Essay on Anglo-Saxon

To Herbert Croft, Esq., LL.B., London Monticello, October 30th, 1798

Sir, —The copy of your printed letter on the English and German languages, which you have been so kind as to send me, has come to hand; and I pray you to accept my thanks for this mark of your attention. I have perused it with singular pleasure, and, having long been sensible of the importance of a knowledge of the Northern languages to the understanding of English, I see it, in this letter, proved and specifically exemplified by your collations of the English and German. I shall look with impatience for the publication of your “English and German Dictionary.” Johnson, besides the want of precision in his definitions, and of accurate distinction in passing from one shade of meaning to another of the same word, is most objectionable in his derivations. From a want probably of intimacy with our own language while in the Anglo-Saxon form and type, and of its kindred languages of the North, he has a constant leaning towards Greek and Latin for English etymon. Even Skinner has a little of this, who, when he has given the true Northern parentage of a word, often tells you from what Greek and Latin source it might be derived by those who have that kind of partiality. He is, however, on the whole, our best etymologist, unless we ascend a step higher to the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary; and he has set the good example of collating the English word with its kindred word in the several Northern dialects, which often assist in ascertaining its true meaning.

Your idea is an excellent one, in producing authorities for the meaning of words, “to select the prominent passages in our best writers, to make your dictionary a general index to English literature, and thus intersperse with verdure and flowers the barren deserts of Philology.” And I believe with you that “wisdom, morality, religion, thus thrown down, as if without intention, before the reader, in quotations, may often produce more effect than the very passages in the books themselves.” — “that the cowardly suicide, in search of a strong word for his dying letter, might light on a passage which would excite him to blush at his want of fortitude, and to forego his purpose; ”—“and that a dictionary with examples at the words may, in regard to every branch of knowledge, produce more real effect than the whole collection of books which it quotes.” I have sometimes myself used Johnson as a Repertory, to find favorite passages which I wished to recollect, but too rarely with success.

I was led to set a due value on the study of the Northern languages, and especially of our Anglo-Saxon, while I was a student of the law, by being obliged to recur to that source for explanation of a multitude of law-terms. A preface to Fortescue on Monarchies, written by Fortescue Aland, and afterwards premised to his volume of Reports, develops the advantages to be derived to the English student generally, and particularly the student of law, from an acquaintance with the Anglo-Saxon; and mentions the books to which the learner may have recourse for acquiring the language. I accordingly devoted some time to its study, but my busy life has not permitted me to indulge in a pursuit to which I felt great attraction. While engaged in it, however, some ideas occurred for facilitating the study by simplifying its grammar, by reducing the infinite diversities of its unfixed orthography to single and settled forms, indicating at the same time the pronunciation of the word by its correspondence with the characters and powers of the English alphabet. Some of these ideas I noted at the time on the blank leaves of my Elstob's Anglo-Saxon Grammar: but there I have left them, and must leave them, unpursued, although I still think them sound and useful. Among the works which I proposed for the AngloSaxon student, you will find such literal and verbal translations of the Anglo-Saxon writers recommended, as you have given us of the German in your printed letter. Thinking that I cannot submit those ideas to a better judge than yourself, and that if you find them of any value you may put them to some use, either as hints in your dictionary, or in some other way, I will copy them as a sequel to this letter, and commit them without reserve to your better knowledge of the subject. Adding my sincere wishes for the speedy publication of your valuable dictionary, I tender you the assurance of my high respect and consideration.

An Essay on the Anglo-Saxon Language

The importance of the Anglo-Saxon dialect toward a perfect understanding of the English language seems not to have been duly estimated by those charged with the education of youth; and yet it is unquestionably the basis of our present tongue. It was a full-formed language; its frame and construction, its declension of nouns and verbs, and its syntax were peculiar to the Northern languages, and fundamentally different from those of the South. It was the language of all England, properly so called, from the Saxon possession of that country in the sixth century to the time of Henry Ⅲin the thirteenth, and was spoken pure and unmixed with any other. Although the Romans had been in possession of that country for nearly five centuries from the time of Julius Caesar, yet it was a military possession chiefly, by their soldiery alone, and with dispositions intermutually jealous and unamicable. They seemed to have aimed at no lasting settlements there, and to have had little familiar mixture with the native Britons. In this state of connection there would probably be little incorporation of the Roman into the native language, and on their subsequent evacuation of the island its traces would soon be lost altogether. And had it been otherwise, these innovations would have been carried with the natives themselves when driven into Wales by the invasion and entire occupation of the rest of the Southern portion of the island by the Anglo-Saxons.

