,  official  documents,  and  in  private  letters,  until 
well  into  the  third  quarter  of  the  century.  To  this  the  Sermons  of 
Bp.  Latimer,  preached  in  1549,  form  an  exception,  but  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  we  possess  these  only  in  the  form  in  which  they  were 
printed  thirty  years  or  so  later,  and  it  is  possible  that  we  owe  some  of  the 
peculiarities  to  the  editor  or  the  printer. 

At  the  same  time,  Latimer's  language  shows  certain  traces  of  provin- 
cialism in  other  directions,  and  the  -s  forms  may  be  perfectly  genuine 
and  characteristic  of  the  bishop's  dialect.  At  any  rate,  I  have  noted  about 
sixty-three  examples  in  Arber's  Reprint  of  the  Sermons,  side  by  side  with 
many  -eth  forms.  In  Thos.  Lever's  Sermons  (1550)  there  are  a  few  -s 
forms,  though  the  first  of  these  seems  to  occur  on  p.  65,  where  it  is  put 
into  the  mouth  of  what  the  preacher  calls  '  rude  lobbes  of  the  country ', 
who  are  supposed  to  say :  '  he  minisheth  Gods  servants,  he  slubbers  up 
his  service  who  cannot  reade  the  humbles/  The  3rd  Sing.  Pres.  is  very 
rare  in  any  form  in  Machyn's  Diary,  but  he  lys  occurs,  pp.  181,  204,  leys, 
tyys>  J46>  gyffes>  J47-  Gabriel  Harvey  uses  -s  forms  in  his  letters  occa- 
sionally, especially  in  the  more  familiar  letters — smels,  18,  hopes,  heares, 
23.  When  writing  to  the  Master  of  his  College  he  uses  only  *ith  forms. 
Cavendish,  Life  of  Wolsey,  has  very  few  -f  forms,  -ith,  -yth  being  nearly 
universal,  but  I  have  noted  me  semys,  p.  60.  Ascham  has  at  least  twenty 
examples  of  -s  in  Toxophilus,  of  which  endures,  39,  occurs  in  a  metrical 
line,  and  leaues,  91,  also  in  a  verse.  Sir  Thos.  Smith  nearly  always 
writes  -eth  in  Republ.,  but  gettes,  ibid.,  p.  67.  Queen  Elizabeth,  in  her 


334  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

later  letters  (to  James  VI)  and  in  the  Translations  writes  -j,  by  the  side 
of  -eth,  &c.,  very  frequently.  In  the  latter,  -s  is  much  commoner  than 
-th.  The  -s  forms  are  not  so  frequent  in  those  letters  in  Ellis  written 
when  the  Queen  was  a  girl,  but  methinkes  occurs  in  1572,  Ellis  i.  2.  263. 
The  Auxiliaries  doth  and  hath  are  nearly  always  so  written  in  all  the  Queen's 
writings.  In  Wilson's  Arte  of  Rhetorique  -eth  and  -s  forms  are  both 
frequent,  the  latter  occurring  more  commonly  than  in  Ascham,  especially 
in  the  less  stately  and  solemn  passages.  In  the  Letters  of  Lord  Burghley 
(Ellis,  and  Bardon  Papers),  so  far  as  I  can  see,  and  in  Euphues,  none  but 
-th  forms  are  found.  Bacon,  in  his  Essays,  seems  invariably  to  use  the 
-th  ending. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  3rd  Singular  Present 
nearly  always  ends  in  -s  in  all  kinds  of  prose  writing  except  in  the  state- 
liest and  most  lofty.  Evidently  the  translators  of  the  Authorized  Version 
of  the  Bible  regarded  -s  as  belonging  only  to  familiar  speech,  but  the 
exclusive  use  of  -eth  here,  and  in  every  edition  of  the  Prayer  Book,  may 
be  partly  due  to  the  tradition  set  by  the  earlier  Biblical  translations  and 
the  early  editions  of  the  Prayer  Book  respectively.  Except  in  liturgical 
prose,  then,  -eth  becomes  more  and  more  uncommon  after  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century;  it  is  the  survival  of  this  and  not  the  re- 
currence of  -s  which  is  henceforth  noteworthy.  The  -th  forms  are 
common  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  but  his  style  is  not  typical  of  his  age. 

The  letters  in  the  Verney  Memoirs  contain  a  few  examples  of  -eth 
which  show  that  this  survived  even  in  familiar  and  colloquial  language 
down  to  the  middle  of  the  century. 

Tom  Verney  writes  tellefh,  Mem.  ii.  156,  1646;  Lady  Verney,  expres- 
seih)  ii.  246,  1646;  Sir  Ralph  has  'on  (=  one)  looseth  his  time, the  other 
spends  his  money',  ii.  247,  1646,  and  'my  Lady  Browne  telleth  me  ',  iii. 
70,  1650.  In  Tom  Jones,  Fielding  makes  Parson  Supple,  the  hypocritical 
chaplain,  say  '  You  behold,  Sir,  how  he  waxeth  wroth  at  your  abode 
here ',  vol.  i,  p.  312,  First  Ed. 

The  -j  forms  are  usually  ascribed  to  Northern  influence,  but  this 
cannot  conceivably  have  been  exerted  directly,  and  one  naturally  turns  to 
the  East  Midland  dialects,  which  so  often  were  the  undoubted  medium 
whereby  Northern  forms  have  reached  London  English,  as  the  probable 
channel  in  this  case  also.  In  this  instance,  however,  the  forms  are 
almost  as  rare  in  the  fifteenth  century  in  the  works  of  writers  from 
Suffolk,  Norfolk,  and  even  from  Lincolnshire,  as  they  are  in  the  docu- 
ments of  London  and  of  the  South  generally.  It  must  be  mentioned, 
however,  that  Norf.  Guild  Returns,  1389,  have  numerous  -s  forms  in  the 
documents  of  the  Guild  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  but  elsewhere  -ith. 
It  is  true,  also,  that  Lydgate  of  Bury  has  -s  forms  in  abundance,  and  it  is 
possible  that  in  other  E.  Midland  documents,  especially  the  official 
writings  such  as  the  Suffolk  and  some  Lincolnshire  Wills  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  the  writers  deliberately  avoided  these  forms  and  assimilated  their 
usage  to  that  still  prevailing  in  London,  although  the  forms  may  have 
been  in  the  normal  colloquial  usage  of  these  areas.  This,  however, 
would  not  apply  to  Bokenam,  who  shows  few  if  any  traces  of  specific 
London  influence.  It  is  perhaps  rather  a  far-fetched  assumption  that  the 
E.  Midland  writers  of  the  fifteenth  century  conceal  their  normal  speech 


THIRD   PERSONS  IN  -s  COLLOQUIAL  IN  ORIGIN   335 

habit  in  this  respect,  while  all  the  time  the  very  peculiarity  which  does 
not  emerge  in  their  writings  was  in  existence  and  was  gradually  in- 
fluencing London  speech.  Again,  it  is  significant  that  some  of  the 
earliest  -s  forms  are  found  in  St.  Editha,  and  few  will  attribute  Northern 
influence  to  this  Wiltshire  text.  Some  other  explanation  must  be  sought. 
They  are  also  not  infrequent  in  the  letters  of  the  younger  Celys  (Essex) 
in  third  quarter  of  fifteenth  century,  and  they  are  here  clearly  a  colloquial 
feature.  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  -s  forms  of  the  3rd  Sing,  passed 
into  prose  literature  from  the  poetical  writings,  and  from  prose  literature 
to  colloquial  speech.  This  now  appears  to  me  highly  improbable.  It  is 
true  that  the  exigencies  of  rhyme  and  metre  make  it  convenient  to  sub- 
stitute the  forms  in  -s  for  those  in  -ith  in  verse.  By  this  means  a  syllable 
is  got  rid  of,  and  the  possibilities  of  rhyme  enormously  increased.  Thus, 
at  a  time  when  -s  is  comparatively  rare  in  prose  writings  of  any  sort — 
that  is,  down  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century — the  ending  often 
appears  in  poetry.  But  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  what  was  destined  to 
become  the  only  form  in  the  colloquial  language  should  have  come  into 
that  form  of  English  primarily  from  poetry.  It  is  more  likely  that  the 
use  of  the  -s  forms  in  poetry  is  quite  independent  of  their  introduction 
into  colloquial  English.  The  use  of  those  forms  made  by  Ascham  and 
Queen  Elizabeth  strikes  one  as  reflecting  a  prevalent  habit  of  ordinary 
speech.  We  might  suspect  Northern  influence  in  the  case  of  Ascham, 
a  Yorkshireman,  but  not  in  the  Queen  and  her  contemporaries  generally. 
The  avoidance  of  them — in  Euphues — by  the  highly  correct  Lyly  is  not 
consistent  with  a  purely  literary  origin.  Had  he  regarded  these  forms  as 
primarily  poetical,  why  should  he  not  have  employed  them  in  his  essen- 
tially artificial  dialogue  ?  On  the  other  hand,  if  Lyly  regarded  the  -s 
ending  as  an  innovation,  associated  with  familiar  colloquial  speech,  he 
was  just  the  man  to  set  his  face  against  them  in  writing  such  a  work  as 
Euphues.  The  -s  forms  in  Machyn  are  certainly  the  result  of  colloquial 
usage,  as  this  writer  is  not  the  man  to  take  his  grammar  from  the  poets, 
nor,  indeed,  from  literature  of  any  sort. 

It  is  more  in  accordance  with  what  we  know  of  the  relations  of  the 
Spoken  language  to  the  language  of  Literature  to  suppose  that  the 
feature  we  are  considering  passed,  in  the  first  instance,  into  everyday 
usage,  quite  independently  of  the  poets,  and  thence  into  the  prose  style 
of  literature.  It  is  evident  that  the  number  of  persons  who  read  poetry 
must  at  any  time  be  very  small  in  comparison  with  the  population  as  a 
whole ;  and  poetical  diction,  in  so  far  as  it  differs  from  that  of  ordinary 
life,  can  exercise  but  a  slight  influence  upon  the  colloquial  language  at 
large.  If  the  -s  forms  of  the  3rd  Sing.  Present  gained  currency  primarily 
from  poetical  and  then  from  prose  literature,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
explain  how,  in  a  comparatively  short  time,  they  attained  such  univer- 
sality of  usage,  and  also,  allowing  for  the  weight  of  tradition  in  favour  of 
the  older  form,  why  they  should  have  been  felt  as  too  colloquial  to  be 
admitted  at  all  into  Liturgical  English  in  any  form,  and  into  the  Autho- 
rized Version. 

But  all  this  is  purely  negative,  and  does  not  account  for  the  appearance 
of  the  forms  and  their  gradual  complete  acceptance  in  a  dialect  area  to 
which  they  were  originally  quite  alien. 


336  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

We  are  placed  in  this  dilemma,  that  the  only  apparent  possible  inter- 
mediary between  the  North  and  London  and  the  South,  by  which 
a  dialectal  peculiarity  could  pass,  is  the  E.  Midland  area,  whereas  this 
particular  characteristic  does  not  appear  to  be  especially  widespread  in 
the  E.  Midland  dialects,  or  among  such  writers  as  might  be  expected  to 
show  direct  influence  from  these  dialects  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries — e.  g.  Bokenam,  Gregory,  Capgrave,  Bury  Wills,  some  of  the 
Lines.  Wills,  Marg.  Paston. 

From  this  dilemma  the  theory  which  saddles  the  poets  ultimately  with 
giving  currency  to  the  -s  forms  in  the  Spoken  language,  if  it  can  be 
accepted,  offers  an  easy  escape.  If,  in  spite  of  the  improbabilities  which 
have  been  urged  against  it,  this  view  commends  itself  to  the  reader,  he 
will  have  no  further  difficulty.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  the  starting- 
point  of  the  -s  forms  has  nothing  to  do  with  Regional  influence,  but  that 
the  extremely  common  Auxiliary  is  may  have  provided  the  model.  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  this  is  the  true  explanation  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Pres.  in 
-s  in  the  Spoken  dialect  of  London  and  the  South,  and  in  the  English  of 
Literature. 

A  few  remarks  upon  the  use  of  these  forms  by  the  poets  down  to  the 
first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  will  not  be  out  of  place. 

The  -s  forms  were  a  great  boon  to  writers  of  verse,  both  in  supplying 
rhymes,  and  metrically,  in  providing  a  form  with  a  syllable  less  than 
the  -eth  form  of  the  same  verb. 

Thus  poets  often  make  use  of  these  forms  both  in  rhyme  and  in  the 
middle  of  lines.  As  regards  the  fifteenth  century,  while  Lydgate  often 
employs  these  forms,  Hoccleve  does  not,  and  Stephen  Hawes  appears  to 
make  but  moderate  use  of  them.  Skelton,  who  was  born  in  1460,  and 
may  therefore  be  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  late  fifteenth  century  from 
a  linguistic  point  of  view,  makes  frequent  use  of  the  -s  endings  (-/>,  -ys^ 
-es,  -s)  in  such  a  rough  coarse  satire  as  '  Why  come  ye  nat  to  Courte  ? ', 
but  generally  writes  -M  in  his  more  delicate  work,  such  as  Phyllyp  Sparowe ; 
in  Magnyficence  he  has  usually  -elk,  but  also  she  lokys,  925,  he  ne  reeky  s, 
1 1 68,  rhymes  spekys,  2nd  Pers.  S. 

It  has  already  been  mentioned  that  the  Wilts,  writer  of  St.  Editha  has 
a  few  -j  forms,  while  the  Suffolk  writer  Bokenam  has  practically  none. 

The  Earl  of  Surrey  has  many  of  these  endings,  the  sonnet  The  Sweie 
sesoun  alone  having  springes,  bringes,  singes,  flinges,  slinges,  minges  all 
rhyming,  besides  decayes,  and  they  occur  with  fair  frequency  in  all  his 
love  poems  and  in  the  translation  of  the  Aeneid.  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  the 
Elder  has  a  great  many  in  his  Satires.  Lord  Buckhurst,  in  the  Induc- 
tion, has  twenty  -s  forms  in  the  seventy-nine  seven-line  verses. 

The  only  -th  endings  are  hath,  four  times,  doth,  doeth,  three  times, 
and  ceasseth,  once.  Hath  and  doth  survive  long  after  -s  has  become 
universal  in  English,  but  so  far  as  the  metre  is  concerned  it  is  evident  that 
has  would  do  just  as  well,  and  the  same  is  true  of  does.  The  spelling  doefh, 
which  occurs  in  verse  69  of  the  Induction,  is  monosyllabic — '  mine  iyes. . . . 
That  fylde  with  teares  as  doeth  the  spryngyng  well.'  The  form  ceasseth, 
verse  40,  is  metrically  of  the  same  value  as  ceases,  which  might, 
therefore,  have  been  used  had  the  poet  wished.  All  the  -s  forms  in 
the  poem  are  necessary  for  the  metre,  and  in  the  only  cases  where 


THIRD   SINGULAR— PRESENT   PLURAL  337 

there  was  any  option  Lord  Buckhurst  has  written  -th  in  preference 
to  -s.  All  these  facts,  taken  together  with  the  arguments  stated  earlier, 
seem  to  me  to  confirm  the  view  that  the  -s  ending  was  of  colloquial,  not 
of  literary  origin,  in  Standard  English,  and  that  it  arose  in  various  areas 
in  the  South,  not  through  external  Regional  influence  but  as  a  result  of 
a  natural  and  widespread  analogy.  The  ending  may  have  had  currency 
first  among  the  humbler  classes  (cf.  the  Celys  and  Machyn),  and  its  usage 
for  convenience  in  poetry  may  have  hastened  its  acceptance  in  the  collo- 
quial speech  of  the  better  classes. 

Forms  of  the  $rd  Pers.  Present  Singular  without  Inflexion. 

At  the  present  time  such  forms  may  occasionally  be  heard  from  vulgar 
and  uneducated  speakers.  I  noticed,  some  years  ago  in  Essex,  that  such 
phrases  as  '  he  come  every  day  to  see  me ',  '  he  always  take  sugar  in  his 
tea ',  and  so  on,  were  very  common. 

In  earlier  times  these  flexionless  3rd  Singulars  were  used  by  far  more 
distinguished  persons.  The  origin  of  the  omission  is  presumably  the 
analogy  of  the  ist  Person. 

I  have  noted  a  few  from  the  fifteenth  century  onwards : — Marg.  Paston, 
commaund,  i.  246;  Lord  Berners,  methynke,  i.  250;  Latimer,  methynke, 
Seven  Sermons,  133;  Ascham,  methincke,  Tax.  100;  Q.  Elizabeth,  '  as 
your  secretarye  terme  it ',  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  30 ;  Wentworth  Pprs.,  '  my 
cossen  hear  take  great  delight  in  fishing,  and  ketch  many',  47 ;  'the  town 
tell  a  world  of  stories  of  Lady  Masham',  Peter  W.,  408. 

The  Endings  of  the  Present  Indicative  Plural. 

In  M.E.  the  ending  -<?/,  -i>  in  the  Present  PI.  is  typical  of  the  Southern 
dialects,  and  -en  of  the  Midland,  especially  of  E.  Midland.  From  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  onwards  London  texts,  by  the  side  of  the 
Southern  -ep,  have  a  preponderance  of  the  E.  Midland  -en  type  of  Pres. 
Pis.  The  weakened  ending  -e,  with  loss  of  final  -«,  was  still  further 
weakened,  sometimes,  even  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  from  this  type 
our  present-day  form,  without  any  suffix,  is  derived.  Chaucer  generally 
writes  -en  in  his  prose,  -e  being  rare.  In  his  poetry  both  forms  occur 
very  commonly,  but  in  rhymes  -e  is  almost  universal. 

The  history  of  the  Present  PI.  during  the  Modern  period  is  concerned 
(i)  with  the  gradual  loss  of  the  final  -«,  and  the  ultimate  fixing  of  the 
prevailing  type  as  one  with  no  ending  at  all ;  (2)  with  the  survival,  for 
a  considerable  period,  alongside  the  -en,  or  the  flexionless  type,  of  the 
ending  -eth,  -ith ;  (3)  with  the  appearance  of  a  PI.  ending  in  -es,  -ys,  -s. 

Now  this  last  is  still,  as  it  was  in  M.E.,  and  even  in  O.E.,  a  character- 
istic feature  of  the  Northern  dialects.  Whether  the  use  of  this  suffix, 
sporadically,  from  about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  in 
Literary  English,  and  in  the  colloquial  speech  of  educated  persons  in  the 
South  of  England,  is  to  be  ascribed  to  Northern  influence,  is  quite 
another  matter.  We  shall  discuss  this  question  later  on. 

The  Present  Indicative  Plural  in  -en,  -e. 

We  should  expect,  from  what  we  know  of  M.E.,  to  find  that  in  the 
fifteenth  century  -en  or  -e  would  be  the  sole,  or  at  least  the  prevailing  type  of 


338  NOTES  ON  INFLEXIONS 

ending  in  London  English,  and  that  -eth,  -ith,  &c.,  would  occur  only  in 
texts  written  by  Southerners.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  latter  suffix  is  by 
no  means  so  rare  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  as  we  might 
expect,  even  in  the  writings  of  those  whom  we  have  no  reason  to  suspect 
of  Regional  tendencies.  It  would  appear  that  the  literary  and  official 
documents  of  the  late  fourteenth  century  do  not  give  us  an  altogether  true 
picture  of  actual  speech  habit  in  this  respect,  and  that  the  -ip  Plurals 
must  have  survived  in  the  colloquial  speech  of  large  sections  of  the 
population,  over  a  considerable  area,  although  expressed  comparatively 
rarely  in  the  written  form  of  English.  This  type  of  ending  survives  long 
after  the  disappearance  of  -n.  The  appearance  of  the  -s  endings  marks 
a  further  and  later  stage.  These  appear  some  time  after  the  loss  of  -n 
and  at  a  period  in  which  ith,  &c.,  is  a  rarely. 

It  must  be  ascribed  to  the  indirect  influence  of  London  speech,  in  its 
written  form,  that  the  -en  type  either  very  largely  predominates,  or  is  at 
least  represented,  from  quite  early  in  the  fifteenth  century,  even  in  docu- 
ments whose  authors  might  be  expected  to  stick  to  a  pure  Southern  form. 

Thus,  Palladius  (Essex)  generally  writes  -eth,  but  has  occasional  -en\ 
the  Constable  of  Dynevor,  by  the  side  of  we  fayleth,  15,  has  also  they 
seyen  '  see  ',  1 6,  and  hau  '  have ',  Ellis  ii.  i  ;  St.  Editha  has  slydith,  8,  but 
dwelle,  57  ;  the  Devonian  Fortescue  has  only  -en,  -yn,  or  -e ;  Shillingford 
has  semeth,  12,  menyth,  16,  but  more  often  -en,  requyren,  30,  seyn  'say', 
40,  131,  &c.,  deserven,  131,  touchyn,  132  (-en  occurs  most  commonly  in 
the  legal  and  official  documents  in  the  Shillingford  Pprs.,  and  in  Shilling- 
ford's  letter  to  the  Chancellor ;  this  ending  is  commoner  in  the  letter  of 
the  Bishop  of  Exeter  than  in  S.'s  own  letters  or  those  of  his  friends). 

Turning  to  writers  whom  we  might  suspect  of  specific  E.  Midland 
tendencies : — Bokenam  has  -e  or  -yn ;  William  Paston,  the  judge,  has  -en 
or  -e ;  Marg.  Paston  has  generally  -yn—jeowyn,  i.  168,  or  no  ending — 
ye  thenk,  i.  224,  but  makyth,  ii.  124;  Gregory,  the  Cockney  from  Suffolk, 
-yn,  -e,  or  no  ending — belevyn,  75,  deputy  n,  124,  behote  'promise',  125, 
long,  201,  but  also  longythe,  134. 

These  writers,  as  we  should  expect,  hardly  differ  from  the  London 
usage  in  this  particular  case. 

We  may  now  describe  the  characteristics  of  a  certain  number  of 
typical  Literary  English  texts.  Hoccleve  has  only  -en ;  Rewle  Sustr. 
Men.  very  commonly  -in,  purchassin,  81.  4,  longin,  33.  2,  &c.,  &c.,  but 
alsoy^y  singi]),  no.  g,J>ey  etip,  in.  17,  }>ey  redifi,  116.  17  and  20;  Bk. 
of  Quint.,  -en  with  occasional  -i}> ;  State  of  Ireland,  St.  Pprs.  of  Hen.  VIII, 
1515,  has  frequent  examples  tf  -yth,  but  -en  occasionally — there  bin  more 
then  60  cavities^  p.  i.  Lord  Surrey  has  ben,  Aeneid,  Bk.  ii,  735.  This  is 
the  latest  -en  form  in  prose  in  my  collections  until  we  get  to  Euphues,  in 
which  work  I  have  noted  they  loaden,  144.  This  is  a  better  example 
than  that  quoted  by  Bradley  on  p.  257  of  his  edition  of  Morris's  Histori- 
cal Outlines,  from  Shakespeare — '  and  waxen  in  their  mirth  ' — since  the 
additional  syllable  is  here  added  for  the  sake  of  the  metre.  The  same 
applies  to  Wyatt's  'you  that  blamen\  Tottel,  37.  On  the  whole,  Ben 
Jonson's  remark  in  his  English  Grammar,  that  the  ending  -en  was  used 
1  till  about  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII '  is  correct,  but  it  should  be  qualified 
and  limited  to  the  beginning  of  the  reign,  for  we  must  regard  the  exam- 


PRESENT   PLURALS  IN  -th  339 

pies  just  quoted  from  Surrey,  Wyatt,  and  Euphues  as  literary  archaisms, 
which  do  not  represent  the  usage  of  the  spoken  language.  This 
applies  also  to  Spenser's  deliberate  archaisms — bene,  rhymes  tene,  weene, 
&c.  As  late,  however,  as  1695  Congreve  makes  Ben  Legend,  a  rough 
sailor,  though  a  gentleman's  son,  say  '  as  we  sayn  at  sea ',  Love  for  Love, 
Act  in,  Sc.  vi. 

Mention  may  be  made  of  three  fifteenth-century  texts  written  in  the 
South- West  Midlands  : — the  English  Register  of  Godstow  Abbey  (1450) 
has  -th  Pis.,  in  -ith  and  -eth,  very  frequently,  especially  in  the  first,  liturgi- 
cal portions  of  the  work,  but  also  many  in  -en,  and  some  in  -e ;  the 
English  Register  of  Oseney  Abbey,  Oxfordshire,  c.  1460,  has  they  hauen, 
pey  holden,  53,  but  -n  is  rather  rare,  -e  being  commoner,  and  -/  forms 
being  apparently  absent ;  the  Ordinances  of  Worcester  have  -en  or  -e. 

The  Central  Midlands,  as  represented  by  the  Coventry  Leet  Bk.,  have 
-en,  -yn. 

The  Survival  of  Pres.  Pis.  in  -eth,  -ith. 

We  have  seen  that  these  are  in  use  in  documents  over  a  very^  wide 
area,  besides  in  the  London  and  Literary  English  throughout  the 
fifteenth  century,  we  have  now  to  trace  them  through  the  following 
century  and  beyond.  The  chief  examples  I  have  noted  are : — St.  of 
Ireland,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii,  1515,  -yth  is  very  common — e.g.  some 
callyth,  i,  messengers  corny  th,  14,  they  payeth,  5,  &c.,  &c. ;  Skelton, 
Magnyf.,  'your  clothes  smelleth  musty',  761,  Her  eyen  gray  and  stepe, 
Causeth  mine  herte  to  lepe,  Phyll.  Sparowe,  1015;  Sir  Thos.  Elyot, 
besemeth,  7,  harts  lepeth,  245,  people  takethe  comforte,  45,  other  foules  and 
bestis  which  herdeth  and  flocketh,  2.  210,  after  exploitures  hapneth  occasions, 
2.  429;  Lord  Berners,  Froissart,  other  thynges  lyeth  at  my  hart,  i.  194, 
your  Knightes  abideth  for  you  to  wasshe,  i.  195,  what  weneth  the  French- 
men, i.  328,  their  husbandes  payeth,  i.  352  ;  Archbp.  Cranmer,  Your 
Lordships  hath  bene  thorowly  enformed,  Ellis  i.  2.  172;  Bp.  Latimer,  the 
mountaines  swelleth,  Seven  Serm.,  31,  goth,  41,  kepeth,  74;  Cavendish, 
L.  of  Wolsey,  them  that  hath,  245;  Ascham  occasionally  uses  hath,  doth 
in  PI. — as  wild  horses  doth  race,  Tox.  8 ;  Q.  Elizabeth,  the  ('  they ')  ar 
most  deseeved  that  trusteth  most  in  their  selves,  Ellis  i.  2. 156,  1549  ;  who 
seekith  .  .  .  the  may,  &c.,  Transl.,  breakith,  Transl.,  132;  Sir  Thos. 
Smith,  the  father  and  mother  sendeth  them  out  in  couples,  Rep.  Angl.  24  ; 
Spenser,  State  of  Ireland,  the  upper  garment  which  serving  men  weareth, 
p.  623,  col.  2;  Euphues — whose  barkes  seemeth,  231,  pleasant  sirroppes 
doth  chiefliest  infect  a  delicate  taste,  306. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  the  Verney  Memoirs  have  a  few  examples: — 
/  believe  others  doth  doe  that,  Lady  V.,  ii.  252,  1647,  Elders  who  .  .  . 
asketh  them  such  questions,  Lady  V.,  ii.  259,  1647. 

It  seems  evident  from  these  examples  that  the  Southern  -th  Plurals 
survived  longer  in  good  usage  than  might  be  gathered  from  the  late  M.E. 
literary  works.  This  form  is  one  of  the  Southern  characteristics  of  the 
original  London  dialect  which  were  gradually  ousted  by  E.  Midland  en- 
croachments, but  it  lingered  long  in  the  conservative  usage  of  the  upper 
classes  of  society. 

Z    2 


340  NOTES  ON  INFLEXIONS 


Present  Plurals  in  -s. 

This  Form  of  the  Pres.  Indie.  PI.,  which  survives  to  the  present  time  as 
a  vulgarism,  is  by  no  means  very  rare  in  the  second  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century  among  writers  of  all  classes,  and  was  evidently  in  good  colloquial 
usage  well  into  the  eighteenth  century.  I  do  not  think  that  many 
students  of  English  would  be  inclined  to  put  down  the  present-day 
vulgarism  to  North  country  or  Scotch  influence,  since  it  occurs  very 
commonly  among  uneducated  speakers  in  London  and  the  South,  whose 
speech,  whatever  may  be  its  merits  or  defects,  is  at  least  untouched  by 
Northern  dialect.  The  explanation  of  this  peculiarity  is  surely  analogy 
with  the  Singular.  The  tendency  is  to  reduce  Sing,  and  PI.  to  a  common 
form,  so  that  certain  sections  of  the  people  inflect  all  Persons  of  both 
Sing,  and  PI.  with  -s  after  the  pattern  of  the  3rd  Pers.  Sing.,  while 
others  drop  the  suffix  even  in  the  3rd  Sing.,  after  the  model  of  the  un- 
inflected  ist  Pers.  Sing,  and  the  PI.  of  all  Persons. 

But  if  this  simple  explanation  of  the  present-day  PI.  in  -s  be  accepted, 
why  should  we  reject  it  to  explain  the  same  form  at  an  earlier  date  ? 

It  would  seem  that  the  present-day  vulgarism  is  the  lineal  traditional 
descendant  of  what  was  formerly  an  accepted  form.  The  -s  Plurals  do 
not  appear  until  the  -s  forms  of  the  3rd  Sing,  are  already  in  use.  They 
become  more  frequent  in  proportion  as  these  become  more  and  more 
firmly  established  in  colloquial  usage,  though,  in  the  written  records 
which  we  possess  they  are  never  anything  like  so  widespread  as  the 
Singular  -s  forms.  Those  who  persist  in  regarding  the  sixteenth- 
century  Plurals  in  -s  as  evidence  of  Northern  influence  on  the  English 
of  the  South  must  explain  how  and  by  what  means  that  influence  was 
exerted.  The  view  would  have  had  more  to  recommend  it,  had  the 
forms  first  appeared  after  James  VI  of  Scotland  became  King  of 
England.  In  that  case  they  might  have  been  set  down  as  a  fashionable 
Court  trick.  But  these  Plurals  are  far  older  than  the  advent  of  James  to 
the  throne  of  this  country. 

The  earliest  example  I  have  noted  occurs,  strangely  enough,  in  the 
Report  on  the  State  of  Ireland  in  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  iii,  1515,  p.  15, 
the  noble  folk  of  the  land  shotes  at  hym.  This  sentence  is  the  more 
remarkable  in  that  there  are  no  3rd  Pers.  Sing,  in  -s  in  this  text,  and  that 
Pis.  in  -ith  abound.  It  is  just  conceivable,  though  unlikely,  that  folk  is 
here  regarded  as  a  Singular  Collective  Noun,  and  that  the  Verb  is  there- 
fore also  Singular.  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  the  Elder  has  for  swine  so  grones, 
which  rhymes  nones,  bones,  Satire  to  Sir  F.  Bryan,  18,  1 540.  Bp.  Latimer,  in 
his  Sermons,  has  a  certain  number  of  ~s  Plurals: — standes,  87,  some  that 
Hues,  179,  there  be  some  writers  that  sates,  188,  some  sayes,  189.  As  we 
have  seen  above,  the  bishop  often  uses  -s  in  the  3rd  Sing.  Machyn  has 
after  them  comys  harolds,  40.  The  only  forms  of  the  3rd  Sing,  which 
I  have  found  in  this  Diary  end  in  -s  (cf.  p.  333),  but  they  are  so  few 
that  we  cannot  judge  with  certainty  whether  this  was  Machyn's 
usual  form,  nor  how  far  the  -s  Plural  may  have  been  influenced  by  it. 
Lord  Buckhurst,  Induction,  has  '  And  as  the  stone  that  drops  of 
water  weares\  rhyming  with  teares,  Noun,  v.  12.  Ascham  has  the 
cordes  haue  nolhyng  to  stop  them,  but  whippes  so  far  back,  &c. ; 


PRESENT  PLURALS   IN  -s  341 

Queen  Elizabeth  has  many  examples,  especially  in  her  Translations, 
but  some  also'  in  her  later  letters  (to  James  VI).  A  few  examples  : — all 
our  subjectes  lokes  after,  Lttrs.  31,  small  flies  stiks  fast  for  wekenis,  L.  41, 
your  commissionars  telz  me,  ibid.  44,  sild  recouers  kings  ther  dominion,  ibid. 
58 ;  in  the  Translations  we  have  : — roring  windz  the  seas  perturbz,  4,  all 
men  hides  them,  132,  as  the  huntars  rates  ther  houndz,  134,  men  that  runs, 
i35>  &c.,  &c.  Thos.  Wilson,  Arte  of  Rhet,  has  some  speakes  some  spettes, 
220.  There  are  seventeen  forms  in  -s  after  some  on  this  one  page. 

The  Verney  Papers  have  how  things  goes  here,  Sir  R.  V.,  1639  ; 
couenantirs  has  forbidden  any  man  to  read  it,  240;  Verney  Memoirs — My 
Lady  and  Sir  tomos  remembers  their  sarvices  to  you  and  Mrs.  Gardin  r, 
Gary  V.,  ii.  68,  1642,  both  sides  promisis,  &c.,  Lady  Sussex,  ii.  252, 1647, 
the  late  noyses  of  riesings  puts  me  in  a  fear,  &c.,  Gary  Stewkley  (Verney), 
iii.  439,  1659. 

In  the  Wentworth  Papers  Lady  W.  and  her  son  Peter  both  use  these 
forms  : — which  moste  lauhgs  at,  52,  1706,  all  people  from  the  highist  to 
the  lowist  stairs  (i.  e.  '  stares  ')  after  them,  57  ;  several  affirms,  123  (Peter 
W.) ;  Lord  Wentworth  and  Lady  Hariot  gives  their  duty  to  your  Lordship, 
Lady  A.  Wentworth,  a  child,  453,  1724;  Lord  Garsy  and  Mr.  Varnum 
both  corns  in  the  somer  thear,  55  ;  all  others  sends  fowls,  59  ;  Peter  and  his 
wife  comse  tomorrow,  127;  my  letters  that  informs  you,  107  (Peter  W.); 
Two  of  the  prettiest  young  peers  in  England  .  .  .  who,  by  the  way,  makes 
no  pretty  figure,  395  (Peter  W.);  Mrs.  Law  son  and  Mrs.  Oglethorpe  gives 
their  service  to  you,  444  (Lord  Bute). 

Note.  The  use  of  is  and  was  with  a  Plural  Subject  will  be  dealt  with 
under  the  Auxiliaries,  p.  356. 

The  Infinitive. 

The  usual  M.E.  ending  in  the  Midlands  and  South  is  -en,  but  forms 
without  -n  are  found  quite  early.  A  typical  Southern  ending  of  the  Inf. 
is  -y,  -ie,  &c.,  which  represents  the  O.E.  -t'an  suffix,  and  is  generalized 
widely,  especially  in  Verbs  of  French  origin,  in  the  dialects  of  the  South- 
East  and  South-West. 

The  -n  termination  hardly  survives  in  written  documents  beyond  the 
third  quarter  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  by  that  time  the  examples  are 
scarce. 

All  fifteenth-century  writers  use  Infinitives  in  -e,  even  when  they  occa- 
sionally keep  -en  or  -yn.  Hoccleve  has  han,  usen,  synkyn,  wedden ;  Const, 
of  Dynevor,  to  wetyn,  Ellis  ii.  i.  14 ;  Rewle  Sustr.  Men.  is  rather  rich  in 
-n  forms — to  herin,  90,  &c.,  pey  schullen  dweltin,  94.  21,  we  commaunde  .  .  . 
senden,  enioinen,  95.  14,  bowen,  113.  12,  knelyn,  115.  38,  &c. ;  Fortescue 
generally  has  -e  or  no  ending,  z>g.gyf,  but  helpen,  152;  Marg.  Paston 
has  numerous  forms  in  -n—ye  vol  askyn,  i.  49,  to  heryn,  i.  67,  buyn  '  buy ', 
i.  68,  sellyn,  i.  69,  &c.,  &c. ;  Bokenam  has  seen,  delyvyrn,  acceptyn,  adver- 
tysyn,  geuyn,  lesyn,  &c. ;  Gregory  has  a  fair  number  of  -n  forms — usyn,  82, 
folowyn,  91,  procedyn,  99,  ben,  99,  beryn,  99,  doen,  99,  setten,  settynne,  117, 
and  also  rather  strangely  a  few  forms  in*-_y — delyvery,  118,  answery,  231 
(twice), ymageny,  231 ;  the  Godstow  Register  usually  has  -e  or  no  ending, 
but/allyn,  25;  Caxton  has  very  few  examples  of-«,  but  ouer taken,  Jason 
50.  5.  The  -y  type  is  found  also  in  St.  Editha — to  correcty,  2383. 


-342  NOTES  ON  INFLEXIONS 

A  late  example  in  prose  is  he  and  I  wyll  commen,  in  a  letter  of  Thos. 
Pery,  1539,  Ellis  ii.  2.  148. 

