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after it. Two writers of this period are known to-day wherever the English language is studied: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), the poet of The Canterbury Tales, and John Wiclif (1324-1384), the translator of the Bible.

A Specimen of Middle English.-Here is how the Old English passage already quoted appears in Wiclif's translation:

And he spac to hem many thingis in parablis, and seide, Lo! he that sowith, yede out to sowe his seed. And while he sowith, summe seedis felden bisidis the weie, and bridis of the eir camen and eeten hem.

The Period of Modern English (1500- ).—The Modern English period extends from the year 1500 to the present time. Thousands of new words have entered our language, and endings have been still further dropped; but in all essentials the grammar remains about the same. Every one who reads the Bible or hears it read must have noticed that we no longer say thou lovest or he loveth, but you love and he loves. The greatest changes have been in spelling and pronunciation. You would find little difficulty in reading most of the books written in the sixteenth century; but if the authors of these books could read them aloud to you, it would take you a long time to understand any but the simplest sentences. It was early in the Modern English period that the two greatest books ever written in the English language appeared. These are the King James Translation of the Bible (1611) and the first collected edition of Shakespeare's works (1623). As the Bible and Shakespeare will often be quoted, the student should remember when these two books were first published.

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Specimen of Modern English in 1611.—The passage that we have twice quoted appears in 1611 as follows:

And hee spake many things vnto them in parables, saying, Behold a sower went foorth to sow.

And when he sowed, some seedes fell by the wayes side, and the foules came, and deuoured them vp.

Notice that he could be spelled in two ways. Spelling did not begin to crystallize into fixed forms until a hundred years later.

The Function of Grammar.-Such, then, is a brief sketch of our own people and our own language. We are now to study that language as it is written and spoken by the leaders of thought and action in the beginning of the twentieth century. Such a study will train us to think accurately and to speak worthily. It will lead us to watch more closely and to value more justly our own speech and the speech of others. It will show us law and order where before were chaos and caprice. It will make us independent of constant question and advice about how to speak and how to write correctly. It will give us a knowledge of all the words that are required in talking intelligently about our own language or any other language. It will enable us to move unashamed and to talk unabashed in the best circles of refined society. It will give us a sense of honest proprietorship in our mother tongue and permit us to hand it on undefiled to those that shall come after us.

PART I

THE SENTENCE

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PARAGRAPHS AND SENTENCES

1. Read aloud the following passage:*

And now as she rested, the beauty of the scene came to her. Over her the wind moved the leaves. A jay screamed far off, as if answering the cries of the boy. A kingfisher crossed and recrossed the stream with a dipping sweep of his wings. The river sang with its lips to the pebbles. The vast clouds went by majestically far above the tree tops, and the snap and buzzing and ringing whir of July insects made a ceaseless, slumberous undertone of song solvent of all else. The tired girl forgot her work. She began to dream.

HAMLIN GARLAND: Main Travelled Roads

We see at once that this is a descriptive passage made up of eight groups of words. Each group, while expressing a distinct thought, helps to develop the topic of the whole passage. Each group has a unity of its own, but is a part of a larger unity. The passage is a paragraph. Each group is a sentence.

*EXPLANATION.-Julia Peterson, wearied with labor in the cornfield, is sitting with her bare feet in a stream and her head leaning against the trunk of a tree. Her brother Otto has gone, "whooping with uncontrollable delight,” to bathe in a neighboring pond.

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