The language of these last became that of the country from that time forth, for nearly seven centuries; and so little attention was paid among them to the Latin, that it was known to a few individuals only as a matter of science, and without any chance of transfusion into the vulgar language. We may safely repeat the affirmation, therefore, that the pure Anglo-Saxon constitutes at this day the basis of our language. That it was sufficiently copious for the purposes of society in the existing condition of arts and manners, reason alone would satisfy us from the necessity of the case. Its copiousness, too, was much favored by the latitude it allowed of combining primitive words so as to produce any modification of idea desired. In this characteristic it was equal to the Greek, but it is more especially proved by the actual fact of the books they have left us in the various branches of history, geography, religion, law, and poetry. And although since the Norman conquest it has received vast additions and embellishments from the Latin, Greek, French, and Italian languages, yet these are but engraftments on its idiomatic stem; its original structure and syntax remain the same, and can be but imperfectly understood by the mere Latin scholar. Hence the necessity of making the Anglo-Saxon a regular branch of academic education. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was assiduously cultivated by a host of learned men. The names of Lambard, Parker, Spelman, Wheeloc, Wilkins, Gibson, Hickes, Thwaites, Somner, Benson, Mareschal, Elstob, deserve to be ever remembered with gratitude for the Anglo-Saxon works which they have given us through the press, the only certain means of preserving and promulgating them. For a century past this study has been too much neglected. The reason of this neglect, and its remedy, shall be the subject of some explanatory observations. These will respect—Ⅰ. The Alphabet. Ⅱ. Orthography. Ⅲ. Pronunciation. Ⅳ. Grammar.

Ⅰ. THE ALPHABET

The Anglo-Saxon alphabet, as known to us in its printer forms, consists of twenty-six characters, about the half of which are Roman, the others of forms peculiarly Saxon. These, mixed with the others,give an aspect to the whole rugged, uncouth, and appalling to an eye accustomed to the roundness and symmetry of the Roman character. This is a first discouragement to the English student. Next, the task of learning a new alphabet, and the time and application necessary to render it easy and familiar to the reader, often decides the doubting learner against an enterprise so apparently irksome.

The earliest remains extant of Saxon writing are said to be of the seventh century; and the latest of the thirteenth. The black letter seems to have been introduced by William the Conqueror, whose laws are written in Norman French, and in that letter. The full alphabet of Roman characters was first used about the beginning of the sixteenth century. But the expression of the same sounds, by a different character did not change these sounds, nor the language which they constituted; did not make the language of Alfred a different one from that of Piers Ploughman, of Chaucer, Douglas, Spenser, and Shakespeare, any more than the second revolution, which substituted the Roman for the English black letter, made theirs a different language from that of Pope and Bolingbroke;or the writings of Shakespeare, printed in black letter, different from the same as now done in Roman type. The life of Alfred, written in Latin and in Roman character by Asser, was reprinted by Archbishop Parker in Anglo-Saxon letters. But it is Latin still, although the words are represented by characters different from those of Asser's original. And the extracts given us by Dr. Hickes from the Greek Septuagint, in Anglo-Saxon characters, are Greek still, although the Greek sounds are represented by other types. Here then I ask, why should not this Roman character, with which we are all familiar, be substituted now for the Anglo-Saxon, by printing in the former the works already edited in the latter type? and also the manuscripts still inedited? This may be done letter for letter, and would remove entirely the first discouraging obstacle to the general study of the Anglo-Saxon.