A  late  survival,  or  rather  revival,  of  -en,  for  metrical  reasons,  is  seen  in 
Lord  Buckhurst's  /  can  accusen  none,  Complaint  of  Duke  of  Buckingham, 
147. 

The  Prefix  y-  in  Past  Participles. 

This  prefix,  which  is  still  much  used  by  Chaucer,  is  comparatively  rare  in 
the  poems  of  Hoccleve.  In  the  Reg.  of  Pr.  he  ^m\K&yfynchidtypuit  but 
generally  omits  the  prefix  in  Strong  Verbs.  In  the  Minor  Poems,  however, 
we  have  Hake,  ifalle.  On  the  whole  during  the  fifteenth  century  the  use 
of  the  prefix  is  chiefly  confined  to  texts  which  show  a  more  or  less 
strongly  marked  Southern  provincial  influence,  whether  South-Eastern  or 
South- Western.  Thus  it  is  frequent  in  the  letter  of  the  Constable  of 
Dynevor  Castle,  in  Shillingford,  in  the  Register  of  Oseney,  where  it  is 
almost  universal  in  Strong  and  Weak  Verbs,  in  the  R.  of  Godstow,  where, 
however,  it  is  less  frequent,  especially  in  Strong  Verbs.  In  St.  Editha  the 
prefix  is  often  written  and  crossed  out  again  in  the  MS.,  though  it  is 
also  fairly  often  not  erased,  and  often  not  written  at  all.  In  the  South- 
East  the  prefix  is  very  common  in  Palladius,  but  very  rare  in  the  much 
later  Cely  Papers  ;  this  Suffolk  dialect,  as  represented  by  Bokenam,  shows 
no  example  of  it,  nor  does  Marg.  Paston.  Fortescue,  from  whom  one 
might  expect  this  Southernism,  appears  not  to  write  y-  at  all  in  Strong 
Verbs  and  very  rarely  in  Weak,  though  I  have  noted  t-blissed,  155 ;  Pecok 
seems  to  have  no  examples  in  vol.  i  of  the  Repressor,  and  there  are  none 
in  the  Ordinances  of  Worcester,  nor  those  of  Exeter. 

Of  texts  written  more  specifically  in  the  London  dialect,  the  Suffolk 
man  Gregory  has  a  fair  sprinkling  of  Past  Participles,  Strong  and  Weak, 
with  /-,  and  Rewle  of  Sustr.  Men.  a  few.  Apparently  Gregory's  forms 
were  not  derived  from  his  native  dialect,  so  we  must  regard  them  as 
belonging  to  a  rather  archaic  form  of  London  speech.  Caxton  makes 
no  use  of  the  prefix,  nor  is  it  found  in  the  later  Cr.  of  Knt.  of  Bath, 
which  is  a  better  example  on  the  whole  of  the  higher  type  of  London 
English.  After  this  the  prefix  is  only  used  by  poets  who  are  more  or  less 
deliberately  archaic.  An  interesting  form — storm  ybeten — occurs  in  Skel- 
ton's  Magnyfycence,  a  word  which  suggests  the  Spenserian  period  of 
Keats.  Spenser's  imitation  of  Chaucer  is  doubtless  chiefly  responsible 
for  the  occasional  use  of  the  /-forms  by  later  poets. 

VI 

THE  STRONG  VERBS. 

The  following  is  but  the  slightest  sketch  of  the  development  of  these 
Verbs  in  the  Modern  period.  The  examples  given  of  the  forms  of  the 
members  of  each  class  are  intended  mainly  to  show  on  the  one  hand  the 
survival  of  old  forms,  and  on  the  other  the  adoption  of  those  now  in  use. 
It  is  evident  that  a  much  larger  collection  of  forms  would  be  necessary  to 
achieve,  with  anything  like  completeness,  either  of  these  objects.  In  fact 
a  special  monograph  would  be  required,  which  I  may  possibly  undertake 
when  circumstances  permit.  The  excellent  monograph  of  Price  on 


STRONG  VERBS  343 

Strong  Verbs  from  Caxton  to  the  End  of  the  Elizabethan  Period  contains 
a  great  deal  of  material  which  I  have  not  incorporated  here,  the  following 
short  account  being  based  on  part  of  my  own  collections.  We  want  an 
account  dealing  with  these  Verbs  from  1400  or  so  until  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Caxton  is  not  a  good  starting-point,  nor  is  the  end 
of  the  Elizabethan  period  the  end  of  the  story.  I  now  regret  that  I  did 
not  make  much  larger  collections  from  the  Verney  Memoirs  and  the 
Wentworth  Papers,  as  well  as  from  later  eighteenth- century  sources. 

The  apparent  irregularities  in  the  Strong  Verbs  during  the  Middle  and 
Modern  periods,  compared  with  the  conditions  in  O.E.,  are  due  to  the 
working  of  analogy  in  various  directions. 

The  fact  that  originally  there  were  two,  three,  and  in  some  cases  four 
types  in  a  single  class  of  Verbs,  and  that  there  was  a  certain  variety  of 
treatment  of  each  type  according  to  Regional  dialect,  has  given  a  very 
considerable  number  of  possible  types  for  the  Preterite  and  Past  Participle 
of  some  classes.  Added  to  this  there  is  the  transference  of  Verbs  from 
one  class  to  another  which  while  closely  resembling  it,  yet  differed  from 
it  in  certain  respects.  Thus  speak  has  been  transferred  to  theclass  to 
which  break  belongs.  The  result  of  this  was  first  to  prodireSf  a  new 
P.  P.  spoken,  on  the  analogy  of  broken,  and  then  to  call  into  existence 
a  new  Preterite  broke  on  the  pattern  of  the  new  P.  P. 

During  the  M.E.  period  the  tendency  was  to  get  rid  of  the  distinction 
between  the  Singular  and  Plural  in  the  Preterite  in  those  classes  where 
this  originally  existed.  In  the  North  and  East  Midland  it  was  usually  the 
old  Singular  Preterite  which  survived  as  the  sole  type  for  that  tense.  In 
the  South- West,  on  the  other  hand,  the  type  of  the  P.P.  generally 
dominated  the  Preterite  also. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  many  Verbs  have  forms  with  both  a  long  and  a 
short  vowel  in  the  Pret.  in  the  Early  Modern  period,  a  condition  which  is 
inherited  from  M.E.  Thus  we  have  both  spack  and  spake,  bad  and  bade, 
sat  and  sate,  &c.  The  explanation  of  this  is  simple.  The  short  forms 
are  in  all  these  cases  the  normal  developments  of  the  O.E.  forms — sp(r)&c, 
bxd,  sftt,  &c.  In  M.E.  these  forms  were  the  only  ones  with  a  short  vowel 
in  the  whole  conjugation  of  each  of  these  Verbs.  It  is  perfectly  natural, 
therefore,  that  some  speakers  should  have  extended  the  quantity  of  the 
Inf.  and  Pres.  speken,  the  Pret.  PI.  speken,  and  the  P.  P.  speken — spoken  to 
the  Pret.  Sing.,  the  solitary  form  which  had  a  short  vowel,  pronouncing 
spdk(e)  instead  of  spak.  Later,  this  new  type  spdk(e)  was  in  its  turn 
extended  also  to  the  Pret.  PI.,  so  that  speken  was  eliminated  and  the 
distinction  disappeared. 

We  see  two  distinct  tendencies  conflicting  during  the  Modern  period, 
namely,  one  to  establish  the  type  of  the  P.  P.  for  the  Pret.  as  well,  and 
the  other  to  eliminate  the  old  P.  P.  type  in  favour  of  that  of  the  Pret. 

Those  speakers  who  said  writ  in  the  Pret.  exhibited  the  former  ten- 
dency, while  those  who  said  /  have  wrote  displayed  the  latter. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  old  Pret.  PI.  type  rarely  supersedes 
that  of  the  Sing.,  unless  the  former  be  also  that  of  the  P.  P.,  in  which  case 
it  is  assumed  that  it  is  the  P.  P.  which  is  the  basis  of  analogy,  as  the  form 
more  frequently  used. 

Thus  the  history  of  the  Strong  Verbs  after  the  O.E.  period  is  chiefly 


344  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

concerned  with  transference  of  Verbs  from  one  class  to  another,  with  the 
elimination  of  this  or  that  type,  and  with  the  ultimate  distribution  in 
a  given  dialect  of  the  various  types  between  the  Pret.  and  P.  P. 

Many  old  Strong  Verbs  have  passed  into  the  Weak  conjugation, 
e.  g.  bake,  sew,  &c.  We  notice  a  tendency  to  transfer  others,  e.  g.  take, 
come,  stand,  which  did  not,  however,  become  established  in  the  Standard 
Spoken  or  in  the  Literary  form  of  English. 

The  converse  process  of  a  Weak  Verb  becoming  Strong  is  rarer,  but 
we  note  strive — strove — striven  on  the  analogy  of  thrive — throve — thriven, 
&c.  Hide — hid — hidden  instead  of  O.E.  hydd,  M.E.  hidde,  is  due  to  the 
influence  of  ride — rid — ridden.  Here  we  note  that  hid  was  a  perfectly 
normal  Weak  Pret.  from  hide,  the  vowel  being  shortened  in  M.E.  before 
the  double  consonant.  Rid,  a  common  Preterite,  instead  of  rode,  is  due 
to  the  influence  of  the  P.  P.  Having  got  hide — hid,  it  was  inevitable  that 
the  agreement  with  ride  should  be  completed  by  the  formation  of  hidden 
as  a  P.  P. 

We  see,  even  from  the  comparatively  few  examples  given  below,  that 
the  usage  of  the  best  writers  in  the  sixteenth  and  even  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  in  regard  to  the  Strong  Verbs,  does  not  by 
any  means  coincide  exactly  with  our  own.  Even  at  the  present  time 
there  is  a  certain  fluctuation.  Thus,  while  we  have  eliminated  flang  as 
the  Pret.  of  fling,  and  prefer  the  P.  P.  type,  sang,  rang  are  still  in  very 
wide  use,  although  many  speakers  say  sung,  rung,  allowing  the  P.  P.  type 
to  carry  the  day  as  in  the  case  of  flung.  Great  hesitation  exists  in  the 
conjugation  of  wake.  What  is  the  current  form  of  the  P.  P.  ?  Some 
speakers  habitually  use  waked,  others  woke,  others  woken. 

Such  forms  as  wrate,  drove,  strdke,  which  occur  sometimes  in  Cl.  i 
in  the  sixteenth  century  are  certainly  not  of  Northern  origin  as  is  sup- 
posed by  some.  Apart  from  the  very  common  occurrence  of  forms  with 
a  in  other  classes — e.  g.  sate,  bare,  spake,  £c.,  side  by  side  with  sat,  &c., 
which  probably  encouraged  the  use  of  d  as  a  vowel  associated  with  the 
Pret.,  wrate,  &c.,  would  arise  naturally  by  the  side  of  wrat  (with  O.E. 
shortening)  just  as  sate  and  spake  arose  by  the  side  of  sat,  spak,  and 
gave  by  the  side  of  gaf. 

The  analogy  of  bade  Pret.  with  a  P.  P.  bidden  may  also  have  helped  to 
form  a  Pret.  wrate,  strake,  &c.,  in  association  with  written,  stricken,  as  also 
sate  with  a  P.  P.  sitten. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  preservation  or  loss  of  -en  in  the  P.  P.  is 
a  matter  of  dialect  originally.  In  M.E.  the  Southern  dialects  generally 
drop  the  -«,  and  Midland  dialects  retain  it.  Thus  the  variations  between 
Verbs  in  this  respect  are  the  result  of  different  competing  Regional 
tendencies. 

CLASS  I.     O.E.  i—a—i—t.     M.E.  i— o*—i—l 

The  Inf.  and  Pres.  type  of  this  Class  shows  no  variation  from  the 
normal  development  of  M.E.  f,  and  is  invariably  [#;'].  It  is  therefore 
unnecessary  to  include  examples. 

Write. 

Preterite,     wrote,  &c. : — Pecok,  wroten  (PI.) ;  Shillingford,  wrote,  8, 


WRITE  CLASS  345 

wrotte,  6  1  ;  Marg.  Paston,  wroi,  i.  178,  &c.  ;  Latimer,  wrote,   175,  wrot, 

175- 
writ,  &c.  :  —  Euphues,  writ,  304  ;  Mrs.  Eure,  Verney  Mem.  ii.  87,  rit 


wrate:  —  Elyot,  i.  131,  156,  ii.  100. 

Past  Participle,  writt(en),  &c.  :  —  Hoccleve,  wryten  ;  St.  Editha, 
wry  ten,  33,  y-wryton,  g  ;  Bokenam,  wrytyn,  Pr.  Marg.  4  ;  Gregory, 
wrytynne,  61  ;  Shillingford,  writyn,  15;  Gabr.  Harvey,  writ,  Lttrs.  265; 
Euphues,  written,  169;  Mrs.  Pulteney,  V.  Pprs.  222,  rit  (1639). 

wrote,  &c.  :  —  Sir  Edw.  Howard,  Ellis  ii.  i.  216  (1513)  ;  Lady  Mary 
M.  Wortley,  '  all  the  verses  were  wrote  by  me  '. 

Write.     Lady  Sussex  uses  right  as  a  Pret.,  V.  Mem.  iv.  88,  1642. 

Smite. 

Preterite,  smote,  smot:  —  Gregory,  smote,  76  ;  Cr.  of  Dk.  of  York  Knt. 
of  Bath,  smot,  399. 

Past  Part,     smyttyn,  Machyn,  14. 

smete,  Gregory,  77;  smetyn.  Gregory,  106;  smet,  Bokenam,  Kath. 
898. 

smot,  Shakespeare,  L.  L.  L.,  rhymes  with  not. 

Drive.  St.  Editha  has  Pret.  Sing,  drof,  36,  Pret.  PI.  drovyn,  3263, 
and  drevyn,  54.  The  latter  form  occurs  also  in  Shillingford,  97,  and 
Short  Engl.  Chronicle,  71. 

Abide.  The  normal  Pret.  Sing,  abode  occurs,  St.  Editha,  276,  and. 
the  PI.  abydyn,  Bokenam,  Crist.  673  ;  Pecok  has  Sing,  abode,  and  PI. 
abiden,  i.  20,  aboden,  i.  206;  Marg.  Paston,  abedyn  PL,  i.  in  ;  Shilling- 
ford,  abode  Sing.,  5;  Latimer,  abode,  188. 

Past  Participle.  Marg.  Paston,  abiden,  41  ;  also  Fortescue,  135,  and 
Shillingford,  41,  and  Skelton,  Magnyfycence,  576  ;  Marg.  Paston  has  also 
abedyn,  i.  81,  also  Short  Engl.  Chron.  130;  Elyot  has  aboden,  ii.  184. 

Bite.  The  old  Pret.  bote  survives  in  the  fifteenth  century,  Gregory, 
202  ;  Caxton,  Jason,  69.  14. 

Ride.  Pret.  rod,  Marg.  Paston,  i.  77  ;  Shillingford,  rode,  5;  Gregory, 
roode,  89;  rodde,  Lord  Berners,  i.  114;  Machyn,  rod,  rode,  4. 

rid,  &c.  :  —  Cranmer,  Ellis  i.  2.  37  ;  Thos.  Wilson,  140;  Machyn  also 
has  red,  167. 

Strike. 

Inf.,  &c.  By  the  side  of  strike,  strick  is  also  found  :  —  Euphues,  to 
s  trick,  239. 

Preterite,  stroke  :  —  Cr.  of  Knt.  of  Bath,  stroke,  400  ;  Latimer,  94  ; 
Euphues,  251. 

strake  :  strack  :—  Cr.  of  Knt.  of  Bath,  strakke,  399,  400  (twice)  ; 
Lord  Berners,  strake,  i.  114,  140;  J.  Mason,  strake,  Ellis  ii.  2.  59; 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  strak,  83. 

streke  :  —  St.  Editha,  3739. 

struck  :  —  Machyn,  85. 

Past  Participle,  stricken,  &c.  :—  Machyn,  stryken,  63;  Euphues, 
stricken,  152,  striken,  299. 


346  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

strooken,  &c. : — Thos.  Wilson,  stroken,  132;  Sir  T.  Smith,  stroken, 
Republ.  36  ;pAiphues,  strooke,  57,  stroken,  162,  230. 

strucken  : — Honourable  J.  Dillon  (of  a  ship),  '  She  had  her  bottome 
strucken  out',  Verney  Pprs.  149. 


CLASS  II.     O.E.  to,  ea,  u,  o ;  M.E.  e,  u  (=  [y]),  ol,  u,  o. 

Choose. -The  Present  and  Inf.  forms  appear  in  three  types — (i) 
chese  (with  M.E.  £*),  which  is  characteristic  of  South-East  and  E.  Mid- 
land ;  (2)  o  (M.E.  <?1)  from  a  form  with  shifting  of  stress  from  the  fi  st  to 
the  second  element  of  the  diphthong,  and  the  loss  of  the  former  : — to— 
eo — b ;  (3)  u—  [y],  which  is  a  characteristic  W.  Midland  and  South- 
West  treatment  of  eo  in  M.E.  Types  (2)  and  (3)  have  no  difference  in 
pronunciation  from  the  moment  that  [y]  has  become  [u]  (cf.  p.  246), 
but  the  spelling  with  u  probably  indicates  a  late  survival  of  (3).  On  the 
other  hand,  u  may  be  written  occasionally  for  type  (2),  according  to 
the  habit  of  writing  u  for  O.E.  o1.  See  pp.  234,  &c.  This  is  probably  the 
explanation  of  the  chuse  spelling  in  writers  who  would  hardly  make  use 
of  type  (3)." 

(1)  Inf.  and  Pres.,  to  chees,  chese,  &c.,  occur  in  Pallad.  4.  84,  99.  1059, 
&c. ;  M.  Paston,  ii.  292,  /  ches]  Pecok,  chese  Subj.,  i.  112  ;  Gregory,  230, 
Inf.;    Caxton,  Jason,  for  to  chese,  57.  32;    Elyot,  51,  chesing;  Lord 
Berners,  i.  53. 

(2)  chose,   choose,  Lord   Berners,  i.    58 ;    Latimer,  Sev.    Serm.   25  ; 
Ascham,  Toxoph.  39;  Euphues,  choose,  139. 

(3)  chuse,    &c.,   Pallad.   5.   123,  Imperat. ;    Lord   Berners,  i.  389; 
Machyn,  chuysse,  17,  chusse,  141 ;  Thos.  Wilson,  A.  of  Rhet.  56  ;  Euph. 
chuse  Imperat.,  229 ;  Lady  Rochester,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  467  (1660). 

The  Preterite.  The  M.E.  chees,  ches,  &c.,  with  e1  [e]  from  O.E.  ea,  is 
gradually  replaced  by  a  form  with  <?*,  formed  on  the  analogy  of  the  P.  P. 
chosen.  This  is  the  ancestor  of  the  present  form.  The  older  form 
survives  far  into  the  fifteenth  century,  after  which  the  b  form  is  most 
common.  The  occasional  chase  must  be  explained  by  association  with 
Vbs.  of  the  bear  class — Pret.  bare,  P.  P.  bbren. 

chees,  &c.,  Hoccleve;  St.  Editha,  chesen  (PL),  274;  Gregory,  chesse 
PL,  190;  Fortescue,  chese,  112,  113. 

chose,  &c.,  Pecok,  i.  183;  Gregory,  chosse,  95,  they  chosynne,  96; 
Caxton,  Jason,  94.  32 ;  Lever,  Serm.  35. 

chase,  Pecok,  chas,  ii.  349,  chaas,  ii.  ibid.;  Elyot,  i.  214. 

Past  Participle.  St.  Editha  still  retains  the  old  form  y-core,  789,  by 
the  side  of  y-chose,  2207.  There  is  no  variety  as  regards  the  vowel, 
except  that  it  occasionally  appears  to  be  short,  as  the  following  consonant 
is  doubled,  e.g.  chosse,  Gregory,  95;  chossen,  Machyn,  22  ;  otherwise  the 
only  point  of  note  is  that,  as  in  other  Strong  Vbs.,  the  forms  in  -e  alter- 
nate with  those  in  -en  : e  occurs,  Pecok,  i.  in  ;  Gregory,  71,  95; 

Lady  Rochester,  choose,  V.  Mem.  iii.  467,  1660.     Most  writers,  so  far  as 
my  material  goes,  use  the  -en  (-yn)  type. 

O.E.  geotan — geat — guton — goten  '  pour '. 

This  obsolete  Vb.  is  still  traceable  in  the  word  ingot,  where  got  is 


LOSE,   ETC.;   FIND,  ETC.  347 

derived  from  the  P.  P.     Elyot  preserves  the  fuller  form  of  the  P.  P.  in 
yoten,  i.  48. 

Lose.  This  Vb.  had,  originally,  exactly  the  same  vowel  sequence  as 
choose.  It  is  conjugated  as  a  Weak  Vb.  from  early  in  the  Modern  period, 
the  survivals  of  the  old  Strong  Pret.  and  P.  P.  being  rare.  The  latter 
survives  as  an  Adjective  in  the  compound  forlorn. 

Inf.  and  P res.  lese,  &c.,  Pallad.  35.  248  ;  Marg.  Paston,  i.  109,  ii.  309, 
&c. ;  Fortescue,  118,  lesynge  Pres.  Part.,  138;  Elyot,  34,  Use;  Lord 
Berners,  leese,  i.  28;  Ascham,  lease,  Tox.  117,  leese,  ibid.  128,  158 
(Subj.),  leeseth,  Tox.  158;  Euphues,  193. 

The  other  type  appears  as  loose,  305. 

Shoot.  O.E.  scTotan — sceat — scuton — scoten  still  retains  the  form  with 
e,  comparable  to  chese,  lese,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  is  found  in  Marg. 
Paston — schete,  i.  83,  shet,  i.  82.  This  lady  also  writes  schote,  i.  83. 
Gregory  has  sckuie,  which  may  be  a  phonetic  spelling  for  the  01  type, 
as  is  most  probable. 

Gregory  has  a  Weak  Pret.  schot,  204,  and  a  P.  P.  schottyn,  58. 

Float.     O.E.  fled 'tan,  &c. ;  Bk.  of  Quint.  has/*//>  3rd  Pres.  Sing. 

CLASS  III. 

O.E.  singan — sang — sungon — sungen.  Verbs  of  this  Class  have,  on 
the  whole,  preserved  three  original  types,  though  no  longer  distinguishing 
be  ween  Sing,  and  PI.  in  the  Pret.  Begin,  spin,  spring,  swim,  drink,  &c. 

It  is  possible  that  begin,  &c.,  besides  began,  in  Pret  had  also  forms 
with  a  long  vowel,  on  the  analogy  of  Class  IV — cf.  begane,  Pecok, 
Machyn,  &c.,  swame,  Lord  Berners,  by  the  side  of  swamme,  Elyot,  ii.  169. 

In  some  Verbs  of  this  Class  the  P.  P.  type  penetrates  to  the  Pret.,  and 
just  as  we  now  often  have  rung,  swum,  &c.  in  the  Pret.,  we  find  wonne, 
Euphues,  '  won  ',  273,  by  the  side  of  the  then  usual  wan  or  wanne,  which 
occurs  very  generally  not  only  in  Euphues  itself,  but  also  before,  in 
Short  Engl.  Chron.,  wanne,  61,  Gregory,  58,  71,  Caxton,  Jason,  n.  3, 
Lord  Berners,  Machyn,  &c. 

Lord  Berners,  i.  371,  and  Euphues,  88,  both  have  flang  where  we 
now  \iwzflung,  but  Euphues  already  has  slung,  68. 

In  the  Vb.  find  the  old  distinction  between  Sing,  and  PI.  Pret. — O.E. 
/and,  M.E.  find;  O.E.  fundon,  M.E.  founden— \s  preserved  far  into  the 
fifteenth  century.  Pecok  has  S'mg.fonde,  i.  101,  Pl./ounden,  by  the  side 
of/onden,  i.  242  ;  Shillingford  has  fonde,  61,  founde,  65.  In  the  P.  P., 
forms  with  or  without  ~n  occur  throughout  the  fifteenth  century — e.  g. 
Gregory,  founde,  foundyn  ;  Caxton,  founden ;  Fortescue,  ffounde ;  M. 
Paston,  fownd,fond;  Pecok  and  Ord.  of  Worcester,  founde.  Elyot  has 
founde,  i.  215,  founden,  26,  &c.,  &c.  Run,  in  Inf.,  is  a  new  formation; 
the  ordinary  M.E.  type  in  Inf.  and  Pres.  is  renne,  which  is  perhaps  of 
Scand.  origin.  This  persists  as  the  more  usual  form  throughout  the  fif- 
teenth century  and  into  the  next  century,  and  is  found  in  Pallad., 
St.  Editha,  Bokenam,  Pecok,  Bk.  of  Quint.,  Fortescue,  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath, 
and  Cath.  of  Ar.,  the  last  but  one  having  also  rynnyng  in  Pres.  Part.  Lord 
Berners  has  rynne  and  ryn,  and  further,  ronne  (=  runne),  i.  163  and  358, 


348  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

and  ronnyng,  i.  163.  Roon  is  found  in  a  letter  of  Sir  Edw.  Howard, 
Ellis  ii.  i.  217,  to  runne,  Ascham,  Tox.  46,  ronne,  ibid.  103,  but  rin  still 
occurs,  Scholem.  54.  Euphues  has,  apparently,  only  the  runne  type. 

Come.     O.E.  cuman — com — cam — comon — cdmon — cumen. 

Various  types  spring  from  the  above. 

Pret.  St.  Editha  has  come  and  become,  25,  Sing.  65,  PI.  comen,  58  ; 
Pecok,  cdmen,  came;  Gregory  has  Pret.  PI.  cum,  91,  and  a  Pret.  Sing. 
come,  apparently  =  [kum]  from  the  cbmen  type;  also  cam,  91,  a  survival 
of  old  cam  ;  Caxton  has  becam,  4.  24  Sing.,  and  cam,  94.  32.  Dr.  Knight 
has  cam,  196,  and  so  has  Sir  T.  Smith,  Ellis  ii.  3.  16.  The  P.  P.  is 
generally  written  come,  which  may  represent  either  [k«m]  or  [kum]. 

That  the  O.  and  M.E.  P.  P.  cumen  survives  is  shown  by  the  occasional 
spelling  comme,  &c.  Gabriel  Harvey  had  a  new  formation,  overcome!, 
p.  3,  as  a  P.  P.,  and  ouercomed  occurs  in  the  Te  Deum  in  Edward  VI's 
First  and  Second  Prayer  Books,  and  Shakespeare  has  misbecom'd,  L.  L.  L. 
Pecok  has  come,  Gregory,  ovyrcome,  125,  Machyn,  over-cum,  70.  Caxton 
has  comen  (Jason),  and  so  has  Elyot,  ii.  144.  Laneham's  Lttr.  (1575), 
cummen  33. 

Climb.  O.E.  climban — clamb — clumbon — clumben  ;  M.E.  climb — 
clomb — dumb. 

The  Pret.\ — cldme  survives  in  Ascham,  Tox.  76.  The  vowel  is  from 
an  O.E.  and  M.E.  unlengthened  form  clamb,  with  later  lengthening  on 
the  analogy  of  the  other  tenses. 

Hoccleve  has  the  P.  P.  clumben,  and  Bokenam,  clomben,  Ann.  646. 

Yield  has  a  Pret.  PI.  yelde  in  Gregory,  83,  which  apparently  comes 
from  the  Late  O.E.  (Sthn.)  gxld,  M.E.yeld,  type  of  the  Singular,  extended 
to  PL  also. 

The  P.  P.  y  olden  often  occurs  in  Short  Engl.  Chron.,  and  is  found  in 
Gregory  as  i-yolde,  >]<),yolde,  n$,yoldyn,  115,  and  Elyot,  ii.  220.  Short 
Engl.  Chron.  has  also  ylden,  56,  and  Gregory  has  a  Wk.  P.  P.  yoldyd, 
1 15.  Spenser  has  P.  P.  yold,  F.  Q.  vii.  7.  30. 

Help.  Caxton,  Jason  102.  26,  still  has  the  old  Pret  halp,  also  helpe, 
76.  i,  perhaps  from  O.E.  South  and  South-East  healp,  M.E.  help.  A 
Pret.  holpe  is  found  in  Robt.  the  Devil,  960,  and  in  Shakespeare's 
Hen.  IV,  Pt.  i,  i.  ii.  This  is  derived  from  the  P.  P.  type. 

The  P.  P.  holpe(n)  in  M.E.  is  found  without  -«  in  Pecok,  i.  284,  with 
-en,  &c.,  in  Pallad.,  Gregory  (holpyn),  207,  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  400,  Elyot, 
117,  Ascham,  Tox.  43,  &c.,  &c. 

Fight.  O.E.  feohtan  (feht-,  fiht-)—/eaht—fuhton—fohten  ;  M.E. 
fihten—faht—fauht ;  fuhlen  *x\&foughten ;  foughten. 

The  Pret.  faught(e)  (M.E.  Singular  type)  survives,  Gregory,  82,  &c. ; 
Caxton,  Jason  66.  33;  Short  Engl.  Chron.  68;  Elyot,  179;  the  other 
iy^t,  fought,  from  the  P.  P.,  also  occurs  in  Gregory  and  afterwards. 

The  P.  P.  retains  the  -en  suffix  in  Asch&m's/oughten,  Tox.  64. 

CLASS  IV. 

Knead.  The  Strong  P.  P.  kndden  is  preserved,  Lever's  Sermons, 
46 — knoden  into  dough. 


BREAK ;    GIVE  349 

Break.  O.E.  Irecan — brxc — brxcon — brocen',  M.E.  breken,  brak, 
and  brdk(e) — breke  and  broke—  broken. 

Preterite.  During  the  whole  of  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth 
centuries  brake  is  the  most  frequent  type,  and,  occasionally,  brdk. 
St.  Editha,  Pecok,  Gregory,  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  Lord  Berners,  Latimer, 
Euphues,  &c.,  all  have  brake.  St.  Editha  still  distinguishes  the  PI.  brekon, 
4410,  from  the  Sing,  type,  and  Gregory  uses  this  type  in  the  Sing.,  202. 

broke  comes  from  the  P.  P.  type.  It  is  found  already  in  Cr.  Knt.  of 
Bath,  395. 

Past  Participle.  The  vowel  is  practically  invariable  from  the  M.E. 
period  onwards,  being  always  the  lengthened  d.  There  is,  however, 
a  form  brake,  on  the  analogy  of  the  Pret.,  found  in  Verney  Mem.  iv,  used 
both  by  Sir  R.  Verney,  p.  134  (1665),  and  Dr.  Denton,  p.  223  (1676). 
There  is  the  usual  fluctuation  during  the  M.E.  and  Modern  periods 
between  the  forms  broke — broken. 

Speak,  which  originally  belonged  to  Class  V  (O.E.  sprecan — sprxc— 
sprxcon — sprecen],  has  passed  completely  into  that  of  break,  and  is  best 
considered  under  this  Class.  Its  forms  are  identical  with  those  of  break. 

The  Pret.  has  both  long  and  short  forms  as  in  M.E.  St.  Editha  has 
Sing,  spake  and  a  PI.  speke,  287,  which  doubtless  preserves  the  original 
PI.  type.  The  latter  is  rare,  however,  after  the  M.E.  period.  Spake  is 
the  usual  type  well  into  the  seventeenth  century.  The  type  with  a 
short  vowel,  however,  is  also  used  by  Pecok,  spak,  Caxton,  spack,  Jason 
64.  30,  Latimer,  115,  and  many  others.  The  Rev.  Mr.  Aris  uses  speake 
as  a  Pret,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  136,  1655. 

Past  Participle.  Spoke,  spoken  seem  to  be  equally  common  down  to  and 
during  the  eighteenth  century.  Sir  J.  Burgoyne  has  spok,  V.  Mem.  ii. 
217,  1642.  Lord  Chesterfield,  writing  in  No.  looofthe  World,  1754  (on 
Johnson's  Dictionary  before  it  appeared),  speaks  of  English  as  being 
'  studied  as  a  learned  language,  though  as  yet  but  little  spoke '  in  France 
and  Italy. 

Marg.  Paston  still  uses  the  archaic  speke,  i.  77  (1449). 

Bear  and  steal  have  pretty  much  the  same  history  as  the  other  Vbs.  of 
this  Class,  bare  and  stale  long  being  the  common  form  of  the  Pret. 
Cr.  of  Knt.  of  Bath  has  bere  (Pret.  Sing,  and  PL,  391,  389),  which  may 
be  a  phonetic  spelling  for  bare,  or  correspond  to  the  old  PL  type. 
Bokenam  has  Pret.  PL  bere.  Stale  occurs  throughout  the  fifteenth  century 
and  in  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  92. 

CLASS  V. 

Give.  O.E.  giefan,  geaf,  gedfon — giefen  (W.  Sax.) ;  Non-W.  Sax. : — 
gefan,  geofan ;  gx/,  ge/;  ge/on  •  ge/en,  geo/en. 

These  forms  give  rise  to  correspondingly  various  types  in  M.E.  and 
Modern  English. 

The  initial  sound  was  an  open  consonant  in  O.E.,  and  in  M.E.  is  ex- 
pressed by  y  or  y-.  By  the  side  of  these,  forms  with  g-,  expressing 
a  stop  consonant,  are  common  in  M.E.,  which  are  probably  due  to  Scan- 
dinavian influence.  There  is  also  an  alternation  between  i  and  e  in  the 
vowel  of  the  Inf.  and  Pres.  Indie.  The  former  may  be  of  Scandinavian 


350  NOTES   ON  INFLEXIONS 

origin,  when  the  initial  consonant  is  g,  otherwise  it  must  be  derived 
from  the  Saxon  type,  or  formed  by  analogy  from  the  and  and  3rd  Pers. 
Pres.  The  geve  forms  are  to  be  explained  according  to  the  statement  on 
pp.  207-8. 

Inf.  and  Pres.  type,  (i)  yeve,  geue,  &c.  :  —  St.  Editha  958,  1409. 
&c.  ;  Pallad.  (Imperat.)  19.  508;  Bokenam,  Marg.  1053,  Eliz.  930 
(yeuyih)',  Pecok,  jeueth,  ii,  $euen  (PI.),  passim;  Godstow  Reg.,  w. 
forjeue,  6  ;  Marg.  Paston,  yeve,  i.  268,  to  $ef,  i.  109,  $eue,  i.  67,  jeuyn,  i, 
69;  Shillingford,jtfZtf,  2^,yeveth,  29,  &c.  ;  Fortescue,  153,  &c. 

(2)  geve,  &c.  :  —  Pallad.  Pr.  24.  656;  Bokenam,  Pr.  Marg.  232  and 
411  ;  Pecok,  passim;  Marg.  Paston,  geve,  ii.  218;  Gregory,  tQ/orgevyn, 
99;  Shillingford,  gevt  Inf.,  20;  Sir  Thos.  More,  Ellis  i.  i.  213,  Inf.,  and 
geveth,  i.  i.  200;  Latimer,  to  geue,  Ploughers  35,  and  Seven  Serm.  22, 
geuynge,  Ploughers  24  ;  Edw.  VI's  First  and  Second  Prayer  Bks.,  geue, 
passim;    Ascham,    geue,    Scholem.   115,    134,  geueth,   Tox.  39,    145; 
Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  96,  &c.  ;    Gabriel  Harvey,  gef  (=  gev  ?),  48  ; 
Q.  Elizabeth,  Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,   2  ;    Mrs.  Basire,  getting,  Corresp.   140 

(1655). 

(3)  5ive»  yive  :  —  Pecok;  Bokenam,  Imperat.  yiue,  Marg.  1123. 

(4)  give,  gyve,  &c.  :  —  Caxton,  Jason  13.  2  ;  Fortescue,  gj/Inf.,  129, 
givith,  139,  give  PL,  ibid.  ;  Lord  Berners,  i.  22  ;  Latimer,  gyue,  Ploughers 
25,  Ascham,  gyueth,  Tox.  28;  Machyn,  gyfe,  gy/Subj.  ;  Euphues,  giue, 
163,  giues,  88,  to  for  giue,  90;   Thos.  Wilson  (always);    Q.  Elizabeth, 

gyve,  give  (usual  type). 

Preterite. 

Type  (i).  yaf,  &c.  :  —  St.  Editha,  jaffe,  81  ;  Bokenam,  yaf,  Pr.  Marg. 
\tfi,)>ouyoue,  Marg.  507,  PI.  youe(ti\  Agn.  441,  Ann.  254;  Shillingford, 
yeaf,  14;  Marg.  Paston,  yaffe,  ii.  215. 

(2)  gaf,  &c.  :  —  Wm.  Paston,  gef,  i.  25  (=  gaf  with  e  written   for 
[se]?);  Gregory,  gaffe,  174;  Caxton,  Jason  12.  23,  gaf. 

(3)  5ave  :  —  Short    Eng!-    Chron.    62  ;     Marg.   Paston,    jave    PL, 
i.  109. 

Sir  Thos.  Smith  refers  to  both  yaf  and  yave  as  antiquated. 

