London furnished
that dialect, just as the chief city of Attica furnished the language
of literary Greek and Paris the language of literary French ; and
throughout the fifteenth century this London dialect was gaining
ascendency.
that dialect, just as the chief city of Attica furnished the language
of literary Greek and Paris the language of literary French ; and
throughout the fifteenth century this London dialect was gaining
ascendency.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
Admitted at St John's when twelve years
of age, Cheke so proved his skill in the tongues as 'to have laid the
very foundations of learning in his College. ' The foundation of
the royal chair of Greek gave him the pre-eminence, both titular
and real, in Cambridge scholarship. His expositions of Euripides
and Sophocles, Herodotus and the Ethics of Aristotle, are specially
recorded. These, probably, were of far more importance in the
history of learning in England than the controversy as to the
right value of Greek vowel sounds, with which his name is usually
associated. Cheke became public orator in 1544, and was ap-
pointed tutor to prince Edward. At heart a reformer, he had no
## p. 431 (#453) ############################################
The Writers on Rhetoric
431
scruple in accepting conventual lands, whereby he became a man
of wealth and station. As provost of King's College, one of
Somerset's visitors, a knight and intimate at court, he was familiar
with the currents both of learning and of politics. For rashly
embracing the cause of lady Jane Grey, he went, in due course,
to the Tower; he was soon released, but, circumspectly, passed
to the continent, where we hear of him teaching Greek at Padua
and at Strassburg. He was arrested by order of Philip II, near
Brussels, as an 'unlicensed' traveller and conveyed, once more, to
the Tower. Under threat of torture, he abjured his convictions,
and died (1557) within a year, a broken man.
a
Cheke was un-
questionably a scholar of distinction. Of his criticism on Sallust
as quoted by Ascham, something has already been said? . He left
behind a copious body of Latin translation from the Greek,
patristic and classical. His bulky tracts of controversial divinity
are chiefly noteworthy as exhibiting the temper of the time,
especially as it affected Cambridge learning. He wrote nothing
but a pamphlet or two in the vernacular, though he endeavoured,
unsuccessfully, to reform English spelling on a phonetic method.
His outstanding merit lies in his stimulating force as a teacher,
and the respect which his learning won for English scholarship.
The contribution of Thomas Wilson, friend and disciple of
Cheke, to the classical renascence in England has, also, already
been mentioned. The first book of The Arte of Rhetorique (1553)
treats of the purpose of rhetoric, which is affirmed to be the art
which perfects the natural gifts of speech and reason. The distinc-
tions of several types of arguments,' and their constituent factors,
are set out by means of examples shaped, indeed, on classical and
Erasmian models, but with an added seriousness, born of the time,
which lifts them above the Petrarchian commonplaces of the
Italians. The second book treats, in the customary manner, of the
fundamental qualities of style as an instrument of persuasion. The
orator must be easily intelligible. He must secure the goodwill
of his audience, must wind his way into the subject by suitable
approaches, particularly if he be a preacher. Let the latter
diligently seek his pattern in Chrysostom. The conditions oí
right eloquence, such as logical order, emphasis, repetition, climax,
are as necessary in English speech as in Latin; nor can an
English speaker neglect the art of stirring the emotions by the
employment of humour, or pathos, by appeal to indignation or
passion. The third book, ranging over a wide field, deals with
1 See ante, p. 290.
6
3 See ante, p. 23.
1
## p. 432 (#454) ############################################
432 Universities, Schools and Scholarship
the choice of words and the use of figure and ornament; with the
functions of gesture; with the essential art of memory. It con-
tains some of the sanest Elizabethan criticism of classical writers.
The marks of The Arte of Rhetorique are its clearness, its
freedom from pedantry and its modern instances. It was several
times reprinted during the century and even now repays a reading.
Wilson's treatise should be read side by side with Guazzo's Civile
Conversation, translated by Pettie twenty years later, with a
preface in which he refers to Wilson and in which he urges the
need for a liberal expansion of English vocabulary. A work far
less attractive than either was Richard Sherry's Treatise of Schemes
and Tropes (1555). The author was headmaster of Magdalen
College school, at this time, perhaps, the best Latin school in
England. His writing is crabbed and technical, and had small vogue
outside lecture rooms. More popular were Richard Rainolde's
Foundation of Rhetorike (1563), Henry Peacham's Garden of
Eloquence (1577) and The Arcadian Rhetorike (1584) of Abraham
Fraunce, who works in modern examples from poetry and prose,
notably quoting Sidney and Tasso, and not overlooking the
Spaniards.
Roger Ascham was entered at St John's, Cambridge, a little
later than Cheke and, as he neared manhood, found himself drawn
into his circle, which embraced Redman and Pember, Thomas
Smith, Ridley and Wilson. Upon Cheke, Ascham looked back as
upon his great master, counting him worthy to rank with John
Sturm of Strassburg, the chief luminary of protestant scholarship
in the middle of the sixteenth century.
In 1548, Ascham, perhaps the ablest Greek scholar in England,
and public orator of the university, was called to court as
tutor to princess Elizabeth. But, while he enjoyed his task
of teaching a pupil of Elizabeth's acquisitive temper, his self-
respect ill brooked a court position. Two years later, he made
the tour of Germany, as secretary to a mission, touching Italy at
Venice. He was alert to meet scholars, observe institutions and
visit historic sites. Characteristically, the secretary taught his
chief Greek grammar during their intervals of leisure. The
Report and Discourse of the affairs of Germany, written in 1553,
shows him a keen student of French and German politics. He
has made Thucydides, Polybius and Livy his models. Commines
has his favour, but, though he would not have allowed it, we may
safely affirm that Macchiavelli's Relazioni had taught him more
than the ancients. Queen Mary made him Latin secretary at
## p. 433 (#455) ############################################
Roger Ascham
433
court, where his own caution, aided by Gardiner's personal feeling
for him, secured him from molestation on account of his opinions,
and Elizabeth was glad to keep him in her service as Greek
preceptor and courtier of the new style.
Much of Ascham's classical writing-translation from Sopho-
cles, studies in Herodotus, a tract de Imitatione-has disappeared.
Probably, the three works by which he is now known adequately
represent his powers. Toscophilus (1545), a treatise on the art
of shooting with the long-bow, treats, in the accepted dialogue form,
of the function of bodily training in education, with the urgent
prescription of practice with the bow as the national exercise.
There is not a little of Plato and the Italians in his concept of the
place of physical grace and vigour in personality. Plutarch and
Epicharmus, Domitian and Galen, are all called in to defend his
argument. This was inevitable, given the time and place; but,
in spite of the fanciful play made with Jupiter and Minos in this
connection, the skilled English archer for more than a hundred
years has made Toxophilus his text-book, and 'Ascham’s Five
Points' are part of the lore today.