Ⅱ. ORTHOGRAPHY

In the period during which the Anglo-Saxon alphabet was in use, reading and writing were rare arts. The highest dignitaries of the church subscribed their marks, not knowing how to write their names. Alfred himself was taught to read in his thirty-sixth year only, or, as some editions of Asser say, in his thirty-ninth. Speaking of learning in his Preface to the Pastoral of Gregory, Alfred says,“Swa clean hi was oth-fallen on Angelkin that swithe few were on behinan Humber the hior thenung cuthon understandan on Englisc, oth furthon an errand y-write of Latin on Englisc areckon. And I ween that not many beyondan Humber nay aren; swa few hior weron that I furthon ane on lepne nay may y-thinkan be-Suthan Thames tha tha I to ric fang.” Or, as literally translated into later English by Archbishop Parker, “So clean was it fallen amongst the English nation, that very few were on this side Humber which their service could understand in English, or else furthermore an epistle from Latin into English to declare. And I ween that not many beyond Humber were not. So few of them were that I also one only may not remember by South Tamise when as I to reign undertook.” In this benighted state, so profoundly illiterate, few read at all, and fewer wrote: and the writer having no examples of orthography to recur to, thinking them indeed not important, had for his guide his own ideas only of the power of the letters, unpractised and indistinct as they might be. He brought together, therefore, those letters which he supposed must enter into the composition of the sound he meant to express, and was not even particular in arranging them in the order in which the sounds composing the word followed each other. Thus, birds was spelt brides;grass,gaers;run,yrnan;cart,craett;fresh,fersh. They seemed to suppose, too, that a final vowel was necessary to give sound to the consonant preceding it, and they used for that purpose any vowel indifferently.A son was suna,sune,sunu;maera,maere,maero,maeru;fines,limites;ge,ye,y,i,are various spellings of the same prefix.The final e mute in English is a remain of this,as in give, love, curse.

The vowels were used indiscriminately also for every vowel sound. Thus,

The comparative ended in ar,er,ir,or,ur,yr.

The superlative ended in ast,est,ist,ost,ust,yst.

The participle present ended in and,end,ind,ond,und,ynd.

The participle past ended in ad,ed,id,od,ud,yd.

Other examples are, betweox, betwix, betwox, betwux, betwyx, for betwixt;egland,igland,ygland,for island.

Of this promiscuous use of the vowels we have also abundant remains still in English. For according to the powers given to our letters we often use them indifferently for the same sound, as in bulwark, assert, stir, work, lurk, myrtle. The single word many, in Anglo-Saxon, was spelt, as Dr. Hickes has observed, in twenty different ways; to wit, maenigeo, maenio, maeniu, menio, meniu, maenigo, maenego, manige, menigo, manegeo, maenegeo, menegeo, maenygeo, menigeo, manegu, maenigu, menegu, menego, menigu manigo. To prove, indeed, that every one spelt according to his own notions, without regard to any standard, we have only to compare different editions of the same composition....

This unsettled orthography renders it necessary to swell the volume of the dictionaries, by giving to each word as many places in order of the alphabet as there are different modes of spelling it; and in proportion as this is omitted, the difficulty of finding the words increases on the student.

Since, then, it is apparent that the Anglo-Saxon writers had established no particular standard of orthography, but each followed arbitrarily his own mode of combining the letters, we are surely at liberty equally to adopt any mode which, establishing uniformity,may be more consonant with the power of the letters, and with the orthography of the present dialect, as established by usage. The latter attention has the advantage of exhibiting more evidently the legitimate parentage of the two dialects.

Ⅲ. PRONUNCIATION

To determine what that was among the Anglo-Saxons, our means are as defective as to determine the long-agitated question what was the original pronunciation of the Greek and Latin languages. The presumption is certainly strong that in Greece and Italy, the countries occupied by those languages, their pronunciation has been handed down, by tradition, more nearly than it can be known to other countries: and the rather, as there has been no particular point of time at which those ancient languages were changed into the modern ones occupying the same grounds. They have been gradually worn down to their present forms by time, and changes of modes and circumstances. In like manner there has been no particular point of time at which the Anglo-Saxon has been changed into its present English form. The languages of Europe have generally, in like manner, undergone a gradual metamorphosis, some of them in name as well as in form. We should presume, therefore, that in those countries of Great Britain which were occupied earliest, longest, and latest by the Saxon immigrants, the pronunciation of their language has been handed down more nearly than elsewhere;and should be searched for in the provincial dialects of those countries. But the fact is, that these countries have divaricated in their dialects, so that it would be difficult to decide among them which is the most genuine. Under these doubts, therefore, we may as well take the pronunciation now in general use as the legitimate standard, and that form which it is most promotive of our object to infer the Anglo-Saxon pronunciation. It is, indeed, the forlorn hope of all aim at their probably pronunciation; for were we to regard the powers of the letters only, no human organ could articulate their uncouth jumble. We will suppose, therefore, the power of the letters to have been generally the same in Anglo-Saxon as now in English;and to produce the same sounds we will combine them, as nearly as may be, conformably with the present English orthography. This is, indeed, a most irregular and equivocal standard; but a conformity with it will bring the two dialects nearer together in sound and semblance, and facilitate the transition from the one to the other more auspiciously than a rigorous adherence to any uniform system of orthography which speculation might suggest.