(4)  gave  :—  Gregory,  58  ;    Caxton,   Jason  3.   5  ;    Bp.  Knight,  204 
(1512);  Lord  Berners;  Ascham,  Tox.  31  ;  Latimer,  gaue,  Seven  Serm., 
^6,forgaue,  ibid.  57  ;  Machyn,  gayf,  3  (ay  =  a,  i.  e.  [i  or  e]  ?)  ;  Euphues, 
gaue,  pzssim,/orgaue,  175. 

Past  Participle. 

(1)  yeve(n)  :  —  Hen.  V,  Letter  in  Lttrs.  of  Marg.  of  Anjou  (1421); 
St.  Editha,  jeue,  499,y-yeue,  759;  Pecok,  jeue;  Shillingford,  131  ;  Lord 
Level's  Will,  yeven,  L.  D.  D.  75.  27  ;    Fortescue,  yeuen,  152  ;  Barlings 
Abbey  Agreement,  L.  D.  D.  135.  5  ;  y  yeven,  Cely  Pprs.  4  ;  Oseney  Reg., 
ijefe,  6  ;  Bury  Wills,  yeuen  (1480). 

(2)  yove(n):  —  Bokenam,   youe,    Ann.  329;     Pecok;    Marg.  Paston, 
jovyn,  i.  112;  Godstow  Reg.,  yoven  ;  Gregory,  yovyn,  126;  Sustr.  Men., 
jouzn,  96.  32;    Irish  Docs.,  Lttrs.  and  Pprs.  i.  379,  youen\    also  Bury 
Wills  77  (1492)  ;  youe,  ibid.  77  ;  Q.  Elizabeth,  yeouen,  Argyle  Lttrs.  32 


(3)  geve(n)  :—  M.  Paston,  i.  112;  Gregory,  i-geve,  64,  geve,  96,  geyyn, 


BID;    GET  351 

96,  118;  Fortescue,  geuen,  136,  150,  geve,  155;  Bury  Wills,  gevyn,  82 
(J595);  Cr.  Knt-  of  Bath,  ^ww,  393,  398;  Sir  R.  Wingfield,  Ellis  ii.  i. 
212,  gevyn;  Edw.  VI's  First  and  Second  Prayer  Bks. ;  Latimer,  geuen, 
Ploughers  20;  Ascham,  Tox.  13,  18,  Scholem.  59,  134;  Q.  Elizabeth, 
Lttrs.  2;  Mall  Verney,  V.  Mem.  ii.  2i^,forgeven  (1655);  Lady  Went- 
worth,  geven,  W.  Pprs.  40  (1705),  56  (1706),  64  (1708). 

(4)  give(n),  &c.:—gtffen,  Will  of  Lord  Lovel,  L.  D.  D.  86.  6  (1455); 
Caxton,  Jason,  giue,  70.  9,  gyuen,  68.   18;  Elyot,  giuen,  i.  215;  Lord 
Berners,  gyven,\.  171,  &c.,  forgyven,  i.  66;    Cranmer,  Ellis  i.   2.   40; 
Ascham,  gyuen,  Tox.  1 9  (twice),  2  7  ;   also  £7»ro,  which  greatly  prepon- 
derates over  geuen  ;  Machyn,  gyffyn,  1 7  ;  Euphues,  giuen  ;  Q.  Elizabeth, 
Lttrs.  to  J.  VI,  13;  after  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  while  geuen, 
&c.,  occurs,  given  is  the  predominant  type. 

(5)  A  type  govyn  is  found  occasionally,  but  I  have  only  noted  one 
example — from  Gregory,  200.     Bury  Wills,  80,  have  a  variant  of  this — 
gwovyn  (1501).     (6)  Geen,  Laneham's  Lttr.  41. 

In  quite  recent  times  the  type  gave  was  used  as  a  P.  P.,  though  proba- 
bly never  by  the  best  speakers.  Thus,  Miss  Austen,  in  Sense  and 
Sensibility,  chap.  24,  makes  Miss  Lucy  Steele  write  '  he  has  never  gave  me 
a  moment's  alarm ',  and  '  it  would  have  gave  me  such  pleasure  to  meet 
you  there '. 

Bid  and  forbid.  This  Verb  is  derived  from  a  blending  of  two  O.E. 
Verbs,  biddan — bxd,  bxdon,  beden  'pray ',  and  beodan — bead — budon — boden 
'  order ', '  command ',  &c.  The  Pret.  bade,  pronounced  both  as  [bsed],  from 
the  M.E.  Singular  type  bad,  and  [bez'd]  from  a  M.E.  bad,  with  lengthen- 
ing on  the  analogy  of  the  PI.  beden,  and  the  P.  P.  beden,  are  easy  to 
explain.  The  present-day  P.  P.  found  already  in  Late  M.E.  and  becom- 
ing more  frequent  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  is  more  difficult. 
The  only  P.  P.'s  which  agree  with  bidden  are  written,  ridden,  &c.,  of 
Class  I.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  a  point  of  association  which  can  have  led 
to  the  borrowing  of  a  P.  P.  from  this  class  by  bid,  unless  it  be  the  rarish 
wrate,  &c. 

Pres.  and  Inf.  type,      (i)  bidde,  bidde  th,  Pecok  ;  Euphues,  forbiddeth. 

(2)  bede,  for  bedeth,  Pres.  Subj.,  forbede,  Pecok;  Elyot,  God  forbede,  ii. 
141  ;  Euphues,  bed  Inf.  (variant  of  bid). 

The  e  forms  are  from  O.E.  beodan.  From  this  Verb  also  comes 
St.  Editha's  bude,  1520. 

Preterite,  (i)  bade: — Pecok,  forbade,  i.  279;  Marg.  Paston,  }e 
bddeyn,  i.  69  ;  Shillingford,  bade  (Sing.),  7. 

(2)  bad: — M.  Paston,  je  badt  i.  77  ;  Euphues;  the  last-mentioned 
source  has  also  a  Pret.  bidde,  105. 

Past  Participle,     (i)  bede,  Pecok,  i.  7  ;   Shilling  ford,  ^>£#/<?,  7. 

(2)  boden: — Pecok,  forbode,  i.  144,  145,  /orboden,  i.  207;  Shilling- 
ford,  forbode,  44;  "Ely  ot,  for  fatten,  ii.  334.  (3)  Euphues  has  for  bidden,  61. 

Get.  O.E.  gietan  (non-W.Sax.  getan)  is  only  used  compounded — for-, 
be-,  on-,  gietan. 

The  parts  are  Pret.  Sing,  -geat  (non-W.  Sax.  -gxt  and  -get) ;  Pret. 
PI.  -geaton  (non-W.  Sax.  -geton) ;  P.  P.  -gieten  (non-W.  Sax.  -geten, 
-geoten). 


352  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

The  use  of  this  Verb  uncompounded,  and  the  stop  g-  instead  of  y-  in 
the  initial,  are  both  the  result  of  Scandinavian  influence.  The  £0/-forms 
are  the  result  of  confusion  with  Verbs  of  the  break  class,  which  always  had 
-<?-  in  the  P.  P.  The  ^/-forms  began  in  the  P.  P.  and  passed  by  the  so- 
called  '  Western  *  system  of  analogy  into  the  Pret. 

Infinitive  Present. 

(1)  yete,  &c.     This  type  appears  to  be  rare  in  the  Modern  period  in 
the  uncompounded  forms,  but  St.  Editha  has  for-je tone,  2167,  Pres.  PI.; 
~Pecok,forjete,  Shillingford,/0r^/<?  Imperat.,  59. 

(2)  gete: — Pallad.,  gete  (rhymes  sweete],  14.  371;  Bokenam,  forgete, 
Marg.  464  ;  Shillingford,  gete  Inf.,  46  ;  Marg.  Paston,  gett,  ii.  239,  gete, 
i.  fi,gettyn,  ii.  132,  to  gyte,  ii.  179  (all  Inf.);  Lord  Berners,  getle,  i.  29. 

Preterite. 

(1)  yat :— St.  Editha,  format,  453. 

(2)  gat : — St.  Editha,  £•£/&,  856  ;  Gregory,  gatte\  Lord  Berners, gatte,  i. 
32;    Latimer,  gat,    179;    Thos.  Wilson,  forgat,   49;   Ascham,  gatte, 
Scholem.  31. 

(3)  gate  : — Pecok,  Fortescue,  £•#&,  149  ;    Caxton,  Jason  7.  21 ;  Elyot, 
1 80,  forgate,  ii.  139;  Sir  Thos.  More,  forgate,  Ellis  i.  i.  213  ;  Latimer, 
gate,  57;  Laneham's  Lttr.  (1575),  42. 

(4)  got:— Thos.  Wilson,  begot,  81. 

(5)  gote  : — Bokenam,  begolyn,  Crist.  676;  Latimer,  Seven  Serm.  28. 
A  Pret.  PI.   geion  is  found  in  Pecok,  which  is  probably  the  lineal 

descendant  of  O.E.  (non-W.  Sax.)  geton. 

Past  Participle. 

(1)  yete(n) : — St.  Editha, yjete,  2744. 

(2)  gete(n): — Pecok,  geten\  Fortescue,  getun,  143. 

(3)  goteu : — It  is  not  quite  certain  whether  forms  spelt  with  one  /  are 
in  all  cases  long,  but  since  it  is  said  to  be  established  by  rhymes  that  the 
long  type  existed,  and  since  this  is  the  normal  development  of  the  vowel 
in  an  open  syllable,  I  assume  length  unless  the  following  consonant  is 
doubled.     Caxton,  Jason,  goten,  8.  26  ;  Fortescue,  gote,  143,  goton,  136, 
gotyn,  154;  Gregory,  gotyn,  134,  begotyn,  70;  Bp.  Knight, /orgotyn,  201. 

(4)  gdtte(n) : — Elyot, gotten,  27  ;  Lord  Berners,  i.  2%$,gotte\  Machyn, 
gotten,  52,  be-gotten,  23  ;  Ascham,  gotten,  Tox.  32  ;  Latimer,  50,  78,  &c. ; 
Lever,  Sermons,  32;  Gabriel  Harvey,  gottin,  Lttrs.  17  ;  Thos.  Wilson, 
gotten,  202. 

gotten  is  used  by  Lady  Arabella  in  Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London,  n. 

i,  P-  345- 

The  American  use  of  the  suffix  -en  in  the  uncompounded  form  goes 
back  to  the  current  English  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries. 

Lie  '  cumbo  '.  O.E.  lic'gean — fog — Ixgon  (and  lagori)  —le'gen  ;  M.E. 
liggen — lai — lain. 

The  M.E.  Pies,  and  Inf.  type  with  gg  (=  [dz])  survives  in  Pecok,  who 
has  leggith,  i.  29,  liggen  Pres.  PI.,  Pres.  Part,  tigging. 

The  P.  P.  lyen,  &c.,  is  used  during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries, 


SIT,  SEE-,    BAKE,  ETC.  353 

and  occasionally  in  the  seventeenth  century : — Bokenam,  lyne,  Christ. 
685;  Cely  Papers,  lyne,  47;  lyen,  Elyot,  i.  150;  Cavendish,  L.  of 
Wolsey,  123;  Creighton,  Bp.  of  Bath  and  Wells,  Verney  Mem.  iii.  92, 
1670. 

(M.E.)  Mete  '  measure  '.    O.E.  metan — mdet — mdeton — meten. 

The  P.P.  of  this  old  Verb,  meaten,  occurs  in  Euphues,  92. 

Sit.     O.E.  sittan — sxt — sxton — seten. 

Preterite.  During  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  both  sate  and 
sat  are  in  frequent  use. 

sate  occurs  in  Gregory,  112,  Short  Engl.  Chron.  53  (three  times),  Elyot 
ii.  157,  Euphues,  52. 

satte,  &c.,  Gregory,  112,  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  389,  satt't  Latimer,  satte,  174, 
Machyn,  satt,  43. 

Euphues  has  also  set,  which  is  capable  of  more  than  one  explanation. 
Lady  Verney  uses  sate,  V.  Mem.  ii.  306  (1647). 

A  P.  P.  sitten  occurs  in  Hume's  History  of  England,  vol.  vii,  p.  353. 

See.  O.E.  seon — seah  (and  sxh)—sdwon — sewen.  The  M.E.  Pret. 
forms  are — Angl.  saugh,  and  its  variant,  saw,  from  the  sxh  type,  seih 
from  a  Southern  seh  type.  There  is  also  a  form  si  and  sih,  from  the  PL 
type  seh,  sxh,  formed  on  the  analogy  of  Angl.  PI.  sxgon.  The  old  P.  P. 
is  generally  abandoned  in  favour  of  a  new  form  sene  from  the  O.E.  Adj. 
gestene,  non-W.  Sax.  gesene  '  visible  '. 

The  early  Modern  reflect  the  variety  of  forms  found  in  M.E. 

Preterite.  St.  Editha  has,  in  Sing.: — seyje,  1016,  saye,  823,  seye,  907, 
sey,  2521,  sye,  3153,  sawe,  220,  saw,  2112;  in  PI. — seyje,  460,  seyen, 
2573.  Bokenam  has,  in  Sing. — sey,  Marg.  1130,  sawe,  Magd.  1010, 
saw,  Christ.  240;  in  PI. — seyn,  Pr.  Marg.  345,  seyin,  Agn.  81.  Marg. 
Paston  has  sey  (PL),  i.  113;  Pecok,  thei  sien,  i.  187,  sawen,  i.  246; 
Shillingford,  sigh,  10,  sawe,  67  (both  Sing.)  ;  Cely  Papers  sometimes  has 
se;  Gregory,  sawe,  no  (Sing.),  say,  222  (PL);  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  sayw, 
394  (Sing.);  Bp.  Fox  of  Winchester  writes  see,  Ellis  ii.  2.  5,  c.  1520; 
Machyn,  say,  and  often  see  Sing.,  saw  PL ;  Aubrey  has  I  see,  i.  115.  Lady 
Wentworth  often  writes  see,  especially  in  the  phrase  as  ever  I  see,  p.  57,  &c. 

Past  Participle.  St.  Editha,  sene,  473,  seyje,  1502,  sey,  2436,  y-sey, 
2440;  Bokenam,  seyn,  Magd.  1058;  Pecok,  seen]  Shillingford,  seyn,  4, 
sey,  13;  Marg.  Paston,  sene,  ii.  82;  Cr.  Knt.  of  Bath,  sien,  390,  seen, 
394- 

CLASS  VI. 

Bake.     O.E.  bacan — boc — bbcon — bacen  ;  M.E.  baken — boke — baken. 

The  old  P.  P.  bake  survives  in  Pecok,  i.  67,  Gregory,  141,  and  in 
Bp.  Knight,  202.  The  latter  writer  has  '  the  bisket  is  almost  bake '  =  the 
matter  is  nearly  ripe. 

Stand.  O.E.  standan — stbd — stodon — standen.  The  old  P.  P.  stande, 
&c.;  is  used  throughout  the  fifteenth  century.  A  Weak  form,  especially  in 
the  compound  understanded,  is  much  in  vogue  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
e.  g.  in  the  First  Prayer  Book,  Preface.  The  Second  Prayer  Book  has 
understanden. 

A  a 


354  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

Take.  By  the  side  of  the  universally  used  forms  fake,  taken,  -yn,  in 
the  P.  P.,  Palladius  has  faked,  used  as  a  passive  with  an  Auxiliary,  83. 
630. 

Lade.  The  P.  P.  lade  occurs  in  Gregory,  175;  ouerloaden,  Wilson,  66, 
and  loaden  in  Verney  Mem.  ii.  224,  1645,  in  a  letter  from  Sir 
H.  P.  Newton. 

Forsake.     Sir  T.  Smith  has  Pret.forsah'd  in  a  letter,  Ellis  ii.  3.  10. 

Laugh.     O.E.  hlxhhan — hlog — hlogon. 

The  old  Strong  Pret.  loughe  from  hloh  survives  in  the  fifteenth-century 
poem  Robert  the  Devil,  872,  and  in  Bokenam,  lozv,  Eliz.  737. 

Gnaw,  draw,  slay  have  Prets.  gnog — gndgon,  slog — slogon.  The 
forms  slew,  drew,  which  we  now  use  exclusively,  and  the  rather  remark- 
able gnew,  Robert  the  Devil,  200,  are  due  to  the  influence  of  the 
reduplicating  Verbs  of  the  blow,  grow  class.  Slew  appears,  Robert  the 
Devil,  922  (coupled  with  hue  'hewed'),  slewe,  Caxton,  Jason  ii.  2, 
Gregory,  75,  Machyn,  slew,  102.  On  the  other  hand,  slow  from  the  slog 
type  occurs,  Gregory,  79,  and  Fortescue,  117.  Drewe  occurs,  Gregory,' 
58,  drue,  Lord  Berners,  i.  135,  136,  withdrue,  i.  153,  druw,  Machyn,  64. 
But  Shillingford  has  drowe,  6,  and  Gregory,  withdrowe,  84,  from  drbg 
type. 

The  P.P.  of  draw  is  drane,  Machyn  4  (cf.  p.  142);  the  normal  is 
drawen,  &c.,  cf.  Gregory,  drave,  58,  drawyn,  186.  Gregory  has  also  a 
Weak  form  drawyd,  172. 

CLASS  VII. 
THE  SO-CALLED  REDUPLICATING  VERBS. 

Beat.     O.E.  beatan — beof — bed  ton — beaten. 

The  Early  Modern  forms  of  Pres.  and  Pret.  must  have  been  [bet — bet; 
bzt]  respectively. 

The  difference  does  not  appear  to  be  indicated  by  the  spelling. 
Latimer  has  a  Pret.  bet,  which  may  represent  an  early  shortening  from 
M.E.  bet.  This  would  correspond  to  the  present-day  popular  and  dialec- 
tal bet.  The  latter  could  also  be  explained  on  the  analogy  of  meet — 
met,  &c. 

Pall.    O.E.feallatt— feoll— fed  lion— fallen. 

The  very  common  M.E.  fill,  &c.,  which  has  not  been  satisfactorily 
explained,  persists  at  least  as  late  as  the  sixteenth  century : — Hoccleve  has 
fille;  Shillingford,  fyll,  19;  Pecok,  fill,  fillen,  befill',  Caxton,  fylle, 
Jason,  ii.  8,  fill,  99.  24;  also  Lord  Berners,///,  i.  336,  398;  and 
Cavendish,  6. 

On  the  other  hand,  Bokenam  has  fel,  befel,  St.  Editha,  felle,  239,  fel, 
258.  Lord  Berners's  usual  form  is  feel,  the  normal  development  of  O.E. 
feoll,  of  which  fell  is  the  shortened  form. 

Hold.  Comparable  iofill  from/eoll,  we  find  hild  or  hyld  from  heold, 
Shillingford,  20  ;  Gregory,  69,  179,  hylde  ;  Cr.  Knt.of  Bath,  389  ;  Caven- 
dish, 89. 


REDUPLICATING  VERBS,   HEW,  ETC.  355 

Shillingford  has  also  held,  5,  and  Gregory,  helde,  78,  Lord  Earners, 
held,  i.  366,  &c. ;  Marg.  Paston  has  huld,  ii.  191,  a  remarkable  form  to 
find  in  an  Eastern  dialect. 

It  is  not  surprising  to  find  hulte  in  St.  Editha,  852,  &c.,  by  the  side  of 
helt,  3206. 

The  P.P.  is  iholde,  Godstow  Reg.;  hald,  Marg.  Paston;  holde,  77, 
hold,  99,  holden,  120,  Shillingford;  Euphues  \&&  helde,  304. 

Hew.  Robert  the  Devil  has  hue  (and  slew),  922,  the  descendant  of 
M.E.  heu  (cf.  p.  242,  on  the  spelling). 

The  P.  P.  in  -en  is  normal  in  Early  Modern  hewen,  Marg.  Paston,  ii. 
251 ;  Euphues,  in,  &c.,  &c. 

Know,  blow,  grow  have  quite  regularly  knew,  grew,  blew,  &c.,  with 
variants  knyw,  blue,  &c.  Shillingford  has  a  Weak  Pret.  knawed,  10 
and  27. 

The  Pret.  shewe  from  show,  an  old  Weak  Verb,  occurs,  Cavendish,  L. 
of  Wolsey,  185,  doubtless  on  the  analogy  of  this  group.  Euphues  has 
the  Strong  P.  P.  showen,  202,  280,  also  shewn,  280. 


CLASS  VIII. 
AUXILIARIES. 

Be.  The  main  points  to  be  considered  are  the  forms  of  the  3rd  Pers. 
Pres.  Indie,  and  of  the  PI.  Pres. 

As  regards  the  former,  the  old  Southern  form  bith,  &c.,  occurs  here 
and  there  in  the  fifteenth  century. 

Shillingford  has  bith,  Marg.  Paston,  beth  (and  is),  but  Pecok  and 
Fortescue,  is.  This,  indeed,  is  the  usual  form.  The  PI.  shows  more 
variety,  and  the  present-day  are,  derived  from  the  E.  Midlands,  and  ulti- 
mately from  the  North,  comes  only  gradually  into  general  use  in  London 
and  the  South.  • 

The  Southern  PI.  bith,  &c.,  was  widely  used  in  the  fifteenth  century,  by 
the  side  of  the  Midland  bin,  been,  or  be. 

The  E.  Midland  texts  of  M.E.  generally  have  arn,  sometimes  by  the 
side  of  ben — thus,  Genesis  and  Exodus  (arn  and  ben),  R.  of  Brunne  (are, 
ben,  and  even  bej>),  Norf.  Guilds  (arn) ;  in  the  fifteenth  century  Bokenam 
has  arn,  ern.  William  Paston,  arn,  Marg.  Paston,  arn,  ar,  ben,  Lydgate, 
arn,  Gregory,  ar  and  bene.  These  writers  are  all  from  the  E.  Midlands, 
Bokenam  definitely  claiming  to  write  the  Suffolk  speech,  the  others  show- 
ing in  many  ways  traces  of  their  native  dialect.  In  the  letters  of 
Q.  Marg.  of  Anjou  there  is  one  from  the  Treasurer  of  Calais,  who  writes 
er,  1 6,  other  officers  write  we  aren,  by  the  side  of  beeth,  and  Henry  V,  in 
a  letter  of  1421,  writes  ar,  p.  18.  Other  texts,  with  no  very  pronounced 
dialectal  character,  vary  more  or  less.  Short  Engl.  Chron.  has  bethe, 
Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  been,  Caxton,  ben,  but  also  ye  ar  (Jason),  Cr.  Dk.  of 
York,  be,  been,  Bk.  of  Quint.,  ben,  Irish  Documents  in  Letters  and  Papers, 
vol.  i,  ben.  Shillingford  has,  by  the  side  of  occasional  ben,  the  archaic 
buth,  and  also  beth,  Ord.  of  Worcester,  ben,  Godstow  Register,  byn,  ben , 
Oseney  Reg.,  been. 

A  a  2 


356  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

Early  in  the  following  century,  a  letter  from  Sir  J.  Wingfield,  Ellis  ii. 
i  (1513)  has  be,  while  Bp.  Knight  (afterwards  of  Bath  and  Wells)  (1512) 
has  beth(e)  and  be.  Lord  Berners  has  ben  and  are,  arre,  ar.  The  Will 
of  R.  Bradley  (Leics.,  1533)  still  has  ben,  L.  D.  D.  162.  i.  Bp.  Latimer, 
be,  bee  commonly,  rarely  are,  Machyn,  ar,  Ascham,  be,  often  in  Tox., 
while  are  occurs  somewhat  infrequently  in  Scholem. ;  Wilson,  Arte  of 
Rhet.,  has  both  are  and  ben  frequently,  Euphues,  are  and  be,  Q.  Elizabeth, 
ar  and  be. 

With  the  negative,  be  was  used  late  into  the  seventeenth  century  by 
good  speakers  ;  thus  Col.  Courtly,  in  Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London,  says 
if  it  bent  too  long.  Otherwise,  are  seems  the  universal  form  of  the  PI.  in 
the  seventeenth  century  in  good  colloquial  English.  I  have  noted  no  be 
forms  in  the  Verney  Letters. 

Confusion  in  use  of  is — are ;  was — were. 

A  tendency  to  extend  the  use  of  is  to  sentences  in  which  there  was  a 
PI.  subject  is  traceable  in  the  sixteenth  century  and  continues  among 
educated  people  well  into  the  eighteenth  century.  The  -s-  Plurals  of 
ether  verbs,  referred  to  p.  340,  may  have  been  fostered  partly  by  this 
habit.  At  the  present  time  is  with  a  PI.  subject  is  heard  only  among  the 
uneducated. 

Sir  Thomas  Elyot  writes  both  body  and  soul  is  deformed,  Gouern.  ii. 
340 ;  Sir  Thos.  Smith — there  is  three  wayes,  Rep.  Angl.  64  ;  Mrs.  Isham, 
Verney  Mem.  iii — mosie  of  our  gentre  is  secured  and  took  to  Oxford,  233, 
1655  ;  Sir  Ed.  Sydenham,  ibid,  ii — all  hopes  of  peace  is  now  taken  away, 
Edm.  V.—your  delayes  is  out  of  your  goodness,  V.  Mem.  ii.  132,  143; 
Sir  R.  Verney — my  Cough  and  Cold  is  badd  enough  God  helpe  me,  iv.  326, 
1685;  Lady  StrafTord,  Wentworth  Pprs.  262 — Lord  Marsam  and  Lord 
Bathurst  is  named',  Lord  Bute,  Wentw.  Pprs. — when  there  is  great  folks, 
fine  words,  &c. 

The  construction  you  was  was  apparently  much  more  common,  and 
there  are  indications  of  a  more  general  tendency  to  extend  the  use  of  was 
to  the  3rd  Pers.  PI.  also. 

Pope,  in  a  letter  to  Lady  Mary  Montagu  Wortley,  dated  Sept.  i, 
1718,  writes  I  shall  look  upon  you  as  so  many  years  younger  than  you  was', 
Lady  Wentworth  has_y0«  was,  pp.  94,  118  ;  Vermilla,  in  Fielding's  Love 
in  several  Masques,  says— pray,  Sir,  how  was  you  cured  of  your  love, 
Act  iv,  Sc.  ii.  The  habit  was  apparently  passing  into  disrepute  at  the 
beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Miss  Austen  puts  the  construction 
several  times  into  the  mouth  of  the  rather  vulgar  Miss  Lucy  Steele  in 
Sense  and  Sensibility — I  felt  almost  as  if  you  was  an  old  acquaintance, 
vol.  i,  chap.  22  ;  I  felt  sure  you  was  angry  with  me,  chap.  24  ;  if  you  was  to 
say  to  me,  &c.,  chap.  24.  The  better-bred  personages  in  this  and  others 
of  Miss  Austen's  books  do  not  use  this  phrase. 

I  have  noted  a  few  examples  of  was  with  the  3rd  Pers.  Pis.  Sir 
Thos.  Seymour,  1544,  such  sowders  and  maryners  as  was  shept  at 
Harwyche,  St.  Pprs.  Hen.  VIII,  i,  p.  781 ;  Cavendish,  L.  of  Wolsey,  the 
wells  whiche  was,  80  ;  Nancy  Nicholas,  in  Verney  Mem.,  has  ye  seconds 
(in  a  duel)  was,  iv.  230,  1683;  Lady  Sussex,  we  was  glade',  in  Wentw. 


'AIR'  FOR  ARE  357 

Pprs. — they  was,  124,  1642  ;   The  Duke  of  Kent  and  Lord  Longville  was, 
300  (Peter  W.). 

In  Euphues  appears  the  strange  but  quite  explicable  construction  art 
not  you,  p.  1 80,  where  you,  being  used  to  a  single  person,  takes  the 
Singular  form  of  the  Verb.  This  is  also  the  explanation  of  you  was, 
though,  as  they  was  shows,  there  was  a  tendency  to  generalize  this  form  of 
the  Verb  for  both  numbers. 

The  Vowel  of  Present-day  are. 

The  M.E.  dre(n)  had  undoubtedly  originally  a  long  vowel  in  stressed 
positions,  as  pan  be  shown  by  rhymes.  M.E.  are  would  result  in 
present-day  [ea],  cf.  M.E.  bare,  which  has  become  [bea],  and  hare, 
which  has  become  [hea].  This  form  was  still  in  vulgar  use  down  to  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  is  seen  from  the  spelling  air  in 
Dickens  and  other  writers  of  his  period.  The  ancestral  form  of  this,  from 
M.E.  are  can  also  be  proved  by  rhymes  and  spellings  to  have  been  in  use 
at  a  much  earlier  date.  Rede  me,  &c.,  rhymes  are — care,  Donne  rhymes 
are—faire,  Heroical  Epistle,  21-2,  with  aire,  ibid.  41-2,  pp.  124-5; 
Mrs.  Isham,  in  Verney  Mem.  iii,  writes,  you  air  tow  discrate,  p.  235, 
1655,  and  Mrs.  Sherrard  writes  aier,  V.  Mem.  iii.  256,  1655;  Cooper 
mentions  are,  air,  heir,  ere  as  all  having  the  same  sound. 

This  form  is  the  basis  of  the  negative  aiV/[eint],  formerly  written  an't. 

The  present-day  pronunciation  of  are  [d]  when  stressed,  [3]  in  un- 
stressed positions,  is  derived  from  the  M.E.  unstressed  form  ar(e).  This 
became  [aer]  when  M.E.  a  was  fronted  (p.  196,  &c.,  above)  and  was  used  both 
in  Strong  and  Weak  positions.  In  the  former  position  the  vowel  underwent 
lengthening  before  -r,  and  the  Early  Modern  combination  [ser]  was  re- 
tracted subsequently  to  [<z(r)],  cf.  pp.  203-5,  above. 

This  old  Weak  form,  used  in  a  stressed  position,  is  seen  in  various 
rhymes  in  the  sixteenth  century  and  later,  e.  g.  are — warre,  Habington's 
Castara,  49 ;  farre — are,  Donne's  Progr.  of  the  Soul,  First  Aniv.  7—8. 

Thus,  it  is  evident  that  for  a  long  time  both  types  were  in  use,  until 
one  was  finally  eliminated  in  good  usage. 

Shall.  The  original  difference  in  the  vowels  of  the  Sing,  and  PI.  of 
the  Pres.,  which  is  found  in  Old  and  Middle  English  (schal — schulleri]  is 
preserved  in  texts  from  all  sources  down  to  the  third  quarter  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  During  the  greater  part  of  this  period  schall,  &c., 
occurs  also  in  the  PL,  and  gradually  the  schulle(ri)  forms  are  altogether 
superseded  by  the  Singular  type. 

The  following  PI.  forms  may  be  noted : — Hoccleve,  schul,  schol, 
Pecok,  schulen  and  schal,  Shillingford,  shall,  Marg.  Paston,  we  sholle, 
Rewle  Sustr.  Men.,  schullin,  schullen,  Bk.  of  Quint.,  schulen  and  schal, 
Gregory,  shulle  and  shalle,  Ord.  of  Worcester,  shullen,  Fortescue,  shul 
and  shall,  Caxton,  shal,  shull,  shulle,  Jul.  Berners,  shall.  Henceforward 
the  PI.  seems  to  be  everywhere  levelled  under  the  type  of  the  Sing. 

The  2nd  Pers.  Sing,  is  usually  shalt,  the  traditional  form,  but  Caxton 
has  the  analogical  form  shalst,  Jason,  5.  20.  Marg.  Paston's  scholl 
(Sing.)  and  sholl  (PI.)  may  have  been  formed  on  the  analogy  of  the  old 
form  of  the  Pret. — scholde,  cf.  wol  from  wolde,  though  she  does  not 


358  NOTES   ON   INFLEXIONS 

usually  write  the  Pret.  in  this  way,  or  the  o  may  be  written  for  u,  in  which 
case  the  vowel  has  been  introduced  from  the  old  PI.  type.  Finally,  it  is 
just  possible  that  o  represents  the  rounded  vowel  resulting  from  earlier 
shaul,  for  the  explanation  of  which  see  p.  201,  above. 

The  commonest  spelling  of  the  Pret.  in  the  fifteenth  century  seems  to 
be  schulde,  and  this  is  used  by  nearly  all  the  writers  above  cited.  Shilling- 
ford,  however,  writes  sholde,  and  Marg.  Paston,  shoulde.  It  seems 
probable  that  this  last,  and  the  ou  spellings,  express  [u],  which  is  that 
natural  development  of  the  vowel  in  M.E.  scholde  in  stressed  positions. 
The  /  was  probably  lost  early,  in  unstressed  positions  at  any  rate,  though 
the  traditional  spelling  is  rarely  departed  from  in  this  word.  I  have, 
however,  noted  shud,  Elyot's  Gouernour,  70,  shudd,  Gabr.  Harvey's  Lttrs. 
3,  and  shud,  in  a  letter  of  Gary  Verney,  V.  Mem.  ii.  67.  The  vowel 
in  the  present-day  Weak  form  of  should  shows  that  this  is  a  new  forma- 
tion, in  the  Early  Modern  period,  from  the  stressed  form  [Ju(l)d].  The 
old  spelling  of  the  Pret.  shold  lasts  far  into  the  sixteenth  century ;  Latimer 
writes  both  shold  and  should ;  Euphues  also  has  both  spellings. 

Will.  The  forms  wille,  wile,  wtl,\ ;&c.,  occur  commonly  in  M.E., 
alongside  wule,  the  vowel  of  which  seems  to  be  a  rounding  of  i  after 
w.  Chaucer  has  wit,  but  more  commonly  wol,  which  is  very  common  in 
the  fourteenth  century.  It  may  be  explained  sometimes  as  a  mere  ortho- 
graphical variant  of  wule,  &c.,  but  it  is  also  often  a  distinct  new  form 
made  on  the  analogy  of  the  Pret.  wol-de.  It  is  this  that  gives  rise  to  the 
negative  wont  (for  wol*not\  Both  will  and  wol  occur  throughout  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  some  writers  using  both  forms,  others 
chiefly  wol,  others  only  will,  &c.  Pallad.  has  both,  Bokenam,  wyl,  Marg. 
Paston,  wul  and  wol ;  St.  Editha,  ychulle  (I  will),  he  wole ;  Sustr.  Men., 
Fortescue,  and  Caxton^zw/,  wole.  Bp.  Knight  (1513)  has  wil  in  PI.  and 
wol  in  Sing.,  but  the  distinction  'is^  probably  accidental.  Lord  Berners 
has  wol,  Latimer,  wyl,  Cavendish,  wyll  and  wol,  Euphues,  wil 

Can.  The  O.  ancT  M.E.  distinction'  between  Sing,  and  PI.  survives  in 
the  fifteenth  century  to  some  extent ;  Pecok  has  cunnen  for  the  latter. 
Bokenam  has  kun  for  both  Sing,  and  PL,  but  also  kan  for  the  former. 

The  past  tense  is  still  couthen  (PI.)  in  Pecok,  cou^the  in  St.  Editha, 
cowde  in  Bokenam,  Marg.  Paston,  and  Lord  Berners.  The  latter  also 
writes  coulde*$xA  this  remains  the  usual  form,  with  occasional  colde,  for 
the  sixteenth  century  and  later.  The  /  has  no  historical  justification,  and 
is  due  to  the  analogy  of  wolde. 

Elyot  has\  strange  P.  P.  kanned,  with  the  sense  of  known. 

The  Inf.  is  used  after  another  Auxiliary  throughout  the  fifteenth 
century,  the  old  form,  kunne,  being  used  by  Pecok,  kon  by  Marg.  Paston, 
conne  by  Caxton — as  mjrit  shall  not  conne  kepe  it  secrete,  Jason,  13.  6. 

May.  The  old  PI.  mowen,  as  used  in  Chaucer's  time,  from  O.E. 
magon,  survives  throughout  the  first  three  quarters  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  is  found  in  Hoccleve,  Shillingford,  Pecok,  Fortescue,  and 
Caxton.  An  Inf.  mowen  '  to  be  able  ',  is  used  after  other  Auxiliaries  by 
Marg.  Paston,  Sustr.  Men.,  Fortescue,  and  Caxton. 

The  past  tense  mought  is  found  in  Sir  Thos.  More  (Ellis  ii.  i.  289), 
Elyot,  i.  164,  passim,  and  Queen  Elizabeth's  early  letters  (movgth),'£X&%  i. 

2-   157,  1549- 


CHAPTER    X 
COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

THE  uttered  speech  of  private  life  is  fluctuating  and  variable.  In 
every  period  it  varies  according  to  the  age,  class,  education,  and  habits  of 
the  speaker.  His  social  experience,  traditions  and  general  background, 
his  ordinary  tastes  and  pursuits,  his  intellectual  and  moral  cultivation  are 
all  reflected  in  each  man's  conversation.  These  factors  determine  and 
modify  a  man's  mode  of  speech  in  innumerable  ways.  They  may  affect 
his  pronunciation,  the  speed  of  his  utterance,  his  choice  of  vocabulary, 
the  shade  of  meaning  he  attaches  to  particular  words,  or  turns  of  phrase, 
the  character  of  such  similes  and  metaphors  as  occur  in  his  speech,  his 
word  order  and  the  structure  of  his  sentences. 