Ascham’s nationalism, which inspires every paragraph of
Toxophilus, is but characteristic of English humanism of the finer
type. Elyot, Smith, Cheke and Hoby are Englishmen first and
men of scholarship next. Learning, indeed, they win from every
source; they are voracious readers, their interests are well-nigh
universal. But, whatever the flowers, native or foreign, whole-
some or poisonous, the sweetness drawn therefrom is the honey
of English hives. The Scholemaster (1570) is essentially the work
of a scholar who has no illusions on the subject of Erasmian
cosmopolitanism. Like Elyot, he wrote in his own tongue-
English matter, in English speech, for Englishmen, as he had said
in his Toxophilus. He made, indeed, of a technical treatise
a piece of literature, and that of no mean order. We may notice
that writings upon education which were written or found welcome
in this country had a note of reality which is often far to seek in
German or, still more, in Italian pieces of similar character. The
starting point of The Scholemaster is, essentially, that of Elyot's
Governour. This is, that England loses much fruitful capacity
through the ill-training of its youth of station. In the first book,
Ascham considers the chief reasons of the ineffectiveness of the
new education. From the text that news had reached court that
Eton boys had broken school to escape the birch, he inveighs,
in the vein of Erasmus, against the cruelty of school discipline,
E. L. IJI.
OH. XIX.
28
## p. 434 (#456) ############################################
434 Universities, Schools and Scholarship
not realising that, given the curriculum and the mode of teaching
it, harsh punishments were, in fact, inevitable. He next considers
the differing nature of wits. ' The schoolmaster is prone to hold
'
precocity the singular mental and moral virtue: Ascham pleads
for the slow but solid temper, and protests that, by contempt for
late developed minds, Pedantius drives away many a fine intelli-
gence from due opportunity of public service. He draws from
Plato seven true ‘notes of a good wit,' which 'he plainly declares
in English': in essence, these are industry, interest, curiosity, a
good will, but never premature gifts of acquisition. Now, these
are qualities which the 'lewd and ignorant teacher bars from
their natural growth by his impatient pedantry. The second hin-
drance is the decay of home discipline. The youth of seventeen sent
to court, left without a career, hanging idly about a great house,
falls to gambling, and all licence, swelling that clan of the gentle
unemployed for which relief was sought later in adventure and
plantation. Travel, in the third place, has made shipwreck of many,
not because I do contemn either the knowledge of strange and divers tongues,
and namely the Italian tongue, which next the Greek and Latin tongue I do
like and love above all others, or else because I do despise the learning that is
gotten or the experience that is gathered in strange countries,
but travel meant a sojourn in Italy, and, in well remembered words,
he proclaims his aversion to what he had seen in Venice, and the
deep seated distrust with which he views the morals, the politics,
the irreligion, the newer literature of the Italy of the Spaniard
and the inquisition. Study will provide all the worthy fruits of
travel, and manners can be learnt by all who care to read
Castiglione's Cortegiano, in its new English dress. Let a young
Englishman be proud of his England, and, if he will see other
manners, other minds, Strassburg or Frankfort will give him what
he seeks, with no danger to faith and morals. The second book is
largely concerned with the teaching of Latin. The method of
Ascham, according to which a classical language is taught by the
process of re-translation of construes, is, at least, as old as Cicero
and is of slight importance in the history of instruction. But this
section of The Scholemaster is of interest as evidence of the thorough-
ness and breadth of Ascham's reading. He avows Greek to be the
subject of his truest affection. He has a sound view of the
function of historical writing, which far transcends the superficial
aspect of it which confronts us in Italian humanists prior to the
later Patrizi. Much space is given to the art of teaching rhetoric.
Cicero is the accepted master; where Quintilian differs from him,
## p. 435 (#457) ############################################
a
-
Richard Mulcaster
435
he is to be disregarded. John Sturm he regards as unapproach-
able amongst neo-Latinists. Ascham pleads for style: 'ye know
not what hurt ye do to learning that are not for words but for
matter, and do make a divorce betwixt the tongue and the heart. '
The secret of true imitation is to read exactly and, at the same
time, to read widely. English will have its fruit of such right
imitation of classic models, for in them alone are the 'true pre-
cepts and perfect examples' of sound writing. Upon poetic imita-
tion only did Ascham lapse into pedantry! He will recognise no
English metres. Much as he admires Chaucer, he apologises for
his riming, an inheritance from the Goth and Hun.
It seems that The Scholemaster was, for a time, accepted as
the approved manual of method in instruction. The licence of
The Positions (1581) of Richard Mulcaster runs thus : 'provided
always that if this book contain anything prejudicial or hurtful
to the Book of Master Ascham . . . called The Scholemaster, that
then this licence shall be void. ' In passing from Ascham to
Mulcaster we step into a different world. For Mulcaster, though
an Eton boy and a student of Christ Church, spent his life as a
master of the two great day schools of the city of London-head-
master of Merchant Taylors' 1561–86 ; surmaster and, later,
highmaster (1596) of St Paul's. The fruit of his experience is
embodied in two books, The Positions (1581) and The Elementarie
(1582), the latter an instalment of a larger work. Whilst Ascham was
concerned with youth of station, destined to become landowners,
courtiers or diplomatists, Mulcaster's subject is the education of
the burgher class. Both, again, use English as their instrument;
Ascham wrote good Tudor prose, whilst it is no gibe to say that
Mulcaster's own example is enough to imperil his thesis that
English speech is as harmonious and as precise as Latinity itself.
He had Spenser for his pupil, and has often been identified with
the caricature in Love's Labour's Lost. Mulcaster is, by training
and by interests, a humanist, but of a temper little akin to that of
Cheke or Ascham. The hard experience of twenty years had
proved to him how different was the training in letters set out by
the great writers from the realities of the schoolroom. It is a
standing puzzle to us today that men of strong intelligence,
knowing however little of boys, should assume, as without
question, that a rigorous course of grammar, construing, com-
position and conversation in Latin, and that only, must appeal to
youthful minds. They do not seem to have understood that, to
1 See ante, chap. XIV.
1
28-2
## p. 436 (#458) ############################################
436
Universities, Schools and Scholarship
win effective attention to arid and meaningless material, nothing
less than the most harsh pressure could be expected to succeed with
the average boy. Now, Mulcaster is the uncouth prophet of a new
order. For he sees the problem in a modern way. He has shaken
himself free of traditional platitudes. He is conscious of a new
world, and of the need of a new education adapted to it. His two
books, written in close succession, exhibit a consistent idea and
may be viewed together. He writes in English, wishing to reach
the vulgar; no fishmonger or tailor in London could touch it in
Latin shape. The time has gone by, as he perceives, for illusions
as to the place of Latin speech in Elizabethan England. He will
have the elements of education for all; the grammar school and
the university will provide for the select few of promising wit.
But he boldly states that he sees loss to the community in alluring
the unfit to the unpractical training of letters. 'I am tooth and
nail for woman-kind' in matters of education, he declares. But
their instruction must fit them for their station. Only such as
are born to high place or to prospect of coming wealth should, in
humanist fashion, be taught the learned tongues or history or
logic. Mulcaster has a sound perception of the importance of
physical training to mental efficiency, which he partly owes to
Girolamo Mercuriale and other Italians. The growing custom
of sending boys of every class to school has his goodwill : but,
sympathising here with Ascham, he sets himself against the habit
of travel for youth as bad for patriotism and religious constancy.
