Fragments from the Lectures of Professor Lowell.

Elements of the English Language.

If a very little wine be poured into a cupful of water it will at first penetrate in irregular streaks without mingling, but will gradually give a color and flavor to the whole. This was really the case with the Norman-French brought into England at the time of the Conquest. At first the French and the Anglo-Saxon existed side by side, the one as language of the Court, the higher clergy and the nobles; the other of the people. Gradually as the connexion with Frence grew weaker and at last ceased altogether, and the realm of England began to develop itself under its single kings, the languages began to commingle and to take the direction which has ended in the present English. Even without the Conquest something similar, though not identical, would have taken place, for the Saxon was rapidly changing and would have ended, what with the processes incident to all living languages, and the introduction of Latin at the revival of learning, in something nearer to modern English than to the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf.

When a country is conquered and taken possession of by an emigrating tribe who bring with them their women and children, the material of the population is changed, the aborigines take refuge in the mountains and their language perpetuates itself there, as snow maintains itself all summer in certain mountainclefts inaccessible to the sun. But here a nation is conquered by an invading army, where the dynasty or governing class alone is changed; only so much of the language of the conqueror infuses itself as is absolutely necessary to the commerce of life, and the speech of the people gradually absorbs into itself these foreign elements and assimilates them. During the period of manuscripts, the influence of literature upon language was comparatively small; languages continued in a state of solution, and it was the invention of printing which finally precipitated them in crystals of homogeneous and enduring forms.

In considering the influences at work on the English, terms of law, of the church, and words for articles of necessity and consumption would naturally be those in which the alien would triumph over the native nomenclature. In the third class we should of course expect to find the greatest number of examples,- the producers being Saxon and the consumers Norman. Thus for instance we have ox, sheep, calf, swine, on the one hand, to designate the thing produced, all Saxon-and, on the other, beef, mutton, veal, pork, all Norman-French-to indicate the thing consumed. In the same way while the names of the various grains continue Saxon as well as the product of the inferier kinds when ground, as oatmeal, barleymeal, ryemeal, yet that which was used by the higher classes gets a foreign name-flour. Thus we find a principle of caste established in our language by the mere necessities of the case. To bury remains Saxon, because everybody must at last be put in the earth, but as only the rich and noble could afford any pomp in that sad office we get the word for it-funeral from the Norman. So also the poor man was put into a Saxon grave, and the noble into a Norman tomb. All the parts of armor, which was worn only by the nobel, have French names, while the weapons of the people, sword, bow, and the like continued Saxon. So feather is Saxon, but when it changes to a plume for the lord, or a pen for the learned it becomes foreign. Book is Saxon, but a number of books collected together, as could only be done by the wealthy, becomes a library. The weapons of the scholar-pen, ink, paper-all point to foreign origin, and one of them carries us back to the papyrus that waved its slender stems over the little river of Syracuse.

And this suggests another point in which language is interesting. The little facts of domestic history are to be found imbedded in it, and not only so, but we may trace in it sometimes the tide lines and driftmarks of civilization. The word chimney, for example, coming into English from the Latin by the way of Italian and French, gives us good ground for suspecting that the mass of the population of Saxon England before the Norman conquest got rid of their smoke by the less ingenious outlet of door and window. In cordwainer (still the legal designation of shoemaker) we are pointed to the fact that the people of Cordova made the best leather-a fame to which Morocco succeeded-hence Cordovannier, cordonnier, cordwainer. Cant perpetuates a sneer against the monks who did no work but singing-cantabant, Hocus-pocus again satirizes their ignorance, and also contains a sly Protestant laugh at the Catholic mystery of transubstantiation-hoc est corpus. That wigs were originally a French fashion is plain enough in the word itself-first corrupted from perruque to periwig, and then contracted for convenience to wig. Chouse, in the sense of to cheat, carries us back to the days of James First, when an impostor palmed himself off upon the people of London as a Turkish ambassador, or Chiaus. That the English learned some of their seamanship from the Italians is plain from the word mizzenmast (la mezzana), and the order avast! from basta! That the English taught the Italians to build railroads the traveller is informed when he hears il treno in Tuscany, and reads the word waggons in Naples,- i waggons-della prima classe. In the same way the word