But  the  individual  speaker  is  also  affected  by  the  character  of  those 
to  whom  he  speaks.  He  adjusts  himself  in  a  hundred  subtle  ways  to  the 
age,  status,  and  mental  attitude  of  the  company  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
His  own  state  of  mind,  and  the  mode  of  its  expression  are  unconsciously 
modified  by  and  attuned  to  the  varying  degree  of  intimacy,  agreement, 
and  community  of  experience  in  which  he  may  stand  with  his  companions 
of  the  moment. 

Thus  an  accomplished  man  of  the  world,  in  reality,  speaks  not 
one  but  many  slightly  different  idioms,  and  passes  easily  and  instinc- 
tively, often  perhaps  unknown  to  himself,  from  one  to  another,  according 
to  the  exigence  of  circumstances.  The  man  who  does  not  possess, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  this  power  of  adjustment,  is  of  necessity  a  stranger 
in  every  company  but  that  of  one  particular  type.  No  man  who  is  not 
a  fool  will  consider  it  proper  to  address  a  bevy  of  Bishops  in  precisely 
the  same  way  as  would  be  perfectly  natural  and  suitable  among  a  party 
of  fox-hunting  country  gentlemen. 

A  learned  man,  accustomed  to  choose  his  own  topics  of  conversation 
and  dilate  upon  them  at  leisure  in  his  College  common  room  where  he 
can  count  upon  the  civil  forbearance  of  other  people  like  himself,  would 
be  thought  a  tedious  bore,  and  a  dull  one  at  that,  if  he  carried  his 
pompous  verbiage  into  the  Officers'  Mess  of  a  smart  regiment.  'A 
meere  scholler  is  but  a  woefull  creature ',  says  Sir  Edmund  Verney,  in 
a  letter  in  which  he  discusses  a  proposal  that  his  son  should  be  sent  to 
Leyden,  and  observes  concerning  this — '  'tis  too  private  for  a  youth  of 
his  yeares  that  must  see  company  at  convenient  times,  and  studdy  men  as 
well  as  bookes,  or  else  his  bearing  may  make  him  rather  ridiculous  then 
esteemed '. 

There  is  naturally  a  large  body  of  colloquial  expression  which  is 
common  to  all  classes,  scholars,  sportsmen,  officers,  clerics,  and  the  rest, 
but  each  class  and  interest  has  its  own  special  way  of  expressing  itself, 
which  is  more  or  less  foreign  to  those  outside  it.  The  average  colloquial 


36o  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

speech  of  any  age  is  at  best  a  compromise  between  a  variety  of  different 
jargons,  each  evolved  in  and  current  among  the  members  of  a  particular 
section  of  the  community,  and  each,  within  certain  social  limits,  affects 
and  is  affected  by  the  others.  Most  men  belong  by  their  circumstances 
or  inclinations  to  several  speech-communities,  and  have  little  difficulty  in 
maintaining  themselves  creditably  in  all  of  these.  The  wider  the  social 
opportunities  and  experience  of  the  individual,  and  the  keener  his  lin- 
guistic instinct,  the  more  readily  does  he  adapt  himself  to  the  company 
in  which  he  finds  himself,  and  the  more  easily  does  he  fall  into  line  with 
its  accepted  traditions  of  speech  and  bearing. 

But  if  so  much  variety  in  the  details  of  colloquial  usage  exists  in 
a  single  age,  with  such  well-marked  differences  between  the  conventions 
of  each,  how  much  greater  will  be  the  gulf  which  separates  the  types  of 
familiar  conversation  in  different  ages.  Do  we  realize  that  if  we  could, 
by  the  workings  of  some  Time  Machine,  be  suddenly  transported  back 
into  the  seventeenth  century,  most  of  us  would  find  it  extremely  difficult 
to  carry  on,  even  among  the  kind  of  people  most  nearly  corresponding 
with  those  with  whom  we  are  habitually  associated  in  our  present  age, 
the  simplest  kind  of  decent  social  intercourse  ?  Even  if  the  pronunciation 
of  the  sixteenth  century  offered  no  difficulty,  almost  every  other  element 
which  goes  to  make  up  the  medium  of  communication  with  our  fellows 
would  do  so. 

We  should  not  know  how  to  greet  or  take  leave  of  those  we  met,  how 
to  express  our  thanks  in  an  acceptable  manner,  how  to  ask  a  favour,  pay 
a  compliment,  or  send  a  polite  message  to  a  gentleman's  "wife.  We 
should  be  at  a  loss  how  to  begin  and  end  the  simplest  note,  whether  to 
an  intimate  friend,  a  near  relative,  or  to  a  stranger.  We  could  not  scold 
a  footman,  commend  a  child,  express  in  appropriate  terms  admiration  for 
a  woman's  beauty,  or  aversion  to  the  opposite  quality.  We  should  hesitate 
every  moment  how  to  address  the  person  we  were  talking  to,  and  should  be 
embarassed  for  the  equivalent  of  such  instinctive  phrases  as — look  here,  old 
man ;  my  dear  chap ;  my  dear  Sir ;  excuse  me  ;  I  beg  your  pardon ; 
I'm  awfully  sorry ;  Oh,  not  at  all ;  that 's  too  bad ;  that 's  most  amusing ; 
you  see ;  don't  you  know ;  and  a  hundred  other  trivial  and  meaningless 
expressions  with  which  most  men  fill  out  their  sentences.  Our  innocent 
impulses  of  pleasure,  approval,  dislike,  anger,  disgust,  and  so  on,  would 
be  nipped  in  the  bud  for  want  of  words  to  express  them.  How  should  we 
say,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment — what  a  pretty  girl ! ;  what  an  amusing 
play ! ;  how  clever  and  witty  Mr.  Jones  is ! ;  poor  woman ;  that's  a  perfectly 
rotten  book ;  I  hate  the  way  she  dresses ;  look  here,  Sir,  you  had  better 
take  care  what  you  say ;  Oh,  shut  up ;  I'm  hanged  if  I'll  do  that ;  I'm  very 
much  obliged  to  you,  I'm  sure  ? 

It  is  very  probable  that  we  perfectly  grasp  the  equivalents  of  all  these 
and  a  thousand  others  when  we  read  them  in  the  pages  of  Congreve  and 
his  contemporaries,  but  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  right  expressions 
would  not  rise  naturally  to  our  lips  as  we  required  them,  were  we 
suddenly  called  upon  to  speak  with  My  Lady  Froth,  or  Mr.  Brisk. 

The  fact  is  that  we  should  feel  thoroughly  at  sea  in  such  company, 
and  should  soon  discover  that  we  had  to  learn  a  new  language  of  polite 
society. 


SOME  ASPECTS   OF   THE   SUBJECT  361 

If  we  did  not  realize  this,  but  insisted  on  speaking  in  our  own  way, 
we  should  be  made  to  feel  before  long  that  we  were  outraging  every 
convention  and  sense  of  decorum  which  that  not  very  decorous  age 
possessed.  We  should  appear  at  once  too  familiar  and  too  stiff  and 
stilted;  too  prim  and  too  outspoken;  too  pompous  and  too  much 
lacking  in  ceremonious  observance. 

In  any  case  we  should  cut  a  very  sorry  figure. 

Now  to  exhibit,  in  a  single  chapter,  even  in  the  merest  outline,  the 
genius  of  the  English  colloquial  idiom  of  several  centuries,  is  an  im- 
possible task.  Each  century  would  need  to  be  the  subject  of  a  thorough 
investigation,  and  all  possible  sources  of  information  would  require  to  be 
exploited  to  the  full.  Again,  the  various  aspects  of  colloquial  speech  life 
must  be  examined,  and  the  different  elements  arranged  and  grouped 
according  to  some  principle  of  classification.  Such  a  work,  for  a  single 
age,  would  profitably  occupy  the  time  of  a  band  of  inquirers  for  many 
years,  and  even  then  it  would  be  necessarily  incomplete.  As  Mr.  Henry 
Bradley  has  well  remarked  in  his  chapter  on  Shakespeare's  Language : — 
'  At  no  period — not  even  in  our  own  time,  which  has  an  unexampled 
abundance  of  prose  fiction  dealing  with  all  aspects  of  contemporary 
life — has  the  colloquial  vocabulary  and  idiom  of  the  English  Language 
been  completely  preserved  In  the  literature.  The  homely  expressions 
of  everyday  intercourse,  the  phrases  of  contemporary  currency  alluding 
to  recent  events,  the  slang  words  and  uses  of  words  characteristic  of 
particular  classes  of  society — all  these  have  been  but  very  imperfectly 
recorded  in  the  writings  of  any  age/ 

A  very  perfunctory  treatment  of  a  vast  subject  is  all  that  can  be 
attempted  here.  If  it  suffices  to  interest  a  certain  number  of  readers 
in  the  general  question,  and  in  some  of  the  details  here  touched  upon, 
so  that  they  pursue  the  subject  for  themselves ;  if  a  few  of  these  readers 
should  be  stimulated  to  devote  some  of  their  time  to  a  systematic  investi- 
gation of  such  parts  of  the  matter  here  dealt  with,  or  of  others  which  are 
here  omitted,  then  this  short  study  will  not  have  failed  altogether  of  its  object. 

It  is  proposed  to  deal  here  with  the  subject  in  the  following  manner. 

In  the  first  place  characteristic  specimens  will  be  given,  of  dialogue 
when  this  is  available,  otherwise  of  passages  from  letters  of  a  colloquial 
character,  to  illustrate  the  general  features  and  tone  of  familiar  English 
from  the  fifteenth  to  the  eighteenth  centuries  inclusive. 

Following  these  specimens  of  whole  passages,  we  shall  attempt  to  illus- 
trate certain  special  and  particular  elements  in  the  conversation  of  every- 
day life.  Those  selected  come  principally  under  the  following  heads : — 

Modes  of  greeting ;  farewells ;  compliments  and  complimentary  banter  ; 
endearments ;  angry  and  abusive  speeches  among  equals,  or  addressed  to 
inferiors ;  expressions  of  approval  and  disapproval. 

Oaths,  imprecations,  expletives,  exclamatory  and  interjectional  ex- 
pressions; emphatics. 

Preciosities,  affectations,  and  euphemisms. 

The  term  Colloquial  is  so  far  extended  as  to  include  formulas  used 
in  beginning  and  ending  letters,  nor  are  the  examples  of  these  confined 
entirely  to  purely  familiar  epistles  written  to  intimates,  but  include  also 
the  beginnings  and  endings  of  letters  of  a  more  formal  character. 


362  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

In  illustrating  the  colloquial  style  of  the  fifteenth  century  we  have  to 
be  content,  either  with  the  account  of  conversations  given  in  letters,  or  with 
such  other  passages  from  letters  of  the  period  as  appear  to  be  nearest 
to  the  speech  of  everyday  life. 

The  following  passages  are  from  the  Shillingford  Letters,  to  which 
reference  is  repeatedly  made  in  this  book  (see  p.  65,  &c.),  and  are 
extracted  from  the  accounts  given  by  the  stout  and  genial  Mayor  of 
Exeter,  in  letters  to  his  friends,  of  his  conversations  with  the  Chancellor 
during  his  visit  to  London. 

Shillingford  begins  by  referring  to  himself  as  '  the  Mayer ',  but  suddenly 
changes  to  the  first  person—^ — in  describing  the  actual  meeting,  again 
returning  for  a  moment  to  he  impersonal  phrase. 

John  Shillingford. 

'The  Saterdey  next  (28  Oct.  1447)  therafter  the  mayer  came  to  West- 
minster sone  apon  ix.  atte  belle,  and  ther  mette  w*  my  lorde  Chanceller  atte 
brode  dore  a  litell  fro  the  steire  fote  comyng  fro  the  Sterrechamber,  y  yn 
the  courte  and  by  the  dore  knellyog  and  salutyng  hym  yn  the  moste  godely 
wyse  that  y  cowde  and  recommended  yn  to  his  gode  and  gracious  lordship 
my  feloship  and  all  the  comminalte,  his  awne  peeple  and  bedmen  of  the 
Cite  of  Exceter.  He  seyde  to  the  mayer  ij  tymes  "  Well  come  "  and  the  iijde 
tyme  "Right  well  come  Mayer"  and  helde  the  Mayer  a  grete  while  faste  by 
the  honde,  and  so  went  forth  to  his  barge  and  w*  hym  grete  presse,  lordis 
and  other,  &c.  and  yn  especiall  the  tresorer  of  the  kynges  housholde,  w* 
wham  he  was  at  right  grete  pryvy  communication.  And  therfor  y,  mayer, 
drowe  me  apart,  and  mette  w*  hym  at  his  goyng  yn  to  his  barge,  and  ther 
toke  my  leve  of  hym,  seyyng  these  wordis,  "  My  lord,  y  wolle  awayte  apon 
youre  gode  lordship  and  youre  better  leyser  at  another  tyme  ".  He  seyde 
to  me  ayen,  "  Mayer,  y  pray  yow  hertely  that  ye  do  so,  and  that  ye  speke  w* 
the  Chief  Justyse  and  what  that  ever  he  will  y  woll  be  all  redy  ".  And  thus 
departed.' — pp.  5,  6. 

A  little  later  :— 

'  Nerthelez  y  away  ted  my  tyme  and  put  me  yn  presse  and  went  right  to  my 
lorde  Chaunceller  and  seide,  "  My  lorde  y  am  come  at  your  commaunde- 
ment,  but  y  se  youre  grete  bysynesse  is  suche  that  ye  may  not  attende ". 
He  seide  "  Noo,  by  his  trauthe  and  that  y  myght  right  well  se ".  Y  seide 
"  Yee,  and  that  y  was  sory  and  hadde  pyty  of  his  grete  vexacion ".  He 
seide  "  Mayer,  y  moste  to  morun  ride  by  tyme  to  the  Kyng,  and  come  ayen 
this  wyke :  ye  most  awayte  apon  my  comyng,  and  then  y  wol  speke  w*  the 
justise  and  attende  for  yow  " ',  &c. — p.  7. 

*  He  seyde  "  Come  the  morun  Monedey  "  (the  Chancellor  was  speaking  on 
Sunday)  ..."  the  love  of  God  "  Y  seyde  the  tyme  was  to  shorte,  and  prayed 
hym  of  Wendysdey  ;  y  enfourmed  hym  (of  t)he  grete  malice  and  venym  that 
they  have  spatte  to  me  yn  theire  answeris  as  hit  appereth  yn  a  copy  that 
y  sende  to  yow  of.  My  lorde  seide,  "  Alagge  alagge,  why  wolde  they  do  so  ? 
y  woll  sey  right  sharpely  to  ham  therfor  and  y  nogh'V 

Margery  Brews. 

The  following  brief  extracts  from  the  letters  of  Margery  Brews,  the 
affianced  wife  of  John  Paston  (junior)  are  like  a  ray  of  sunlight  in  the 
dreary  wilderness  of  business  and  litigation,  which  are  the  chief  subjects 
of  correspondence  between  the  Pastons.  Even  this  love-letter  is  not 


A  FIFTEENTH-CENTURY   LOVE-LETTER  363 

wholly  free  from  the  taint,  but  the  girl's  gentle  affection  for  her  lover  is 
the  prevailing  note. 

'  Yf  that  ye  cowde  be  content  with  that  good  and  my  por  persone  I  wold 
be  the  meryest  mayden  on  grounde,  and  yf  ye  thynke  not  your  selffe  soe 
satysfyed  or  that  ye  myght  hafe  much  mor  good,  as  I  hafe  undyrstonde  be 
youe  afor  ;  good  trewe  and  lovyng  volentyne,  that  ye  take  no  such  labur 
uppon  yowe,  as  to  come  more  for  that  matter,  but  let  it  passe,  and  never 
more  to  be  spokyn  of,  as  I  may  be  your  trewe  lover  and  bedewoman  during 
my  lyfe.' — Paston  Letters,  iii,  p.  172  (1477). 

A  few  years  later  Mrs.  Paston  writes  to  her  'trewe  and  lovyng 
volentyne ' : — 

'  My  mother  in  lawe  thynketh  longe  she  here  no  word  from  you.  She  is  in 
goode  heale,  blissed  be  God,  and  al  yowr  babees  also.  I  marvel  I  here  no 
word  from  you,  weche  greveth  me  ful  evele.  I  sent  you  a  letter  be  Basiour 
sone  of  Norwiche,  wher  of  I  have  no  word.1  To  this  the  young  wife  adds 
the  touching  postscript : — *  Sir  I  pray  yow  if  ye  tary  longe  at  London  that  it 
wil  plese  to  sende  for  me,  for  I  thynke  longe  sen  I  lay  in  your  armes.' — 
Paston  Letters,  iii,  p.  293  (1482). 


Sir  Thomas  More. 

No  figure  in  the  early  part  of  Henry  VIIFs  reign  is  more  distin- 
guished and  at  the  same  time  more  engaging  than  that  of  Sir  Thomas 
More.  A  few  typical  records  of  his  conversation,  as  preserved  by  his 
devoted  biographer  and  son-in-law  Roper,  are  chosen  to  illustrate  the 
English  of  this  time.  The  context  is  given  so  that  the  extracts  may 
appear  in  Roper's  own  setting. 

'  Not  long  after  this  the  Watter  baylife  of  London  (sometyme  his  servaunte) 
hereing,  where  he  had  beene  at  dinner,  certayne  Marchauntes  liberally  to 
rayle  against  his  ould  Master,  waxed  so  discontented  therwith,  that  he 
hastily  came  to  him,  and  tould  him  what  he  had  hard:  "and  were  I  Sir" 
(quoth  he)  "  in  such  favour  and  authentic  with  my  Prince  as  you  are,  such 
men  surely  should  not  be  suffered  so  villanously  and  falsly  to  misreport  and 
slander  me.  Wherefore  I  would  wish  you  to  call  them  before  you,  and  to 
there  shame,  for  there  lewde  malice  to  punnish  them."  Who  smilinge  upon 
him  sayde, "  Mr  Watter  Baylie,  would  you  have  me  punnish  them  by  whome 
I  receave  more  benefitt  then  by  you  all  that  be  my  frendes  ?  Let  them 
a  Gods  name  speake  as  lewdly  as  they  list  of  me,  and  shoote  never  soe 
many  arrowes  at  me,  so  long  as  they  do  not  hitt  me,  what  am  I  the  worse  ? 
But  if  the  should  once  hitt  me,  then  would  it  a  little  trouble  me :  howbeit, 
I  trust,  by  Gods  helpe,  there  shall  none  of  them  all  be  able  to  touch  me. 
I  have  more  cause,  Mr  Water  Bayly  (I  assure  thee)  to  pittie  them,  then  to 
be  angrie  with  them."  Such  frutfull  communication  had  he  often  tymes 
with  his  familier  frendes.  Soe  on  a  tyme  walking  a  long  the  Thames  syde 
with  me  at  Chelsey,  in  talkinge  of  other  thinges  he  sayd  to  me,  "  Now, 
would  to  God,  Sonne  Roger,  upon  condition  three  things  are  well  estab- 
lished in  Christendome,  I  were  put  in  a  sacke,  and  here  presently  cast  into  the 
Thames."  "  What  great  thinges  be  these,  Sir"  quoth  I,  "  that  should  move 
you  so  to  wish?"  "Wouldest  thou  know,  sonne  Roper,  what  they  be" 
quoth  he?  "Yea  marry,  Sir,  with  a  good  will  if  it  please  you",  quoth  I. 
"  I  faith,  they  be  these  Sonne  ",  quoth  he.  The  first  is,  that  where  as  the 
most  part  of  Christian  princes  be  at  mortall  warrs,  they  weare  at  universal 
peace.  The  second,  that  wheare  the  Church  of  Christ  is  at  this  present 


364  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

soare  afflicted  with  many  heresies  and  errors,  it  were  well  settled  in  an 
uniformity.  The  third,  that  where  the  Kinges  matter  of  his  marriage  is  now 
come  into  question,  it  were  to  the  glory  of  God  and  quietnesse  of  all  parties 
brought  to  a  good  conclusion :  "  where  by,  as  I  could  gather,  he  judged,  that 
otherwise  it  would  be  a  disturbance  to  a  great  part  of  Christendome.' 

'  When  Sir  Thomas  Moore  had  continued  a  good  while  in  the  Tower,  my 
Ladye  his  wife  obtayned  license  to  see  him,  who  at  her  first  comminge  like 
a  simple  woman,  and  somewhat  worldlie  too,  with  this  manner  of  salutations 
bluntly  saluted  him,  "What  the  good  yeare,  Mr  Moore"  quoth  shee, 
"I  marvell  that  you,  that  have  beene  allwayes  hitherunto  taken  for  soe  wise 
a  man,  will  now  soe  playethe  foole  to  lye  here  in  this  close  filthie  prison,  and 
be  content  to  be  shutt  upp  amonge  myse  and  rattes,  when  you  might  be 
abroad  at  your  libertie,  and  with  the  favour  and  good  will  both  of  the 
King  and  his  Councell,  if  you  would  but  doe  as  all  the  Bushopps  and  best 
learned  of  this  Realme  have  done.  And  seeing  you  have  at  Chelsey  a  right 
fayre  house,  your  librarie,  your  books,  your  gallerie,  your  garden,  your 
orchards,  and  all  other  necessaries  soe  handsomely  about  you,  where  you 
might,  in  the  companie  of  me  your  wife,  your  children,  and  houshould  be 
merrie,  I  muse  what  a  Gods  name  you  meane  here  still  thus  fondlye  to  tarry." 
After  he  had  a  while  quietly  hard  her,  "  I  pray  thee  good  Mrs  Alice,  tell  me, 
tell  me  one  thinge."  "  What  is  that  ? "  (quoth  shee).  "  Is  not  this  house 
as  nighe  heaven  as  myne  owne?"  To  whome  shee,  after  her  accustomed 
fashion,  not  likeinge  such  talke,  answeared,  "  Tille  valle^  Tille  valle " 
"How  say  you,  Mrs  Alice,  is  it  not  soe?"  quoth  he.  "Bone  deus,  bone 
Deus,  man,  will  this  geare  never  be  left?"  quoth  shee.  "Well  then 
Mr8  Alice,  if  it  be  soe,  it  is  verie  well.  For  I  see  noe  great  cause  whie 
I  should  soe  much  joye  of  my  gaie  house,  or  of  any  thinge  belonginge 
thereunto,  when,  if  I  should  but  seaven  yeares  lye  buried  under  ground, 
and  then  arise,  and  come  thither  againe,  I  should  not  fayle  to  finde  some 
therin  that  would  bidd  me  gett  out  of  the  doores,  and  tell  me  that  weare 
none  of  myne.  What  cause  have  I  then  to  like  such  an  house  as  would 
soe  soone  forgett  his  master  ? "  Soe  her  perswasions  moved  him  but  a  little.' 

The  last  days  of  this  good  man  on  earth,  and  some  of  his  sayings  just 
before  his  death,  are  told  with  great  simplicity  by  Roper.  We  cannot 
forbear  to  quote  the  affecting  passage  which  tells  of  Sir  Thomas  More's 
last  parting  from  his  daughter,  the  writer's  wife. 

*  When  Sir  Tho.  Moore  came  from  Westminster  to  the  Towreward  againe, 
his  daughter  my  wife,  desireous  to  see  her  father,  whome  shee  thought  shee 
should  never  see  in  this  world  after,  and  alsoe  to  have  his  finall  blessinge, 
gave  attendaunce  aboutes  the  Towre  wharfe,  where  shee  knewe  he  should 
passe  by,  e're  he  could  enter  into  the  Towre.  There  tarriinge  for  his 
cominge  home,  as  soone  as  shee  sawe  him,  after  his  blessinges  on  her 
knees  reverentlie  receaved,  shee  hastinge  towards,  without  consideration 
and  care  of  her  selfe,  pressinge  in  amongest  the  midst  of  the  thronge  and 
the  Companie  of  the  Guard,  that  with  Hollbards  and  Billes  weare  round 
about  him,  hastily  ranne  to  him,  and  then  openlye  in  the  sight  of  all  them 
embraced  and  tooke  him  about  the  necke,  and  kissed  him,  whoe  well  likeing 
her  most  daughterlye  love  and  affection  towards  him,  gave  her  his  fatherlie 
blessinge,  and  manye  goodlie  words  of  comfort  besides,  from  whome  after 
shee  was  departed,  shee  not  satisfied  with  the  former  sight  of  her  deare 
father,  havinge  respecte  neither  to  her  self,  nor  to  the  presse  of  the  people 
and  multitude  that  were  about  him,  suddenlye  turned  backe  againe,  and 
rann  to  him  as  before,  tooke  him  about  the  necke,  and  divers  tymes  togeather 
most  lovingley  kissed  him,  and  at  last  with  a  full  heavie  harte  was  fayne  to 
departe  from  him ;  the  behouldinge  whereof  was  to  manye  of  them  that  were 


SIR   THOMAS   MORE'S   LAST   CONVERSATION      365 

present  thereat  soe  lamentable,  that  it  made  them  for  very  sorrow  to  mourne 
and  weepe.' 

In  his  last  letter  to  his  '  dearely  beloved  daughter,  written  with  a  Cole ', 
Sir  Thomas  More  refers  to  this  incident : — '  And  I  never  liked  your 
manners  better,  then  when  you  kissed  me  last  For  I  like  when 
daughterlie  Love,  and  deare  Charitie  hath  noe  leasure  to  looke  to  worldlie 
Curtesie '. 

Next  morning  '  Sir  Thomas  even,  and  the  U tas  of  St.  Peeter  in  the  yeare 
of  our  Lord  God  1537  .  .  .  earlie  in  the  morninge,  came  to  him  Sir  Thomas 
Pope,  his  singular  frend,  on  messedge  from  the  Kinge  and  his  Councell, 
that  hee  should  before  nyne  of  the  clocke  in  the  same  morninge  suffer 
death,  and  that  therefore  fourthwith  he  should  prepare  himselfe  thereto. 
"  MP  Pope "  sayth  he,  "  for  your  good  tydinges  I  most  hardly  thank  you. 
I  have  beene  allwayes  bounden  much  to  the  Kinges  Highnes  for  the 
benefitts  and  honors  which  he  hath  still  from  tyme  to  tyme  most  bounti- 
fully heaped  upon  mee,  and  yete  more  bounden  I  ame  to  his  Grace  for 
putting  me  into  this  place,  where  I  have  had  convenient  tyme  and  space  to 
have  remembraunce  of  my  end,  and  soe  helpe  me  God  most  of  all  Mr  Pope, 
am  I  bound  to  his  Highnes,  that  it  pleased  him  so  shortlie  to  ridd  me  of 
the  miseries  of  this  wretched  world.  And  therefore  will  I  not  fayle  most 
earnestlye  to  praye  for  his  Grace  both  here,  and  alsoe  in  another  world.  .  .  . 
And  I  beseech  you,  good  Mr  Pope,  to  be  a  meane  unto  his  Highnes,  that 
my  daughter  Margarette  may  be  present  at  my  buriall."  "  The  King  is  well 
contented  allreadie  "  (quoth  Mr  Pope)  "  that  your  Wife,  Children  and  other 
frendes  shall  have  free  libertie  to  be  present  thereat".  "O  how  much  be- 
houlden"  then  said  Sir  Thomas  Moore  "am  I  to  his  Grace,  that  unto  my 
poore  buriall  vouchsafeth  to  have,  so  gratious  Consideration."  Wherewithal! 
Mr  Pope  takeinge  his  leave  of  him  could  not  refrayne  from  weepinge,  which 
Sir  Tho.  Moore  perceavinge,  comforted  him  in  this  wise,  "  Quiete  yourselfe 
good  Mr  Pope,  and  be  not  discomforted.  For  I  trust  that  we  shall  once  in 
heaven  see  each  other  full  merily,  where  we  shall  bee  sure  to  live  and  love 
togeather  in  joyfull  blisse  eternally." 


Wolsey. 

The  Life  of  Wolsey  (1557),  by  George  Cavendish,  a  faithful  and 
devoted  servant  of  the  Cardinal,  who  was  with  him  on  his  death-bed, 
gives  a  wonderfully  interesting  picture  of  this  remarkable  man,  in  affluence 
and  in  adversity,  and  records  a  number  of  conversations  which  have 
a  convincing  air  of  verisimilitude.  The  following  specimens  are  taken 
from  the  Kelmscott  Press  edition  of  1893,  which  follows  the  spelling  of 
the  author's  MS.  in  the  British  Museum. 

'  After  ther  departyng,  my  lord  came  to  the  sayd  howsse  of  Eston  to  his 
lodgyng,  where  he  had  to  supper  with  hyme  dyvers  of  his  frends  of  the  court. 
And  syttyng  at  supper,  in  came  to  hyme  Doctor  Stephyns,  the  secretary, 
late  ambassitor  unto  Rome  ;  but  to  what  entent  he  came  I  know  not ; 
howbeit  my  lord  toke  it  that  he  came  bothe  to  dissembell  a  certeyn 
obedyence  and  love  towards  hyme,  or  ells  to  espie  hys  behaviour,  and  to 
here  his  commynycacion  at  supper.  Not  withstandyng  my  lord  bade  hyme 
well  come,  and  commaundyd  hyme  to  sytt  down  at  the  table  to  supper; 
with  whome  my  lord  had  thys  commynycacion  with  hyme  under  thys 
maner.  Mayster  Secretary,  quod  my  lord,  ye  be-welcome  home  owt  of 
I  tally ;  whan  came  ye  frome  Rome  ?  Forsothe,  quod  he,  I  came  home 


366  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

allmost  a  monethe  agoo  ;  and  where  quod  my  lord  have  you  byn  ever 
sence  ?  Forsothe,  quod  he,  folowyng  the  court  this  progresse.  Than  have 
ye  hunted  and  had  good  game  and  pastyme.  Forsothe,  Syr,  quod  he,  and 
so  I  have,  I  thanke  the  kyngs  Majestic.  What  good  greyhounds  have  ye? 
quod  my  lord.  I  have  some  syr  quod  he.  And  thus  in  huntyng,  and  in 
lyke  disports,  passed  they  all  ther  commynycacion  at  supper.  And  after 
supper  my  lord  and  he  talked  secretly  together  until  it  was  mydnyght  or 
they  departed.1 — p.  143. 

'Than  all  thyng  beyng  ordered  as  it  is  before  reherced,  my  lord 
prepared  hyme  to  depart  by  water.  And  before  his  departyng  he  com- 
maundyd  Syr  William  Gascoyne,  his  treasorer,  to  se  these  thyngs  byfore 
remembred,  delyverd  safely  to  the  kyng  at  his  repayer.  That  don,  the 
seyd  Syr  William  seyd  unto  my  lord.  Syr  I  ame  sorry  for  your  grace,  for 
I  understand  ye  shall  goo  strayt  way  to  the  tower.  Ys  this  the  good 
comfort  and  councell,  quod  my  lord,  that  ye  can  geve  your  mayster  in 
adversitie?  Yt  hathe  byn  allwayes  your  naturall  inclynacion  to  be  very 
light  of  credytt,  and  mych  more  lighter  in  reporting  of  false  newes, 
I  wold  ye  shold  knowe,  Syr  William,  and  all  other  suche  blasphemers, 
that  it  is  nothyng  more  false  than  that,  for  I  never,  thanks  be  to  god, 
deserved  by  no  wayes  to  come  there  under  any  arrest,  allthoughe  it  hathe 
pleased  the  kyng  to  take  my  howse  redy  furnysshed  for  his  pleasyr  at  this 
tyine.  I  wold  all  the  world  knewe,  and  so  I  confesse  to  have  no  thyng, 
other  riches,  honour,  or  dignyty,  that  hathe  not  growen  of  hyme  and  by 
hyme ;  therefore  it  is  my  verie  dewtie  to  surrender  the  same  to  hyme  agayn 
as  his  very  owen,  with  al_  my  hart,  or  ells  I  ware  and  onkynd  servaunt. 
Therefore  goo  your  wayes,  and  geve  good  attendaunce  unto  your  charge, 
that  no  thyng  be  embeselled.' — p.  149. 

'  And  the  next  day  we  removed  to  ShefFeld  Parke,  where  therle  of  Shrews- 
bury lay  within  the  loge,  and  all  the  way  thetherward  the  people  cried  and 
lamented,  as  they  dyd  in  all  places  as  we  rode  byfore.  And  whan  we  came 
in  to  the  parke  of  Sheffeld,  nyghe  to  the  logge,  my  lord  of  Shrewesbury,  with 
my  lady  his  wyfe,  a  trayn  of  gen  till  women,  and  all  my  lords  gentilmen  and 
yomen,  standyng  without  the  gatts  of  the  logge  to  attend  my  lords  commyng, 
to  receyve  hyme  with  myche  honor ;  whome  therle  embraced,  sayeng  these 
words.  My  lord  quod  he,  your  grace  is  most  hartely  welcome  unto  me,  and 
glade  to  se  you  in  my  poore  loge  ;  the  whiche  I  have  often  desired ;  and 
myche  more  gladder  if  you  had  come  after  another  sort.  Ah,  my  gentill 
lord  of  Shrewesbury  quod  my  lord,  I  hartely  thanke  you ;  and  allthoughe 
I  have  no  cause  to  rejoyce,  yet  as  a  sorowe  full  hart  may  joye,  I  rejoyce  my 
chaunce,  which  is  so  good  to  come  into  the  hands  and  custody  of  so  noble 
a  persone,  whose  approved  honor  and  wysdome  hathe  byn  allwayes  right 
well  knowen  to  all  nobell  estats.  And  Sir,  howe  soever  my  ongentill  accusers 
hathe  used  ther  accusations  agenst  me,  yet  I  assure  you,  and  so  byfore  your 
lordshipe  and  all  the  world  do  I  protest,  that  my  demeanor  and  procedyngs 
hathe  byn  just  and  loyall  towards  my  soverayn  and  liege  lord  ;  of  whose 
behaviour  and  doyngs  your  lordshipe  hathe  had  good  experyence  ;  and  evyn 
accordyng  to  my  trowthe  and  faythfulnes,  so  I  beseche  god  helpe  me  in  this 
my  calamytie.  I  dought  nothyng  of  your  trouthe,  quod  therle,  therfore  my 
lorde  I  beseche  you  be  of  good  chere  and  feare  not,  for  I  have  receyved 
letters  from  the  kyng  of  his  owen  hand  in  your  favour  and  entertaynyng  the 
whiche  you  shall  se.  Sir,  I  ame  nothyng  sory  but  that  I  have  not  wherwith 
worthely  to  receyve  you,  and  to  entertayn  you  accordyng  to  your  honour  and 
my  good  wyll ;  but  suche  as  I  have  ye  are  most  hartely  welcome  therto, 
desiryng  you  to  accept  my  good  wyll  accordyngly,  for  I  wol  not  receyve  you 
as  a  prisoner,  but  as  my  good  lord,  and  the  kyngs  trewe  faythfull  subjecte ; 
and  here  is  my  wyfe  come  to  salute  you.  Whome  my  lord  kyst  barehedyd, 
and  all  hir  gentilwomen  ;  and  toke  my  lords  servaunts  by  the  hands,  as  well 
gentilmen  and  yomen  as  other.  Then  these  two  lords  went  arme  in  arme 


CARDINAL   WOLSEY   TAKES   HIS   LEAVE  367 

into  the  logge,  conductyng  my  lord  into  a  fayer  chamber  at  thend  of  a  goodly 
gallery  within  a  newe  tower,  and  here  my  lord  was  lodged.' — p.  246. 

Here  are  some  short  portions  of  dialogue  between  Wolsey  and  his 
friends,  just  before  his  death  : 

'  Uppon  Monday  in  the  mornyng,  as  I  stode  by  his  bedds  side,  abought 
viii  of  the  clocke,  the  wyndowes  beyng  cloose  shett,  havyng  wake  lights 
burnyng  uppon  the  cupbord,  I  behyld  hyme,  as  me  seemed,  drawyng  fast  to 
his  end.  He  perceyved  my  shadowe  uppon  the  wall  by  his  bedds  side, 
asked  who  was  there.  Sir  I  ame  here,  quod  I.  Howe  do  you  ?  quod  he  to 
me.  Very  well  Sir,  if  I  myght  se  your  grace  well.  What  is  it  of  the  clocke  ? 
quod  he  to  me.  Forsothe  Sir,  quod  I,  it  is  past  viii.  of  the  clocke  in  the 
mornyng.  Eight  of  the  clocke,  quod  he,  that  cannot  be,  rehersing  dyvers 
times  eight  of  the  clocke,  eight  of  the  clocke.  Nay,  nay,  quod  he  at  the  last, 
it  cannot  be  viii  of  the  clocke,  for  by  viii  of  the  clocke  ye  shal  loose  your 
mayster ;  for  my  tyme  drawyth  nere  that  I  must  depart  out  of  this  world.' 
.  .  .—p.  265. 