He would have a training school for teachers set up in each
university; he is the first English master to grasp the significance
of what Vives had said on this head long before. Further, he would
.
see with approval the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge specifically
allotted to the study of the three subjects of general training,
languages, mathematics and philosophy, and to the four profes-
sional disciplines of medicine, law, divinity and teaching. He is
consistent in objecting to the study of Roman and of canon law
for English youth. He sets out in detail his views of the function
of English in the new education, advocating, in particular, that
scholars should devote themselves to the settling of the ortho-
graphy, accidence and syntax of the language, that, thereby,
English may claim its place side by side with Latin, whose merits
of precision and elaboration he is foremost to perceive. For ‘I
love Rome, but London better, I favour Italy, but England more,
I honour Latin, but worship English. '
It would be impossible to enumerate the works of foreign
## p. 437 (#459) ############################################
The Courtier and other Courtesy Books 437
origin which affected the ideals of manners and instruction in
England during Elizabeth's reign, but account may be taken of
certain representative books which were popular enough to
demand translation. Il Cortegiano of Castiglione', translated
by Hoby as The Courtier (1561) is, of course, much more than
a treatise on the up-bringing of youth, but, as presenting a
picture of the perfect man' of the renascence, it had an
undoubted, if indirect, effect on higher education in England.
Il Cortegiano speedily became cosmopolitan in its vogue. High
society in France, Spain and the Low Countries, not less than
in Italy, revered it as an inspired guide, supplementing, according
to choice, its obvious omissions with respect to the side of religion
and the stalwart virtues. The concept of a complete personality
constituted of physical gifts, learning, taste and grace of manner
was the gift which the Italian revival at its noblest offered to the
western peoples. Himself “a perfect Castilio,' Sidney never
stirred abroad without The Courtier in his pocket. To Cleland,
writing for the new century (The Institution of a Nobleman,
1607), it is the final word on a gentleman's behaviour. Especially
does its spirit breathe through such writers as La Primaudaye and
Count Annibale Romei, whose books were in wide circulation at
the time when this period was drawing to its close. The French
Academy-so Bowes translates the title of La Primaudaye's work
-is written (1577) in dialogue form, and dedicated to Henri III.
It is less strictly confined to the courtly ideal than Castiglione's Il
Cortegiano; its gentlemen of Anjou discourse together of the means
by which all estates of men may live courteously, happily and with
true dignity. The secret of the worthy life lies in the due ordering
of home and commonwealth by parent and ruler, 'the grace of
God working in them. ' The best chapter is that on the rearing of
children, based upon accepted humanist precedents, though with
a vein of Huguenot piety running through it all. The author
holds that civility comes not of arms, but of learning and virtue ;
and, of all means of training, historic studies are the most effective
instruments: he bids youth ponder Cyrus, Charlemagne and
Francis I. The power of education is such that it can change the
temper of whole countries not less than the character of a man.
Hence, the modern state should have concern to provide right
teaching for all its sons. 'In every town of the realm’ should be
ordained the public teaching of grammar (Latin) to all comers.
The popularity of this bulky work is proved by the number of its
editions during twenty years. Though written in the Aristotelian
· Ed. pr. Aldus, 1528.
## p. 438 (#460) ############################################
438
Universities, Schools and Scholarship
vein made familiar by Patrizi and Acontio, the dialogue is modelled
on Castiglione, with, it must be said, but little of the grace of n
Cortegiano. I Galateo (1545), a far better known book, was trans-
lated into English (1576) by Peterson. It is a frank handbook of
manners, a manual for the schoolboy and the parvenu, and became
popular in England under the titles of Refined Courtier and the
like, given to it by later editors and adapters. The Courtier's
Academy, a translation, by Kepers, of the Discorsi of Count
Annibale Romei of Ferrara (1586), treats of the ideal of personality
approved in cultivated society when the renascence was already
on the verge of decline. The Elizabethan scholar or merchant
was interested, we can believe, in the argument for learning and
for wealth as titles to gentilezza, when birth or skill in arms
could not be pleaded.
As the century draws to a close, we trace, on the one hand, a
gradual enlargement of the concept of what is possible in the way
of education for a youth of parts and opportunity, side by side
with a process of ossification of school instruction. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's project of Queene Elizabethes Achademy (1572) was an
anticipation of later 'academies' and, in a sense, of Milton's
generous' dream. Gilbert's scheme of a training in which lan-
guages, modern no less than ancient, mathematics and law, are
grouped with technical and military exercises is an attempt to
bring education into immediate touch with actual life. In essence,
it is a protest against the narrow humanism of the public school,
the herald of a reaction which was to take one shape in Bacon,
and another in Montaigne. Meanwhile, in spite of Ascham, men
of the world sent their boys to complete their training abroad.
The French court was accounted the best school of courtesy.
Venice was the centre for art, and for such sciences as astronomy;
Florence for letters. Politics, history, painting, building, scientific
invention, the technique of war, drew the interest of Englishmen
wherever they sojourned. And the finer minds returned with a
deeper and more intelligent patriotism. Hakluyt’s Principal
Navigations, Stow's Annales, Camden's Britannia, Holinshed's
Chronicles and its predecessors are evidence of a fuller national
self-consciousness. More truly than works of scholarship do these
represent the genius of Elizabethan England. For the end of a
man's 'whole traine' lay in action rather than in the knowledge
itself which equipped him for it. The universities had definitely
recognised this as their principal function, and the temper of the
English race responded readily to the call.
## p. 439 (#461) ############################################
CHAPTER XX
THE LANGUAGE FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE
THE all-important feature in the development of English during
the pre-Chaucerian period consisted of those grammatical changes
which entirely altered the organic character of the language. From
being a highly inflected language, it became one partially stripped
of inflections, whereas its changes in vocabulary during the same
period, though important in themselves, were far less radical in
their effects. After 1400, the order of importance is reversed. It
was a change in the vocabulary, particularly in that of the sixteenth
century, which made almost all the difference; the grammatical
structure was modified in but a comparatively slight degree.
The causes of these differing tendencies are not far to seek.
The period before Chaucer was one in which English was not,
as yet, the literary language: it shared that dignity with Latin
and Anglo-French, and, of its four main dialects, no one had
become predominant. These were conditions which readily per-
mitted grammatical change and led to attempts being made
at removing ambiguities and irregularities from the inflectional
system. After 1400, the restraining influences of a recognised
literary dialect and a growing literature made themselves felt.
Writers became more and more adverse to modifications of
grammatical forms, which had already been simplified almost to
their limit, while the vocabulary grew mechanically under varying
but ever increasing influences.
The period (1400—1600) with which this chapter deals divides
naturally into two centuries, the dividing point being, roughly, the
date of Caxton's death (1491). The first of these two periods—the
fifteenth century-though transitional and somewhat chaotic in
character, was, nevertheless, responsible for certain marked develop-
ments. In it an increased importance was given to the vernacular,
and a uniform written language was established, both of which
effects were due to tendencies visible already in Chaucer's day. And
## p. 440 (#462) ############################################
440 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
the period is further characterised by some considerable changes in
vocabulary, as well as by changes of a more gradual kind in gram-
matical structure and pronunciation, which may be said to culminate
in the following century.
The increasing importance of the vernacular in the fifteenth
century was due, in part, to the growing sense of nationality
under Edward III. Although the use of English had never
died out, and even Robert of Gloucester had been able to
state that 'lowe men holdep to Engliss, yet, in the thirteenth
century and later, Anglo-French was the courtly language, Latin
the language of learned and documentary writings. Under
Edward III, the conditions began to change : in 1362, parliament
was opened by an English speech, and, about the same time,
English began to be used in the law courts and the schools? . It
also came to be generally regarded as the language of literature, as
is seen when Gower forsakes French and Latin to write in Englisb,
and when Capgrave (1462) compiles what was the first ebronicle in
English since the Conquest. Though the struggles of the vernacular
for recognition were not completed in this century, the position it
held was stronger than at any time since 1066, and its supremacy
was to be assured by Caxton's work.
