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And forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgifap urum gyltendum
And forgive us our debts, so-as we forgive our debtors
And ne gelæde þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfle
And not lead thou us into temptation, but loose us of evil

Soplice.

Soothly (Amen).

The period of West-Saxon leadership extends from Alfred to the Conquest, about A.D. 880 to A.D. 1066. These figures represent also the interval at which Saxon literature was strongest; but its duration exceeds these limits at either end. We have poetry, laws, and annals before 880, and we have large and important continuations of Saxon Chronicles after 1066. Perhaps the most natural date to adopt as the close of Saxon literature would be A.D. 1154, the year of King Stephen's death, the last year that is chronicled in Saxon.

$4. Characteristics of Anglo-Saxon.

30. The Saxon differed from modern English most conspicuously in being what is called an inflected language. An inflected language is one that joins words together, and makes them into sentences, not so much by means of small secondary and auxiliary words, but rather by means of changes made in the main words themselves. If we look at a page of modern English, we see not only substantives, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, the great words of conspicuous importance, but also a sprinkling of little interpreters among the greater words; and the relations of the great words to one another are expressed by the little ones that fill the spaces between them. Such are the pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. In more general terms it may be said

that the essence of an inflected language is, to express by modifications of form that which an uninflected language expresses by arrangement of words. So that in the inflected language more is expressed by single words than in the noninflected. Take as an example these words of the Preacher, and see how differently they are constructed in English and in Latin:

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There are no words in the Latin answering to the words which are italicised in the English version- -a, to, be, up, that, away, together-yet the very sense of the passage depends upon them in English, often to such a degree that if one of these were to be changed, the sense would be completely overturned. The Latin has no words corresponding to these symbols, but it has an equivalent of another kind. The terminations of the Latin words undergo changes which are expressive of all these modifications of sense; and these changes of form are called Inflections. 31. The following piece may serve to illustrate the Saxon inflections:

Upahafenum eagum on pa heahnysse and a penedum earmum ongan gebiddan mid þæra welera styrungum on stilnesse.

With uplifted eyes to the height and with outstretched arms she began to pray with stirrings of the lips in stillness.

Here we observe in the first place, that terminations in the elder speech are replaced by prepositions in the younger. Upahafenum eagum' is 'with uplifted eyes,' and 'apenedum earmum' is 'with outstretched arms'; and the infinitive termination of the verb 'gebiddan' is in English represented by the preposition to.

We observe however in the second place, that on the Saxon side also there are prepositions among the inflections. The phrases on þa heahnysse,' 'mid . . . styringum,' 'on stilnesse,' are at once phrasal and inflectional. This indicates a new growth in the language: the inflections are no longer what once they were, self-sufficient. Prepositions are brought to their aid, and very soon the whole weight of the function falls on the preposition. The inflection then lives on as a familiar heirloom in the language, an ancient fashion, ornamental rather than necessary. At the first great shake which such a language gets, after it is well furnished with prepositions, there will most likely be a great shedding of inflections. And so it happened to our language after the shock of the Conquest, as will be told in its place.

We should not pass on without observing, that this condition of a language, in which it is provided with a double mechanism for the purposes of syntax, is one eminently favourable to expression, being precisely that of the ancient Greek and of the modern German. The old flexions serve to convey feeling, sentiment, association, much of that which is æsthetic in literature; the prepositions and other intermediaries seek to satisfy the demands of the intellect for clear and unambiguous statement. The excellence of Saxon as a field of study is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that two eras live on side by side in that language: the one in the old poetry, which is almost entirely flexional; the other mixed of flexion and phrase, in the prose and later poetry.

D

Sharon Turner has some sentences on this head, which, though not exact, are worth quoting:

Another prevailing feature of the Anglo-Saxon poetry was the omission of the little particles of speech, those abbreviations of language which are the invention [?] of man in the more cultivated ages of society, and which contribute to express our meaning more discriminatingly, and to make it more clearly understood. The prose and poetry of Alfred's translation of Boethius will enable us to illustrate this remark. Where the prose says, Thu the on tham ecan setle ricsast, Thou who on the eternal seat reignest; the poetry of the same passage has Thu on heahsetle ecan ricsast, Thou on high-seat-eternal reignest: omitting the explaining and connecting particles, the and tham.. Thus, the phrase

in Alfred's prose 'So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens,' is put by him in his poetry thus:

With pale light
Bright stars

Moon lesseneth.

History of the Anglo-Saxons, bk. xii. c. i.

32. But it is not in the scheme of its grammar alone that human speech is subject to change: this liability extends to the vocabulary also. There is a constant movement in human language, though that movement is neither uniform in all languages, nor is it evenly distributed in its action within the limits of any one given language. It might almost be imagined as if there were a pivot somewhere in the motion, and as if the elemental parts were more or less moveable in proportion as they lay farther from or nearer to that pole or pivot of revolution. Accordingly, we see

words like man, word, thing, can, smith, heap, on, with, an, which seem like permanent fixtures through the ages, and at first sight we might think that they had suffered no change within the horizon of our observation. They are found in

our oldest extant writings spelt just as we now spell them, and for this very reason it is the more necessary to call attention to the change that has really passed over them.

There are others, on the contrary, which have long been obsolete and forgotten, for which new words have been long ago substituted. Sometimes a whole series of substitutions successively superseding each other have occupied the place of an old Saxon word. The Saxon witodlice was in the middle ages represented by verily, and in modern times by certainly. The verb gehyrsumian passed away, and instead of it we find the expression to be buxom, and this yielded to the modern verb to obey. One might construct a table of words which have succeeded one another in the successive eras of our language, the new sometimes superseding the old, and sometimes, even oftener, living along peaceably by its side:

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And this is a great store for supplying the materials of

amplification and variation in diction. Thus :

So that no certaine end could euer be attained, unlesse the actions whereby it is attained were regular, that is to say, made suteable, fit, and correspondent vnto their end, by some Canon, rule, or lawe.-R. Hooker, Of the Laws, &c. i. 2.

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