*  Mayster  Kyngston  farewell.  I  can  no  moore,  but  whyshe  all  thyngs  to 
have  good  successe.  My  tyme  drawyth  on  fast.  I  may  not  tary  with  you. 
And  forget  not  I  pray  you,  what  I  have  seyd  and  charged  you  with  all :  for 
whan  I  ame  deade,ye  shall  peradventure  remember  my  words  myche  better. 
And  even  with  these  words  he  began  to  drawe  his  speche  at  lengthe  and  his 
tong  to  fayle,  his  eyes  beyng  set  in  his  hed,  whos  sight  faylled  hyme ;  than 
we  began  to  put  hyme  in  rembraunce  of  Christs  passion,  and  sent  for  the 
Abbott  of  the  place  to  annele  hyme  ;  who  came  with  all  spede  and  mynestred 
unto  hyme  all  the  servyce  to  the  same  belongyng ;  and  caused  also  the  gard 
to  stand  by,  bothe  to  here  hyme  talk  byfore  his  deathe,  and  also  to  bere 
wytnes  of  the  same  ;  and  incontinent  the  clocke  strake  viii,  at  whiche  tyme 
he  gave  uppe  the  gost,  and  thus  departed  he  this  present  lyfe.' — p.  276. 

Latimer. 

The  Sermons  of  Bp.  Latimer  present  good  examples  of  colloquial 
oratory,  and  the  style  is  but  little  removed  from  the  colloquial  style  of  the 
period.  The  following  are  from  the  Sermon  of  the  Ploughers,  preached 
in  1548: 

'  For  they  that  be  lordes  vyll  yll  go  to  plough.  It  is  no  mete  office  for 
them.  It  is  not  semyng  for  their  state.  Thus  came  up  lordyng  loiterers. 
Thus  crept  in  vnprechinge  prelates,  and  so  haue  they  longe  continued. 

'  For  how  many  vnlearned  prelates  haue  we  now  at  this  day  ?  And  no 
maruel.  For  if  ye  plough  men  yat  now  be,  were  made  lordes  they  woulde 
cleane  gyue  ouer  ploughinge,  they  woulde  leaue  of  theyr  labour  and  fall  to 
lordyng  outright,  and  let  the  plough  stand.  And  then  bothe  ploughes  nor 
walkyng  nothyng  shoulde  be  in  the  common  weale  but  honger.  For  euer 
sence  the  Prelates  were  made  Loordes  and  nobles,  the  ploughe  standeth, 
there  is  no  worke  done,  the  people  starue. 

'  Thei  hauke,  thei  hunt,  thei  card,  they  dyce,  they  pastyme  in  theyr  pre- 
lacies with  galaunte  gentlemen,  with  theyr  daunsinge  minyons,  and  with 
theyr  freshe  companions,  so  that  ploughinge  is  set  a  syde.  And  by  the 
lordinge  and  loytryng,  preachynge  and  ploughinge  is  cleane  gone  .  .  . — 
pp.  24,  25. 

'  But  nowe  for  the  defaulte  of  vnpreaching  prelates  me  thinke  I  coulde 
gesse  what  myghte  be  sayed  for  excusynge  of  them  :  They  are  so  troubeled 
wyth  Lordelye  lyuynge,  they  be  so  placed  in  palacies,  couched  in  courtes, 
ruffelynge  in  theyr  rentes,  daunceyng  in  theyr  dominions,  burdened  with 
ambassages,  pamperynge  of  theyr  paunches  lyke  a  monke  that  maketh  his 


368  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

jubilie,  mounchynge  in  their  maungers,  and  moylynge  in  their  gaye  manoures 
and  mansions,  and  so  troubeled  wyth  loyterynge  in  theyr  Lordeshyppes  :  that 
they  canne  not  attende  it.  They  are  other  wyse  occupyed,  some  in  the 
kynges  matters,  some  are  ambassadoures,  some  of  the  pryuie  counsell,  some 
to  furnyshe  the  courte,  some  are  Lordes  of  the  Parliamente,  some  are 
presidentes,  and  some  comptroleres  of  myntes.  Well,  well. 

Is  thys  theyr  duetye  ?  Is  thys  theyr  offyce  ?  Is  thys  theyr  callyng  ? 
Should  we  haue  ministers  of  the  church  to  be  comptrollers  of  the  myntes  ? 
Is  thys  a  meete  office  for  a  prieste  that  hath  cure  of  soules  ?  Is  this  hys 
charge  ?  I  woulde  here  aske  one  question  :  I  would  fayne  knowe  who  comp- 
trolleth  the  deuyll  at  home  at  his  parishe,  whyle  he  comptrolleth  the  mynte  ? 
If  the  Apostles  mighte  not  leaue  the  office  of  preaching  to  be  deacons,  shall 
one  leaue  it  for  myntyng  ? ' 

Wilson's  Arte  of  Rhetor ique  (1560)  has  a  section  'Of  deliting  the 
hearers,  and  stirring  them  to  laughter '  in  which  are  enumerated  '  What 
are  the  kindes  of  sporting,  or  mouing  to  laughter'.  The  subject  is 
illustrated  by  various  '  pleasant '  stories,  which  if  few  of  them  would  now 
make  us  laugh,  are  at  least  couched  in  a  very  easy  and  colloquial  style 
and  enlivened  by  scraps  of  actual  conversation.  The  most  amusing 
element  in  the  whole  chapter  is  the  attitude  of  the  writer  to  the  subject, 
and  the  combination  of  seriousness  and  scurrility  with  which  it  is  handled. 

'  The  occasion  of  laughter '  says  Wilson,  '  and  the  meane  that  maketh  us  mery 
...  is  the  fondnes,  the  filthines,  the  deformitie,  and  all  such  euill  be- 
hauiour  as  we  see  to  be  in  other?  .  .  .  Now  when  we  would  abashe  a 
man  for  some  words  that  he  hath  spoken,  and  can  take  none  aduauntage 
of  his  person,  or  making  of  his  bodie,  we  either  doubt  him  at  the  first, 
and  make  him  beleeue  that  he  is  no  wiser  then  a  Goose :  or  els  we  confute 
wholy  his  sayings  with  some  pleasaunt  iest,  or  els  we  extenuate  and  diminish 
his  doings  by  some  pretie  meanes,  or  els  we  cast  the  like  in  his  dish,  and 
with  some  other  devise,  dash  hym  out  of  countenance :  or  last  of  all,  we 
laugh  him  to  scorne  out  right,  and  sometimes  speake  almost  neuer  a  word, 
but  only  in  continuaunce,  shewe  our  selues  pleasaunt'. — p.  136. 

'  A  frend  of  mine,  and  a  good  fellowe,  more  honest  then  wealthie,  yea  and 
more  pleasant  then  thriftie,  hauing  need  of  a  nagge  for  his  iourney  that  he 
had  in  hande,  and  being  in  the  countrey,  minded  to  go  to  Partnaie  faire  in 
Lincolnshire,  not  farre  from  the  place  where  he  then  laie,  and  meeting  by  the 
way  one  of  his  acquaintaunce,  told  him  his  arrande,  and  asked  him  how 
horses  went  at  the  Faire.  The  other  aunswered  merely  and  saide,  some 
trot  sir,  and  some  amble,  as  farre  as  I  can  see.  If  their  paces  be  altered, 
I  praye  you  tell  me  at  our  next  meeting.  And  so  rid  away  as  fast  as  his 
horse  could  cary  him,  without  saying  any  word  more,  whereat  he  then 
b.eing  alone,  fel  a  laughing  hartely  to  him  self,  and  looked  after  a  good 
while,  vntil  the  other  was  out  of  sight.' — p.  140. 

'  A  Gentleman  hauing  heard  a  Sermon  at  Panics,  and  being  come  home, 
was  asked  what  the  preacher  said.  The  Gentleman  answered  he  would 
first  heare  what  his  man  could  saie,  who  then  waited  vpon  him,  with  his 
hatte  and  cloake,  and  calling  his  man  to  him,  sayd,  nowe  sir,  whate  haue 
you  brought  from  the  Sermon.  Forsothe  good  Maister,  sayd  the  seruaunt 
your  cloake  and  your  hatte.  A  honest  true  dealing  seruaunt  out  of  doubt, 
plaine  as  a  packsaddle,  hauing  a  better  soule  to  God,  though  his  witte  was 
simple,  then  those  haue,  that  vnder  the  colour  of  hearing,  giue  them  selues 
to  priuie  picking,  and  so  bring  other  mens  purses  home  in  their  bosomes, 
in  the  steade  of  other  mens  Sermons.' — pp.  141-2. 

These  two  stories  are  intended  to  illustrate  the  point  that  '  We  shall 
delite  the  hearers,  when  they  looke  for  one  answere,  and  we  make  them 


'DELITING  THE   HEARERS'  369 

a  cleane  contrary,  as  though  we  would  not  seeme  to  vnderstand  what  they 
would  haue '. 

*  Churlish  aunsweres  like  the  hearers  sometimes  very  well.  When  the 
father  was  cast  in  judgement,  the  Sonne  seeing  him  weepe:  why  weepe 
you  Father?  (quoth  he)  To  whom  his  Father  aunswered.  What?  Shall 
I  sing  I  pray  thee  seeing  by  Lawe  I  am  condemned  to  dye.  Socrates 
likewise  hieing  mooued  of  his  wife,  because  he  should  dye  an  innocent 
and  guiltlesse  in  the  Law:  Why  for  shame  woman  (quoth  he)  wilt  thou 
haue  me  to  dye  giltie  and  deseruing.  When  one  had  falne  into  a  ditch, 
an  other  pitying  his  fall,  asked  him  and  saied  :  Alas  how  got  you  into 
that  pit  ?  Why  Gods  mother,  quoth  the  other,  doest  thou  aske  me  how 
I  got  in,  nay  tell  me  rather  in  the  mischiefe,  how  I  shall  get  out.' 

The  nearest  approach  to  the  colloquial  style  in  Bacon  is  to  be  found 
in  the  Apophthegms,  in  which  are  scraps  of  conversation.  A  few  may  be 
quoted,  if  only  on  account  of  the  author. 

'  Master  Mason  of  Trinity  College,  sent  his  pupil  to  an  other  of  the  fellows, 
to  borrow  a  book  of  him,  who  told  him,  "  I  am  loth  to  lend  my  books  out  of 
my  chamber,  but  if  it  please  thy  tutor  to  come  and  read  upon  it  in  my  chamber, 
he  shall  as  long  as  he  will."  It  was  winter,  and  some  days  after  the  same 
fellow  sent  to  Mr  Mason  to  borrow  his  bellows  ;  but  Mr  Mason  said  to  his 
pupil,  "  I  am  loth  to  lend  my  bellows  out  of  my  chamber,  but  if  thy  tutor 
would  come  and  blow  the  fire  in  my  chamber,  he  shall  as  long  as  he  will." 
—Apophth.  47,  p.  113. 

( There  were  fishermen  drawing  the  river  at  Chelsea:  Mr  Bacon  came 
thither  by  chance  in  the  afternoon,  and  offered  to  buy  their  draught :  they 
were  willing.  He  asked  them  what  they  would  take  ?  They  asked  thirty 
shillings.  Mr  Bacon  offered  them  ten.  They  refused  it.  Why  then  said 
Mr  Bacon,  I  will  be  only  a  looker  on.  They  drew  and  catched  nothing. 
Saith  Mr  Bacon,  Are  not  you  mad  fellows  now,  that  might  have  had  an 
angel  in  your  purse,  to  have  made  merry  withal,  and  to  have  warmed  you 
thoroughly,  and  now  you  must  go  home  with  nothing.  Ay  but,  saith  the 
fishermen,  we  had  hope  then  to  make  a  better  gain  of  it.  Saith  Mr  Bacon, 
"  Well  my  master,  then  I  will  tell  you,  hope  is  a  good  breakfast,  but  it  is 
a  bad  supper." — p.  136. 

Otway's  Comedies  have  all  the  coarseness  and  raciness  of  dialogue 
of  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  a  pretty  vein  of  genuine 
comicality.  They  are  packed  with  the  familiar  slang  and  colloquialisms 
of  the  period.  A  few  passages  from  Friendship  in  Fashion  illustrate 
at  once  the  speech  and  the  manners  of  the  day. 


Enter  LADY  SQUEAMISH  at  the  Door. 

Sir  Noble  Clumsey.  Hah,  my  Lady  Cousin  !  —Faith  Madam  you  see  I  am 
at  it. 

Malagene.  The  Devil's  wit,  I  think ;  we  could  no  sooner  talk  of  wh — 
but  she  must  come  in,  with  a  pox  to  her.  Madam,  your  Ladyship's  most 
humble  Servant. 

Ldy  Squ.  Oh,  odious  !  insufferable !  who  would  have  thought  Cousin,  you 
would  have  serv'd  me  so— fough,  how  he  stinks  of  wine,  I  can  smell  him 
hither. — How  have  you  the  Patience  to  hear  the  Noise  of  Fiddles,  and 
spend  your  time  in  nasty  drinking  ? 

Sir  Noble.  Hum !  'tis  a  good  Creature :  Lovely  Lady,  thou  shalt  take 
thy  Glass. 

Ldy  Squ.    Uh  gud  ;  murder !  I  had  rather  you  had  offered  me  a  toad. 

Bb 


370  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

Sir  N.  Then  Malagene,  here's  a  Health  to  my  Lady  Cousin's  Pelion 
upon  Ossa.  [Drinks  and  breaks  the  Glass.] 

Ldy  Squ.    Lord,  dear  Mr  Malagene  what 's  that  ? 

Mai.  A  certain  Place  Madam,  in  Greece,  much  talk't  of  by  the  Ancients  ; 
the  noble  Gentleman  is  well  read. 

Ldy  Squ.    Nay  he 's  an  ingenious  Person  I'll  assure  you. 

Sir  N.  Now  Lady  bright,  I  am  wholly  thy  Slave:  Give  me  thy  Hand, 
I'll  go  straight  and  begin  my  Grandmother's  Kissing  Dance ;  but  first  deign 
me  the  private  Honour  of  thy  Lip. 

Ldy  Squ.  Nay,  fie  Sir  Noble  !  how  I  hate  you  now  !  for  shame  be  not  so 
rude  :  I  swear  you  are  quite  spoiled.  Get  you  gone  you  good-natur'd  Toad 
you.  [Exeunt^ 

Malegene.  .  .  .  I'm  a  very  good  Mimick  ;  I  can  act  Punchinello,  Scara- 
mouchir,  Harlequin,  Prince  Prettyman  or  anything.  I  can  act  the  rumbling 
of  a  Wheel-barrow. 

Valentine.     The  rumbling  of  a  Wheel-barrow  ! 

Mai.  Ay,  the  rumbling  of  a  Wheel-barrow,  so  I  say — Nay  more  than  that, 
I  can  act  a  Sow  and  Pigs,  Saussages  a  broiling,  a  Shoulder  of  Mutton  a 
roasting :  I  can  act  a  fly  in  a  Honey-pot. 

Truman.    That  indeed  must  be  the  Effect  of  very  curious  Observation. 

Mai.  No,  hang  it,  I  never  make  it  my  business  to  observe  anything,  that 
is  Mechanicke.  But  all  this  I  do,  you  shall  see  me  if  you  will :  But  here 
comes  her  Ladyship  and  Sir  Noble. 

Ldy  Squ.  Oh,  dear  Mr  Truman,  rescue  me.  Nay  Sir  Noble  for  Heav'n's 
sake. 

Sir  N.  I  tell  thee  Lady,  I  must  embrace  thee  :  Sir,  do  you  know  me !  I  am 
Sir  Noble  Clumsey:  I  am  a  Rogue  of  an  Estate,  and  I  live— Do  you  want 
any  money  ?  I  have  fifty  pounds. 

Val.  Nay  good  Sir  Noble,  none  of  your  Generosity  we  beseech  you.  The 
Lady,  the  Lady,  Sir  Noble. 

Sir  N.  Nay,  'tis  all  one  to  me  if  you  won't  take  it,  there  it  is. — Hang 
Money,  my  Father  was  an  Alderman. 

Mai.    "Pis  pity  good  Guineas  should  be  spoil'd,  Sir  Noble,  by  your  leave. 

[Picks  up  the  Guineas^ 

Sir  N.    But,  Sir,  you  will  not  keep  my  Money  ? 

Mai.     Oh,  hang  Money,  Sir,  your  Father  was  an  Alderman. 

Sir  N.    Well,  get  thee  gone  for  an  Arch- Wag— I  do  but  sham  all  this 
while  : — but  by  Dad  he 's  pure  Company.  .  .  . 
.  .  .  Lady,  once  more  I  say  be  civil,  and  come  kiss  me. 

Val.    Well  done  Sir  Noble,  to  her,  never  spare. 

Ldy 'Squ.  I  maybe  even  with  you  tho  for  all  this,  Mr  Valentine:  Nay 
dear  Sir  Noble  :  Mr  Truman,  I'll  swear  he'll  put  me  into  Fits. 

Sir  N.  No,  but  let  me  salute  the  Hem  of  thy  Garment.  Wilt  thou  marry 
me  ?  [Kneels.] 

Mai.    Faith  Madam  do,  let  me  make  the  Match. 

Ldy  Squ.  Let  me  die  Mr  Malagene,  you  are  a  strange  Man,  and  I'll 
swear  have  a  great  deal  of  Wit.  Lord,  why  don't  you  write  ? 

Mai.  Write  ?  I  thank  your  Ladyship  for  that  with  all  my  Heart.  No 
I  have  a  Finger  in  a  Lampoon  or  so  sometimes,  that 's  all. 

Truman.     But  he  can  act. 

Ldy  Squ.  I'll  swear,  and  so  he  does  better  than  any  one  upon  our 
Theatres;  I  have  seen  him.  Oh  the  English  Comedians  are  nothing,  not 
comparable  to  the  French  or  Italian :  Besides  we  want  Poets. 

Sir  N.  Poets !  Why  I  am  a  Poet ;  I  have  written  three  Acts  of  a  Play, 
and  have  nam'd  it  already.  'Tis  to  be  a  Tragedy. 

Ldy  Squ.    Oh  Cousin,  if  you  undertake  to  write  a  Tragedy,  take  my 


1  PLEASURE   INTOLERABLE'  371 

Counsel :  Be  sure  to  say  soft  melting  tender  things  in  it  that  may  be  moving, 
and  make  your  Lady's  Characters  virtuous  whate'er  you  do. 

Sir  N.  Moving  !  Why,  I  can  never  read  it  myself  but  it  makes  me  laugh  : 
well,  'tis  the  pretty'st  Plot,  and  so  full  of  Waggery. 

Ldy  Squ.     Oh  ridiculous ! 

Mai.     But  Knight,  the  Title ;  Knight,  the  Title. 

Sir  N.  Why  let  me  see  ;  'tis  to  be  called  The  Merry  Conceits  of  Love  ; 
or  the  Life  and  Death  of  the  Emperor  Charles  the  Fifth,  with  the  Humours 
of  his  Dog  Boabdillo. 

Mai.     Ha,  ha,  ha.  .  .  . 

Ldy  Squ.  But  dear  Mr  Malagene,  won't  you  let  us  see  you  act  a  little 
something  of  Harlequin?  I'll  swear  you  do  it  so  naturally,  it  makes  me 
think  I'm  at  the  Louvre  or  Whitehall  all  the  time.  [Mai.  acts.}  O  Lord, 
don't,  don't  neither ;  I'll  swear  you'll  make  me  burst.  Was  there  ever  any- 
thing so  pleasant  ? 

Trum.  Was  ever  anything  so  affected  and  ridiculous  ?  Her  whole  Life 
sure  is  a  continued  Scene  of  Impertinence.  What  a  damn'd  Creature  is 
a  decay'd  Woman,  with  all  the  exquisite  Silliness  and  Vanity  of  her  Sex,  yet 
none  of  the  Charms  !  [Mai.  speaks  in  Punchinello's  voice.] 

Ldy  Squ.  O  Lord,  that,  that ;  that  is  a  Pleasure  intolerable.  Well,  let 
me  die  if  I  can  hold  out  any  longer. 

A  Comparison  between  the  Stages,  with  an  Examen  of  the  Generous 
Conqueror,  printed  in  1702,  is  a  dialogue  between  'Two  Gentlemen', 
Sullen  and  Ramble  (see  below),  and  'a  Critick',upon  the  plays  of  the  day  and 
others  of  an  earlier  date.  The  style  is  that  of  easy  and  natural  familiar  con- 
versation, with  little  or  no  artificiality,  and  incidentally,  the  tract  throws 
light  upon  contemporary  manners  and  social  habits.  The  following 
examples  are  designed  to  illustrate  the  colloquial  handling  of  indifferent 
topics,  and  the  small-talk  of  the  early  eighteenth  century,  as  well  as 
the  treatment  of  the  immediate  subject  of  the  essay. 

Sullen.  They  may  talk  of  the  Country  and  what  they  will,  but  the  Park 
for  my  money. 

Ramble.  In  its  proper  Season  I  grant  you,  when  the  Mall  is  pav'd  with 
lac'd  shoes  ;  when  the  Air  is  perfum'd  with  the  rosie  Breath  of  so  many  fine 
Ladies ;  when  from  one  end  to  the  other  the  Sight  is  entertain'd  with  nothing 
but  Beauty,  and  the  whole  Prospect  looks  like  an  Opera. 

Sull.    And  when  is  it  out  of  Season  Ramble  ? 

Ram.  When  the  Beauties  desert  it ;  when  the  absence  of  this  charming 
Company  makes  it  a  Solitude  :  Then  Sullen,  the  Park  is  to  me  no  more  than 
a  Wilderness,  a  very  Common ;  and  a  Grove  in  a  country  Garden  with  a 
pretty  Lady  is  by  much  the  pleasanter  Landscape. 

Sull.  To  a  Man  of  your  Quicksilver  Constitution  it  may  be  so,  and  the 
Cuckoo  in  May  may  be  Music  fee  a  hundred  Miles  off,  when  all  the  Masters 
in  Town  can't  divert  you. 

Ram.  I  love  everything  as  Nature  and  the  Nature  of  Pleasure  has  con- 
triv'd  it ;  I  love  the  Town  in  Winter,  because  then  the  Country  looks  aged 
and  deform'd ;  and  I  hate  the  Town  in  Summer,  because  then  the  Country  is 
in  its  Glory,  and  looks  like  a  Mistress  just  drest  out  for  enjoyment. 

r>    jj       -\j 11  j:_j.: :_u»j  .    vr—i.  i:i_^  „   i.>..;j~    u,.*  i:i*A  «  "\R\r-*- 

Ram. 
enough 
my  Abode  with  my  Inclination. 

Sull.  I  differ  from  you  for  the  very  Reason  you  give  for  your  change ;  the 
Town  is  evermore  the  same  to  me ;  and  tho'  the  Season  makes  it  look  after 
another  manner,  yet  still  it  has  a  Face  to  please  me  one  way  or  other,  and 
both  Winter  and  Summer  make  it  agreeable. —pp.  1-3. 

B  b  2 


372  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

Here  is  a  conversation  during  dinner  at  the  *  Blew  Posts '. 

Critik.    What  have  you  order'd  ? 

Ramb.  A  Brace  of  Carp  stew'd,  a  piece  of  Lamb,  and  a  Sallet ;  d'ee 
like  it? 

Crit.  I  like  anything  in  the  World  that  will  indure  Cutting :  Prithee 
Mr  Cook  make  haste  or  expect  I  shall  Storm  thy  Kitchin. 

Sull.  Why  thou'rt  as  hungry  as  if  thou  hadst  been  keeping  Garrison  in 
Mantua :  I  don't  know  whether  Flesh  and  Blood  is  safe  in  thy  Company. 

Crit.  I  wish  with  all  my  Heart  thou  wert  there,  that  thou  mightst  under- 
stand what  it  is  to  fast  as  I  have  done :  Come,  to  our  Places  .  .  .  the  blessed 
hour  is  come.  . . .  Sit,  sit  ...  fall  to,  Graces  are  out  of  Fashion. 

Ramb.     I  wish  the  Charming  Madam  Subligny  were  here. 

Crit.  Gad  so  don't  I :  I  had  rather  her  Feet  were  pegg'd  down  to  the 
Stage ;  at  present  my  Appetite  stands  another  way  :  Waiter,  some  Wine  .  . . 
or  I  shall  choak.  .  .  . 

Sull.  This  Fellow  eats  like  an  Ostrich,  the  Bones  of  these  great  Fish  are 
no  more  to  him  than  the  Bones  of  an  Anchovy  ;  they  melt  upon  his  Tongue 
like  marrow  Puddings. 

Crit.  Ay,  you  may  talk,  but  I'm  sure  I  find  'em  not  so  gentle ;  here 's 
one  yet  in  my  Throat  will  be  my  death  ;  the  Flask  .  . .  the  Flask  .  .  . , 

Ramb.     But  Critick,  how  did  you  like  the  Play  last  Night  ? 

Crit.  I'll  tell  you  by  and  by,  Lord  Sir,  you  won't  give  a  Man  time  to  break 
his  Fast :  This  Fish  is  such  washy  Meat  ...  a  Man  can't  fix  his  knife  in 't, 
it  runs  away  from  him  as  if  it  were  still  ..alive,  and  was  afraid  of  the  Hook : 
Put  the  Lamb  this  way. 

Sull.  The  Rogue  quarrels  with  the  Fish,  and  yet  you  cou'd  eat  up  the 
whole  Pond ;  the  late  Whale  at  Cuckold's  point,  with  all  its  oderiferous  Gar- 
badge,  wou'd  ha'  been  but  a  Meal  to  him :  Well,  how  do  you  like  the  Lamb  ? 
does  that  feel  your  knife  ? 

Crit.  A  little  more  substantial,  and  not  much  :  Well,  I  shou'd  certainly  be 
starv'd  if  I  were  to  feed  with  the  French,  I  hate  their  thin  slops,  their  Pot- 
tages, Frigaces,  and  Ragous,  where  a  Man  may  bury  his  Hand  in  the  Sauce, 
and  dine  upon  Steam :  No,  no,  commend  me  to  King  Jemmy's  English 
Surloin,  in  whose  gentle  Flesh  a  Man  may  plunge  a  Case-knife  to  the  tip  of 
the  Handle,  and  then  draw  out  a  Slice  that  will  surfeit  half  a  Score  Yeoman  of 
the  Guard.  Some  Wine  ye  Dog  .  .  .  there  .  .  .  now  I  have  slain  the  Giant ; 
and  now  to  your  Question  .  . .  what  was  it  you  askt  me  ? 

Ramb.    Won't  you  stay  the  Desert  ?    Some  Tarts  and  Cheese  ? 

Crit.  I  abominate  Tarts  and  Cheese,  they're  like  a  faint  After-kiss,  when 
a  Man  is  sated  with  better  Sport ;  there 's  no  more  Nourishment  in  'em,  than 
in  the  paring  of  an  Apple.  Here  Waiter  take  away.  .  .  . 

Ramb.    Then  remove  every  Thing  but  the  Table-cloth.'  .  . . 

Ramb.  Here  Waiter — send  to  the  Booksellers  in  Pell  mell  for  the  Generous 
Conqueror  and  make  haste  .  .  .  you  say  you  know  the  Author  Critick. 

Crit.  By  sight  I  do,  but  no  further  ;  he 's  a  Gentleman  of  good  Extraction, 
and  for  ought  I  know,  of  good  Sense. 

Ramb.  Surely  that's  not  to  beTquestioned ;  I  take  it  for  granted  that 
a  Man  that  can  write  a  Play,  must  be  a  Man  of  good  Sense. 

Crit.  That' is  not  always  a  consequence.  I  have  known  many  a  singing 
Master  have  a  worse  voice  than  a  Parish  Clerk,  and  I  know  two  dancing 
Masters  at  this  time,  that  are  directly  Cripples  :  .  .  .  A  Ship-builder  may  fit 
up  a  Man  of  War  for  the  West  Indies,  and  perhaps  not  know  his  Compas  : 
Or  a  great  Traveller,  with  Heylin,  that  writ  the  Geography  of  the  whole 
World,  may,  like  him,  not  know^the  way  from  the  next  Village  to  his 
own  House. 

Ramb.    Your  Comparisons  are  remote  Mr  Critick. 

Crit.    Not  so  remote  as  some  successful  Authors  are  from  good  sense : 


GENERAL  CONVERSATION   AFTER  DINNER        373 

Wit  and  Sense  are  no  more  the  same  than  Wit  and  Humour ;  nay  there  is 
even  in  Wit  an  uncertain  Mode,  a  variable  Fashion,  that  is  as  unstable  as 
the  Fashion  of  our  Cloaths  :  This  may  be  prov'd  by  their  Works  who  writ 
a  hundred  Years  ago,  compar'd  with  some  of  the  modern  ;  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
Don,  Overbury,  nay  Ben  himself  took  singular  delight  in  playing  with  their 
Words :  Sir  Philip  is  everywhere  in  his  Arcadia  jugling,  which  certainly  by 
the  example  of  so  great  a  Man,  proves  that  sort  of  Wit  then  in  Fashion  ;  now 
that  kind  of  Wit  is  call'd  Punning  and  Quibbling,  and  is  become  too  low  for 
the  Stage,  nay  even  for  ordinary  Converse ;  so  that  when  we  find  a  Man  who 
still  loves  that  old  fashion'd  Custom,  we  make  him  remarkable,  as  who  is 
more  remarkable  than  Capt.  Swan. 

Ramb.  Nay,  your  Quibble  does  well  now  a  Days,  your  best  Comedies 
tast  of  'em  ;  the  Old  Batchelor  is  rank. 

Crit.  But  'tis  every  Day  decreasing,  and  Queen  Betty's  Ruff  and  Fardin- 
gale  are  not  more  exploded  ;  But  Sense  Gentlemen,  is  and  will  be  the  same 
to  the  World's  end. 

Sull.  And  Nonsense  is  infinite,  for  England  never  had  such  a  Stock  and 
such  Variety. 

Ramb.  Yet  I  have  heard  the  Poets  that  flourish'd  in  the  last  Reign  but 
two,  complain  of  the  same  Calamity,  and  before  that  Reign  the  thing  was  the 
same :  All  Ages  have  produced  Murmurers  ;  and  in  the  best  of  times  you  shall 
hear  the  Trades-man  cry — Alas  Neighbour  !  sad  Times,  very  hard  Times  . . . 
not  a  Penny  of  Money  stirring  .  . .  Trade  is  quite  dead,  and  nothing  but  War 
.  .  .  War  and  Taxes  .  .  .  when  to  my  knowledge  the  gluttonous  Rogue  shall 
drink  his  two  Bottles  at  Dinner,  and  his  Wife  have  half  a  Score  of  rich  Suits, 
a  purse  of  Gold  for  the  Gallant,  and  fifty  Pounds  worth  of  Gold  and  Silver 
Lace  on  her  under  Petticoats. 

Sull.  Nay  certainly,  this  that  Ramble  now  speaks  of  is  a  great  Truth ; 
those  hypocritical  Rogues  are  always  grumbling ;  and  tho'  our  Nation  never 
had  such  a  Trade,  or  so  much  Money,  yet  'tis  all  too  little  for  their  voracious 
Appetites  :  As  I  live — says  he,  I  can't  afford  this  Silk  one  Penny  cheaper — 
d'ee  mind  the  Rogues  Equivocation  ?  as  I  live— that  is,  he  lives  like  a  Gen- 
tleman— but  let  him  live  like  a  Tradesman  and  be  hang'd ;  let  him  wear 
a  Frock,  and  his  Wife  a  blew  Apron. 

Ramb.    See,  the  Book 's  here  :  go  Waiter  and  shut  the  Door.— pp.  76-9. 

The  dialogue  of  Richardson,  '  sounynge  in  moral  vertu  ',  devoid  of  all 
the  lighter  touches,  is  typical  of  the  age  that  was  beginning,  the  age  of 
reaction  against  the  levities  and  negligences  in  speech  and  conduct 
of  the  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  centuries. 

The  following  conversation  of  rather  an  agitated  character,  between 
a  mother  and  daughter,  is  from  Letter  XVI,  in  Clarissa  Har lowe  (1748): 

1  .  .  .  My  mother  came  up  to  me.  I  love,  she  was  pleased  to  say,  to  come 
into  this  appartment.— No  emotions  child  !  No  flutters !—  Am  I  not  your 
mother  ? — Am  I  not  your  fond,  your  indulgent  mother  ? — Do  not  discompose 
me  by  discomposing  your  self  \  Do  not  occasion  me  uneasiness,  when  I  would 
give  you  nothing  but  pleasure.  Come  my  dear,  we  will  go  into  your  closet. . . . 
Hear  me  out  and  then  speak  ;  for  I  was  going  to  expostulate.  You  are  no 
stranger  to  the  end  of  Mr  Solmes's  visits — O  Madam  !— Hear  me  out; 
and  then  speak. — He  is  not  indeed  everything  I  wish  him  to  be :  but  he  is 
a  man  of  probity  and  has  no  vices— No  vices  Madam  ! — Hear  me  out  child. — 
You  have  not  behaved  much  amiss  to  him  :  we  have  seen  with  pleasure  that 
you  have  not— O  Madam,  must  I  not  now  speak  !  I  shall  have  done  presently. 
—A  young  creature  of  your  virtuous  and  pious  turn,  she  was  pleased  to  say, 
cannot  surely  love  a  proflicate ;  you  love  your  brother  too  well,  to  wish  to  see 
any  one  who  had  like  to  have  killed  him,  and  who  threatened  your  uncles 
and  defies  us  all.  You  have  had  your  own  way  six  or  seven  times  :  we  want 


374  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

to  secure  you  against  a  man  so  vile.  Tell  me  (I  have  a  right  to  know) 
whether  you  prefer  this  man  to  all  others  ? — Yet  God  forbid  that  I  should 
know  you  do  ;  for  such  a  declaration  would  make  us  all  miserable.  Yet  tell 
me,  are  your  affections  engaged  to  this  man  ? 

I  know  what  the  inference  would  be  if  I  had  said  they  were  not.  You  hesitate 
— You  answer  me  not — You  cannot  answer  me  —  Rising — Nevermore  will 
I  look  upon  you  with  an  eye  of  favour — O  Madam,  Madam !  Kill  me  not 
with  your  displeasure — I  would  not,  I  need  not,  hesitate  one  moment,  did 
I  not  dread  the  inference,  if  I  answer  you  as  you  wish. — Yet  be  that  inference 
what  it  will,  your  threatened  displeasure  will  make  me  speak.  And  I  declare 
to  you,  that  I  know  not  my  own  heart  if  it  be  not  absolutely  free.  And  pray, 
let  me  ask  my  dearest  Mamma,  in  what  has  my  conduct  been  faulty,  that 
like  a  giddy  creature,  I  must  be  forced  to  marry,  to  save  me  from — from 
what  ?  Let  me  beseech  you  Madam  to  be  the  Guardian  of  my  reputation ! 
Let  not  your  Clarissa  be  precipitated  into  a  state  she  wishes  not  to  enter  into 
with  any  man  !  And  this  upon  a  supposition  that  otherwise  she  shall  marry 
herself,  and  disgrace  her  whole  family. 

When  then,  Clary  [passing  over  the  force  of  my  plea]  if  your  heart  be  free 
— O  my  beloved  Mamma,  let  the  usual  generosity  of  your  dear  heart  operate 
in  my  favour.  Urge  not  upon  me  the  inference  that  made  me  hesitate. 

I  won't  be  interrupted,  Clary — You  have  seen  in  my  behaviour  to  you,  on 
this  occasion,  a  truly  maternal  tenderness ;  you  have  observed  that  I  have 
undertaken  the  task  with  some  reluctance,  because  the  man  is  not  everything ; 
and  because  I  know  you  carry  your  notions  of  perfection  in  a  man  too  high. 
— Dearest  Madam,  this  one  time  excuse  me !  Is  there  then  any  danger  that 
I  should  be  guilty  of  an  imprudent  thing  for  the  man's  sake  you  hint  at  ? 
Again  interrupted !  Am  I  to  be  questioned,  and  argued  with  ?  You  know 
this  won't  do  somewhere  else.  You  know  it  won't.  What  reason  then, 
ungenerous  girl,  can  you  have  for  arguing  with  me  thus,  but  because  you 
think  from  my  indulgence  to  you  you  may  ? 

What  can  I  say  ?  What  can  I  do  ?  What  must  that  cause  be  that  will  not 
bear  being  argued  upon  ? 

Again  !     Clary  Harlowe — 

Dearest  Madam  forgive  me :  it  was  always  my  pride  and  my  pleasure  to 
obey  you.  But  look  upon  that  man — see  but  the  disagreeableness  of  his 
person — Now,  Clary,  do  I  see  whose  person  you  have  in  your  eye ! — Now  is 
Mr  Solmes,  I  see,  but  comparatively  disagreeable  ;  disagreeable  only  as  an- 
other man  has  a  much  more  specious  person. 

But,  Madam,  are  not  his  manners  equally  so  ? — Is  not  his  person  the  true 
representation  of  his  mind  ? — That  other  man  is  not,  shall  not  be,  anything 
to  me,  release  me  from  this  one  man,  whom  my  heart,  unbidden,  resists. 