The causes which brought about the recognition of a standard
dialect of English have already been treated.
London furnished
that dialect, just as the chief city of Attica furnished the language
of literary Greek and Paris the language of literary French ; and
throughout the fifteenth century this London dialect was gaining
ascendency. Various dialectal forms inserted in a text would still
betray the district from which their writer hailed, even when he
had deliberately adopted the standard dialect; and such pro-
vincialisms remained until the time of printed texts. But, from
now onwards, the one dialect was to represent the spoken language
of the educated, as well as the literary and official medium. The
dialects of Ormulum and the Ancren Riwle lost caste, and
remained, apart from literature, on the tongues of the people
The most striking feature in connection with the fifteenth
century vocabulary was the rapid manner in which old native words
became obsolete. This is clearly seen from the following lists,
taken, on the one hand, from fourteenth century texts, and, on the
a
1 The oldest private records in English are dated 1375 and 1381; the oldest London
documents in English, 1384, 1386; the earliest petition to parliament in English,
1386; the earliest English wills, 1387. See Morsbach: Über den Ursprung der
neuengl. Schriftsprache (Heilbronn, 1888), passim.
5
## p. 441 (#463) ############################################
shall resgeyve
encrece
teke away
axe him
a
olde age
Fifteenth Century Changes in Vocabulary 441
other, from modernised versions of those texts, belonging to the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Trevisa's Chron. Caxton's version Wyclif's trans. Tindale's version
(1387)
(1482)
(1380)
(1525)
icleped
called
heathens gentyls
schullep fonge
Zeerd
rod
to eche
to meke
to humble
byneme
soure dow3
leven
buxom
obedient
bitake
delyver
hist
was named
questen with bim
as me trowej
as men suppose walow a stoon roll a stone
steihe
ascended
abide it
wayte for it
zede
went
elde
nesche
soft
to hie hymself to exalt hym selfel.
Literary diction is not always a true test as to the condition of
the spoken language, but there can be little doubt that the
changes here represented stand for changes of the language in
common use ; for the object in modernising the texts had been to
bring them into conformity with the language of the day. And it
is also interesting to note that the forms of the later texts are
practically those of modern English: they were to be fixed by the
printing press.
It is evident from the above lists that the obsolescent native
words were being mainly superseded by words of French origin.
French words had been borrowed during the preceding centuries,
when Anglo-French represented the language of the official and
governing classes ; but, in the fifteenth century, as a result of
different social and literary influences, the borrowings were mainly
of the Parisian or Picardian type, and their use became more
marked than ever. Already, in the first half of this century, a
change is visible; in Lydgate, for instance, abstract words of
Romance origin are being substituted for Chaucer's concrete
native terms', and the proportion of this foreign element steadily
increased as the century advanced.
Translation, no doubt, accounts for the presence of many of
these French words in fifteenth century English, also for the many
Latin words and constructions which were freely adopted. But
it by no means represents the only influence. Trade relations with
the Netherlands and the settlement of Flemish weavers in England
during the fourteenth century led to the introduction of many
i See T. L. K. Oliphant's New English, 1, pp. 336, 409-10.
: In the diction of Chaucer's Prologue there is 13 per cent. of foreign element; in
Lydgate's Assembly of Gods, 23 per cent. (See 0. T. Triggs, Assembly of Gods,
E. E. T. S. Ex. Ser. LXIX. )
## p. 442 (#464) ############################################
442 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
6
>
Low German words, which were supplemented at a later date,
when relations with the Low Countries were renewed in connection
with printing. Then, again, Italian words like 'pilgrim,' 'alarm’
and 'brigand,' are found naturalised before 1500; and so, in
a variety of ways, the character of the vocabulary changed, antici-
pating the more expansive movements of the following century !
It is also clear, from the above lists, that the decay of the
earlier inflectional system was being gradually completed. Un-
necessary adjuncts like the prefix y-, the negative particle in nas
and endings like -ep in schulleh' (present plural) and 'havep'
(imperative plural), where the plural idea was denoted by the
context, were being discarded. Prepositional forms were increasing,
as well as the periphrastic method of comparison by 'more' and
‘most. ' There was also a growing tendency to avoid impersonal
constructions, while vowel-differences, due to earlier ablaut or
umlaut, as in 'schullep' and 'elde,' in the list given above, were
being rapidly levelled. The most important of these changes,
however, was the loss of final syllabic -e (-es, -en). It is probable
that Chaucer's systematic use of that vowel represented merely an
archaism utilised for metrical purposes, and it was owing to his
influence that its value was preserved in poetry during the early
part of the fifteenth century. But already in Lydgate there are
signs that it had really become mute, more frequently, perhaps, in
Romance words, than in those of Teutonic origin; and this led
to much confusion in both language and metre after the middle of
the century. The secret of Chaucer's metrical methods seemed lost,
and the confused metre, the halting gait and the unmusical com-
binations of words illustrate how misapprehension of this final syllabic
-e had interfered with literary effects. A change in the whole poetic
phraseology was, moreover, involved; dissyllabic words became
monosyllabic, and poetic formulas, received from the past, became
mere prose. Lydgate was able to embody phrases such as Chaucer's
'the grene levės,' or 'oldė stories tellen us’; but, to later poets,
unconscious of the syllabic -e, the phrases were lacking in harmony
and rhythm. Instead of Chaucer’s ‘my grenė yerés,' Surrey has to
.
>
1 Wyclif's phrases the streit zate,' to be of good coumfort,' and such expressions
as 'the pees that the world may not geve,' . for better for warse,' 'tyl dethe us departe'
(translation of York Manual, 1890) are early indications of the influence of 'makers of
English' (see p. 455).
? See Lydgate's later works for y, yë, rimes.
* See vol. 11, chap. ix, and Courthope's History of English Poetry, vol. 1, pp. 87 ff.
For its influence upon Spenser's accentual measures in the Shepheards Calender see
Greg's Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, pp. 94, 95.
## p. 443 (#465) ############################################
Elizabethan English
443
write ‘my fresh green years'; for Chaucer's 'sootė flourės,'Sackville
writes 'soot fresh flowers 'l.
Of changes in pronunciation during the fifteenth century, those
of open and close è and 7, are, perhaps, the most important. The
open and close values had, apparently, been distinct in Chaucer's
time, for he avoids riming the one with the other; but, in the fifteenth
century, the open values began to approximate those of the close.
This change gave to open 7 what is practically its modern value,
but the other sounds were to undergo further changes in the
sixteenth and later centuries? At the same time, medial gh
ceased to be pronounced. Chaucer does not rime a vowel followed
by ght with a vowel followed by t; but, in Lydgate, 'fought' rimes
with ‘about,' and there is ample evidence that the Old English
sound of medial h was, by this time, lost.
The orthography during this century was somewhat confused.
It was irregular in the sixteenth century, in spite of the influence
of printed texts, but already it was assuming forms which, with
slight changes, were destined to survive all later modifications of
pronunciation, thus producing the anomalies of our modern spelling.