Ⅳ GRAMMAR

Some observations on Anglo-Saxon grammar may show how much easier that also may be rendered to the English student. Dr. Hickes may certainly be considered as the father of this branch of modern learning. He has been the great restorer of the Anglo-Saxon dialect from the oblivion into which it was fast falling. His labors in it were great, and his learning not less than his labors. His grammar may be said to be the only one we yet possess: for that edited at Oxford in 1711 is but an extract from Hickes, and the principal merit of Mrs. Elstob's is, that it is written in English, without anything original in it. Some others have been written, taken also, and almost entirely from Hickes. In his time there was too exclusive a prejudice in favor of the Greek and Latin languages. They were considered as the standards of perfection, and the endeavor generally was to force other languages to a conformity with these models. But nothing can be more radically unlike than the frames of the ancient languages, Southern and Northern, of the Greek and Latin languages, from those of the Gothic family. Of this last are the Anglo-Saxon and English; and had Dr. Hickes, instead of keeping his eye fixed on the Greek and Latin languages, as his standard, viewed the Anglo-Saxon in its conformity with the English only, he would greatly have enlarged the advantages for which we are already so much indebted to him. His labors, however, have advanced us so far on the right road, and a correct pursuit of it will be a just homage to him.

A noun is to be considered under its accidents of genders, cases, and numbers. The word gender is, in nature, synonymous with sex. To all the subjects of the animal kingdom nature has given sex, and that is twofold only, male or female, masculine or feminine. Vegetable and mineral subjects have no distinction of sex, consequently are of no gender. Words, like other inanimate things, have no sex, are of no gender. Yet in the construction of the Greek and Latin languages, and of the modern ones of the same family, their adjectives being varied in termination, and made distinctive of animal sex, in conformity with the nouns or names of animal subject, the two real genders, which nature has established, are distinguished in these languages. But, not stopping here, they have by usage, thrown a number of unsexual subjects into the sexual classes, leaving the residuary mass to a third class, which grammarians call neutral—that is to say, of no gender or sex: and some Latin grammarians have so far lost sight of the real and natural genders as to ascribe to that language seven genders, the masculine, feminine, neuter, gender common to two, common to three, the doubtful, and the epicene;than which nothing can be more arbitrary, and nothing more useless. But the language of the Anglo-Saxons and English is based on principles totally different from those of the Greek and Latin, and is constructed on laws peculiar and idiomatic to itself. Its adjectives have no changes of termination on account of gender, number or case. Each has a single one applicable to every noun, whether it be the name of a thing having sex, or not. To ascribe gender to nouns in such a case would be to embarrass the learner with unmeaning and useless distinctions.

It will be said, e.g., that a priest is of one gender, and a priestess of another; a poet of one, a poetess of another, etc.; and that therefore the words designating them must be of different genders. I say, not at all; because although the thing designated may have sex, the word designating it, like other inanimate things, has no sex, no gender. In Latin, we well know that the thing may be of one gender and the word designating it of another. See Martial vii., Epig. 17. The ascription of gender to it is artificial and arbitrary, and, in English and Anglo-Saxon, absolutely useless. Lowthe, therefore, among the most correct of our English grammarians, has justly said that in the nouns of the English language there is no other distinction of gender but that of nature, its adjectives admitting no change but of the degrees of comparison. We must guard against the conclusion of Dr. Hickes that the change of termination in the Anglo-Saxon adjectives, as god, gode, for example, is an indication of gender; this, like others of his examples of inflection, is only an instance of unsettled orthography. In the languages acknowledged to ascribe genders to their words, as Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, their dictionaries indicate the gender of every noun; but the Anglo-Saxon and English dictionaries give no such indication; a proof of the general sense that gender makes no part of the character of the noun. We may safely therefore dismiss the learning of genders from our language, whether in its ancient or modern form.