Condition  thus  with  your  father.  Will  he  bear,  do  you  think,  to  be  thus 
dialogued  with  ?  Have  I  not  conjured  you,  as  you  value  my  peace — What  is 
it  that  /  do  not  give  up  ? — This  very  task,  because  I  apprehended  you  would 
not  be  easily  persuaded,  is  a  task  indeed  upon  me.  And  will  you  give  up 
nothing  ?  Have  you  not  refused  as  many  as  have  been  offered  to  you  ?  If  you 
would  not  have  us  guess  for  whom,  comply ;  for  comply  you  must,  or  be 
looked  upon  as  in  a  state  of  defiance  with  your  whole  family.  And  saying 
thus  she  arose,  and  went  from  me.' 

Miss  Austen. 

The  following  examples  of  Miss  Austen's  dialogue  are  not  selected 
because  they  are  the  most  sparkling  conversations  in  her  works,  but 
rather  because  they  appear  to  be  typical  of  the  way  of  speech  of  the 
period,  and  further  they  illustrate  Miss  Austen's  incomparable  art.  The 
first  passage  is  from  Emma,  which  was  written  between  1 8 1 1  and 


CONVERSATION   OF   MR,   WOODHOUSE  375 

1816.  Mr.  Woodhouse  and  his  daughter  have  just  received  an  invitation 
to  dine  with  the  Coles,  enriched  tradespeople  who  had  settled  in  the 
neighbourhood.  Emma's  view  of  them  was  that  they  were  '  very  respect- 
able in  their  way,  but  they  ought  to  be  taught  that  it  was  not  for  them  to 
arrange  the  times  on  which  the  superior  families  would  visit  them '.  On 
the  present  occasion,  however,  '  she  was  not  absolutely  without  inclina- 
tion for  the  party.  The  Coles  expressed  themselves  so  properly — there 
was  so  much  real  attention  in  the  manner  of  it — so  much  consideration 
for  her  father.'  Emma  having  decided  in  her  own  mind  to  accept  the 
invitation — some  of  her  intimate  friends  were  going — it  remained  to 
explain  to  her  father,  the  ailing  and  fussy  Mr.  Woodhouse,  that  he 
would  be  left  alone  without  his  daughter's  company  for  the  evening,  as  it 
was  out  of  the  question  that  he  should  accompany  her.  '  He  was  soon 
pretty  well  resigned.' 

' "  I  am  not  fond  of  dinner- visiting "  said  he  ;  "I  never  was.  No  more  is 
Emma.  Late  hours  do  not  agree  with  us.  I  am  sorry  Mr  and  Mrs  Cole 
should  have  done  it.  I  think  it  would  be  much  better  if  they  would  come  in 
one  afternoon  next  summer  and  take  their  tea  with  us ;  take  us  in  their 
afternoon  walk,  which  they  might  do,  as  our  hours  are  so  reasonable,  and 
yet  get  home  without  being  out  in  the  damp  of  the  evening.  The  dews  of 
a  summer  evening  are  what  I  would  not  expose  anybody  to.  However  as 
they  are  so  very  desirous  to  have  dear  Emma  dine  with  them,  and  as  you 
will  both  be  there  [this  refers  to  his  friend  Mr  Weston  and  his  wife],  and 
Mr  Knightley  too,  to  take  care  of  her  I  cannot  wish  to  prevent  it,  provided 
the  weather  be  what  it  ought,  neither  damp,  nor  cold,  nor  windy."  Then 
turning  to  Mrs  Weston  with  a  look  of  gentle  reproach — "  Ah,  Miss  Taylor, 
if  you  had  not  married,  you  would  have  staied  at  home  with  me." 

"  Well,  Sir  ",  cried  Mr  Weston,  "  as  I  took  Miss  Taylor  away,  it  is  incumbent 
upon  me  to  supply  her  place,  if  I  can ;  and  I  will  step  to  Mrs  Goddard  in 
a  moment  if  you  wish  it."  .  .  .  With  this  treatment  Mr  Woodhouse  was 
soon  composed  enough  for  talking  as  usual.  "  He  should  be  happy  to  see 
Mrs  Goddard.  He  had  a  great  regard  for  Mrs  Goddard;  and  Emma 
should  write  a  line  and  invite  her.  James  could  take  the  note.  But  first 
there  must  be  an  answer  written  to  M1'8  Cole." 

"  You  will  make  my  excuses,  my  dear,  as  civilly  as  possible.  You  will  say 
that  I  am  quite  an  invalid,  and  go  nowhere,  and  therefore  must  decline  their 
obliging  invitation  ;  beginning  with  my  compliments,  of  course.  But  you  will 
do  everything  right.  I  need  not  tell  you  what  is  to  be  done.  We  must 
remember  to  let  James  know  that  the  carriage  will  be  wanted  on  Tuesday. 
I  shall  have  no  fears  for  you  with  him.  We  have  never  been  there  above 
once  since  the  new  approach  was  made  ;  but  still  I  have  no  doubt  that  James 
will  take  you  very  safely ;  and  when  you  get  there  you  must  tell  him  at  what 
time  you  would  have  him  come  for  you  again  ;  and  you  had  better  name  an 
early  hour.  You  will  not  like  staying  late.  You  will  get  tired  when  tea  is  over." 

"  But  you  would  not  wish  me  to  come  away  before  I  am  tired,  papa  ? " 

"  Oh  no  my  love  ;  but  you  will  soon  be  tired.  There  will  be  a  great  many 
people  talking  at  once.  You  will  not  like  the  noise." 

"But  my  dear  Sir,"  cried  Mr  Weston,  "if  Emma  comes  away  early,  it 
will  be  breaking  up  the  party." 

"  And  no  great  harm  if  it  does  "  said  Mr  Woodhouse.  "  The  sooner  every 
party  breaks  up  the  better." 

"  But  you  do  not  consider  how  it  may  appear  to  the  Coles.  Emma's  going 
away  directly  after  tea  might  be  giving  offense.  They  are  good-natured 
people,  and  think  little  of  their  own  claims ;  but  still  they  must  feel  that 
anybody's  hurrying  away  is  no  great  compliment ;  and  Miss  Woodhouse's 


376  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

doing  it  would  be  more  thought  of  than  any  other  person's  in  the  room. 
You  would  not  wish  to  disappoint  and  mortify  the  Coles,  I  am  sure,  sir ; 
friendly,  good  sort  of  people  as  ever  lived,  and  who  have  been  your  neighbours 
these  ten  years." 

"  No,  upon  no  account  in  the  world,  Mr  Weston,  I  am  much  obliged  to 
you  for  reminding  me.  I  should  be  extremely  sorry  to  be  giving  them  any 
pain.  I  know  what  worthy  people  they  are.  Perry  tells  me  that  Mr  Cole 
never  touches  malt  liquor.  You  would  not  think  it  to  look  at  him,  but  he  is 
bilious — Mr  Cole  is  very  bilious.  No,  I  would  not  be  the  means  of  giving 
them  any  pain.  My  dear  Emma  we  must  consider  this.  I  am  sure  rather 
than  run  any  risk  of  hurting  Mr  and  MrB  Cole  you  would  stay  a  little  longer 
than  you  might  wish.  You  will  not  regard  being  tired.  You  will  be  perfectly 
safe,  you  know,  among  your  friends." 

"  Oh  yes,  papa.  I  have  no  fears  at  all  for  myself ;  and  I  should  have  no 
scruples  of  staying  as  late  as  Mrs  Weston,  but  on  your  account.  I  am  only 
afraid  of  your  sitting  up  for  me.  I  am  not  afraid  of  your  not  being  ex- 
ceedingly comfortable  with  Mr8  Goddard.  She  loves  piquet,  you  know ;  but 
when  she  is  gone  home  I  am  afraid  you  will  be  sitting  up  by  yourself,  instead 
of  going  to  bed  at  your  usual  time  ;  and  the  idea  of  that  would  entirely 
destroy  my  comfort.  You  must  promise  me  not  to  sit  up."  ' 

The  next  example  is  in  a  very  different  vein.  It  is  from  Sense  and 
Sensibility  (chap,  xxi)  and  records  the  mode  of  conversation  of  the 
Miss  Steeles.  These  two  ladies  are  among  Miss  Austen's  vulgar 
characters,  and  their  speech  lacks  the  restraint  and  decorum  which  her 
better-bred  personages  invariably  exhibit.  While  the  Miss  Steeles,  con- 
versation is  in  sharp  contrast  with  that  of  the  Miss  Dashwoods,  with 
whom  they  are  here  engaged,  both  in  substance  and  manner,  it  evidently 
passed  muster  among  many  of  the  associates  of  the  latter,  especially  with 
their  cousin  Sir  John  Middleton,  in  whose  house,  as  relations  of  his 
wife's,  the  Miss  Steeles  are  staying.  Apart  from  the  vulgarity  of  thought, 
the  diction  appears  low  when  compared  with  that  of  most  of  Miss  Austen's 
characters.  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  largely  the  way  of  speech  of  the 
better  society  of  an  earlier  age,  which  has  come  down  in  the  world,  and 
survives  among  a  pretentious  provincial  bourgeoisie. 

*  "What  a  sweet  woman  Lady  Middleton  is"  said  Lucy  Steele  .  .  .  "And 
Sir  John  too  "cried  the  elder  sister,  "what  a  charming  man  he  is!"  .  .  . 
"  And  what  a  charming  little  family  they  have  !  I  never  saw  such  fine  children 
in  my  life.  I  declare  I  quite  doat  upon  them  already,  and  indeed  I  am 
always  destractedly  fond  of  children."  "I  should  guess  so"  said  Elinor 
with  a  smile  "from  what  I  witnessed  this  morning." 

"  I  have  a  notion"  said  Lucy,  "you  think  the  little  Middletons  rather  too 
much  indulged  ;  perhaps  they  may  be  the  outside  of  enough  ;  but  it  is  natural 
in  Lady  Middleton ;  and  for  my  part  I  love  to  see  children  full  of  life  and 
spirits ;  I  cannot  bear  them  if  they  are  tame  and  quiet." 

"I  confess "  replied  Elinor,  "that  while  I  am  at  Barton  Park,  I  never 
think  of  tame  and  quiet  children  with  any  abhorrence." ' 

"And  how  do  you  like  Devonshire,  Miss  Dashwood?  (said  Miss  Steele) 
I  suppose  you  were  very  sorry  to  leave  Sussex." 

In  some  surprise  at  the  familiarity  of  this  question,  or  at  least  in  the 
manner  in  which  it  was  spoken,  Elinor  replied  that  she  was. 

"Norland  is  a  prodigious  beautiful  place,  is  not  it?"  added    Miss  Steele. 

"  We  have  heard  Sir  John  admire  it  excessively,"  said  Lucy,  who  seemed 
to  think  some  apology  necessary  for  the  freedom  of  her  sister.  "  I  think 


MISS   LUCY   STEELE  377 

every  one  must  admire  it "  replied  Elinor,  "  who  ever  saw  the  place  ;  though 
it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  any  one  can  estimate  its  beauties  as  we  do." 

"  And  had  you  many  smart  beaux  there  ?  I  suppose  you  have  not  so  many 
in  this  part  of  the  world ;  for  my  part  I  think  they  are  a  vast  addition 
always." 

"  But  why  should  you  think "  said  Lucy,  looking  ashamed  of  her  sister, 
"  that  there  are  not  as  many  genteel  young  men  in  Devonshire  as  Sussex." 

"  Nay,  my  dear,  I'm  sure  I  don't  pretend  to  say  that  there  an't.  I'm  sure 
there 's  a  vast  many  smart  beaux  in  Exeter ;  but  you  know,  how  could  I  tell 
what  smart  beaux  there  might  be  about  Norland  ?  and  I  was  only  afraid  the 
Miss  Dashwoods  might  find  it  dull  at  Barton ;  if  they  had  not  so  many  as 
they  used  to  have.  But  perhaps  you  young  ladies  may  not  care  about  beaux, 
and  had  as  lief  be  without  them  as  with  them.  For  my  part,  I  think  they  are 
vastly  agreeable,  provided  they  dress  smart  and  behave  civil.  But  I  can't 
bear  to  see  them  dirty  and  nasty.  Now,  there 's  Mr  Rose  at  Exeter,  a  pro- 
digious smart  young  man,  quite  a  beau,  clerk  to  Mr  Simpson,  you  know, 
and  yet  if  you  do  but  meet  him  of  a  morning,  he  is  not  fit  to  be  seen.  I  sup- 
pose your  brother  was  quite  a  beau,  Miss  Dashwood,  before  he  married,  as 
he  was  so  rich  ?  " 

"  Upon  my  word,"  replied  Elinor,  "  I  cannot  tell  you,  for  I  do  not  per- 
fectly comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  word.  But  this  I  can  say,  that  if  he 
ever  was  a  beau  before  he  married,  he  is  one  still,  for  there  is  not  the  smallest 
alteration  in  him." 

"  Oh  !  dear  !  one  never  thinks  of  married  men's  being  beaux — they  have 
something  else  to  do." 

"Lord!  Anne",  cried  her  sister,  "you  can  talk  of  nothing  but  beaux;— 
you  will  make  Miss  Dashwood  believe  you  think  of  nothing  else.'" 

It  is  not  surprising  that  * "  this  specimen  of  the  Miss  Steeles"  was  enough. 
The  vulgar  freedom  and  folly  of  the  eldest  left  her  no  recommendation 
and  as  Elinor  was  not  blinded  by  the  beauty,  or  the  shrewd  look  of  the 
youngest,  to  her  want  of  real  elegance  and  artlessness,  she  left  the  house 
without  any  wish  of  knowing  them  better '. 

Greetings  and  Farewells. 

Only  the  slightest  indication  can  be  given  of  the  various  modes  of  greet- 
ing and  bidding  farewell.  These  seem  to  have  been  very  numerous,  and 
less  stereotyped  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  than  at  present.  It 
is  not  easy  to  be  sure  how  soon  the  formulas  which  we  now  employ,  or 
their  ancestral  forms,  came  into  current  use.  The  same  form  often  serves 
both  at  meeting  and  parting. 

In  1451,  Agnes  Paston  records,  in  a  letter,  that  'after  evynsonge, 
Angnes  Ball  com  to  me  to  my  closett  and  bad  me  good  evyn '.  In  the 
account,  quoted  above,  p.  362,  given  by  Shillingford  of  his  meetings 
with  the  Chancellor,  about  1447,  ne  speaks  of  '  saluting  hym  yn  the 
moste  godely  wyse  that  y  coude '  but  does  not  tell  us  the  form  he  used. 
The  Chancellor,  however,  replies  '  Welcome,  ij  times,  and  the  iij*10  tyme 
"Right  wel  come  Mayer",  and  helde  the  Mayer  a  grete  while  faste  by 
the  honde '. 

In  the  sixteenth  century  a  great  deal  of  ceremonial  embracing  and 
kissing  was  in  vogue.  Wolsey  and  the  King  of  France,  according  to 
Cavendish,  rode  forward  to  meet  each  other,  and  they  embraced  each 
other  on  horseback.  Cavendish  himself  when  he  visits  the  castle  of  the 
Lord  of  Cre'pin,  a  great  nobleman,  in  order  to  prepare  a  lodging  for 


378  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

the  Cardinal,  is  met  by  this  great  personage,  who  *  at  his  first  coming 
embraced  me,  saying  I  was  right  heartily  welcome '.  Henry  VIII  was 
wont  to  walk  with  Sir  Thomas  More,  '  with  his  arm  about  his  neck '. 
The  actual  formula  used  in  greeting  and  leave-taking  is  too  often  un- 
recorded. When  the  French  Embassy  departs  from  England,  whom 
Wolsey  has  so  splendidly  entertained,  Cavendish  says — 'My  lord,  after 
humble  commendations  had  to  the  French  King  bade  them  adieu '.  The 
Earl  of  Shrewsbury  greets  the  Cardinal  thus — '  My  Lord,  your  Grace  is 
most  heartily  welcome  unto  me ',  and  Wolsey  replies  '  Ah  my  gentle 
Lord  of  Shrewsbury,  I  heartily  thank  you '. 

It  is  not  until  the  appearance  of  plays  that  we  find  the  actual  forms  of 
greeting  recorded  with  frequency.  In  Roister  Doister,  there  are  a  fair 
number: — God  keepe  thee  worshipful  Master  Roister  Doister;  Welcome 
my  good  wenche ;  God  you  saue  and  see  Nourse ;  and  the  reply  to  this — 
Welcome  friend  Merrygreeke ;  Good  night  Roger  old  knaue,  farewell 
Roger  old  knaue  ;  well  met,  I  bid  you  right  welcome.  A  very  favourite 
greeting  is  God  be  with  you. 

God  continue  your  Lordship  is  a  form  of  farewell  in  Chapman's 
Monsieur  D'Olive,  and  God-den  '  good  evening ',  occurs  in  Middleton's 
Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside.  Sir  Walter  Whorehound  in  the  same  play 
makes  use  of  the  formula  '  /  embrace  your  acquaintance  Sir  \  to  which 
the  reply  is  '  //  vows  your  service  Sir '.  Massinger's  New  Way  to  pay 
old  Debts  contains  various  formulas  of  greeting.  lam  still  your  creature, 
says  Allworth  to  his  step-mother  Lady  A.  on  taking  leave ;  of  two  old 
domestics  he  takes  leave  with  '  my  service  to  both  \  and  they  reply  '  ours 
waits  on  you  '.  In  reply  to  the  simple  Farewell  Tom,  of  a  friend, 
Allworth  answers  'A  II  joy  stay  with  you'.  Sir  Giles  Overreach  greets 
Lord  Lovel  with  '  Good  day  to  My  Lord ' ;  and  the  prototype  of  the  modern 
how  are  you  is  seen  in  Lady  Allworth's  '  How  dost  thou  Marrall  ? ' 
A  graceful  greeting  in  this  play  is  '  You  are  happily  encountered '. 

The  later  seventeenth-century  comedies  exhibit  the  characteristic 
urbanity  of  the  age  in  their  formulas  of  greeting  and  leave-taking. 

*  A  happy  day  to  you  Madam ',  is  Victoria's  morning  compliment  to 
Mrs.  Goodvile  in  Otway's  Friendship  in  Fashion,  and  that  lady  replies — 
'Dear  Cousin, your  humble  servant'.  Sir  Wilful!  Witwoud  in  Congreve's 
Way  of  the  World,  says  '  Save  you  Gentleman  and  Lady'  on  entering 
a  room.  His  younger  brother,  on  meeting  him,  greets  him  with  '  Your 
servant  Brother',  and  the  knight  replies  l  Your  servant!  Why  yours  Sir> 
Your  servant  again  ;  's  heart^  and  your  Friend  and  Servant  to  that '. 
I'm  everlastingly  your  humble  servant,  deuce  take  me  Madam,  says  Mr.  Brisk 
to  Lady  Froth,  in  the  Double  Dealer. 

Your  servant  is  a  very  usual  formula  at  this  period,  on  joining  or 
leaving  company.  In  Vanbrugh's  Journey  to  London,  Colonel  Courtly 
on  entering  is  greeted  by  Lady  Headpiece — Colonel  your  servant]  her 
daughter  Miss  Betty  varies  it  with — Your  servant  Colonel,  and  the  visitor 
replies  to  both — Ladies, your  most  obedient. 

Mr.  Trim,  the  formal  coxcomb  in  Shadwell's  Bury  Fair,  parts  thus 
from  his  friends — Sir,  I  kiss  your  hands  ;  Mr.  Wildish — Sir  your  most 
humble  servant]  Trim — Mr  Oldwit  I  am  your  most  faithful  servant] 
Mr.  Oldwit — Your  servant  sweet  Mr  Trim. 


BEGINNINGS  AND   ENDINGS   OF  LETTERS         379 

Your  servant,  madam  good  morrow  to  you,  is  Lady  Arabella's  greeting 
to  Lady  Headpiece,  who  replies — And  to  you  Madam  (Vanbrugh's 
Journey  to  London).  The  early  eighteenth  century  appears  not  to 
differ  materially  from  the  preceding  in  its  usage.  Lord  Formal  in 
Fielding's  Love  in  Several  Masques,  says  Ladies  your  most  humble 
servant,  and  Sir  Apish  in  the  same  play— Your  Ladyship's  everlasting 
creature. 


Epistolary  Formulas. 

The  writing  of  letters,  both  familiar  and  formal,  is  such  an  inevitable 
part  of  everyday  life,  that  it  seems  legitimate  to  include  here  some 
examples  of  the  various  methods  of  beginning  and  ending  private  letters 
from  the  early  fifteenth  century  onwards.  A  proper  and  exhaustive 
treatment  of  the  subject  would  demand  a  rather  elaborate  classification, 
according  to  the  rank  and  status  of  both  the  writer  and  the  recipient, 
and  the  relation  in  which  they  stood  to  each  other — whether  master 
and  servant,  or  dependant,  friend,  subject,  child,  spouse,  and  so  on. 
In  the  comparatively  few  examples  here  given,  out  of  many  thousands, 
nothing  is  attempted  beyond  a  chronological  arrangement.  The  status 
and  relationship  of  the  parties  is,  however,  given  as  far  as  possible.  We 
note  that  the  formula  employed  is  frequently  a  conventional  and  more 
or  less  fixed  phrase  which  recurs,  with  slight  variants,  again  and  again. 
At  other  times  the  opening  and  closing  phrases  are  of  a  more  personal 
and  individual  character. 

1418.  Archbp.  Chichele to  Hen.  V.  Signs  simply:  your  preest  and  bede- 
man. — Ellis,  i.  I.  5. 

1425.  Will.  Paston  to .  Right  worthy  and  worshepfull  Sir.  I  recom- 

maunde  me  to  you,  &c.  Ends :  Almyghty  God  have  you  in  his  governaunce. 
Your  frend  unknowen. — Past.  Letters,  i.  19-20. 

1440.  Agnes  to  Will.  Paston.  Inscribed:  To  my  worshepful  housbond 
W.  Paston  be  this  letter  takyn.  Dere  housbond  I  reccommaunde  me  to  yow. 
Ends  :  The  Holy  Trinite  have  you  in  governaunce. — P.  L.  i.  38-9. 

1442-5.  Duke  of  Buckingham  to  Lord  Beaumont.  Ryght  worshipful  and 
with  all  my  herte  right  enterly  beloved  brother,  I  recomaunde  me  to  you, 
thenking  right  hastili  your  good  brotherhode  for  your  gode  and  gentill  letters. 
I  beseche  the  blissid  Trinite  preserve  you  in  honor  and  prosperite.  Your 
trewe  and  feithfull  broder  H.  Bukingham.— P.  L.  i.  61-2. 

1443.  Margaret  to  John  Paston.     Ryth  worchipful  husbon,  I  reccomande 
me  to  yow  desyryng  hertely  to  her  of  your  wilfar.    Almyth  God  have  you  in 
his  kepyn  and  seride  yow  helth,  Yorys  M.  Paston. — P.  L.  i.  48-9. 

1444.  James  Gresham  to  Will.  Paston.     Please  it  your  good  Lordship  to 
wete,  &c.     Ends :  Wretyn  right  simply  the  Wednesday  next  to  fore  the  Fest. 
By  your  most  symple  servaunt. — P.  L.  i.  50. 

1444.  Duchess  of  Norfolk  to  J.  Paston.  Ryght  trusty  and  entirely  wel- 
beloved  we  grete  you  wel  hertily  as  we  kan  .  .  .  and  siche  agrement  as,  &c. 
...  we  shall  duely  performe  yt  with  the  myght  of  Jesu  who  naff  you  in  his 
blissed  keping.— P.  L.  i.  57. 

1444.  Sir  R.  Chamber layn  to  Agn.  Paston.     Ryght  worchepful  cosyn, 
I  comand  me  to  you.    And  I  beseche  almyty  God  kepe  you.    Your  Cosyn 
Sir  Roger  Chamberlain. 

1445.  Agnes  to  Earn,  Paston.    To  myn  welbelovid  sone.    I  grete  you  wel. 
Be  your  Modre  Angnes  Paston.— i.  58,  59. 


38o  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

1449.  Marg.  to  John  Paston.  Wretyn  at  Norwych  in  hast,  Be  your  gronyng 
Wyff.— i.  76-7. 

1449.  Same  to  same.  No  mor  I  wryte  to  }ow  atte  this  tyme.  Your  Mar- 
karyte  Paston. — i.  42-3. 

1449.  Will,  to  John  Paston.    Ends:  Be  }owre  pore  Broder. 

1449.  Eli*.  Clare  to  J.  Paston.    No  more  I  wrighte  to  }ow  at  this  tyme, 
but  Holy  Gost  have  }ow  in  kepyng.     Wretyn  in  haste  on  Seynt  Peterys  day 
be  candel  lyght,  Be  your  Cosyn  E.  C. — P.  L.  i.  89-90. 

1450.  Duke  of  Suffolk  to  his  son.     My  dear  and  only  welbeloved  sone. 
Your  trewe  and  lovynge  fader  Suffolk. — P.  L.  i.  121-3. 

1450.  Will.  Lomme  to  J.  Paston.  I  prey  you  this  bille  may  recomaunde 
me  to  mastrases  your  moder  and  wyfe.  Wretyn  yn  gret  hast  at  London.— 
P.L.  i.  126. 

1450.  J.  Gresham  to  *  my  Maister  Whyte  Esquyer*.  After  due  recomen- 
dacion  I  recomaund  me  to  yow. 

1450.  /.  Paston  to  above.  James  Gresham,  I  pray  you  labour  for  the,  &c. 
— i.  145. 

1450.  Justice  Yelverton  to  Sir  J.  Fastolf.  By  your  old  Servaunt  William 
Yelverton  Justice.— P.  L.  i.  166. 

1453.  Agnes  to  J.  Paston.    Sone  I  grete  you  well  and  send  you  Godys 
blessyng  and  myn.     Wretyn  at  Norwych  ...  in  gret  hast,  Be  your  moder 
A.  Paston. — P.  L.  i.  259. 

1454.  /.  Paston  to  Earl  of  Oxford.    Youre  servaunte  to  his  powr  John 
Paston.— P.  L.  i.  276. 

1454.  Lord  Scales  to  J.  Paston.  Our  Lord  have  you  in  governaunce.  Your 
frend  The  Lord  Scales.— P.  L.  i.  289. 

1454.  Thomas  Howes  to  J.  Paston.  I  pray  God  kepe  yow.  Wryt  at  Castr 
hastly  ij  day  of  September,  Your  owne  T.  Howes. — P.  L.  i.  301. 

1454.  The  same.     Your  chapleyn  and  bedeman  Thomas  Howes. — i.  318. 

1455.  Sir  J.  Fastolf  to  Duke  of  Norfolk.     Writen  at  my  pore  place  of 
Castre,  Your  humble  man  and  servaunt. — P.  L.  i.  324. 

1455.  J.  Cudworth,  Bp.  of  Lincoln,  to  J.  Paston.    And  Jesu  preserve  you, 
J.  Bysshopp  of  Lincoln. — P.  L.  i.  350. 

1456.  Archbp.  Bpurchier  to  SirJ.  Fastolf.    The  blissid  Trinitee  have  you 
everlastingly  in  His  keping,  Written  in  my  manoir  of  Lamehith,  Your  feith- 
full  and  trew  Th.  Cant.— P.  L.  i.  382. 

1456  (Nephew  to  uncle).  H.  Fylinglay  to  Sir  J.  Fastolf.  Ryght  wor- 
shipful unkell  and  my  ryght  good  master,  I  recommaund  me  to  yow  wyth  all 
my  servys.  And  Sir,  my  brother  Paston  and  I  have,  &c.  .  .  .  Your  nevew 
and  servaunt. — P.  L.  i.  397. 

1458.  John  Jerningham  to  Marg.  Paston.  Nomor  I  wryte  unto  you  at 
this  tyme.  .  .  .  Your  owne  umble  servant  and  cosyn  J.  J. — P.  L.  i.  429. 

1458  (Daughter  to  her  mother).  Eliz.  Poynings  to  Agn.  Paston.  Right 
worshipful  and  my  most  entierly  belovde  moder,  in  the  most  lowly  maner 
I  recomaund  me  unto  your  gode  moderhode.  .  .  .  And  Jesu  for  his  grete 
mercy  save  yow.  By  your  humble  daughter. — P.  L.  i.  434-5. 

1469.  Chancellor  and  University  of  Oxford  to  Sir  John  Say.  Ryght  wor- 
shipful our  trusty  and  entierly  welbeloued,  after  harty  commendacyon.  .  .  . 
Ends  :  yor  trew  and  harty  louers  The  Chancellr  and  Thuniversite  of  Oxon- 
ford.— Ellis. 

1477.  John  Paston  to  his  mother.  Your  sone  and  humbyll  servaunt  P. — 
P.  L.  iii.  176. 

1481-4.  Edm.  Paston  to  his  mother.  3our  umble  son  and  servant. — 
P.  L.  iii.  280. 

1482.  J.  Paston  to  his  mother.  Your  sone  and  trwest  servaunt. — P.  L. 
iii.  290. 

1482.  Margery  Paston  to  her  husband*  No  more  to  you  at  this  tyme,  Be 
your  servaunt  and  bedewoman.— iii.  293. 


LONGWINDED   GREETINGS  381 

1485.  Duke  of  Norfolk  to  J.  Paston.  Welbelovyd  frend  I  cummaund  me 
to  yow.  ...  I  shall  content  you  at  your  metyng  with  me,  Yower  lover  J.  Nor- 
folk.— iii.  320. 

1485.  Eliz.  Browne  to  J.  Paston.    Your  loving  awnte  E.  B. 

4485.  Duke  of  Suffolk  to  J.  Paston.  Ryght  welbeloved  we  grete  you  well. 
. .  .  Suffolk,  yor  frende. — iii.  324-5. 

1490.  Bp.  of  Durham  to  Sir  John  Paston.  IH2.  Xps.  Ryght  wortchipful 
sire,  and  myne  especial  and  of  long  tyme  apprevyd,  trusty  and  feythful  frende, 
I  in  myne  hertyeste  wyse  recommaunde  me  un  to  you.  .  .  .  Scribyllyd  in  the 
moste  haste,  at  my  castel  or  manoir  of  Aucland  the  xxvij  of  Januay.  Your 
own  trewe  luffer  and  frende  John  Duresme. — iii.  363. 

1490.  Lumen  Haryson  to  Sir  J.  Paston.  Onerabyll  and  well  be  lovyd 
Knythe,  I  commend  me  on  to  ^our  masterchepe  and  to  my  lady  }owyr  wyffe. 
...  No  mor  than  God  be  wyth  50 w,  L.  H.  at  ^ouyr  comawndment. 

1503.  Q.  Margaret  of  Scotland  to  her  father  Hen.  VII.  My  moste  dere 
lorde  and  fader  in  the  most  humble  wyse  that  I  can  thynke  I  recommaunde 
me  unto  your  Grace  besechyng  you  off  your  dayly  blessyngys.  .  .  .  Wrytyn 
wyt  the  hand  of  your  humble  douter  Margaret. — Ellis  i.  i.  43. 

Hen.  VII  to  his  Mother ;  the  Countess  of  Richmond.  Madam,  my  most 
enterely  wilbeloved  Lady  and  Moder  .  .  .  with  the  hande  of  youre  most 
humble  and  lovynge  sone. — Ellis,  i.  I.  43-5. 

Margaret  to  Hen.  VII.  My  oune  suet  and  most  deare  kynge  and  all  my 
worldly  joy,  yn  as  humble  manner  as  y  can  thynke  I  recommand  me  to  your 
Grace  ...  by  your  feythful  and  trewe  .bedewoman,  and  humble  modyr  Mar- 
garet R.— Ellis,  i.  I.  46. 

1513.  Q.  Margaret  of  Scotland  to  Hen.  VIII.  Richt  excellent,  richt  hie 
and  mithy  Prince,  our  derrist  and  best  belovit  Brothir.  . .  .  Your  louyn  systar 
Margaret. — Ellis,  i.  1.65.  (The  Queen  evidently  employed  a  Scottish  Secre- 
tary.) 

1515.  Margaret  to  Wolsey.    Yours  Margaret  R. — Ellis,  i.  i.  131. 

1515.  Thos.  Lord  Howard,  Lord  Admiral,  to  Wolsey.  My  owne  gode 
Master  Awlmosner.  . .  .  Scrybeled  in  gret  hast  in  the  Mary  Rose  at  Plymouth 
half  or  after  xj  at  night .  .  .  yr  own  Thomas  Howard. 

c.  1515.  West  Bp.  of  Ely  to  Wolsey.  Myne  especiall  good  Lorde  in  my 
most  humble  wise  I  recommaund  me  to  your  Grace  besechyng  you  to  con- 
tynue  my  gode  Lorde,  and  I  schall  euer  be  as  I  am  bounden  your  dayly 
bedeman.  .  .  .  Yr  chapelayn  and  bedman  N  I.  Elien. 

c.  1520.  Archbp.  Warham  to  Wolsey.  Please  it  yor  moost  honorable  Grace 
to  understand.  ...  At  your  Graces  commaundement,  Willm.  Cantuar. — 
Ellis,  iii.  I.  230.  Also  :  Euer,  your  own  Willm.  Cantuar. 

Langland  Bp.  of  Lincoln  to  Wolsey.  My  bownden  duety  mooste  lowly 
remembrede  unto  Your  good  Grace.  . .  .  Yor  moste  humble  bedisman  John 
Lincoln.— Ellis,  iii.  I.  248. 

Cath.  of  Aragon  to  Princess  Mary.  Doughter,  I  pray  you  thinke  not,  &c. 
— Ellis,  i.  2.  19.  ...  Your  lovyng  mother  Katherine  the  Quene. 

Archibald,  E.  of  Angus.  Addresses  letter  to  Wolsey  :  To  my  lord  Car- 
dinallis  grace  of  Ingland. — Ellis,  iii.  I.  291. 

1521.  Bp.  Tunstal  to  Wolsey.  Addresses  letter:  — to  the  most  reverend 
fader  in  God  and  his  most  singler  good  Lorde  Cardinal.— Ellis,  iii.  I.  273. 

Ends  a  letter  :  By  your  Gracys  most  humble  bedeman  Cuthbert  Tunstall. 
—Ellis,  iii.  I.  332. 

1515  or  1521.  Duke,  of  Buckingham  to  Wolsey.  Yorys  to  my  power 
E.  Bukyngham. 


seruyse 

and 

dolorous  Chaplan  of  Dunkeld.— Ellis,  iii.  I.  303. 

Wolsey  to  Gardiner  (afterwards  Bp.  of  Winchester}.    Ends :  Your  assurjd 


382  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

lover  and  bedysman  T.  Carlis  Ebor. — Ellis,  i.  2.  6.  Again :  Wryttyn  hastely 
at  Asher  with  the  rude  and  shackyng  hand  of  your  dayly  bedysman  and 
assuryd  frende  T.  Carlis  Ebor. 

1532.  Thos.  Audley  (Lord  Keeper)  to  Cromwell.  Yor  assured  to  his  litell 
por  Thomas  Audeley  Gustos  Sigilli. 

Edw.  E.  of  Hertford  (afterwards  Lord  Protector],  Thus  I  comit  you  to 
God  hoo  send  yor  lordshep  as  well  to  far  as  I  would  mi  selfe  .  .  .  w*  the  hand 
of  yor  lordshepis  assured  E.  Hertford. 

Hen.  VIII  to  Catherine  Parr.  No  more  to  you  at  thys  tyme  s  wet  hart 
both  for  lacke  off  tyme  and  gret  occupation  off  bysynes,  savyng  we  pray  you 
in  our  name  our  harte  blessyngs  to  all  our  chyldren,  and  recommendations  to 
our  cousin  Marget  and  the  rest  off  the  laddis  and  gentyll  women  and  to  our 
Consell  alsoo.  Wryttyn  with  the  hand  off  your  lovyng  howsbande  Henry  R. 
—Ellis,  i.  2.  130. 

Princess  Mary  to  Cromwell.  Marye  Princesse.  Maister  Cromwell  I 
commende  me  to  you. — Ellis,  i.  2.  24. 

Prince  Edward  to  Catherine  Parr.  Most  honorable  and  entirely  beloued 
mother.  .  .  .  Your  Grace,  whom  God  have  ever  in  his  most  blessed  keping. 
Your  louing  sonne,  E.  Prince. — Ellis,  i.  2.  131. 

1547.  Henry  Radclyf,  E.  of  Sussex,  to  his  wife.  Madame  with  most 
lovyng  and  hertie  commendations. — Ellis,  i.  2.  137. 

Princess  Elizabeth  to  Edw.  VI.  Your  Maiesties  humble  si  star  to  com- 
maundement  Elizabeth.  — Ellis,  i.  2.  146;  Your  Maiesties  most  humble  sistar 
Elizabeth.— Ellis,  i.  i.  148. 

Princess  Elizabeth  to  Lord  Protector.  Your  assured  frende  to  my  litel 
power  Elizabeth. — Ellis,  i.  2.  158. 

Edward  VI  to  Lord  Protector  Somerset.  Derest  Uncle.  .  .  .  Your  good 
neuew  Edward. — Ellis,  ii.  i.  148. 

Q.  Mary  to  Lord  Admiral  Seymoiir.  Your  assured  frende  to  my  power 
Marye.— Ellis,  i.  2.  153. 

Princess  Elizabeth  to  Q.  Mary  (on  being  ordered  to  the  Tower).  Your 
Highnes  most  faithful  subjec  that  hath  bine  from  the  begining  and  wyl  be  to 
my  ende,  Elizabeth.  (Transcr.  of  1732).— Ellis,  ii.  2.  257. 