After Caxton's day, old symbols like 3 and þ were discarded, and
final non-syllabic -e was often used, as in 'stone' (nom. ), without any
etymological warrant: its use, in such cases, being due to analogy
with the oblique forms in which it normally occurred.
We pass now to the sixteenth century and there we see the
vernacular duly established as the literary medium, so that the
main interest lies in tracing the subsequent development of
the language of Caxton and in noting how it became a fit vehicle
for some of our greatest literature. Now, for the first time, we see
scholars concerned for its welfare, and attempting to improve
its powers of expression. We also see the renascence movement
and general national activities increasing its vocabulary to an
enormous extent. We see its grammatical structure and its
syntax being slowly modified ; and, while there are visible certain
approaches to modern expression, we also notice certain charac-
teristics which give to Elizabethan English something of its peculiar
charm.
open ē
* See J. Schick, Lydgate's Temple of Glas, E. E. T. S. , 1891.
2 These changes might, roughly, be indicated as follows :
M. E. Example 14th cent. pronunciation 15th cent. pronunciation
mele (meal)
sounded as in Pair
sounded as in Pail
close ē demen (deem)
Pail
Pail
open o
stoon (stone)
Paul
Paul, Pole
close 8 doom (doom)
Pole
Pole,
97
## p. 444 (#466) ############################################
444 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
When Caxton died in 1491, he had fixed, in the rough, the
character of modern English. The works subsequently issued
from the printing press were to give to the vernacular a definite
standing, and to suggest its adoption as the literary medium, with
a force denied to rarely handled manuscripts. But there still
remained many obstacles to be overcome, before the capabilities
of English were completely recognised. It had never yet been the
object of serious study. The grammar schools founded in the
sixteenth and previous centuries existed inainly for the teaching
of Latin; grammar meant Latin grammar, and it became a generic
term only at the close of the Elizabethan age? Moreover, the
English-Latin dictionaries? which had appeared at intervals since
1440, though they afforded valuable collections of English words,
were primarily designed to help Latin scholars; and so it is not
strange to find that, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the
idea of Latin as the language of scholarship and the necessary
medium for attaining literary longevity was still a deeply-seated
notion. Thus, we find bishop Gardiner advising that religious
works should take either Greek or Latin form, because those
languages were well fixed, whereas ‘English had not continued
in one form of understanding for 200 years. ' And, again, Sir
Thomas Hoby, though himself a translator, writes, in 1561, that
oure learned menne for the most part, holde opinion that to have
the sciences in the mother tunge, hurteth memorie and hindreth
learning. The vernacular, too, was constantly being made the
subject of apology. Many still felt with Ascham, that to have
written in a tongue other than English would have been more
honest for their names ; and the monotony of lament for the vile
terms' of English, which had become almost conventional since the
days of Chaucer, was, to some extent, maintained.
The second half of the century, however, witnessed a change
of attitude. Literary criticism began with an enquiry into
language, the outward and visible sign of literature; scholars
began to consider what was correct in the pronunciation and
6
6
1 Besides the English Grammar due to Ben Jonson, the works of Mulcaster and
Bullokar ought to be noticed. The former wrote an Elementarie, Pt I. (1582), 'which
entreateth chefely of the right Writing of the English Tung'; while Wm Ballokar's
Bref Grammar for English (1586) was an 'abbreviation out of his grammar at larg,'
which 'grammar at larg’ he claimed to be the first grammar for Englishe that ever
waz' (see Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. III, pp. 346–7). For an article on
Richard Mulcaster as Elizabethan philologist see Mod. Lang. Nules, w, No. 3,
pp. 129–39. See also ante, pp. 311 and 435.
? See bibliography.
## p. 445 (#467) ############################################
Growing Importance of the Vernacular 445
spelling of English, and to set themselves to the task of improving
its powers of expression.
With the appearance of Toxophilus (1545), the prejudice in
favour of Latin may be said to have begun to wane. Though
journals of the guilds and important records and accounts were still
couched in Latin, there was an occasional championing of the
vernacular even in connection with recondite subjects. Elyot had
already protested: 'If physicians be angry that I have written
physicke in English, let them remember that the Grekes wrote
in Greke, the Romains in Latin ",' and the vernacular slowly
asserted itself in religious and secular works, and even in those
which issued from the citadels of science. A sort of compromise
between the old and new traditions was visible when More's
Utopia was translated into English in 1561, and when Lawrence
Humphrey, having written his Optimates (1560) in Latin, three years
later turned it into English. And, though Bacon was yet to fear that
modern languages would 'play the bankrupt with books,' his timid-
ity was far from being shared by the bulk of his contemporaries.
The causes of this change were, no doubt, complex; but one
great driving force must have been the growing sense of
nationalism, the new-bom temper, which rejoiced in everything
English. Then, again, the desire to disseminate renascence learning,
and to open up easy avenues to the classical stores, induced
scholars to make a further use of their mother tongue. The
reformation movement, in itself an assertion of Teutonism against
Latinism, led to numerous English versions of the Bible; and,
when the English prayer-book had also accustomed the nation
to daily reading of their mother tongue, English, instead of
Latin, had become the language of religion. Moreover, the work
inaugurated by Caxton was duly organised when the Stationers'
company was formed in 1557, and growing facilities for the book
industry in England ensured an increase in the appearance of
English works.
With this gradual recognition of the literary claims of the
vernacular, scholars began to perceive the urgency of fitting it
for its new tasks. The situation was paralleled across the Channel,
where Ronsard and La Pléiade were engaged upon the improve-
ment of their mother tongue; and, at a still earlier date, Bembo,
the foster-father of Italian, had undertaken a similar work in
1 Elyot's Castel of Holth (1584). The interlude called The Four Elements (1520)
bad already discussed the use of English for scholarly purposes, and lamented that it
had been employed hitherto only for idle stories of love and war.
## p. 446 (#468) ############################################
446 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
а.
Italy. In Italy, the end had been obtained by a dictatorship;
in France, the reformers aimed at devising rules; but in England,
the method adopted was the characteristic one of compromise.
A middle way was chosen between two conflicting tendencies, one
of which, being conservative, aimed at retaining the language in its
purity and severity, while the other made for innovation, for the
strengthening of the native growth with foreign material. These
opposing tendencies represented an inevitable stage in linguistic
development. Innovations had been made continuously since the
time of the Romans, and the work of sixteenth century inno-
vators, Latinists for the most part, was simply a continuation of
this practice. But the opposite tendency, that of the purists, was
now felt for the first time; conservatism was generated only when
time had brought about a due consciousness of the past and a pride
in the vernacular as a national possession.
The purists were notably Cheke, Ascham and Wilson, though
their sympathies were shared by many others. Cheke, as a lover of
‘old denisened words,' expressed himself in unequivocal terms.
