passages describing warfare and peril. Several of these are both boldly conceived, and executed with very great spirit. Such are the desperate combat in which Bruce lost the brooch of Lorn; and the adventure in which he baffles the blood-hound of the men of the isles, with the attempted assassination which is its sequel. Nor is the fierce love of warfare unrelieved by gentler touches, which occur both in the portraiture of characters, in the events chosen for record, and in the sentiments expressed by the poet. Sir Walter Scott, whose "Lord of the Isles" owes much to "The Bruce," and might profitably be compared with it, has not forgotten one of the finest of those passages; in which we are told how the king, pursued by a superior force, ordered his band to turn and face the enemy, rather than abandon to them a poor woman who had been seized with illness. There are likewise not a few pleasing fragments of landscape-painting: and one of these is made unusually picturesque by having, as its main feature, the mysterious signal-fires that were seen blazing on the Scottish shore, and tempted Bruce to a dangerous landing.

In respect of language we do not, in Wyntoun and Barbour, reach the point of a distinct separation between England and Scotland. If unessential peculiarities of spelling are disregarded, Barbour's work may be said to be composed in Northern English. Its style differs chiefly from that of Chaucer and his contemporaries, in being much more purely Saxon than theirs; the writer showing, indeed, no symptoms of that familiarity with French poetry, which caused so extensive an importation of foreign words into the literary diction of the south. It is not, however, to be forgotten, that the archdeacon seems to have had English inclinations: he travelled to Oxford for study after he had become a beneficed priest.

8. In passing to the fifteenth century, we do not discover any traces of a dialect distinctively Scottish in the earliest poem it presents. It is the King's Quair, (or Book,) in which the accomplished King James the First celebrated the lady whom he married. But the royal poet was educated in England, and probably wrote there; and his pleasing poem exhibits, in its allegories and personifications, and in its whole cast of thought, the influence exerted by his study of those English writers of the preceding age, whom he himself respectfully acknowledges as his

masters.

The development of the language of Scotland into a distinct dialect, must, even then, have fairly begun. It went on rapidly afterwards; and it was attended by a great partiality to Chauce and his contemporaries and followers, with a fondness still greater for their French models. In no long time there arose also a

taste for Latin reading, which influenced the style of poetry yet more strongly.

None of the foreign influences is to be traced, (unless it may be in the use of Chaucer's heroic stanza,) in the "Wallace" of Henry the Minstrel, oftener called Blind Harry. This old poem was once much more popular in Scotland than the Bruce, and it was likely to be so, on account of the more picturesque cha: acter of its incidents, its strain of passionate fervour, and the wildness of fancy which inspires some of its parts. It is altogether, notwithstanding its formidable bulk, a work whose origin might naturally be attributed to the class of men to which its author is said to have belonged; the same class who, then and afterwards, were enriching the northern language of the island with our ancient ballads.

1500.

Towards the close of the century, and in the beginning of the next, Scottish poetry, now couched in a dialect decidedly peculiar, was cultivated by men of higher genius than any that had yet appeared in Great Britain since the dawn of civilization, the father of our poetical literature being alone excepted. One of d. ab. them was Robert Henryson, supposed to have been a monk or schoolmaster in Dunfermline. His most elaborate work was his "Testament of Faire Creseide," a continuation, excellently versified and finely poetical, of a piece of Chaucer's. This Scottish poem indeed is so exceedingly beautiful in many of its parts, so poetical in fancy, so rich in allegory, and often so touching in sentiment, that one cannot help regretting deeply the poet's unfortunate choice of a theme. Probably its unpleasant character is the reason why the work is so little known, even by those who are familiar with our early literature. At all events, Henryson is oftenest named for his beautiful pastoral of "Robin and Makyne," one of the gems of Percy's "Reliques."

More vigorous both in thought and fancy, though inferior in b. ab. 1474. skill of expression, was Gawain or Gavin Douglas, d. 1522. § bishop of Dunkeld, famous alike as an active politician, a man of learning, and a poet. His "King Hart," and "Palace of Honour," are complex allegories, of the kind with which we have become acquainted through other specimens. His Translation of the Æneid, into heroic verse, is a very animated poem, not more unfaithful to the original than it might have been expected to be; and it is embellished with original prologues, of which some are energetically descriptive, and others actively critical. This was, it should be remembered, the earliest attempt made, in any part of our island, to render classical poetry into the living language of the country.

b. ab. 1465.