1553.  Princess  Elizabeth  to  the  Lords  of  the  Council.    Your  verye  lovinge 
frende,  Elizabeth. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  213. 

1554.  Henry  Darnley  to  Q.  Mary  of  England.    Your  Maiesties  moste 
bounden  and  obedient  subjecte  and  servant  Henry  Darnley. 

Queen  Dowager  to  Lord  Admiral  Seymour.  By  her  y*  ys  and  schalbe 
your  humble  true  and  lovyng  wyffe  duryng  her  lyf  Kateryn  the  Quene. — Ellis, 
i.  2.  152. 

Q.  Mary  to  Marquis  of  Winchester.  Your  Myslresse  assured  Marye  the 
Quene. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  252. 

Sir  John  Grey  of  Pyrgo  to  Sir  William  Cecil.  It  is  a  great  while  me 
thinkethe,  Cowsine  Cecill,  since  I  sent  unto  you.  ...  By  your  lovyng  cousin 
and  assured  frynd  John  Grey. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  73-4 ;  Good  cowsyne  Cecill.  .  .  . 
By  yor  lovyng  Cousine  and  assured  pouer  frynd  do  wring  lyfe  John  Grey. — 
Ellis,  ii.  2.  276. 

Lady  Catherine  Grey,  Countess  of  Hertford,  to  Sir  W.  Cecil.  Good  cosyne 
Cecill.  . .  .  Your  assured  frend  and  cosyne  to  my  small  power  Katheryne 
Hartford.— Ellis,  ii.  2.  278 ;  Your  poore  cousyne  and  assured  frend  to  my 
small  power  Katheryne  Hartford. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  287. 

1564.  Sir  W.  Cecil  to  Sir  Thos.  Smith.  Your  assured  for  ever  W.  Cecill. 
—Ellis,  ii.  2.  295  ;  Yours  assured  W.  Cecill.— Ellis,  ii.  2.  297 ;  Your  assured 
to  command  W.  Cecill. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  300. 

1566.  Duchess  of  Somerset  to  Sir  W.  Cecil.  Good  Mr  Secretary,  yf  I  have 
let  you  alone  all  thys  whyle  I  pray  you  to  thynke  yt  was  to  tary  for  my  L.  of 
Leycesters  assistans.  ...  I  can  nomore  .  . .  and  so  do  leave  you  to  God  Yor 
assured  lovyng  frynd  Anne  Somerset— Ellis,  ii.  2.  288. 


SECOND   HALF   OF   SIXTEENTH   CENTURY         383 

Christopher  Jonson,  Master  of  Winchester •,  to  Sir  W.  Cecil.  Right 
honourable  my  duetie  with  all  humblenesse  consydered.  .  .  .  Your  honoures 
most  due  to  commande,  Christopher  Jonson. — Ellis,  ii.  2.  313. 

1569.  Lady  Stanhope  to  Sir  W.  Cecil.  Right  honorable,  my  humble 
dewtie  premised.  .  .  .  Your  honors  most  humblie  bound  Anne  Stanhope. — 
Ellis,  ii.  2.  324. 

1574.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  the  E.  of  Leicester.  Righte  Honorable  and  my 
singular  good  Lorde  and  Uncle.  .  .  .  Your  L.  most  obedi.  .  .  .  Philip  Sidney. 
— Works,  p.  345. 

1576.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  Sir  Francis  Walsingham.  Righte  Honorable 
...  I  most  humbly  recommende  my  selfe  unto  yow,  and  leaue  yow  to  the 
Eternals  most  happy  protection.  .  .  .  Yours  humbly  at  commawndement 
Philipp  Sidney. 

1578.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  Edward  Molineux,  Esq.  (Secretary  to  Sir  H. 
Sidney).  Mr  Molineux,  Few  words  are  best.  My  letters  to  my  father  have 
come  to  the  eyes  of  some.  Neither  can  I  condemn  any  but  you.  .  .  .  (The 
writer  assures  M.  that  if  he  reads  any  letter  of  his  to  his  father  '  without  his 
commandment  or  my  consent,  I  will  thrust  my  dagger  into  you.  And  trust 
to  it,  for  I  speak  it  in  earnest'.  .  .  .)  In  the  meantime  farewell.  From  court 
this  last  of  May  1578,  By  me  Philip  Sidney.— p.  328. 

1580.  Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  his  brother  Robert.  My  dear  Brother  .  .  . 
God  bless  you  sweet  boy  and  accomplish  the  joyful  hope  I  conceive  of  you. 
.  .  .  Lord !  how  I  have  babbled :  once  again  farewell  dearest  brother.  Your 
most  loving  and  careful  brother  Philip  Sidney. 

1582.  Thomas  Watson  '  To  thefrendly  Reader*  (in  Passionate  Centurie  of 
Love).  Courteous  Reader  . . .  and  so,  for  breuitie  sake  (I)  aprubtlie  make  and 
end  ;  committing  the  to  God,  and  my  worke  to  thy  fauour.  Thine  as  thou 
art  his,  Thomas  Watson. 

Anne  of  Denmark  to  James  J.  Sir  ...  So  kissing  your  handes  I  remain 
she  that  will  ever  love  Yow  best,  Anna  R. — Ellis,  i.  3.  97. 

c.  1 585.  Sir  Philip  to  Walsingham.  Sir  ...  your  louing  cosin  and  frend. 
In  several  letters  to  Walsingham  Sidney  signs  '  your  humble  Son '. 

1 586.  Wm.  Webbe  to  Ma.  (=  '  Master ')  Edward  Sulyard  Esquire  (Dedi- 
catory Epistle  to  the  Discourse  of  English  Poetrie).  May  it  please  you  Syr, 
thys  once  more  to  beare  with  my  rudenes,  &c. ...  I  rest,  Your  worshippes 
faithfull  Seruant  W.  W. 

1593.  Edward  Alleyn  to  his  wife.  My  good  sweete  mouse  .  .  .  and  so 
swett  mouse  farwell. — Mem.  of  Edw.  Alleyn,  i.  36 ;  my  good  sweetharte  and 
loving  mouse  .  .  .  thyn  ever  and  no  bodies  else  by  god  of  heaven. — ibid. 

1596.  Thos.,  Lord  Buckhurst >  afterwards  Earl  of 'Dorset ',  to  Sir  Robert 
Cecil.    Sir  .  .  .  Your  very  lo:  frend  T.  Buckhurst. 

1 597.  Sir  W.  Raleigh  to  Cecil.    Sr  I  humblie  thanke  yow  for  your  letter  . .  . 
Sr  I  pray  love  vs  in  your  element  and  wee  will  love  and  honor  yow  in  ours 
and  every  wher.    And   remayne  to  be  comanded  by  yow  for  evermore 
W  Ralegh. 

1602.  Same  to  same.    Good  Mr  Secretary.  .  .  .  Thus  I  rest,  your  very 
loving  and  assured  frend  T.  Buckhurst. — Works,  xxxiv-xi. 

1603.  Same  to  same.    My  very  good  Lord.  ...  So  I  rest  as  you  know, 
Ever  yours  T.  Buckurst. 

1605.  Same  to  same.  ...  I  pray  God  for  your  health  and  for  mine  own 
and  so  rest  Ever  yours  . . . 

1607.  Same  to  the  University  of  Oxford.  Your  very  loving  friend  and 
Chancellor  T.  Dorset.— xlvi. 

c.  1608.  Sir  Henry  Wotton  to  Henry  Prince  of  Wales.  You  re  zealous 
poore  servant  H.  W. — Ellis,  i.  3.  loo. 

Q.  Anne  of  Denmark  to  Sir  George  Villiers  (afterwards  Duke  of  Buc- 
kingham). My  kind  Dog.  ...  So  wishing  you  all  happiness  Anna  R.— 
Ellis,  i.  3.  100. 


384  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

1611.  Charles  Duke  of  York  to  Prince  Henry.     Most  loving  Brother 
I  long  to  see  you.  .  .  .  Your  H.  most  loving  brother  and  obedient  servant, 
Charles.— Ellis,  i.  3.  96. 

1612.  Prince  Charles  to  James  I.    Your  Mties  most  humble  and  most 
obedient  sone  and  servant  Charles. — Ellis,  i.  3.  102. 

Same  to  Villiers.  Steenie,  There  is  none  that  knowes  me  so  well  as  your- 
self. .  .  .  Your  treu  and  constant  loving  frend  Charles  P. — Ellis,  i.  3.  104. 

King  James  to  Buckingham  or  to  Prince  Charles.  My  onlie  sweete  and 
deare  chylde  I  pray  thee  haiste  thee  home  to  thy  deare  dade  by  sunne  setting 
at  the  furthest. — Ellis,  i.  3.  120. 

Same  to  Buckingham.  My  Steenie.  .  .  .  Your  dear  dade,  gosseppe  and 
stewarde. — Ellis,  i.  3.  159. 

Same  to  both,  Sweet  Boyes.  .  .  .  God  blesse  you  both  my  sweete  babes, 
and  sende  you  a  safe  and  happie  returne,  James  R. — Ellis,  i.  3  121. 

Prince  Charles  and  Buckingham  to  James.  Your  Majesties  most  humble 
and  obedient  sone  and  servant  Charles,  and  your  humble  slave  and  doge 
Steenie.— Ellis,  i.  3.  122. 

1623.  Buckingham  to  James.  Dere  Dad,  Gossope  and  Steward.  .  .  .  Your 
Majestyes  most  humble  slave  and  doge  Steenie. — Ellis,  i.  3.  146-7. 

1623.  Lord  Herbert  to  James.  Your  Sacred  Majesties  most  obedient, 
most  loyal,  and  most  affectionate  subjecte  and  servant,  E.  Herbert. 

The  letters  of  Sir  John  Suckling  (Works,  ii,  Reeves  &  Turner)  are 
mostly  undated,  but  one  to  Davenant  has  the  date  1629,  and  another  to 
Sir  Henry  Vane  that  of  1632. 

The  general  style  is  more  modern  in  tone  than  those  of  any  of  the 
letters  so  far  referred  to.  (See  on  Suckling's  style,  pp.  152-3.)  The 
beginnings  and  endings,  too,  closely  resemble  and  are  sometimes  identical 
with  those  of  our  own  time. 

To  Davenant,  Vane,  and  several  other  persons  of  both  sexes,  Suckling 
signs  simply — 'Your  humble  servant  J.  S.',  or  'J.  Suckling'.  At  least 
two,  to  a  lady,  end  'Your  humblest  servant'.  The  letter  to  Davenant 
begins  '  Will ' ;  that  to  Vane — '  Right  Honorable  '.  Several  letters 
begin  '  Madam ',  '  My  Lord  ',  one  begins  '  My  noble  friend ',  another 
'  My  Noble  Lord ',  several  simply  '  Sir '.  The  more  fanciful  letters, 
to  Aglaura,  begin  '  Dear  Princess ',  '  Fair  Princess ',  '  My  dear  Dear ', 
*  When  I  consider,  my  dear  Princess ',  &c.  One  to  a  cousin  begins 
'  Honest  Charles '. 

The  habit  of  rounding  off  the  concluding  sentence  of  a  letter  so  that 
the  valedictory  formula  and  the  writer's  name  form  an  organic  part  of  it, 
a  habit  very  common  in  the  eighteenth  century — in  Miss  Burney,  for 
instance — is  found  in  Suckling's  letters.  For  example  :  '  I  am  still  the 

humble  servant  of  my  Lord that  I  was,  and  when  I  cease  to  be  so, 

I  must  cease  to  be  John  Suckling';  'yet  could  never  think  myself 
unfortunate,  while  I  can  write  myself  Aglaura  her  humble  servant ' ;  '  and 
should  you  leave  that  lodging,  more  wretched  than  Montferrat  needs 
must  be  your  humble  servant  J.  S.',  and  so  on. 

The  longwindedness  and  prolixity  which  generally  distinguish  the 
openings  and  closings  of  letters  of  the  fifteenth  and  the  greater  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  begin  to  disappear  before  the  end  of  the  latter 
period.  Suckling  is  as  neat  and  concise  as  the  letter-writers  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  '  Madam,  your  most  humble  and  faithful  servant ' 
might  serve  for  Dr.  Johnson. 


DR.  AND  MRS.   BASIRE  385 

Most  of  our  modern  formulas  were  in  use  before  the  end  of  the  first 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  though  some  of  the  older  phrases  still 
survive.  But  we  no  longer  find  '  I  commend  me  unto  your  good  master- 
ship, beseeching  the  Blessed  Trinity  to  have  you  in  his  governance ',  and 
such-like  lengthy  introductions.  The  Correspondence  of  Dr.  Basire  (see 
pp.  163-4)  is  very  instructive,  as  it  covers  the  period  from  1634  to  167 5, 
by  which  latter  date  letters  have  practically  reached  their  modern  form. 
Dr.  Basire  writes  in  1635-6  to  Miss  Frances  Corbet,  his  fiance'e,  'Deare 
Fanny  ', '  Deare  Love  ', '  Love ',  and  ends '  Your  most  faithfull  frend  J.  B.', 
'Thy  faithful  frend  and  loving  servaunt  J.  B.',  'Your  assured  frend 
and  loving  well-wisher  J.  B.',  'Your  ever  louing  frend  J.  B/  When 
Miss  Corbet  has  become  his  wife,  he  constantly  writes  to  her  in  his 
exile  which  lasted  from  1640  to  1661,  letters  which  apart  from  our  present 
purpose  possess  great  human  and  historical  interest.  These  letters  generally 
begin  '  My  Dearest ',  and  '  My  deare  Heart ',  and  he  signs  himself '  Your 
very  louing  husband ',  '  Yours,  more  than  ever ',  '  Your  faithful  husband ', 
'  My  dearest,  Your  faithful  friend ', '  Yours  till  death ',  '  Meanewhile  assure 
your  selfe  of  the  constant  love  of — My  dearest — Your  loyall  husband f. 

The  lady  to  whom  these  affectionate  letters  were  addressed,  bore  with 
wonderful  patience  and  cheerfulness  the  anxieties  and  sufferings  incident 
upon  a  state  bordering  on  absolute  want  caused  by  her  husband's  depriva- 
tion of  his  living  under  the  Commonwealth,  his  prolonged  absence,  together 
with  the  cares  of  a  family  of  young  children,  and  very  indifferent  health. 
She  was  a  woman  of  great  piety,  and  in  her  letters  '  many  a  holy  text 
around  she  strews  '  in  reply  to  the  religious  soliloquies  of  her  husband.  Her 
letters  all  begin  '  My  dearest ',  and  they  often  begin  and  close  with  pious 
exclamations  and  phrases — '  Yours  as  much  as  euer  in  the  Lord,  No,  more 
thene  euer ' ;  '  My  dearest,  I  shall  not  faile  to  looke  thos  plases  in  the 
criptur,  and  pray  for  you  as  becometh  your  obedient  wife  and  serunt  in 
the  Lord  F.  B. ' ;  another  letter  is  headed  '  Jesu ! ',  and  ends — '  I  pray  God 
send  vs  all  a  happy  meting,  I  ham  your  faithful  in  the  Lord,  F.  B.' 
Many  of  the  letters  are  headed  with  the  Sacred  Name.  Others  of 
Mrs.  Basire's  letters  end — 'Farwall  my  dearest,  I  ham  yours  faithful 
for  euer ' ;  ' I  euer  remine  Yours  faithfull  in  the  Lord ' ;  'So  with  my 
dayly  prayers  to  God  for  you,  I  desire  to  remene  your  faithfull  loveing 
and  obedient  wif '. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  give  a  few  examples  of  beginnings  and  ends 
of  letters  from  other  persons  in  the  Basire  Correspondence,  to  illustrate 
the  usage  of  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

These  letters  mostly  bear,  in  the  nature  of  an  address,  long  superscrip- 
tions such  as  '  To  the  Reverend  and  ever  Honoured  Doctour  Basire, 
Prebendary  of  the  Cathedral  Church  in  Durham.  To  be  recommended 
to  the  Postmaster  of  Darneton'  (p.  213,  dated  1662). 

This  letter,  from  Prebendary  Wrench  of  Durham,  begins  '  Sir ',  and 
ends — '  Sir,  Your  faithfull  and  unfeigned  humble  Servant  R.  W.' 

In  the  same  year  the  Bishop  of  St.  David's  begins  a  letter  to  Dr.  Basire 
— <  Sir ',  and  ends — '  Sir,  youre  uerie  sincere  friend  and  seruant,  Wil. 
St.  David's',  p.  219. 

The  Doctor's  son  begins — '  Reverend  Sir,  and  most  loving  Father 
and  ends  with  the  same  formula,  adding — ' Your  very  obedient  Son,  P.  B.', 

c  c 


386  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

p.  221.  To  his  Bishop  (of  Durham)  Dr.  Basire  begins  'Right  Rev. 
Father  in  God,  and  my  very  good  Lord ',  ending  '  I  am  still,  My  Ld, 
Your  LPS.  faithfull  Servant  Isaac  Basire '.  In  1666  the  Bishop  of  Carlisle, 
Dr.  Rainbow,  evidently  an  old  friend  of  Dr.  B/s,  begins  'Good 
Mr.  Archdeacon ',  and  ends  '  I  commend  you  and  yours  to  God's  grace 
and  remaine,  Your  very  faithfull  frend  Edw.  Carliol',  p.  254. 

In  1668  the  Bishop  of  Durham  begins  *  Mr  Archdeacon '  and  ends  '  In 
the  interim  I  shall  not  be  wanting  at  this  distance  to  doe  all  I  can,  who 
am,  Sir,  Your  very  loving  ffriend  and  servant l Jo.  Duresme',  p.  273. 
Dr.  Barlow,  Provost  of  Queen's,  begins  '  My  Reverend  Friend ',  and 
ends  'Your  prayers  are  desired  for,  Sir,  Your  affectionate  friend  and 
Seruant,  Tho.  Barlow',  p.  302  (1673).  Dr.  Basire  begins  a  letter  to 
this  gentleman — '  Rev.  Sir  and  my  Dear  Friend '  .  .  .  ending  '  I  remain, 
Reverend  Sir,  Your  affectionate  frend,  and  faithful  servant '.  To  his 
son  Isaac,  he  writes  in  1664 — 'Beloved  Son',  ending — '  So  prays  your 
very  lovinge  and  painfull  Father,  Isaac  Basire '. 

Having  now  brought  our  examples  of  the  various  types  of  epistolary 
formulas  down  to  within  measurable  distance  of  our  own  practice,  we 
must  leave  this  branch  of  our  subject.  Space  forbids  us  to  examine  and  illus- 
trate here  the  letters  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  this  is  the  less  necessary 
as  these  are  very  generally  accessible.  The  letters  of  that  age,  formal  or 
intimate,  but  always  so  courteous  in  their  formulas,  are  known  to  most 
readers.  Some  allusion  has  already  been  made  (pp.  20-1)  to  the  tinge  of 
ceremoniousness  in  address,  even  among  friends,  which  survives  far  into 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  may  be  seen  in  the  letters  of  Lady  Mary 
Montagu,  of  Gray,  and  Horace  Walpole,  while  as  late  as  the  end  of  the 
century  we  find  in  the  letters  of  Cowper,  unsurpassed  perhaps  among 
this  kind  of  literature  for  grace  and  charm,  that  combination  of  stateliness 
with  intimacy  which  has  now  long  passed  away. 


Exclamations,  Expletives,  Oaths,  &c. 

Under  these  heads  comes  a  wide  range  of  expressions,  from  such  as 
are  mere  exclamations  with  little  or  no  meaning  for  him  who  utters  or 
for  him  who  hears  them,  or  words  and  phrases  added,  by  way  of  emphasis, 
to  an  assertion,  to  others  of  a  more  formidable  character  which  are 
deliberately  uttered  as  an  expression  of  spleen,  disappointment,  or  rage, 
with  a  definitely  blasphemous  or  injurious  intention.  In  an  age  like 
ours,  where  good  breeding,  as  a  rule,  permits  only  exclamations  of  the 
mildest  and  most  meaningless  kind,  to  express  temporary  annoyance, 
disgust,  surprise,  or  pleasure,  the  more  full-blooded  utterances  of  a  former 
age  are  apt  to  strike  us  as  excessive.  Exclamations  which  to  those  who 
used  them  meant  no  more  than  '  By  Jove '  or  '  my  word '  do  to  us,  would 
now,  if  they  were  revived  appear  almost  like  rather  blasphemous  irreve- 
rence. It  must  be  recognized,  however,  that  swearing,  from  its  mildest 
to  its  most  outrageous  forms,  has  its  own  fashions.  These  vary  from 
age  to  age  and  from  class  to  class.  In  every  age  there  are  expressions 
which  are  permissible  among  well-bred  people,  and  others  which  are  not. 
In  certain  circles  an  expression  may  be  regarded  with  dislike,  not  so 


UNMEANING   EXCLAMATIONS  387 

much  because  of  any  intrinsic  wickedness  attributed  to  it,  as  merely 
because  it  is  vulgar.  Thus  there  are  many  sections  of  society  at  the 
present  time  where  such  an  expression  as  '  0  Crikey '  is  not  in  use.  No 
one  would  now  pretend  that  in  its  present  form,  whatever  may  underlie 
it,  this  exclamation  is  peculiarly  blasphemous,  but  many  persons  would 
regard  it  with  disfavour  as  being  merely  rather  silly  and  distinctly 
vulgar.  It  is  not  a  gentleman's  expression.  On  the  other  hand,  '  Good 
Heavens ',  or  '  Good  Gracious ',  while  equally  innocuous  in  meaning  and 
intention,  would  pass  muster  perhaps,  except  among  those  who  object,  as 
many  do,  to  anything  more  forcible  than  ' dear  me'. 

Human  nature,  even  when  most  restrained,  seems  occasionally  to 
require  some  meaningless  phrase  to  relieve  its  sudden  emotions,  and  the 
more  devoid  of  all  association  with  the  cause  of  the  emotion  the  better 
will  the  exclamation  serve  its  purpose.  Thus  some  find  solace  in  such 
a  formula  as  '  O  my  little  hat/'  which  has  the  advantage  of  being  neither 
particularly  funny  nor  of  overstepping  the  limits  of  the  nicest  decorum, 
unless  indeed  these  be  passed  by  the  mere  act  of  expressing  any  emotion 
at  all.  It  is  really  quite  beside  the  mark  to  point  out  that  utterances  of 
this  kind  are  senseless.  It  is  of  the  very  essence  of  such  outbursts — the 
mere  bubbles  on  the  fountain  of  feeling — that  they  are  quite  unrelated 
to  any  definite  situation.  There  is  a  certain  adjective,  most  offensive  to 
polite  ears,  which  plays  apparently  the  chief  r61e  in  the  vocabulary  of 
large  sections  of  the  community.  It  seems  to  argue  a  certain  poverty 
of  linguistic  resource  when  we  find  that  this  word  is  used  by  the  same 
speakers  both  to  mean  absolutely  nothing — being  placed  before  every 
noun,  and  often  adverbially  before  all  adjectives — and  also  to  mean  a 
great  deal — everything  indeed  that  is  unpleasant  in  the  highest  degree. 
It  is  rather  a  curious  fact  that  the  word  in  question  while  always  impos- 
sible, except  perhaps  when  used  as  it  were  in  inverted  commas,  in  such 
a  way  that  the  speaker  dissociates  himself  from  all  responsibility  for,  or 
proprietorship  in  it,  would  be  felt  to  be  rather  more  than  ordinarily 
intolerable,  if  it  were  used  by  an  otherwise  polite  speaker  as  an  absolutely 
meaningless  adjective  prefixed  at  random  to  most  of  the  nouns  in  a  sen- 
tence, and  worse  than  if  it  were  used  deliberately,  with  a  settled  and  full 
intent.  There  is  something  very  terrible  in  an  oath  torn  from  its  proper 
home  and  suddenly  implanted  in  the  wrong  social  atmosphere.  In  these 
circumstances  the  alien  form  is  endowed  by  the  hearers  with  mysterious 
and  uncanny  meanings ;  it  chills  the  blood  and  raises  gooseflesh. 

We  do  not  propose  here  lo  penetrate  into  the  sombre  history  of 
blasphemy  proper,  nor  to  exhibit  the  development  through  the  last  few 
centuries  of  the  ever-changing  fashions  of  profanity.  At  every  period 
there  has  been,  as  Chaucer  knew — 

a  companye 

Of  yonge  folk,  that  haunteden  folye, 
As  ryot,  hasard,  stewes  and  tavernes, 
Wher-as  with  harpes,  lutes  and  giternes, 
They  daunce  and  pleye  at  dees  both  day  and  night, 
And  etc  also  and  drinken  over  hir  might, 
Thurgh  which  they  doon  the  devel  sacrifyse 
Within  the  develes  tempel  in  cursed  wyse, 
By  superfluitee  abhominable ; 
c  c  2 


388  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

Hir  othes  been  so  grete  and  so  dampnable, 
That  it  is  grisly  for  to  here  hem  swere ; 
Our  blissed  lordes  body  they  to-tere ; 
Hem  thoughte  Jewes  rent  him  noght  y-nough. 

We  are  concerned,  for  the  most  part,  with  the  milder  sort  of  expres- 
sions which  serve  to  decorate  discourse,  without  symbolizing  any  strong 
feeling  on  the  part  of  those  who  utter  them.  Some  of  the  expletives 
which  in  former  ages  were  used  upon  the  slightest  occasion,  would 
certainly  appear  unnecessarily  forcible  for  mere  exclamations  at  the 
present  day,  and  the  fact  that  such  expressions  were  formerly  used  so 
lightly,  and  with  no  blasphemous  intention,  shows  how  frequent  must 
have  been  their  employment  for  familiarity  to  have  robbed  them  of  all 
meaning. 

So  saintly  a  person  as  Sir  Thomas  More  was  accustomed,  according 
to  the  reports  given  of  his  conversation  by  his  son-in-law,  to  make  use 
of  such  formulas  as  a  Gods  name,  p.  xvi ;  would  to  God,  ibid. ;  in  good 
faith,  xxviii,  but  compared  with  some  of  the  other  personages  mentioned 
in  his  Life,  he  is  very  sparing  of  such  phrases.  The  Duke  of  Norfolk, 
'his  singular  deare  friend',  coming  to  dine  with  Sir  Thomas  on  one 
occasion,  '  fortuned  to  find  him  at  Church  singinge  in  the  quiere  with 
a  surplas  on  his  backe ;  to  whome  after  service,  as  the(y)  went  home 
togither  arme  in  arme,  the  duke  said,  "  God  body,  God  body,  My  lord 
Chauncellor,  a  parish  Clark,  a  parish  Clarke ! " 

On  another  occasion  the  same  Duke  said  to  him  'By  the  Masse, 
Mr  Moore,  it  is  perillous  strivinge  with  Princes  ...  for  by  Gode's  body, 
Mr  Moore,  Indignatio  principis  mors  est ',  p.  xxxix.  In  the  conversation 
in  prison,  with  his  wife,  quoted  above,  p.  364,  we  find  that  the  good 
gentlewoman  '  after  her  accustomed  fashion  '  gives  vent  to  such  exclama- 
tions as  '  What  the  goody  ear e  M*  Moore  ' :  '  Tille  valle,  tille  valle ' ;  'Bone 
deus,  bone  Deus  man ',  '  I  muse  what  a  God's  name  you  meane  here  thus 
fondly  to  tarry'.  At  the  trial  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  the  Lord  Chief 
Justice  swears  by  St.  Julian — '  that  was  ever  his  oath ',  p.  li. 

*  Tilly-fally,  Sir  John,  ne'er  tell  me ',  and  '  What  the  good  year  ! '  are 
both  also  said  by  Mrs.  Quickly  in  Henry  IV,  Pt.  II,  ii.  4.  Marry,  which 
means  no  more  than  •  indeed ',  was  a  universally  used  expletive  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  Roper  uses  it  in  speaking  to  More,  Wolsey  uses  it, 
according  to  Cavendish ;  it  is  frequent  in  Roister  Doister,  and  is  con- 
stantly in  the  mouths  of  Sir  John  FalstafF  and  his  merry  companions. 
By  sweete  Sanct  Anne,  by  cocke,  by  gog,  by  cocks  precious  pots  tick,  kocks 
nownes,  by  the  armes  of  Caleys,  and  the  more  formidable  by  the  passion  of 
God  Sir  do  not  so,  all  occur  in  Roister  Doister,  and  further  such  exclama- 
tions as  O  Lorde,  hoigh  dagh  !,  I  dare  sweare,  I  shall  so  God  me  saue, 
I  make  God  a  vow  (also  written  avow),  would  Christ  I  had,  &c.  Meaning- 
less imprecations  like  the  Devil  take  me,  a  mischief  e  take  his  token  and  him 
and  thee  too  are  sprinkled  about  the  dialogue  of  this  play.  The  later  plays 
of  the  great  period  offer  a  mine  of  material  of  this  kind,  but  only  a  few 
can  be  mentioned  here.  What  a  Devil  (instead  of  the  Devil),  what  a  pox, 
by'r  lady,  zounds,  s'blood,  God's  body,  by  the  mass,  a  plague  on  thee,  are 
among  the  expressions  in  the  First  Part  of  Henry  IV.  In  the  Second 


SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY  EXPLETIVES  389 

Part  Mr.  Justice  Shallow  swears  by  cock  and  pie.  By  the  side  of  these 
are  mild  formulas  such  as  I'm  a  Jew  else,  Pm  a  rogue  if  I  drink  today. 

In  Chapman's  comedies  there  is  a  rich  sprinkling  both  of  the  slighter 
forms  of  exclamatory  phrases,  as  well  as  of  the  more  serious  kind.  Of 
the  former  we  may  note  y  faith,  bir  lord,  bir  lady,  by  the  Lord,  How  the 
dtvell  (instead  of  how  a  devil),  all  in  A  Humorous  Day's  Mirth  •  He  be 
sworne,  All  Fooles;  of  the  latter  kind  of  expression  Gods  precious  soles  > 
H.  D.  M. ;  s'/oot,  sbodie,  God's  my  life,  Mons.  D'Olive  ;  Gods  my  passion, 
H.  D.  M. ;  swounds,  zwoundes,  Gentleman  Usher. 

Massinger's  New  Way  to  pay  old  Debts  has  'slight,  'sdeath,  and  a  fore- 
shadowing of  the  form  of  asseveration  so  common  in  the  later  seventeenth 
century  in  the  phrase — '  If  I  know  the  mystery  .  .  .  may  I  perish ',  ii.  2. 

It  is  to  the  dramatists  of  the  later  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth 
century  that  the  curious  inquirer  will  go  for  expletives  and  exclamatory 
expressions  of  the  greatest  variety.  Otway,  Congreve,  and  Vanbrugh 
appear  to  excel  all  their  predecessors  and  contemporaries  in  the  fertility 
of  their  invention  in  this  respect.  It  is  indeed  probable  that  while  some 
of  the  sayings  of  Mr.  Caper,  my  Lady  Squeamish,  my  Lady  Plyant, 
my  Lord  Foppington,  and  others  of  their  kidney,  are  the  creations  of  the 
writers  who  call  these  '  strange  pleasant  creatures '  into  existence,  many 
others  were  actually  current  coin  among  the  fops  and  fine  ladies  of  the 
period.  Even  if  many  phrases  used  by  these  characters  are  artificial  con- 
coctions of  the  dramatists  they  nevertheless  are  in  keeping  with,  and 
express  the  spirit  and  manners  of  the  age.  If  Mr.  Galsworthy  or 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  were  to  invent  corresponding  slang  at  the  present 
day,  it  would  be  very  different  from  that  of  the  so-called  Restoration 
Dramatists.  The  bulk  of  the  following  selection  of  expletives  and  oaths  is 
taken  from  the  plays  of  Otway,  Congreve,  Wycherley,  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Farquhar.  A  few  occur  in  Shadwell,  and  many  more 
are  common  to  all  writers  of  comedies.  These  are  undoubtedly  genuine 
current  expressions  some  of  which  survive. 

Among  the  more  racy  and  amusing  are : — 

Let  me  die :  *  Let  me  die  your  Ladyship  obliges  me  beyond  expression ' 
(Mr.  Saunter  in  Otway 's  Friendship  in  Fashion) ;  '  Let  me  die,  you  have 
a  great  deal  of  wit'  (Lady  Froth,  Congreve's  Double  Dealer);  also 
much  used  by  Melantha,  an  affected  lady  in  Dryden's  Marriage  a  la 
Mode. 

Let  me  perish — '  I'm  your  humble  servant  let  me  perish '  (Brisk,  Double 
Dealer) ;  also  used  by  Wycherley,  Love  in  a  Wood. 

S£  z  as*"}-*-  *•«**»»' (vanbrugh>s  Reiapse)- 

Death  and  eternal  tartures  Sir,  I  vow  the  packet's  (=  pocket)  too  high 
(Lord  Foppington). 

Burn  me  if  I  do  (Farquhar,  Way  to  win  him). 

Rat  me,  '  rat  my  packet  handkerchief  (Lord  Foppington). 

Never  stir—'  Never  stir  if  it  did  not '  (Caper,  Otway,  Friendship  in 
Love) ;  '  Thou  shalt  enjoy  me  always,  dear,  dear  friend,  never  stir  '. 

ril  take  my  death  you're  handsomer '  (Mrs.  Millamont,  Congreve,  Way 
of  the  World). 

As  Pm  a  Person  (Lady  Wishfort,  Way  of  the  World). 


390  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

Stap  my  vitals  (Lord  Foppington  ;  very  frequent). 

Split  my  windpipe — Lord  Foppington  gives  his  brother  his  blessing,  on 
finding  that  the  latter  has  married  by  a  trick  the  lady  he  had  designed 
for  himself — *  You  have  married  a  woman  beautiful  in  her  person, 
charming  in  her  airs,  prudent  in  her  canduct,  canstant  in  her  inclina- 
tions, and  of  a  nice  marality  split  my  windpipe  '. 

As  I  hope  to  breathe  (Lady  Lurewell,  Farquhar,  Sir  Harry  Wildair). 

JTm  a  Dog  if  do  (Wittmore  in  Mrs.  Behn's  Sir  Patient  Fancy). 

By  the  Universe  (Wycherley,  Country  Wife). 

/  swear  and  declare  (Lady  Ply  ant)  ;  /  swear  and  vow  (Sir  Paul  Plyant, 
Double  Dealer) ;  I  do  protest  and  vow  (Sir  Credulous  Easy,  Aphra  Behn's 
Sir  Patient  Fancy) ;  /  protest  I  swoon  at  ceremony  (Lady  Fancy  full, 
Vanbrugh,  Provok'd  Wife) ;  /  profess  ingenuously  a  very  discreet  young 
man  (Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  Sir  Patient  Fancy). 

Gads  my  life  (Lady  Plyant). 

0  Crimine  (Lady  Plyant). 

0  Jeminy  (Wycherley,  Mrs.  Pinchwife,  Country  Wife). 

Gad  take  me,  between  you  and  I,  I  was  deaf  on  both  ears  for  three 
weeks  after  (Sir  Humphrey,  Shadwell,  Bury  Fair). 

Pll  lay  my  Life  he  deserves  your  assistance  (Mrs.  Sullen,  Farquhar, 
Beaux'  Strategem). 

By  the  Lord  Harry  (Sir  Jos.  Wittol,  Congreve,  Old  Bachelor). 

By  the  universe  (Wycherley,  Mrs.  Pinchwife,  Country  Wife). 

Gadzooks  (Heartfree,  Vanbrugh,  Provok'd  Wife)  ;  Gad's  Bud  (Sir  Paul 
Plyant,  Double  Dealer)  ;  Gud  soons  (Lady  Arabella,  Vanbrugh,  Journey 
to  London) ;  Marry-gep  (Widow  Blackacre,  Wycherley,  Plain  Dealer) ; 
'sheart  (Sir  Wilful,  Congreve,  Way  of  the  World) ;  Eh  Gud,  eh  Gud 
(Mrs.  Fantast,  Shadwell,  Bury  Fair) ;  Zoz  I  was  a  modest  fool ;  ads- 
zoz  (Sir  Credulous  Easy,  Devonshire  Knight,  Aphra  Behn,  Sir 
Petulant  Fancy) ;  'fi's  diggers  Sir  (a  groom  in  Sir  Petulant  Fancy) ; 
'sheart  (Sir  Wilf.  Witwoud,  Congreve,  Way  of  the  World);  od3  shear  t 
(Sir  Noble  Clumsey,  Otway,  Friendship  in  Fashion);  Adsheart  (Sir  Jos. 
Wittol,  Congreve,  Old  Bachelor) ;  Gadswouns  (Oldfox,  Plain  Dealer). 
By  the  side  of  marry,  frequent  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
the  curious  expression  Many  come  up  my  dirty  cousin  occurs  in  Swift's 
Polite  Conversations  (said  by  the  young  lady),  and  again  in  Fielding's 
Tom  Jones — said  by  the  lady's  maid  Mrs.  Honor.  With  this  compare 
marry  gep  above,  which  probably  stands  for  '  go  up  '. 