Our own tung,' he writes, 'should be written clean and pure, un-
mixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein, if
we take not heed by tym, ever borrowing and never payeng, she
shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. ' Ascham, too,
adopted the same attitude, and Wilson decried all 'overflouryshing
wyth superfluous speach. And this love of the vernacular and
confidence in its resources was present with others. Mulcaster
honoured Latin but worshipped English; Sidney maintained that for
‘uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind. . . [English]
hath it equally with any other tongue in the world,' and similar .
sentiments were uttered by Golding and Pettie, while, before the
end of the century, Carew's Epistle on the Excellency of the
English Tongue had appeared! . Under certain conditions, religious
zeal might also account for a purist attitude, as when Fulke, in
his attack of 1583 upon the Rheims translation of the Bible, com-
plains of the number of Latin words used in that version, where
they occur of purpose to darken the sense. . . [and that] it may be
kept [by the Papists] from being understood. '
But there were not a few who held that the vernacular needed
improvement if it was to respond to the demands which were
obviously ahead. To refuse innovation was to neglect the very
1
1 It is contained in the 2nd ed. of Camden’s Remains (1605). See also the
prophecy of the glorious destiny of the English language in Daniel's Musophilus
(1599) (quoted by Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. ul, p. 23).
## p. 447 (#469) ############################################
6
Conservatism and Reform 447
means by which it had prospered in the past; and it was felt that
the jealous exclusiveness of the extreme purists threatened to
blunt all literary expression and would turn the vernacular into a
clumsy instrument. Many of those whose instincts were conserva-
tive were also alive to the necessity for a certain amount of innova-
tion. Even Cheke made a proviso to the effect that, ‘borrowing,
if it needs must be, should be done with bashfulness,' and both
Pettie and Wilson definitely proposed to improve their language by
Latin borrowings. 'It is the way, remarked the former, 'that all
tongues have taken to enrich themselves. ' Gascoigne, though dis-
liking strange words in general, was bound to admit that, at times,
they might 'draw attentive reading’; while Nashe, complaining of
the way in which English swarmed with the single money of
monosyllables,' proposed to make a royaler show,' by exchanging
his ‘small English . . . four into one . . . according to the Greek, French,
Spanish and Italian. ' Other reasons were elsewhere advanced to
justify innovation; but what is of more importance is that, in actual
practice, the main body of writers were fully in sympathy with the
aims of the movement.
The result of these conflicting tendencies was twofold. The
conservatism of the purists proved a useful drag upon the energies
of the reformers; it tended to preserve from obsolescence the
native element in the language, and was a wholesome reminder of
the necessity for moving slowly in a period of rapid change and hot
enthusiasm. The efforts of the innovators, on the other hand,
made great things possible. The language under their treatment
became more supple, more ornate and more responsive to new
ideas and emotions; but this was only after a certain amount of
licence had been frowned out of existence.
The conservative tendency is revealed, not only in a negative
way, by the general discountenancing of rash innovation, but, also,
by positive efforts made to restore such good and natural English
words as had been long time out of use and almost clean disherited. '
Obsolescent words, no doubt, persisted in the spoken language, for
Ascham, who held 'that good writing involved the speech of the
comon people,' makes use of forms like 'stoure' (fight) and 'freke'
(man), while, in Foxe's Actes and Monuments, which appealed
to provincial and cultured taste alike, are to be found words like
‘spill' (destroy), 'dere' (injure), ‘lin' (cease), ‘spur' (ask), “lese'
(lose) and 'middle-earth' (world). Then, again, works written
under the influence of earlier poetic tradition might, also, contain a
certain amount of the archaic: thus, Wyatt and Surrey have forms
## p. 448 (#470) ############################################
448 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
6
6
a
6
like 'eyen' and 'durre' (door), while Gascoigne, who writes under
the influence of Piers the Plowman, uses "sakeless' innocent),
* fearli’ (wonder) and 'grete' (cry). Very frequently, too, there was
deliberate archaising. Sir John Cheke, in his unfinished transla-
tion of the New Testament, took many liberties not always justifi-
able; for 'publican' he writes 'toller'; for "crucify, cross'; for
'centurion,' 'hundreder'; and, for 'lunatic,' 'moond. ' In the
translations of Phaer, Twyne, Golding and North, further archaisms
appear; while Stanyhurst, who was a man of many devices, bas old
forms like 'sib,' 'gadling,' 'quernstone' and 'agryse? ?
In some cases, a definite literary motive might occasion the use
of these forms. Spenser, for instance, in his Shepheards Calender
makes a most liberal use of the language of Lancashire peasants as
well as of obsolete forms. To the former class, probably, belong
such northern forms as 'wae' (woe), "gate' (goat), "sike' (such),
‘mickle' and 'kirke,' and they effectively suggest 'the rusticall
rudenesse of shepheards. ' In his Faerie Queene, while he uses
Chaucerisms like 'gan tel,' 'areed' and 'lustyhed,' to suggest a
medieval tone in keeping with his subject, he also finds such forms
as 'ycled,' 'passen' and 'wawes' of great assistance, not only in
completing the requisite number of syllables in the line, but, also,
in affording riming variants. And, again, in the drama, dialectal
forms were frequently employed to obtain greater verisimilitude.
The west country speech was the conventional form of utterance for
rusticity on the stage; whence the forms 'chad,' 'ichotte,' 'vilthy,'
'zembletee' (semblance), in Ralph Roister Doister, with which
may be compared Edgar's diction in King Lear.
But this use of obsolescent and dialectal forms added nothing
to the permanent literary resources. It was an artificial restoration
of words, honourable enough in the past, but which the language
had naturally discarded; for words rapidly become obsolete in a
period of swiftly advancing culture. Where such words appear,
they add a picturesqueness to Elizabethan diction, but it was
not until the close of the eighteenth century that the full capabilities
of words racy of the soil became properly appreciated, when dialect
added new effects to English expression. For the rest, the ancient
words continued to linger in their rustic obscurity, regardless of the
1 The Gospel according to St Matthew . . . translated from the Greek, with original
notes by Sir John Cheke . . . by James Goodwin. London, 1843.
The rogaes' language then current still survives in modern slang; thus : 'bowse'
(drink), dudes' (clothes), 'fylcho' (rob), 'ken' (house), 'mounch' (eat), 'prygger'
(thief), 'tiplinge-house' (ale-house),'typ' (secret). See Awdeley's Fraternitye, Harman's
Caveat and Chandler's Literature of Roguery, vol. I, pp.
of age, Cheke so proved his skill in the tongues as 'to have laid the
very foundations of learning in his College. ' The foundation of
the royal chair of Greek gave him the pre-eminence, both titular
and real, in Cambridge scholarship. His expositions of Euripides
and Sophocles, Herodotus and the Ethics of Aristotle, are specially
recorded. These, probably, were of far more importance in the
history of learning in England than the controversy as to the
right value of Greek vowel sounds, with which his name is usually
associated. Cheke became public orator in 1544, and was ap-
pointed tutor to prince Edward. At heart a reformer, he had no
## p. 431 (#453) ############################################
The Writers on Rhetoric
431
scruple in accepting conventual lands, whereby he became a man
of wealth and station. As provost of King's College, one of
Somerset's visitors, a knight and intimate at court, he was familiar
with the currents both of learning and of politics. For rashly
embracing the cause of lady Jane Grey, he went, in due course,
to the Tower; he was soon released, but, circumspectly, passed
to the continent, where we hear of him teaching Greek at Padua
and at Strassburg. He was arrested by order of Philip II, near
Brussels, as an 'unlicensed' traveller and conveyed, once more, to
the Tower. Under threat of torture, he abjured his convictions,
and died (1557) within a year, a broken man.
a
Cheke was un-
questionably a scholar of distinction. Of his criticism on Sallust
as quoted by Ascham, something has already been said? . He left
behind a copious body of Latin translation from the Greek,
patristic and classical. His bulky tracts of controversial divinity
are chiefly noteworthy as exhibiting the temper of the time,
especially as it affected Cambridge learning. He wrote nothing
but a pamphlet or two in the vernacular, though he endeavoured,
unsuccessfully, to reform English spelling on a phonetic method.
