manmetree of covetyse in ther pleyinge of myraclis, thei don that in hem is to distroze the ententive preyere of Crist in hevene for hem, and so ther myraclis pleyinge witnessith ther most folye in ther doynge, and therfore as unkyndely seiden to Aaron the children of Israel, Moyses beinge in the hil, 'we witen never how it is of Moyses, make us therfore Goddis that gon biforn us,' so unkyndeli seyen men nowe on dayes, Crist doth now no myraclis for us, pley we therfore his olde,' addyng many lesynges therto so colowrably that the puple zife as myche credense to hem as to the trwthe, and so thei forzeten to ben percever of the preyere of Crist, for the maumetrye that men don to siche myraclis pleyinge; maumetrye, I seye, for siche pleyinge men as myche honoryn or more than the word of God whanne it is prechid, and therefore blasfemely thei seyen, that siche pleyinge doith more good than the word of God wanne it is prechid to the puple. A! Lord! what more blasfeme is azenus thee, than to seyen to don the byddyng, as is to prechen the word of God doth fer lasse good than to don that that is bodyn onely by man and not by God, as is myraclis pleying? Rit forsothe, as the lyknesse of myraclis we clepen myraclis, rigt so the golden calfe the children of Israel clepiden it God; in the whiche thei hadden mynde of the olde myraclis of God beforn, and for that licnesse thei worschipiden and preyseden, as thei worschipiden and presiden God in the dede of his myraclis to hem, and therefore thei diden expresse maumetrye. So sythen now on daies myche of the puple worschipith and preysith onely the licnesse of the myraclis of God, as myche as the worde of God in the prechours mowth by the whiche alle myraclis be don, no dowte that ne the puple doth more mawmetrie now in siche myraclis pleyinge than dide the puple of Israel that tyme in heryinge of the calf, in as myche as the lesynges and lustus of myraclis pleyinge that men worschipen in hem is more contrarious to God, and more acordynge with the devil, than was that golden calf that the puple worschipid. And therefore the maumetrye that tyme was but figure and licknesse of mennus maumetrye nowe, and therfore seith the apostel, asse thes thingis in figure fellen to hem, and therefore in siche myraclis pleyinge the devel is most plesid, as the dyvel is best payid to disceyve men in the licnesse of that thing in whiche by God man weren convertid biforhond, and in whiche the devel was tenyd byfornhond. Therfore oute of doute siche myraclis pleying pretith myche more venjaunce than dide the pleyinge of the chyldren of Israel, after the heriynge of the calf, as this pleyinge settith but japes grettere and more henfetes of God. V. RECORDS OF COMMON LIFE. I have somewhere seen it stated that Trevisa's manuscript of his translation of Glanvilla de Proprietatibus Rerum is still in existence. Philologically speaking, an edition of a work of this character would be more valuable than a chronicle or a poem of equal extent. The variety of subjects discussed by Glanville supposes a correspondingly extensive vocabulary, and a greater range of verbal combination than would be likely to occur in historical narrative, or in poetry, the dialect of which is more conventional than that of prose. It is to works on natural knowledge, and which connect themselves with practical life, that we are chiefly to look for information upon the actual speech of bygone ages, and especially upon historical etymology—the true story of the metamorphoses and migrations of words. Grammaticasters seek the history of language in written, and especially in elegant literature; but, except in the fleeting dialect of pedants, linguistic change and progress begin in oral speech, and it is long before the pen takes up and records the forms and words which have become established in the living tongue. If you would know the present tendencies of English, go, as Luther did, to the market and the workshop; you will there hear new words and combinations, which orators and poets will adopt in a future generation; and in investigating the philological history of past ages, whose market-places are grass-grown, and the hum of whose industry is stilled, you must resort to those written memorials whose subjects most nearly approximate to the busy every-day life of their time. That literature which best preserves the unpremeditated, half-unconscious verbal expression of humanity is richest in true philological instruction, as it is in its revelations of the intellect and the heart of man: hence the great value and the profound interest of old familiar letters, journals, private records of all sorts. Precisely the disclosures we shrink most from making with respect to ourselves, and the outspoken expressions we are shyest in using, attract us most in the life of distant ages. The most insignificant original memorial of the actual words of a living man has an imperishable worth to remote posterity. Refined and sensitive persons destroy their family letters, and are reluctant to record their names in the albums of paper and of stone with which all places of resort abound; but, though we may not approve the vanity which led a distinguished author to have his name carved on the summit of a pyramid he did not climb, I think no traveller looks on the record of a visit to one of the tombs of the Egyptian kings by an ancient Greek-who expresses his disappointment at finding nothing to admire, ει μή τὸν λίθον — or at the inscription rudely cut on the legs of a gigantic statue at the entrance of the great rock-temple of Abou Simbel, to commemorate the halt of a detachment of Roman soldiery sent up into Nubia in search of deserters-or even at the bare name which, three hundred years ago, the old herbalist, Belon, scratched with the point of his dagger on the smoky wall of a convent kitchen, now in ruins, in Arabia Petræa-without feeling that he has added to his stores of knowledge both a historical fact and a 'form of words,' which will adhere to his memory when many an eloquent phrase shall have vanished from it. THE LECTURE X. ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE TIME OF CAXTON. WHEN the political and mental agitations of the fourteenth century—which had been, if not occasioned, at least greatly increased by the antipapal schism - had once subsided, the intellectual activity of the age of Langlande and Wycliffe and Chaucer suddenly ceased, and was followed by a long period of repose, or perhaps I might rather say, of lethargy. The literary monuments we possess of the early part of the fifteenth century exhibit few traces of original power. In some of them, even the language seems to have rather retrograded than advanced; nor did it manifest much substantial progress, until the new life, which the invention of printing infused into literature, made itself felt in England. The English mind, brilliant as were its achievements in the era we have just passed over, was not yet so thoroughly roused and enlivened, that it was able to go on in the path of creative literature by its own inherent energies. It still required external impulse; and it was only by the succession of electric shocks it received from the four greatest events in modern history, which so rapidly followed each other the invention of printing, the discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, and of the American continent, and the Reformation-that it was fully awakened and inspired with that undying energy which, for three hundred years, has filled the world with its renown. The first important poetical writer of the fifteenth century, whose works have come down to us, is Thomas Occleve, a lawyer, who is supposed to have flourished about the year 1420. Most of his works exist only in manuscript, and those that have been printed are not of a character to inspire a very lively desire for the publication of the remainder. They are principally didactic, and in great part translations, the most important of them being a treatise on the Art of Government, taken principally from a Latin work of Egidius, a Roman writer of the thirteenth century. The diction of Occleve is modelled after that of Chaucer, of whom he professes to have been a pupil, but there are some grammatical differences, the most noticeable of them being the constant omission of the n final in the infinitive mood, and in the third person plural of the verbs. This, though not uncommon, was but of occasional, or at least of very irregular occurrence in the preceding century. I can find nothing better worthy of citation from this author than his lamentation upon Chaucer, which Warton gives from an unpublished manuscript: But weleawaye, so is myne hertè wo, That the honour of English tonge is dede, Of which I wont was han counsel and rede! O mayster dere, and fadir reverent, My mayster Chaucer, floure of eloquence, O universal fadir in science, Alas, that thou thine excellent prudence In thy bed mortel mightest not bequethe! What eyled Deth? Alas why would he sle the ! In slaughtre of him, but all the lond it smertith: His name to sle. His hie vertue astertith That is to all this lond enlumyning. The versification of this extract is interesting as showing that |