2. Our law of Cases is different. They exist in nature, according to the difference of accident they announce. No language can be without them, and it is an error to say that the Greek is without an ablative. Its ablative indeed is always like its dative; but were that sufficient to deny its existence, we might equally say that the Latins had no ablative plural, because in all nouns of every declension, their ablative plural is the same with the dative. It would be to say that to go to a place, or from a place, means the same thing. The grammarians of Port-Royal, therefore, have justly restored the ablative to Greek nouns. Our cases are generally distinguished by the aid of the prepositions of, to, by, from, or with, but sometimes also by change of teimination. But these changes are not so general or difficult as to require, or to be capable of a distribution into declensions. Yet Dr. Hickes, having in view the Saxon declensions of the Latin, and ten of the Greek language, has given six, and Thwaytes seven to the Anglo-Saxon. The whole of them, however, are comprehended under the three simple canons following:

(1.)The datives and ablatives plural of all nouns end in um.

(2.) Of the other cases, some nouns inflect their genitive singular only, and some their nominative, accusative and vocative plural also in s, as in English.

(3.) Others, preserving the primitive form in their nominative and vocative singular,inflect all the other cases and numbers in en.

3. Numbers. Every language, as I presume, has so formed its nouns and verbs as to distinguish a single and a plurality of subjects, and all, as far as I know, have been contented with the simple distinction of singular and plural, except the Greeks, who have interposed between them a dual number, so distinctly formed by actual changes of termination and inflection, as to leave no doubt of its real distinction from the other numbers. But they do not uniformly use their dual for its appropriate purpose. The number two is often expressed plurally, and sometimes by a dual noun and plural verb. Dr. Hickes supposes the Anglo-Saxon to have a dual number also, not going through the whole vocabulary of nouns and verbs, as in Greek,but confined to two particular pronouns,i.e.,wit and yit, which he translates we two,and ye two.But Benson renders wit by nos,and does not give yit at all.And is it worth while to embarrass grammar with an extra distinction for two or three, or half a dozen words?And why may not wit,we two,and yit,ye two,be considered plural, as well as we three, or we four? as duo, ambo, with the Latins? We may surely say then that neither the Anglo-Saxon nor English have a dual number.

4. Verbs, moods. To the verbs in Anglo-Saxon Dr. Hickes gives six moods. The Greeks, besides the four general moods, Indicative, Subjunctive, Imperative, and Infinitive, have really an Optative mood, distinguished from the others by actual differences of termination. And some Latin grammarians, besides the Optative, have added, in that language, a Potential mood; neither of them distinguished by differences of termination or inflection. They have therefore been disallowed by later and sounder grammarians; and we may, in like manner, disembarrass our Anglo-Saxon and English from the Optatives and Potentials of Dr. Hickes.

Supines and Gerunds

He thinks, too, that the Anglo-Saxon has supines and gerunds among its variations; accidents certainly peculiar to Latin verbs only. He considers lufian,to love,as the infinitive,and to lufian,a supine. The exclusion,therefore,of the preposition to,makes with him the infinitive, while we have ever considered it as the essential sign of that mood. And what all grammarians have hitherto called the infinitive, he considers as a supine or gerund....

From these aberrations, into which our great Anglo-Saxon leader, Dr. Hickes, has been seduced by too much regard to the structure of the Greek and Latin languages and too little to their radical difference from that of the Gothic family, we have to recall our footsteps into the right way, and we shall find our path rendered smoother, plainer, and more direct to the object of profiting of the light which each dialect throws on the other....

As we are possessed in America of the printed editions of the Anglo-Saxon writings, they furnish a fit occasion for this country to make some return to the older nations for the science for which we are indebted to them; and in this task I hope an honorable part will in time be borne by our University, for which, at an hour of life too late for anything elaborate, I hazard these imperfect hints, for consideration chiefly on a subject on which I pretend not to be profound. The publication of the inedited manuscripts which exist in the libraries of Great Britain only, must depend on the learned of that nation. Their means of science are great. They have done much, and much is yet expected from them. Nor will they disappoint us. Our means are as yet small; but the widow's mite was piously given and kindly accepted. How much would contribute to the happiness of these two nations a brotherly emulation in doing good to each other, rather than the mutual vituperations so unwisely and unjustifiably sometimes indulged in by both. And this too by men on both sides of the water, who think themselves of a superior order of understanding, and some of whom are truly of an elevation far above the ordinary stature of the human mind. No two people on earth can so much help or hurt each other. Let us then yoke ourselves jointly to the same car of mutual happiness, and vie in common efforts to do each other all the good we can—to reflect on each other the lights of mutual science particularly, and the kind affections of kindred blood. Be it our task, in the case under consideration, to reform and republish, in forms more advantageous, what we already possess, and theirs to add to the common stock the inedited treasures which have been too long buried in their depositories.