9. William Dunbar, a native of Lothian, was the } d. ab. 1520. best British poet of his age, and almost a great one. He appears to have been educated for the church, and to have spent some of his early years as a begging friar. Afterwards he became a dependant on the court of the dissolute prince who perished at Flodden. His poems exhibit a versatility of talent which has rarely been paralleled, and moral inconsistency which it is humiliating to contemplate. In his comic and familiar pieces there prevails such a grossness, both of language and sentiment, as destroys the effect of their remarkable force of humour: nor is ribaldry altogether wanting in those serious compositions, which are so admirable for their originality and affluence of imagination. Allegory is Dunbar's favourite field. It is the groundwork of his "Golden Terge," in which the target is Reason, a protection against the assaults of Love; and his "Thistle and Rose" commemorates, in a similar way, the king's marriage with an English princess. "The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins" is wonderfully striking, both for the boldness of the leading conception, and for the significant picturesqueness of several of the personifications. Unfortunately it would be almost impossible to describe, decorously, either the design of this remarkable poem, the imaginative originality which colours the serious passages, or the audacious flight of humorous malice with which, in the close, the Saxon vents the scorn he felt for his Celtic countrymen.

"In the poetry of Dunbar, we recognise the emanations of a mind adequate to splendid and varied exertion; a mind equally capable of soaring into the higher regions of fiction, and of descending into the humble walk of the familiar and ludicrous. He was endowed with a vigorous and well-regulated imagination; and to it was superadded that conformation of the intellectual faculties which constitutes the quality of good sense. In his allegorical poems we discover originality and even sublimity of invention; while those of a satirical kind present us with striking images of real life and manners. As a descriptive poet, he has received superlative praise. In the mechanism of poetry he evinces a wonderful degree of skill. He has employed a great variety of metres; and his versification, when opposed to that of his most eminent contemporaries, will appear highly ornamented and poetical."*

While Scotland, notwithstanding the troubles which marked almost uninterruptedly the reigns of the Jameses, was thus re

*Irving: Lives of the Scottish Poets.

deeming the poetical character of the fifteenth century from the discredit thrown on it by the feebleness of the art in England, her living tongue was, until very near the end of this period, used in versified compositions only. Scottish prose does not appear, in any literary shape, till the first decade of the sixteenth century and its earliest specimens were nothing more than translations.

Nor did Scottish learning take, in that age, more than its very first steps. The necessity of a systematic cultivation of philosophy and classical literature had, indeed, begun to be acknowledged. The university of St. Andrews was founded in the year 1411, and that of Glasgow in 1450. But hardly any immediate effect was produced except this; that the style of most of the poets, especially Douglas, was deformed by a fondness for words formed from the Latin, which were introduced in as great numbers as French terms had been by Chaucer and his followers.

The art of printing was not practised in Scotland till the very close of our period, when it was introduced in Edinburgh. The oldest of the extant books, which is a miscellaneous volume, chiefly filled with ballads and metrical romances, bears the date of 1508.

5

PART SECOND.

THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.

A. D. 449-A. D. 1066.

INTRODUCTION OF THE CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS OF THE
LANGUAGE.

The Families of European Tongues-The Celtic, Gothic, and Classical-The AngloSaxon a Germanic Tongue of the Gothic Stock.-2. Founders of the Anglo-Saxon Race in England-Jutes, Saxons, Angles-The Old Frisic Dialect.-3. History of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue-Prevalence of the Dialect of the West Saxons-Two Leading Dialects-The Saxon-The Anglian or Northumbrian.-4. What Dialect of AngloSaxon passed into the Standard English Tongue ?-5. Close Resemblance of the An glo-Saxon Tongue to the English-Illustrated by Examples.-6. 7. Alfred's Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice-Literal Translation and Notes.-8. Cadmon's Destruction of Pharaoh-Translated with Notes.

[Ir is hoped that this slight sketch has been so framed as to be available, not only for private study, but also for use in teaching; although, by reason of the nature of the matter, lessons cannot be given from it with the same smoothness and ease as from the Literary Chapters. It may be used in any of several ways.

On the one hand, an attempt has been made, through the Translations and Notes appended to the Extracts, to include within the four corners of the book every explanation that could absolutely be required, although the student were not to have the aid of an instructor. The Text, on the other hand, if read without the Extracts and their apparatus, furnishes a plain summary, from which all the leading facts and doctrines may be learned, in cases where it seems unadvisable to undertake a closer scrutiny. Indeed a great deal of knowledge might be gained from the Fourth Chap ter alone, the study of which cannot be difficult for any one.

Or, again, these Chapters may furnish three successive courses of study, progressively increasing in difficulty. The first would embrace the Fourth Chapter, in which the results of the historical survey are summed up. The second would carry the student through the Text of the First, Second, and Third Chapters, the Extracts being passed over. In the third course,