His outstanding merit lies in his stimulating force as a teacher,
and the respect which his learning won for English scholarship.
The contribution of Thomas Wilson, friend and disciple of
Cheke, to the classical renascence in England has, also, already
been mentioned. The first book of The Arte of Rhetorique (1553)
treats of the purpose of rhetoric, which is affirmed to be the art
which perfects the natural gifts of speech and reason. The distinc-
tions of several types of arguments,' and their constituent factors,
are set out by means of examples shaped, indeed, on classical and
Erasmian models, but with an added seriousness, born of the time,
which lifts them above the Petrarchian commonplaces of the
Italians. The second book treats, in the customary manner, of the
fundamental qualities of style as an instrument of persuasion. The
orator must be easily intelligible. He must secure the goodwill
of his audience, must wind his way into the subject by suitable
approaches, particularly if he be a preacher. Let the latter
diligently seek his pattern in Chrysostom. The conditions oí
right eloquence, such as logical order, emphasis, repetition, climax,
are as necessary in English speech as in Latin; nor can an
English speaker neglect the art of stirring the emotions by the
employment of humour, or pathos, by appeal to indignation or
passion. The third book, ranging over a wide field, deals with
1 See ante, p. 290.
6
3 See ante, p. 23.
1
## p. 432 (#454) ############################################
432 Universities, Schools and Scholarship
the choice of words and the use of figure and ornament; with the
functions of gesture; with the essential art of memory. It con-
tains some of the sanest Elizabethan criticism of classical writers.
The marks of The Arte of Rhetorique are its clearness, its
freedom from pedantry and its modern instances. It was several
times reprinted during the century and even now repays a reading.
Wilson's treatise should be read side by side with Guazzo's Civile
Conversation, translated by Pettie twenty years later, with a
preface in which he refers to Wilson and in which he urges the
need for a liberal expansion of English vocabulary. A work far
less attractive than either was Richard Sherry's Treatise of Schemes
and Tropes (1555). The author was headmaster of Magdalen
College school, at this time, perhaps, the best Latin school in
England. His writing is crabbed and technical, and had small vogue
outside lecture rooms. More popular were Richard Rainolde's
Foundation of Rhetorike (1563), Henry Peacham's Garden of
Eloquence (1577) and The Arcadian Rhetorike (1584) of Abraham
Fraunce, who works in modern examples from poetry and prose,
notably quoting Sidney and Tasso, and not overlooking the
Spaniards.
Roger Ascham was entered at St John's, Cambridge, a little
later than Cheke and, as he neared manhood, found himself drawn
into his circle, which embraced Redman and Pember, Thomas
Smith, Ridley and Wilson. Upon Cheke, Ascham looked back as
upon his great master, counting him worthy to rank with John
Sturm of Strassburg, the chief luminary of protestant scholarship
in the middle of the sixteenth century.
In 1548, Ascham, perhaps the ablest Greek scholar in England,
and public orator of the university, was called to court as
tutor to princess Elizabeth. But, while he enjoyed his task
of teaching a pupil of Elizabeth's acquisitive temper, his self-
respect ill brooked a court position. Two years later, he made
the tour of Germany, as secretary to a mission, touching Italy at
Venice. He was alert to meet scholars, observe institutions and
visit historic sites. Characteristically, the secretary taught his
chief Greek grammar during their intervals of leisure. The
Report and Discourse of the affairs of Germany, written in 1553,
shows him a keen student of French and German politics. He
has made Thucydides, Polybius and Livy his models. Commines
has his favour, but, though he would not have allowed it, we may
safely affirm that Macchiavelli's Relazioni had taught him more
than the ancients. Queen Mary made him Latin secretary at
## p. 433 (#455) ############################################
Roger Ascham
433
court, where his own caution, aided by Gardiner's personal feeling
for him, secured him from molestation on account of his opinions,
and Elizabeth was glad to keep him in her service as Greek
preceptor and courtier of the new style.
Much of Ascham's classical writing-translation from Sopho-
cles, studies in Herodotus, a tract de Imitatione-has disappeared.
Probably, the three works by which he is now known adequately
represent his powers. Toscophilus (1545), a treatise on the art
of shooting with the long-bow, treats, in the accepted dialogue form,
of the function of bodily training in education, with the urgent
prescription of practice with the bow as the national exercise.
There is not a little of Plato and the Italians in his concept of the
place of physical grace and vigour in personality. Plutarch and
Epicharmus, Domitian and Galen, are all called in to defend his
argument. This was inevitable, given the time and place; but,
in spite of the fanciful play made with Jupiter and Minos in this
connection, the skilled English archer for more than a hundred
years has made Toxophilus his text-book, and 'Ascham’s Five
Points' are part of the lore today.
Ascham’s nationalism, which inspires every paragraph of
Toxophilus, is but characteristic of English humanism of the finer
type. Elyot, Smith, Cheke and Hoby are Englishmen first and
men of scholarship next. Learning, indeed, they win from every
source; they are voracious readers, their interests are well-nigh
universal. But, whatever the flowers, native or foreign, whole-
some or poisonous, the sweetness drawn therefrom is the honey
of English hives. The Scholemaster (1570) is essentially the work
of a scholar who has no illusions on the subject of Erasmian
cosmopolitanism. Like Elyot, he wrote in his own tongue-
English matter, in English speech, for Englishmen, as he had said
in his Toxophilus. He made, indeed, of a technical treatise
a piece of literature, and that of no mean order. We may notice
that writings upon education which were written or found welcome
in this country had a note of reality which is often far to seek in
German or, still more, in Italian pieces of similar character. The
starting point of The Scholemaster is, essentially, that of Elyot's
Governour. This is, that England loses much fruitful capacity
through the ill-training of its youth of station. In the first book,
Ascham considers the chief reasons of the ineffectiveness of the
new education. From the text that news had reached court that
Eton boys had broken school to escape the birch, he inveighs,
in the vein of Erasmus, against the cruelty of school discipline,
E. L. IJI.
OH. XIX.