P. S. January, 1825. In the year 1818, by authority of the legislature of Virginia, a plan for the establishment of an University was prepared and proposed by them. In that plan the Anglo-Saxon language was comprehended as a part of the circle of instruction to be given to the students; and the preceding pages were then committed to writing for the use of the University. I pretend not to be an Anglo-Saxon scholar. From an early period of my studies, indeed, I have been sensible of the importance of making it a part of the regular education of our youth; and at different times, as leisure permitted, I applied myself to the study of it, with some degree of attention. But my life has been too busy in pursuits of another character to have made much proficiency in this. The leading idea which very soon impressed itself on my mind, and which has continued to prevail through the whole of my observations on the language, was, that it was nothing more than the Old English of a period of some ages earlier than that of Piers Ploughman; and under this view my cultivation of it has been continued. It was apparent to me that the labors of Dr. Hickes, and other very learned men, have been employed in a very unfortunate direction, in endeavors to give it the complicated structure of the Greek and Latin languages. I have just now received a copy of a new work, by Mr. Bosworth, on the elements of Anglo-Saxon grammar, and it quotes two other works, by Turner and Jamieson, both of great erudition, but not yet known here.

Mr. Bosworth's is, indeed, a treasure of that venerable learning. It proved the assiduity with which he has cultivated it, the profound knowledge in it which he has attained, and that he has advanced far beyond all former grammarians in the science of its structure. Yet, I own, I was disappointed on finding that in proportion as he has advanced on and beyond the footsteps of his predecessors, he has the more embarrassed the language with rules and distinctions, in imitation of the grammars of Greek and Latin; has led it still further from its genuine type of old English, and increased its difficulties by the multitude and variety of new and minute rules with which he has charged it.... And this leads to such an infinitude of minute rules and observances, as are beyond the power of any human memory to retain. If, indeed, this be the true genius of the Anglo-Saxon language, then its difficuties go beyond its worth, and render a knowledge of it no longer a compensation for the time and labor its acquisition will require; and, in that case, I would recommend its abandonment in our University, as an unattainable and unprofitable pursuit.

But if, as I believe, we may consider it as merely an antiquated form of our present language, if we may throw aside the learned difficulties which mask its real character, liberate it from these foreign shackles, and proceed to apply ourselves to it with little more preparation than to Piers Ploughman, Douglas, or Chaucer, then I am persuaded its acquisition will require little time or labor, and will richly repay us by the intimate insight it will give us into the genuine structure, powers, and meanings of the language we now read and speak. We shall then read Shakespeare and Milton with a superior degree of intelligence and delight, heightened by the new and delicate shades of meaning developed to us by a knowledge of the original sense of the same words.

This rejection of the learned labors of our Anglo-Saxon doctors, may be considered, perhaps, as a rebellion against science. My hope, however, is, that it may prove a revolution. Two great works, indeed, will be wanting to effect all its advantages, 1. A grammar on the simple principles of the English grammar, analogizing the idiom, the rules and principles of the one and the other, eliciting their common origin, the identity of their structure, laws, and composition, and their total unlikeness to the genius of the Greek and Latin. 2. A dictionary, on the plan of Stephens or Scapula, in which the Anglo-Saxon roots should be arranged alphabetically, and the derivatives from each root, Saxon and English, entered under it in their proper order and connection. Such works as these, with new editions of the Saxon writings, on the plan I venture to propose, would show that the Anglo-Saxon is really old English, little more difficult to understand than works we possess, and read, and still call English. They would recruit and renovate the vigor of the English language, too much impaired by the neglect of its ancient constitution and dialects, and would remove, for the student, the principal difficulties of ascending to the source of the English language, the main object of what has been here proposed.