In a poem we find the following synonymous terms used to express con

For knowledge and learning they had list, croft, leornung, leornesse.

They had a great number of words for a ship; and to express the Supreme, they used more words and phrases than I can recollect to have seen in any other language.

Indeed the copiousness of their language was receiving perpetual additions from the lays of their poets. I have already mentioned that the great features of their poetry were metaphor and periphrasis. On these they prided themselves. To be fluent in these was the great object of their emulation, the great test of their merit. Hence Cedmon, in his account of the deluge, uses near thirty synonymous words and phrases to express the ark. They could not attain this desired end without making new words and phrases by new compounds, and most of these became naturalized in the language. The same zeal for novelty of expression led them to borrow words from every other language which came within their reach.

We have a specimen of the power of the language in Elfric's Saxon Grammar, in which we may perceive that he finds Saxon words for the abstruse distinctions and definitions of grammar. A few may be added.

To express indeclinables the natural resources of the language failed him, and he adopts the Latin word, and gives it a Saxonized form.

The astronomical treatises which have been already mentioned show a considerable power in the language to express even matters of science.

But the great proof of the copiousness and power of the Anglo-Saxon language may be had from considering our own English, which is principally Saxon. It may be interesting to show this by taking some lines of our principal authors, and marking in Italics the Saxon words they contain.

SHAKSPEARE.

To be or not to be, that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep;
No more! and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks
The flesh is heir to! 'twere a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; to sleep;
To sleep? perchance to dream!

MILTON.

With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change; all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train.

COWLEY.

Mark that swift arrow! how it cuts the air!
How it outruns the following eye!
Use all persuasions now and try

If thou canst call it back, or stay it there.
That way it went; but thou shalt find
No track is left behind.

Fool! 'tis thy life, and the fond archer thou.

Of all the time thou'st shot away

r'il bid thee fetch but yesterday,

And it shall be too hard a task to do.

TRANSLATORS OF THE BIBLE.

And they made ready the present against Joseph came at noon: for they heard that they should eat bread there. And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which was in their hand into the house, and bowed themselves to him to the earth. And he asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive? And they answered, Thy servant our father is in good health, he is yet alive. And they bowed down their heads, and made obeisance. And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother's son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake unto me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son. Gen. xliii. 25-29.

Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet,

saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him! John, xi. 32-36.

THOMSON.

These as they change, Almighty Father! these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of thee. Full in the pleasing spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields; the soft'ning air is balm,
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles:
And every sense and every heart is joy.
Then comes thy glory in the summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sun
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year.

ADDISON.

I was yesterday, about sunset, walking in the open fields, till the night insensibly fell upon me. I at first amused myself with all the richness and variety of colours which appeared in the western parts of heaven. In proportion as they faded away and went out, several stars and planets appeared, one after another, till the whole firmament was in a glow. The blueness of the other was exceedingly heightened and enlivened by the season of the year.

Every man, being conscious to himself, that he thinks, and that, which his mind is applied about whilst thinking, being the ideas that are there; it is past doubt, that men have in their minds several ideas. Such are those expressed by the words, whiteness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drunkenness, and others. It is in the first place, then, to be inquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas, and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. Locke's Essay, Book xi. ch. 1.

POPE.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot;
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest that equal periods keep;
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n;

Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whispering angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes.

YOUNG.

Let Indians, and the gay, like Indians, fond
Of feather'd fopperies, the sun adore ;
Darkness has more divinity for me;

It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself, our point supreme.

There lics our theatre: there sits our judge.

Darkness the curtain drops o'er life's dull scene;
'Tis the kind hand of Providence stretch'd out
'Twixt man and vanity; 'lis reason's reign,
And virtue's too; these tutelary shades

Are man's asylum from the tainted throng.

Night is the good man's friend, and guardian too.

It no less rescues virtue, than inspires.

SWIFT.

Wisdom is a fox, who, after long hunting, will at last cost you the pains to dig out. 'Tis a cheese, which by how much the richer has the thicker, the homelier, and the coarser coat; and whereof, to a judicious palate, the maggots are the best. 'Tis a sack posset, wherein the deeper you go you will find it the sweeter. But then, lastly, 'tis a nut, which, unless you choose with judgment, may cost you a tooth, and pay you with nothing but a worm.

