English, Past and Present: Eight LecturesMacmillan, 1870 - 328 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adjectives adopted affirm already altogether Anglo-Saxon Bacon Battle of Hastings become Ben Jonson black guard called century Chaucer Compare Conquest Coverdale curious derived dialects Dictionary drop Dryden earlier early edit employed England English language English tongue etymology example existence express fact foreign French words Fuller G. C. Lewis Gabriel Harvey gain German Glossary Gothic Gothic languages grammar Greek Grimm guage Hacket Holland hundred instance Italian Jeremy Taylor Jonson langue Latin words lecture less letters literature lives meaning Milton modern native never Norman Norman Conquest obsolete once passage period perished Piers Ploughman plural poet poetry possessed present preterite pronunciation prose remains Saxon scholar sense Shakespeare sound Spanish speak speech spelling spelt Spenser spoken Sprache survive syllable termination things tion trace translation true verb Version VIII vocables vocabulary whole Wiclif write
Popular passages
Page 291 - Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; Here thou, great ANNA ! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.
Page 35 - The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled.
Page 24 - Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Page 95 - words of art" as he calls them, which Philemon Holland, a voluminous translator at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century...
Page 94 - Poets that lasting marble seek Must carve in Latin or in Greek; We write in sand, our language grows, And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.
Page 286 - The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.
Page 128 - Learning hath his infancy, when it is but beginning and almost childish: then his youth, when it is luxuriant and juvenile: then his strength of years, when it is solid and reduced : and lastly, his old age, when it waxeth dry and exhaust.
Page 140 - Yet it must be allowed to the present age, that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakespeare's time, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse ; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure.
Page 198 - The persons plural keep the termination of the first person singular. In former times, till about the reign of king Henry the eighth, they were wont to be formed by adding en ; thus, loven, sayen, complainen. But now (whatsoever is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again : albeit (to tell you my opinion) I am persuaded that the lack hereof well considered will be found a great blemish to our tongue.
Page 36 - By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.