Such  expressions  as  Lard  are  frequent  in  the  seventeenth-century 
comedies,  and  the  very  modern-sounding  as  sure  as  a  gun  is  said  by 
Sir  Paul  Plyant  in  the  Double  Dealer. 

The  comedies  of  Dryden  contain  but  few  of  the  more  or  less  mild,  and 
fashionable,  semi-bantering  exclamatory  expressions  which  enliven  the 
pages  of  many  of  his  contemporaries  ;  he  sticks  on  the  whole  to  the  more 
permanent  oaths — 'sdeath,  'sblood,  &c.  It  must  be  allowed  that  the 
dialogue  of  Dryden's  comedies  is  inferior  to  that  of  Otway  or  Congreve 
in  brilliancy  and  natural  ease,  and  that  it  probably  does  not  reflect  the 
familiar  colloquial  English  of  the  period  so  faithfully  as  the  conversation 
in  the  works  of  these  writers.  Dryden  himself  says,  in  the  Defense  of 
the  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy,  '  I  know  I  am  not  so  fitted  by  Nature  to 


DECAY  OF   THE   OLDER   PROFANITY  39i 

write  Comedy :  I  want  that  Gaiety  of  Humour  which  is  required  to  it. 
My  Conversation  is  slow  and  dull,  my  Humour  Saturnine  and  reserv'd : 
In  short,  I  am  none  of  those  who  endeavour  to  break  all  Jests  in  Com- 
pany, or  make  Repartees '. 

It  may  be  noted  that  the  frequent  use — almost  in  every  sentence — of 
such  phrases  as  let  me  perish,  burn  me,  and  other  meaningless  interjec- 
tions of  this  order,  is  attributed  by  the  dramatists  only  to  the  most 
frivolous  fops  and  the  most  affected  women  of  fashion.  The  more 
serious  characters,  so  far  as  such  exist  in  the  later  seventeenth-century 
comedies,  are  addicted  rather  to  the  weightier  and  more  sober  sort  of 
swearing.  It  is-  perhaps  unnecessary  to  pursue  this  subject  beyond  the 
first  third  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Farquhar  has  many  of  the  manner- 
isms of  his  slightly  older  contemporaries,  and  some  stronger  expressions, 
e.  g.  '  There  was  a  neighbour's  daughter  I  had  a  woundy  kindness  for ', 
Truman,  in  Twin  Rivals ;  but  Fielding  in  his  numerous  comedies  has 
but  few  of  the  objurgatory  catchwords  of  the  earlier  generation.  Swearing, 
both  of  the  lighter  kind  as  well  as  of  the  deliberately  profane  variety, 
appears  to  have  diminished  in  intensity,  apart  from  the  stage  country 
squire,  such  as  Squire  Badger  in  Don  Quixote,  who  says  'Sbodlikins  and 
ecod,  and  Squire  Western,  whose  artless  profanity  is  notorious.  Ladies 
in  these  plays,  and  in  Swift's  Polite  Conversations,  still  say  lard,  0  Lud, 
and  la,  and  mercy,  'sbubs,  God  bless  my  eyesight,  but  the  rich  variety  of 
expression  which  we  find  in  Lady  Squeamish  and  her  friends  has 
vanished.  Some  few  of  the  old  mouth-filling  oaths,  such  as  zounds, 
'sdeath,  and  so  on,  still  linger  in  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan,  but  the  number 
of  these  available  for  a  gentleman  was  very  limited  by  the  end  of  the 
century.  From  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  would  seem 
that  nearly  all  the  old  oaths  died  out  in  good  society,  as  having  come  to 
be  considered,  from  unfamiliarity,  either  too  profane  or  else  too  devoid 
of  content  to  serve  any  purpose.  It  seems  to  be  the  case  that  the  serious 
oaths  survive  longest,  or  at  any  rate  die  hardest,  while  each  age  produces 
its  own  ephemeral  formulas  of  mere  light  expletive  and  asseveration. 


Hyperbole ;  Compliments ;  Approval ;  Disapproval ;  Abuse,  &c. 

Very  characteristic  of  a  particular  age  is  the  language  of  hyperbole 
and  exaggeration  as  found  in  phrases  expressive  on  the  one  hand  of 
compliments,  pleasure,  approval,  amusement,  and  so  on,  and  of  disgust, 
dislike,  anger,  and  kindred  emotions,  on  the  other.  Incidentally,  the 
study  of  the  different  modes  of  expressing  such  feelings  as  these  leads 
us  also  to  observe  the  varying  fashion  in  intensives,  corresponding  to  the 
present-day  awfully, frightfully,  and  the  rest,  and  in  exaggeration  generally, 
especially  in  paying  compliments. 

The  following  illustrations  are  chiefly  drawn  from  the  seventeenth 
century,  which  offers  a  considerable  wealth  of  material. 

It  is  wonderful  what  a  variety  of  expressions  have  been  in  use,  more 
or  less  transitorily,  at  different  periods,  as  intensives,  meaning  no  more 
than  very,  very  much,  &c.  Rarely  in  Chapman's  Gentleman  Usher — 
'  How  did  you  like  me  aunt?  O  rarely,  rarely',  'Oh  lord,  that,  that  is 


392  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

a  pleasure  intolerable  \  Lady  Squeamish  in  Otway's  Friendship  in  Love  ; 
'Let  me  die  if  that  was  not  extravagantly  pleasant  (=  very  amusing), 
ibid. ;  *  I  vow  he  himself  sings  a  tune  extreme  prettily ',  ibid. :  '  I  love 
dancing  immoderately  ',  ibid. ;  '  O  dear  'tis  violent  hot ',  ibid. ;  '  Deuce  take 
me  if  your  Ladyship  has  not  the  art  of  surprising  the  most  naturally  in 
the  world — I  hope  you'll  make  me  happy  in  communicating  the  Poem ', 
Brisk  in  Congreve's  Double  Dealer ;  '  With  the  reserve  of  my  Honour, 
I  assure  you  Mr  Careless,  I  don't  know  anything  in  the  World  I  would 
refuse  to  a  Person  so  meritorious — You'll  pardon  my  want  of  expression ', 
Lady  Plyant  in  Double  Dealer;  to  which  Careless  replies — 'O  your 
Ladyship  is  abounding  in  all  Excellence,  particularly  that  of  Phrase  ;  My 
Lady  Froth  is  very  well  in  her  Accomplishments — But  it  is  when  my 
Lady  Plyant  is  not  thought  of— if  that  can  ever  be ' ;  Lady  Plyant : — 
1  O  you  overcome^me— That  is  so  excessive' ;  Brisk,  asked  to  write  notes 
to  Lady  Froth's  Poems,  cries  <  With  all  my  Heart  and  Soul,  and  proud  of 
the  vast  Honour  let  me  perish '.  '  I  swear  Mr  Careless  you  are  very 
alluring,  and  say  so  many  fine  Things,  and  nothing  is  so  moving  as  a  fine 

Thing Well,  sure  if  I  escape  your  Importunities,  I  shall  value  myself 

as  long  as  I  live,  I  swear ;  Lady  Plyant.  The  following  bit  of  dialogue 
between  Lady  Froth  and  Mr.  Brisk  illustrates  the  fashionable  mode  of 
bandying  exaggerated,  but  rather  hollow  compliments. 

*  Ldy  F.  Ah  Gallantry  to  the  last  degree — Mr  Brisk  was  ever  anything  so 
well  bred  as  My  Lord?  J5ris&—Ne\er  anything  but  your  Ladyship  let  me 
perish.  Ldy  F.  O  prettily  turned  again  ;  let  me  die  but  you  have  a  great 
deal  of  Wit.  Mr  Mellefont  don't  you  think  Mr  Brisk  has  a  World  of  Wit  ? 
Mellefont — O  yes  Madam.  Brisk — O  dear  Madam — Ldy  F.  An  infinite 
deal!  Brisk.  O  Heaven  Madam.  Ldy  F.  More  Wit —  than  Body. 
Brisk — Pm  everlastingly  your  humble  Servant,  deuce  take  me  Madam." 

Lady  Fancyful  in  Vanbrugh's  Provok'd  Wife  contrives  to  pay  herself 
a  pretty  compliment  in  lamenting  the  ravages  of  her  beauty  and  the  con- 
sequent pretended  annoyance  to  herself — '  To  confess  the  truth  to  you, 
I'm  so  everlastingly  fatigued  with  the  addresses  of  unfortunate  gentlemen 
that  were  it  not  for  the  extravagancy  of  the  example,  I  should  e'en  tear 
out  these  wicked  eyes  with  my  own  fingers,  to  make  both  myself  and 
mankind  easy '. 

Swift's  Polite  Conversations  consist  of  a  wonderful  string  of  slang 
words,  phrases,  and  cliches,  all  of  which  we  may  suppose  to  have  been 
current  in  the  conversation  of  the  more  frivolous  part  of  Society  in  the 
early  eighteenth  century.  The  word  pure  is  used  for  very — '  this  almond 
pudden  is  pure  good ' ;  also  as  an  Adj.,  in  the  sense  of  excellent,  as  in  'by 
Dad  he  'spure  Company ',  Sir  Noble  Clumsey's  summing-up  of  the  'Arch- 
Wag  '  Malagene.  To  divert  in  the  characteristic  sense  of  '  amuse ', 
and  instead  of  this — '  Well  ladies  and  gentlemen,  you  are  pleased  to  divert 
yourselves*.  Lady  Wentworth  in  1706  speaks  of  her  'munckey'  as 
'  full  of  devertin  tricks ',  and  twenty  years  earlier  Gary  Stewkley  (Verney), 
taxed  by  her  brother  with  a  propensity  for  gambling,  writes  '  whot  dus 
becom  a  gentil woman  as  plays  only  for  divartion  I  hope  I  know '. 

The  idiomatic  use  of  obliging  is  shown  in  the  Polite  Conversations,  by 
Lady  Smart,  who  remarks,  in  answer  to  rather  excessive  praise  of  her 
house — '  My  lord,  your  lordship  is  always  very  obliging ' ;  in  the  same 


ENJOYMENT   OF   'WAGGERY';    BACKBITING       393 

sense  Lady  Squeamish  says  'I  sweare  Mr.  Malagene  you  are  a  very 
obliging  person '. 

Extreme  amusement,  and  approval  of  the  persons  who  provoke  it,  are 
frequently  expressed  with  considerable  exaggeration  of  phrase.  Some 
instances  are  quoted  above,  but  a  few  more  may  be  added.  '  A  you  mad 
slave  you,  you  are  a  tickling  Actor',  says  Vincentio  to  Pogio  in  Chapman's 
Gentleman  Usher. 

Mr.  Oldwit,  in  Shadwell's  Bury  Fair,  professes  great  delight  at  the 
buffoonery  of  Sir  Humphrey  : — '  Forbear,  pray  forbear ;  you'll  be  the 
death  ofme;  1  shall  break  a  vein  if  I  keep  you  company,  you  arch  Wag 
you.  .  .  .  Well  Sir  Humphrey  Noddy,  go  thy  ways,  thou  art  the  archest 
Wit  and  Wag.  I  must  forswear  thy  Company,  thou1  It  kill  me  else.' 
The  arch  wag  asks  '  What  is  the  World  worth  without  Wit  and  Waggery 
and  Mirth  ? ',  and  describing  some  prank  he  had  played  before  an  admiring 
friend,  remarks — 'If  you'd  seen  his  Lordship  laugh!  I  thought  my 
Lord  would  have  killed  himself.  He  desired  me  at  last  to  forbear ;  he 
was  not  able  to  endure  it!  'Why  what  a  notable  Wag's  this'  is  said 
sarcastically  in  Mrs.  Aphra  Behn's  Sir  Patient  Fancy. 

The  passages  quoted  above,  pp.  369-71,  from  Otway's  Friendship  in 
Love  illustrate  the  modes  of  expressing  an  appreciation  of  '  Waggery  '. 

In  the  tract  Reasons  of  Mr.  Bays  for  changing  his  religion  (1688), 
Mr.  Bays  (Dryden)  remarks  a  propos  of  something  he  intends  to  write — 
'you  'II  half  kill  yourselves  with  laughing  at  the  conceit ',  and  again 
'  I  protest  Mr  Crites  you  are  enough  to  make  anybody  split  with  laugh- 
ing '.  Similarly  '  Miss '  in  Polite  Conversation  declares — '  Well,  I  swear 
you  II  make  one  die  with  laughing '. 

The  language  of  abuse,  disparagement,  contempt,  and  disapproval, 
whether  real  or  in  the  nature  of  banter,  is  equally  characteristic. 

The  following  is  uttered  with  genuine  anger,  by  Malagene  Goodvile 
in  Otway's  Friendship  in  Love,  to  the  musicians  who  are  entertaining 
the  company—'  Hold,  hold,  what  insufferable  rascals  are  these  ?  Why 
you  scurvy  thrashing  scraping  mongrels,  ye  make  a  worse  noise  than 
crampt  hedgehogs.  'Sdeath  ye  dogs,  can't  you  play  more  as  a  gentleman 
sings  ? ' 

The  seventeenth-century  beaux  and  fine  ladies  were  adepts  in  the  art 


the  cud  like  an  old  Ewe' ;  'Fie  Mr  Brisk,  Eringos  for  her  cough '  pro- 
tests Cynthia;  Lady  Froth:—1  Then  that  t'other  great  strapping  Lady— 
I  can't  hit  of  her  name ;  the  old  fat  fool  that  paints  so  exorbitantly  ; 
Brisk : — '  I  know  whom  you  mean— But  deuce  take  me  I  can't  hit  of  her 
Name  neither— Paints  d'ye  say  ?  Why  she  lays  it  on  with  a  trowel.' 

Mr.  Brisk  knows  well  how  to  'just  hint  a  fault '— '  Don't  you  apprehend 
me  My  Lord  ?  Careless  is  a  very  honest  fellow,  but  harkee— you  under- 
stand me — somewhat  heavy,  a  little  shallow  or  so '. 

Lady  Froth  has  a  picturesque  vocabulary  to  express  disapproval— 
'  O  Filthy  Mr  Sneer  ?  he 's  a  nauseous  figure,  a  most  fulsamic  Fop  . 
Nauseous  and  filthy  are  favourite  words  in  this  period,  but  are  often  used  so 
as  to  convey  little  or  no  specific  meaning,  or  in  a  tone  of  rather  affectionate 


394  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

banter.  *  He 's  one  of  those  nauseous  offerers  at  wit ',  Wycherley's  Country 
Wife ;  '  A  man  must  endeavour  to  look  wholesome  '  says  Lord  Foppington 
in  Vanbrugh's  Relapse,  '  lest  he  make  so  nauseous  a  figure  in  the  side 
box,  the  ladies  should  be  compelled  to  turn  their  eyes  upon  the  Play ' ; 
again  the  same  nobleman  remarks  '  While  I  was  but  a  Knight  I  was 
a  very  nauseous  fellow ' ;  and,  speaking  to  his  tailor — '  I  shall  never  be 
reconciled  to  this  nauseous  packet '.  A  remarkable  use  of  the  verb,  to 
express  a  simple  aversion,  is  found  in  Mrs.  Millamont's  ' 1 'nauseate  walking  ; 
'tis  a  country  divertion '  (Congreve,  Way  of  the  World). 

In  the  Old  Bachelor,  Belinda,  speaking  of  Belmour  with  whom  she  is 
in  love,  cries  out,  at  the  suggestion  of  such  a  possibility — '  Filthy  Fellow  ! 
...  Oh  I  love  your  hideous  fancy  !  Ha,  ha,  ha,  love  a  Man ! '  In  the 
same  play  Lucy  the  maid  calls  her  lover,  Setter,  '  Beast,  filthy  toad ' 
during  an  exchange  of  civilities.  '  Foh,  you  filthy  toad  !  nay,  now  I've 
done  jesting '  says  Mrs.  Squeamish  in  the  Country  Wife,  when  Horner 
kisses  her.  '  Out  upon  you  for  a  filthy  creature '  cries  '  Miss '  in  the 
Polite  Conversations,  in  reply  to  the  graceful  banter  of  Neverout. 

Toad  is  a  term  of  endearment  among  these  ladies  :  *  I  love  to  torment 
the  confounded  toad '  says  Lady  Fidget,  speaking  of  Mr.  Horner  for 
whom  she  has  a  very  pronounced  weakness.  '  Get  you  gone  you  good- 
natur'd  toad  you '  is  Lady  Squeamish's  reply  to  the  rather  outre'  compli- 
ments of  Sir  Noble. 

Plague  ( Vb.),  plaguy ',  plaguily  are  favourite  expressions  in  Polite  Con- 
versations. Lord  Sparkish  complains  to  his  host — '  My  Lord,  this  venison 
is  plaguily  peppered ' ;  :  'Sbubs,  Madam,  I  have  burnt  my  hand  with  your 
plaguy  kettle '  says  Neverout,  and  the  Colonel  observes,  with  satisfaction, 
that  '  her  Ladyship  was  plaguily  bamb'd '.  '  Don't  be  so  teizing ;  you 
plague  a  body  so  !  can't  you  keep  your  filthy  hands  to  yourself? '  is 
a  playful  rap  administered  by  '  Miss '  to  Neverout. 

Strange  is  another  word  used  very  indefinitely  but  suggesting  mild 
disapproval — '  I  vow  you'll  make  me  hate  you  if  you  talk  so  strangely,  but 
'let  me  die,  I  can't  last  longer '  says  Lady  Squeamish,  implying  a  certain 
degree  of  impropriety,  which  nevertheless  makes  her  laugh ;  again,  she 
says,  '  I'll  vow  and  swear  my  cousin  Sir  Noble  is  a  strange  pleasant 
creature '. 

We  have  an  example  above  of  exorbitantly  in  the  sense  of  '  out- 
rageously ',  and  the  adjective  is  also  used  in  the  same  sense — '  Most 
exorbitant  and  amazing '  is  Lady  Fantast's  comment,  in  Bury  Fair,  upon 
her  husband's  outburst  against  her  airs  and  graces.  We  may  close  this 
series  of  illustrations,  which  might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely,  with 
two  from  the  Verney  Memoirs,  which  contain  idiomatic  uses  that  have 
long  since  disappeared.  Susan  Verney,  wishing  to  say  that  her  sister's 
husband  is  a  bad-tempered  disagreeble  fellow,  writes  'poore  peg  has 
married  a  very  humersome  cros  boy  as  ever  I  see'  (Mem.  ii.  361,  1647). 
Edmund  Verney,  Sir  Ralph's  heir,  having  had  a  quarrel  with  a  neigh- 
bouring squire  concerning  boundaries  and  rights  of  way,  describes  him 
as  'very  malicious  and  stomachfull'  (Mem.  iv.  177,  1682).  The  phrase 
'  as  ever  I  see '  is  common  in  the  Verney  letters,  and  also  in  the  Went- 
worth  Papers. 


'A   PARAGON   OF   PERFECTION'  395 

Preciosity,  &o. 

We  close  this  chapter  with  some  examples  of  seventeenth-century 
preciosity  and  euphemism.  The  most  characteristic  specimens  of  this 
kind  of  affected  speech  are  put  by  the  writers  into  the  mouths  of  female 
characters,  and  of  these  we  select  Shadwell's  Lady  Fantast  and  her 
daughter  (Bury  Fair),  Otway's  Lady  Squeamish,  Congreve's  Lady 
Wishfort,  and  Vanbrugh's  Lady  Fancyful  in  the  Provok'd  Wife.  Some 
of  the  sayings  of  a  few  minor  characters  may  be  added ;  the  waiting- 
maids  of  these  characters  are  nearly  as  elegant,  and  only  less  absurd 
than  their  mistresses. 

Luce,  Lady  Fantast' s  woman,  summons  the  latter's  stepdaughter  as 
follows : — '  Madam,  my  Lady  Madam  Fantast,  having  attir'd  herself  in 
her  morning  habiliments,  is  ambitious  of  the  honour  of  your  Ladyship's 
Company  to  survey  the  Fair ' ;  and  she  thus  announces  to  her  mistress 
the  coming  of  Mrs.  Gertrude  the  stepdaughter: — 'Madame,  Mr«  Gatty 
will  kiss  your  Ladyship's  hands  here  incontinently'.  The  ladies  Fan- 
tast, highly  respectable  as  they  are  in  conduct,  are  as  arrant,  pretentious, 
and  affected  minxes  as  can  be  found,  in  manner  and  speech,  given  to 
interlarding  their  conversation  with  sham  French,  and  still  more  dubious 
Latin.  Says  the  daughter — *  To  all  that  which  the  World  calls  Wit  and 
Breeding,  I  have  always  had  a  natural  Tendency,  a  penchen,  derived,  as 
the  learned  say,  ex  traduce,  from  your  Ladyship :  besides  the  great 
Prevalence  of  your  Ladyship's  most  shining  Example  has  perpetually 
stimulated  me,  to  the  sacrificing  all  my  Endeavours  towards  the  attaining 
of  those  inestimable  Jewels  ;  than  which,  nothing  in  the  Universe  can  be 
so  much  a  mon  gre,  as  the  French  say.  And  for  Beauty,  Madam,  the 
stock  I  am  enrich'd  with,  comes  by  Emanation  from  your  Ladyship,  who 
has  been  long  held  a  Paragon  of  Perfection :  most  Charmant,  most  Tuant! 
'  Ah  my  dear  Child '  replies  the  old  lady,  '  I !  alas,  alas  !  Time  has  been, 
and  yet  I  am  not  quite  gone '.  .  .  .  When  Gertrude  her  stepsister,  an 
attractive  and  sensible  girl,  comes  in  Mrs.  Fantast  greets  her  with 
1  Sweet  Madam  Gatty,  I  have  some  minutes  impatiently  expected  your 
Arrival,  that  I  might  do  myself  the  Great  Honour  to  kiss  your  hands  and 
enjoy  the  Favour  of  your  Company  into  the  Fair ;  which  I  see  out  of  my 
Window,  begins  to  fill  apace.' 

To  this  piece  of  affectation  Gatty  replies  very  sensibly,  '  I  got  ready  as 
soon  as  e'er  I  could,  and  am  now  come  to  wait  on  you ',  but  old  Lady 
Fantast  takes  her  to  task,  with  '  Oh,  fie,  Daughter !  will  you  never  attain 
to  mine,  and  my  dear  Daughter's  Examples,  to  a  more  polite  way  of 
Expression,  and  a  nicer  form  of  Breeding  ?  Fie,  fie ;  I  come  to  wait  on 
you !  You  should  have  said ;  I  assure  you  Madam  the  Honour  is  all 
on  my  side ;  and  I  cannot  be  ambitious  of  a  greater,  than  the  sweet 
Society  of  so  excellent  a  Person.  This  is  Breeding.'  'Breeding!' 
exclaims  Gatty,  '  Why  this  had  been  a  Flam,  a  meer  Flam '.  And  with 
this  judgement,  we  may  leave  My  Lady  Fantast. 

We  pass  next  to  Lady  Squeamish,  who  is  rather  ironically  described  by 
Goodvile  as  '  the  most  exact  Observer  of  Decorums  and  Decency  alive '. 
Her  manner  of  greeting  the  ladies  on  entering,  along  with  her  cousin 
Sir  Noble  Clumsey,  if  it  has  the  polish,  has  also  the  insincerity  of  her 


396  COLLOQUIAL  IDIOM 

age — '  Dear  Madam  Goodvile,  ten  thousand  Happinesses  wait  on  you ! 
Fair  Madam  Victoria,  sweet  charming  Camilla,  which  way  shall  I  express 
my  Service  to  you  ? — Cousin  your  honour,  your  honour  to  the  Ladies. — 
Sir  Noble :— Ladies  as  low  as  Knee  can  bend,  or  Head  can  bow,  I  salute 
you  all :  And  Gallants,  I  am  your  most  humble,  most  obliged,  and  most 
devoted  Servant.' 

The  character  of  this  charming  lady,  as  well  as  her  taste  in  language, 
is  well  exhibited  in  the  following  dialogue  between  her  and  Victoria. 

*  Oh  my  dear  Victoria  !  the  most  unlook'd  for  Happiness  !  the  pleasant'st 
Accident !  the  strangest  Discovery  !  the  very  thought  of  it  were  enough  to 
cure  Melancholy.  Valentine  and  Camilla,  Camilla  and  Valentine,  ha,  ha,  ha, 

Viet.    Dear  Madam,  what  is  *t  so  transports  you  ? 

Ldy  Squ.  Nay  'tis  too  precious  to  be  communicated  :  Hold  me,  hold  me, 
or  I  shall  die  with  laughter— ha,  ha,  ha,  Camilla  and  Valentine,  Valentine  and 
Camilla,  ha,  ha,  ha — O  dear,  my  Heart's  broke. 

Viet.  Good  Madam  refrain  your  Mirth  a  little,  and  let  me  know  the  Story, 
that  I  may  have  a  share  in  it. 

Ldy  Squ.  An  Assignation,  an  Assignation  tonight  in  the  lower  Garden  ; — 
by  strong  good  Fortune  I  overheard  it  all  just  now — but  to  think  of  the 
pleasant  Consequences  that  will  happen,  drives  me  into  an  Excess  of  Joy 
beyond  all  sufferance. 

Viet.  Madame  in  all  probability  the  pleasant'st  Consequence  is  like  to  be 
theirs,  if  any  body's ;  and  I  cannot  guess  how  it  should  touch  your  Ladyship 
in  the  least. 

Ldy  Squ.  O  Lord,  how  can  you  be  so  dull  ?  Why,  at  the  very  Hour  and 
Place  appointed  will  I  greet  Valentine  in  Camilla's  stead,  before  she  can  be 
there  herself;  then  when  she  comes,  expose  her  Infamy  to  the  World,  till 
I  have  thorowly  revenged  my  self  for  all  the  base  Injuries  her  Lover  has 
done  me. 

Viet.     But  Madam,  can  you  endure  to  be  so  malicious  ? 

Ldy  Squ.  That,  that 's  the  dear  Pleasure  of  the  thing ;  for  I  vow  I'd 
sooner  die  ten  thousand  Deaths,  if  I  thought  I  should  hazard  the  least 
Temptation  to  the  prejudice  of  my  Honour. 

Viet.  But  why  should  your  Ladyship  run  into  the  mouth  of  Danger? 
Who  knows  what  scurvy  lurking  Devil  may  stand  in  readiness,  and  seize 
your  Virtue  before  you  are  aware  of  him  ? 

Ldy  Squ.  Temptation  ?  No,  I'd  have  you  know  I  scorn  Temptation : 
I  durst  trust  myself  in  a  Convent  amongst  a  Kennel  of  cramm'd  Friers : 
Besides,  that  ungrateful  ill-bred  fellow  Valentine  is  my  mortal  Aversion, 
more  odious  to  me  than  foul  weather  on  a  May-day,  or  ill  smell  in  a  Morning. 
.  .  .  No,  were  I  inclined  to  entertain  Addresses,  I  assure  you  I  need  not 
want  for  Servants  ;  for  I  swear  I  am  so  perplexed  with  Billet-Doux  every 
day,  I  know  not  which  way  to  turn  myself:  Besides  there's  no  Fidelity,  no 
Honour  in  Mankind.  O  dear  Victoria !  whatever  you  do,  never  let  Love 
come  near  your  Heart :  Tho  really  I  think  true  Love  is  the  greatest  Pleasure 
in  the  World.' 

And  so  we  let  Lady  Squeamish  go  her  ways  for  a  brazen  jilt,  and  an 
affected,  humoursome  baggage.  If  any  one  wishes  to  know  whither  her 
ways  led  her,  let  him  read  the  play. 

Only  one  more  example  of  foppish  refinement  of  speech  from  this 
play — the  remarks  of  the  whimsical  Mr.  Caper  to  Sir  Noble  Clumsey, 
who  coming  in  drunk,  takes  him  for  a  dancing-master  — '  I  thought  you 
had  known  me '  says  he,  rather  ruefully,  but  adds,  brightening  — '  I  doubt 


'OECONOMY  OF  FACE'  397 

you  may  be  a  little  overtaken.  Faith,  dear  Heart,  I'm  glad  to  see  you  so 
merry ! ' 

The  character  of  Lady  Wishfort  in  the  Way  of  the  World  is  perhaps 
one  of  the  best  that  Congreve  has  drawn ;  her  conversation  in  spite  of 
the  deliberate  affectation  in  phrase  is  vivid  and  racy,  and  for  all  its 
preciosity  has  a  naturalness  which  puts  it  among  the  triumphs  of  Con- 
greve's  art.  He  contrives  to  bring  out  to  the  full  the  absurdity  of  the 
lady's  mannerisms,  in  feeling  and  expression,  to  combine  these  with  vigour 
and  ease  of  diction,  and  to  give  to  the  whole  that  polish  of  which  he  is  the 
unquestioned  master  in  his  own  age  and  for  long  after. 

The  position  of  Lady  Wishfort  is  that  of  an  elderly  lady  of  great  out- 
ward propriety  of  conduct,  and  a  steadfast  observer  of  decorum,  in  speech 
no  less  than  in  manners.  Her  equanimity  is  considerably  upset  by  the 
news  that  an  elderly  knight  has  fallen  in  love  with  her  portrait,  and  wishes 
to  press  his  suit  with  the  original.  The  pretended  knight  is  really  a  valet 
in  disguise,  and  the  whole  intrigue  has  been  planned,  for  reasons  into 
which  we  need  not  enter  here,  by  a  rascally  nephew  of  Lady  Wishfort's. 
This,  however,  is  not  discovered  until  the  lover  has  had  an  interview  with 
the  sighing  fair.  The  first  extract  reveals  the  lady  discussing  the  coming 
visit  with  Foible  her  maid  (who  is  in  the  plot). 

'  I  shall  never  recompose  my  Features  to  receive  Sir  Rowland  with  any 
Oeconomy  of  Face. . . .  I'm  absolutely  decayed.  Look,  Foible. 

Foible.  Your  Ladyship  has  frown'd  a  little  too  rashly,  indeed  Madam. 
There  are  some  Cracks  discernible  in  the  white  Varnish. 

Ldy  W.  Let  me  see  the  Glass— Cracks  say'st  thou  ?  Why  I  am  arrantly 
flead  (e.  g.  flayed) — I  look  like  an  old  peel'd  Wall.  Thou  must  repair  me 
Foible  before  Sir  Rowland  comes,  or  I  shall  never  keep  up  to  my  picture. 

F.  I  warrant  you,  Madam ;  a  little  Art  once  made  your  picture  like  you ; 
and  now  a  little  of  the  same  Art  must  make  you  like  your  Picture.  Your 
Picture  must  sit  for  you,  Madam. 

Ldy  W.  But  art  thou  sure  Sir  Rowland  will  not  fail  to  come  ?  Or  will  he 
not  fail  when  he  does  come  ?  Will  he  be  importunate,  Foible,  and  push  ? 
For  if  he  should  not  be  importunate  ...  I  shall  never  break  Decorums — 
I  shall  die  with  Confusion ;  if  I  am  forc'd  to  advance— O  no,  I  can  never 
advance. ...  I  shall  swoon  if  he  should  expect  Advances.  No,  I  hope 
Sir  Rowland  is  better  bred  than  to  put  a  Lady  to  the  Necessity  of  breaking 
her  Forms.  I  won't  be  too  coy  neither.— I  won't  give  him  Despair— But 
a  little  Disdain  is  not  amiss;  a  little  Scorn  is  alluring.— Foible.— A  little 
Scorn  becomes  your  Ladyship.— Ldy  W.  Yes,  but  Tenderness  becomes  me 
best.— A  Sort  of  a  Dyingness— You  see  that  Picture  has  a  Sort  of  a—  Ha 
Foible !— A  Swimmingness  in  the  Eyes— Yes,  I'll  look  so— My  Neice  affects 
it  but  she  wants  Features.  Is  Sir  Rowland  handsom  ?  Let  my  Toilet  be 
remov'd— I'll  dress  above.  I'll  receive  Sir  Rowland  here.  Is  he  handsom  ? 
Don't  answer  me.  I  won't  know :  I'll  be  surprised  ;  He'll  be  taken  by  Sur- 
prise. —Foible — By  Storm  Madam.  Sir  Rowland 's  a  brisk  Man.— Ldy  W. 
—Is  he !  O  then  he'll  importune,  if  he 's  a  brisk  Man.  I  shall  save  Decorums 
if  Sir  Rowland  importunes.  I  have  a  mortal  Terror  at  the  Apprehension  of 
offending  against  Decorums.  O  Pm  glad  he 's  a  brisk  Man.  Let  my  things 
be  remov'd  good  Foible.' 

The  next  passage  reveals  the  lady  ready  dressed,  and  expectant  of 
Sir  Rowland's  arrival. 

—  'Well,  and  how  do  I  look  Foible!  — F.  Most  killing  well,  Madam. 
Ldy  W.  Well,  and  how  shall  I  receive  him  ?  In  what  Figure  shall  I  give 


398  COLLOQUIAL   IDIOM 

his  Heart  the  first  Impression  ?  There  is  a  great  deal  in  the  first  Impression. 
Shall  I  sit?— No,  I  won't  sit— I'll  walk— ay  I'll  walk  from  the  door  upon  his 
Entrance ;  and  then  turn  full  upon  him — No,  that  will  be  too  sudden.  I'll 
lie,  ay  I'll  lie  down — I'll  receive  him  in  my  little  Dressing-Room.  There  's 
a  Couch — Yes,  yes,  I'll  give  the  first  Impression  on  a  Couch — I  won't  lie 
neither,  but  loll,  and  lean  upon  one  Elbow ;  with  one  Foot  a  little  dangling 
off,  jogging  in  a  thoughtful  Way — Yes — Yes — and  then  as  soon  as  he  appears, 
start,  ay,  start  and  be  surpris'd,  and  rise  to  meet  him  in  a  pretty  Disorder — 
Yes — O,  nothing  is  more  alluring  than  a  Levee  from  a  Couch  in  some  Con- 
fusion— It  shews  the  Foot  to  Advantage,  and  furnishes  with  Blushes  and 
recomposing  Airs  beyond  Comparison.  Hark !  there  's  a  Coach.' 

But  it  is  when  theure  du  Berger  draws  near,  as  she  supposes,  that 
Lady  Wishfort  rises  to  the  sublimest  heights  of  expression : — 

'Well,  Sir  Rowland,you  have  the  Way, — you  are  no  Novice  in  the  Labyrinth 
of  Love — You  have  the  Clue — But  as  I'm  a  Person,  Sir  Rowland,  you  must 
not  attribute  my  yielding  to  any  sinister  Appetite,  or  Indigestion  of  Widow- 
hood ;  nor  impute  my  Complacency  to  any  Lethargy  of  Continence — I  hope 
you  don't  think  me  prone  to  any  iteration  of  Nuptials — If  you  do,  I  protest 
I  must  recede — or  think  that  I  have  made  a  Prostitution  of  Decorums,  but 
in  the  Vehemence  of  Compassion,  or  to  save  the  Life  of  a  Person  of  so  much 
Importance — Or  else  you  wrong  my  Condescension — If  you  think  the  least 
Scruple  of  Carnality  was  an  Ingredient,  or  that — '. 

Here  Foible  enters  and  announces  that  the  Dancers  are  ready,  and  thus 
puts  an  end  to  the  scene  at  its  supreme  moment  of  beauty  —  and 
absurdity.  Even  Congreve  could  not  remain  at  that  level  any  longer. 

It  is  worth  while  to  record  that  in  this  play,  a  maid,  well  called  Mincing, 
announces — '  Mem,  I  am  come  to  acquaint  your  Laship  that  Dinner  is 
impatient '.  The  hostess  invites  her  guests  to  go  into  dinner  with  the 
phrase — '  Gentlemen,  will  you  walk  ? ' 

This  chapter  and  book  cannot  better  conclude  than  with  a  typical  piece 
of  seventeenth-century  formality.  May  it  symbolize  at  once  the  author's 
leave-taking  of  the  reader  and  the  eagerness  of  the  latter  to  pursue  the 
subject  for  himself. 

The  passage  is  from  the  Provok'd  Wife : — 

'  Lady  FancyfuL    Madam,  your  humble  servant,  I  must  take  my  leave. 

Lady  Brute.    What,  going  already  madam  ? 

Ldy  F.  I  must  beg  you'll  excuse  me  this  once ;  for  really  I  have  eighteen 
visits  this  afternoon.  .  .  .  (Going)  Nay,  you  shan't  go  one  step  out  of 
the  room. 

Ldy  B.    Indeed  I'll  wait  upon  you  down. 

Ldy  F.     No,  sweet  Lady  Brute,  you  know  I  swoon  at  ceremony. 

Ldy  B.  Pray  give  me  leave — Ldy  F.  You  know  I  won't — Ldy  B. — You 
know  I  must. — Ldy  F. — Indeed  you  shan't — Indeed  I  will — Indeed  you  shan't 
— Ldy  ^.—Indeed  I  will. 

Ldy  F.     Indeed  you  shan't.     Indeed,  indeed,  indeed,  you  shan't.' 
{Exit  running.     They  follow.} 


Printed  in  England  at  the  Oxford  University  Press. 


BINDING  CZC7.AUG  4  "1968 


PE  Wyld,  Henry  Cecil  Kennedy 

1075  A  history  of  modern 

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