ROBERTSON.

This great emperor, in the plenitude of his power, and in possession of all the honours which can flatter the heart of man, took the extraordinary resolution to resign his kingdom; and to withdraw entirely from any concern in business or the affairs of this world, in order that he might spend the remainder of his days in retirement and solitude. Dioclesian is, perhaps, the only prince, capable of holding the reins of government, who ever resigned them from deliberate choice, and who continued during many years to enjoy the tranquillity of retirement, without fetching one penitent sigh, or casting back one look of desire towards the power or dignity which he had abandoned. Charles V.

HUME.

The beauties of her person, and graces of her air, combined to make her the most amiable of women; and the charms of her address and conversation, aided the impression which her lovely figure made on the heart of all beholders. Ambitious and active

in her temper, yet inclined to cheerfulness and society; of a lofty spirit, constant and even vehement in her purpose, yet politic, gentle, and affable, in her demeanor, she seemed to partake only so much of the male virtues as to render her estimable, without relinquishing those soft graces which compose the proper ornament of her sex.

GIBBON.

In the second century of the Christian era the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence.

JOHNSON.

Of genius, that power, which constitutes a poet; that quality, without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not beller poems.

From the preceding instances we may form an idea of the power of the Saxon language; but by no means a just idea; for we must not conclude that the words which are not Saxon could not be supplied by Saxon words. On the contrary, Saxon terms might be substituted for almost all the words not marked as Saxon.

To impress this sufficiently on the mind of the reader, it will be necessary to show how much of our ancient language we have laid aside, and have suffered to become obsolete; because all our writers, from Chancer to our own times, have used words of foreign origin rather than our own. In three pages of Alfred's Orosius I found 78 words which have become obsolete, out of 548, or about. In three pages of his Boetius I found 143

obsolete, out of 666, or about. In three pages of his Bede I found 250 obsolete, out of 969, or about. The difference in the proportion between these and the Orosius proceeds from the latter containing many historical names. Perhaps we shall be near the truth if we say, as a general principle, that one fifth of the Anglo-Saxon language has ceased to be used in modern English. This loss must be of course taken into account when we estimate the copiousness of our ancient language, by considering how much of it our English authors exhibit.

I cannot agree with Hickes, in classing the works of Alfred under that division of the Saxon language which he calls Danish Saxon. The Danes had no footing in England till after the period of Alfred's manhood, and when they obtained a settlement, it was in East Anglia and Northumbria. We cannot therefore suppose that Alfred borrowed any part of his language from the Danes. None of their language could have become naturalised in Wessex before he wrote, nor have been adopted by him without either reason or necessity. We may therefore refer to the Anglo-Saxon laws before the reign of Athelstan, and to the works of Alfred, as containing the Anglo-Saxon language in its genuine and uncorrupted state.

CHAPTER IV.

On the Affinities and Analogies of the Anglo-Saxon Language.

All languages which I have examined, besides discovering some direct ancestral consanguinity with particular tongues; as the Saxon with the Gothic, Swedish, Danish, etc., and the Latin with the Greek; display also, in many of their words, a more distant relationship with almost all. Some word or other may be traced in the vocabularies of other nations; and every language bears strong marks, that events have happened to the human race, like those which Moses has recorded in his account of the confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of mankind. The fragments of an original tongue seem, more or less, to exist in all; and no narrated phenomenon of ancient history accounts for the affinities and analogies of words which all languages exhibit, so satisfactorily as the abruption of a primitive language into many others, sufficiently different to compel separations of the general population, and yet retaining in all some indications of a common origin (1).

In such a confusion of mind, memory, and organs, as must have attended such an incident, most of the words and much of the structure of language would be materially altered in the future pronunciation, recollection, and use of the scattered families then existing, and consequentially in the orthography. But it is probable that many words would descend amid these variations into all the subsequent tongues: not the same words in every one, because various accidents would diversify what each retained; but every tongue will be found to have several terms which exist with the

(1) The letters which I sent on the affinities of languages to the Royal Society of Literature, and which have been printed in the first volume of its Transactions, contain copious illustrations on this curious subject. The examples there given of numerous similarities, present many, which nothing that history has recorded satisfactorily accounts for, except the Mosaic narration of the incidents at Babel.