1844, 1 vol. 12mo; Life and Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, do. London, 1845, 1 vol. 12mo; Fragment on Popular Science, in Wright's Popular Treatises on Science, q.v. Roman de la Rose, le, par Guillaume de Lorris et Jehan de Meung, edited by Méon, Paris, 1844, 4 T. 8vo. Roquefort, G. B. B., Glossaire de la Langue Romane, Paris, 1808, 2 T. Sro.; Royal and Historical Letters during the Reign of Henry IV., London, 1860, Sackville, T., Induction, &c., in Mirrour for Magistrates. Poetical Works, London, 1820, 8vo. 1 vol - Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex in Dodsley's Old Plays. Sandras, E. G., Étude sur Chaucer, Paris, 1859, 1 vol. 8vo. Schmid, Gesetze der Angel-Sachsen, 2to Ausgabe, 1858, 1 B. 8vo. Shakespeare, Works of, Knight's Pictorial Edition, London, 1839, 8 vols. 8vo. Sidney, Sir Philip, Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Defence of Poesy, and other works, London, 1665, 1 vol. folio. Skelton, J., Poetical Works, edited by Dyce, London, 1843, 2 vols. 8vo. Snorri Sturluson. See Edda the younger, and Heimskringla. Specimens of Lyric Poetry composed in England in the Reign of Edward I., edited by Wright for the Percy Society, London, 1842, 1 vol. 12mo. Spenser, Edmund, Poetical Works, edited by Hillard, Boston, 1842, 5 vols. 8vo. Stalder, P. J., Die Landessprachen der Schweiz, oder Schweizerische Dialektologie, Aarau, 1819, 1 vol. 8vo. Stanihurst, Richard, Description, &c., of Ireland in Holinshed, Vol. 6. - Translations, &c., extracts in Warton. Stier und Thiele, Polyglotten-Bibel zum Handgebrauch, Bielefeld, 1854, 4 B. in 5, 8vo. Surrey and Wyatt, Songs and Sonnets, reprint, London, 1717, 1 vol. 8vo. Surtees Psalter, Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter, published by the Surtees Society, London, 1843, 1847, 2 vols. 8vo. Sylvester, Du Bartas, his Divine Weekes and Workes, translated by Sylvester, London, 1611, 1 vol. 4to. Tegner, Esaias, Samlade Skrifter, Stockholm, 1847-1851, 7 B. 8vo. Turner, Sharon, The History of the Anglo-Saxons, Philadelphia, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo. Tyndale, William, The Newe Testament, 1526; reprint, after Bagster, by G. P. Dabney, Andover, 1837, 1 vol. 8vo. Tyndale, William, The Supper of the Lorde, London, мCCCCCXXXI. v. daye of Ulfila, Oder die uns erhaltenen Denkmäler der Gothischen Sprache, Text. Grammatik und Wörterbuch, bearbeitet und herausgegeben von F. L. Stamm, Paderborn, 1858, 1 B. 8vo. I have used also the very valuable edition of the Fragments of the Moso-Gothic Scriptures by Gabelentz and Loebe, 1843, 2 B. 4to. Van Maerlant, Jacob, Spiegel Historiael, uitgegeven door de Maatschappij der Nederlandsche Letterkunde, te Leiden, 1859-1862, 3 B. 4to. Vertomannus, Travels in the East, in Supplement to Hakluyt. Villemarqué, Les Romans de la Table Ronde, et les Contes des anciens Bretons, Paris, 1861, 1 vol. 8vo. Warton, Thomas, The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, edited by Price, London, 1840, 3 vols. 8vo. Weber, Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries, Edinburgh, 1810, 3 vols. 12mo. Wedgwood, Hensleigh, A Dictionary of English Etymology, with Notes by George P. Marsh, Vol. 1, New York, 1861, 8vo. Wilson, or Wylson, The Three Orations of Demosthenes in Favour of the Olynthians, and the Four Philippics, London, 1570, 1 vol. 4to. Wright, T., Popular Treatises on Science, written during the Middle Ages, London, 1841, 1 vol. 8vo. See also Piers Ploughman, Anecdota Literaria. Reliquiæ Antiquæ, &c. &c. Wycliffe, Apology for the Lollards, Camden Society, London, 1842, 1 vol. 4to. -The Holy Bible in the earliest English Versions, made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers (Hereford and Purvey), edited by Rev. J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden, Oxford, University Press, 1850, 4 vols. 4to. LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. LECTURE I INTRODUCTORY. THE subject of the course upon which I am about to enter will be, as nearly as I am able to express it in a comprehensive title, the Origin and History of the English Language, and of the Early Literature it embodies. I shall not notice the works of those natives of England who have written, on domestic as well as on more general topics, in foreign tongues, Latin and French, because those works, though composing a part of the national literature, do not belong to the literature of the English language, which alone is embraced in the plan of the present readings. I confine myself to the history of early English literature for two reasons. The first is the impossibility of surveying, in so short a series of discourses, the whole field of English intellectual action; the second, that the harmonious execution of my purpose which is to discuss the two branches of the subject, language and literature, with constant reference to their reciprocal influence on each other-excludes those periods when their history had ceased to be concurrent. The English language had already gone through its principal phases when the earliest of the works, which are now collec B tively known to most grammarians, lexicographers, and common readers as the body of English literature, made its appearance. A single epoch witnessed the completion of that organic action by which the English speech was developed from its elements, and the beginning of that one era of English authorship, the products of which still subsist as a consciously-felt and recognised agency in the world of letters. The language had passed the stages of infancy and youth, attained to the ripe perfection of manhood, and thus completed its physiological history, before the existing period of its literature began. In treating the two, then, the speech and its literature, conjointly, I am necessarily limited to the centuries when both were undergoing the successive processes of evolution and growth, and when the progress of each was dependent on that of the other, and conditioned by it. This period extends from a little before the commencement of the reign of Henry III. to the latter years of Queen Elizabeth, and thus embraces not far from four hundred years. During this space, the intellect of England, stirred at once by inborn impulses, and by external influences, had become luxuriantly productive, and was constantly struggling to find articulate symbols and syntactical combinations, wherein to embody and communicate the vivid images, deep thoughts, and earnest aspirations which it had either spontaneously originated, or appropriated from the literatures of ancient or foreign nations, while the language, stimulated to a continually renewed evolution of organic action by the necessities of a regenerated literary, political, social, and commercial life, was gradually expanding into a largeness of capacity, and moulding itself into a fitness of form, to serve as a vehicle for the vast, and varied, and strange conceptions it was now called upon to express. This process, or rather this double series of processes, was completed, as I have said, about the end of the sixteenth century, and our view of the language and its monuments will embrace little which belongs to later dates, except so far as I |