28
## p. 434 (#456) ############################################
434 Universities, Schools and Scholarship
not realising that, given the curriculum and the mode of teaching
it, harsh punishments were, in fact, inevitable. He next considers
the differing nature of wits. ' The schoolmaster is prone to hold
'
precocity the singular mental and moral virtue: Ascham pleads
for the slow but solid temper, and protests that, by contempt for
late developed minds, Pedantius drives away many a fine intelli-
gence from due opportunity of public service. He draws from
Plato seven true ‘notes of a good wit,' which 'he plainly declares
in English': in essence, these are industry, interest, curiosity, a
good will, but never premature gifts of acquisition. Now, these
are qualities which the 'lewd and ignorant teacher bars from
their natural growth by his impatient pedantry. The second hin-
drance is the decay of home discipline. The youth of seventeen sent
to court, left without a career, hanging idly about a great house,
falls to gambling, and all licence, swelling that clan of the gentle
unemployed for which relief was sought later in adventure and
plantation. Travel, in the third place, has made shipwreck of many,
not because I do contemn either the knowledge of strange and divers tongues,
and namely the Italian tongue, which next the Greek and Latin tongue I do
like and love above all others, or else because I do despise the learning that is
gotten or the experience that is gathered in strange countries,
but travel meant a sojourn in Italy, and, in well remembered words,
he proclaims his aversion to what he had seen in Venice, and the
deep seated distrust with which he views the morals, the politics,
the irreligion, the newer literature of the Italy of the Spaniard
and the inquisition. Study will provide all the worthy fruits of
travel, and manners can be learnt by all who care to read
Castiglione's Cortegiano, in its new English dress. Let a young
Englishman be proud of his England, and, if he will see other
manners, other minds, Strassburg or Frankfort will give him what
he seeks, with no danger to faith and morals. The second book is
largely concerned with the teaching of Latin. The method of
Ascham, according to which a classical language is taught by the
process of re-translation of construes, is, at least, as old as Cicero
and is of slight importance in the history of instruction. But this
section of The Scholemaster is of interest as evidence of the thorough-
ness and breadth of Ascham's reading. He avows Greek to be the
subject of his truest affection. He has a sound view of the
function of historical writing, which far transcends the superficial
aspect of it which confronts us in Italian humanists prior to the
later Patrizi. Much space is given to the art of teaching rhetoric.
Cicero is the accepted master; where Quintilian differs from him,
## p. 435 (#457) ############################################
a
-
Richard Mulcaster
435
he is to be disregarded. John Sturm he regards as unapproach-
able amongst neo-Latinists. Ascham pleads for style: 'ye know
not what hurt ye do to learning that are not for words but for
matter, and do make a divorce betwixt the tongue and the heart. '
The secret of true imitation is to read exactly and, at the same
time, to read widely. English will have its fruit of such right
imitation of classic models, for in them alone are the 'true pre-
cepts and perfect examples' of sound writing. Upon poetic imita-
tion only did Ascham lapse into pedantry! He will recognise no
English metres. Much as he admires Chaucer, he apologises for
his riming, an inheritance from the Goth and Hun.
It seems that The Scholemaster was, for a time, accepted as
the approved manual of method in instruction. The licence of
The Positions (1581) of Richard Mulcaster runs thus : 'provided
always that if this book contain anything prejudicial or hurtful
to the Book of Master Ascham . . . called The Scholemaster, that
then this licence shall be void. ' In passing from Ascham to
Mulcaster we step into a different world. For Mulcaster, though
an Eton boy and a student of Christ Church, spent his life as a
master of the two great day schools of the city of London-head-
master of Merchant Taylors' 1561–86 ; surmaster and, later,
highmaster (1596) of St Paul's. The fruit of his experience is
embodied in two books, The Positions (1581) and The Elementarie
(1582), the latter an instalment of a larger work. Whilst Ascham was
concerned with youth of station, destined to become landowners,
courtiers or diplomatists, Mulcaster's subject is the education of
the burgher class. Both, again, use English as their instrument;
Ascham wrote good Tudor prose, whilst it is no gibe to say that
Mulcaster's own example is enough to imperil his thesis that
English speech is as harmonious and as precise as Latinity itself.
He had Spenser for his pupil, and has often been identified with
the caricature in Love's Labour's Lost. Mulcaster is, by training
and by interests, a humanist, but of a temper little akin to that of
Cheke or Ascham. The hard experience of twenty years had
proved to him how different was the training in letters set out by
the great writers from the realities of the schoolroom. It is a
standing puzzle to us today that men of strong intelligence,
knowing however little of boys, should assume, as without
question, that a rigorous course of grammar, construing, com-
position and conversation in Latin, and that only, must appeal to
youthful minds. They do not seem to have understood that, to
1 See ante, chap. XIV.
1
28-2
## p. 436 (#458) ############################################
436
Universities, Schools and Scholarship
win effective attention to arid and meaningless material, nothing
less than the most harsh pressure could be expected to succeed with
the average boy. Now, Mulcaster is the uncouth prophet of a new
order. For he sees the problem in a modern way. He has shaken
himself free of traditional platitudes. He is conscious of a new
world, and of the need of a new education adapted to it. His two
books, written in close succession, exhibit a consistent idea and
may be viewed together. He writes in English, wishing to reach
the vulgar; no fishmonger or tailor in London could touch it in
Latin shape. The time has gone by, as he perceives, for illusions
as to the place of Latin speech in Elizabethan England. He will
have the elements of education for all; the grammar school and
the university will provide for the select few of promising wit.
But he boldly states that he sees loss to the community in alluring
the unfit to the unpractical training of letters. 'I am tooth and
nail for woman-kind' in matters of education, he declares. But
their instruction must fit them for their station. Only such as
are born to high place or to prospect of coming wealth should, in
humanist fashion, be taught the learned tongues or history or
logic. Mulcaster has a sound perception of the importance of
physical training to mental efficiency, which he partly owes to
Girolamo Mercuriale and other Italians. The growing custom
of sending boys of every class to school has his goodwill : but,
sympathising here with Ascham, he sets himself against the habit
of travel for youth as bad for patriotism and religious constancy.
He would have a training school for teachers set up in each
university; he is the first English master to grasp the significance
of what Vives had said on this head long before. Further, he would
.
see with approval the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge specifically
allotted to the study of the three subjects of general training,
languages, mathematics and philosophy, and to the four profes-
sional disciplines of medicine, law, divinity and teaching. He is
consistent in objecting to the study of Roman and of canon law
for English youth. He sets out in detail his views of the function
of English in the new education, advocating, in particular, that
scholars should devote themselves to the settling of the ortho-
graphy, accidence and syntax of the language, that, thereby,
English may claim its place side by side with Latin, whose merits
of precision and elaboration he is foremost to perceive. For ‘I
love Rome, but London better, I favour Italy, but England more,
I honour Latin, but worship English. '
It would be impossible to enumerate the works of foreign
## p. 437 (#459) ############################################
The Courtier and other Courtesy Books 437
origin which affected the ideals of manners and instruction in
England during Elizabeth's reign, but account may be taken of
certain representative books which were popular enough to
demand translation. Il Cortegiano of Castiglione', translated
by Hoby as The Courtier (1561) is, of course, much more than
a treatise on the up-bringing of youth, but, as presenting a
picture of the perfect man' of the renascence, it had an
undoubted, if indirect, effect on higher education in England.
Il Cortegiano speedily became cosmopolitan in its vogue. High
society in France, Spain and the Low Countries, not less than
in Italy, revered it as an inspired guide, supplementing, according
to choice, its obvious omissions with respect to the side of religion
and the stalwart virtues. The concept of a complete personality
constituted of physical gifts, learning, taste and grace of manner
was the gift which the Italian revival at its noblest offered to the
western peoples. Himself “a perfect Castilio,' Sidney never
stirred abroad without The Courtier in his pocket. To Cleland,
writing for the new century (The Institution of a Nobleman,
1607), it is the final word on a gentleman's behaviour. Especially
does its spirit breathe through such writers as La Primaudaye and
Count Annibale Romei, whose books were in wide circulation at
the time when this period was drawing to its close. The French
Academy-so Bowes translates the title of La Primaudaye's work
-is written (1577) in dialogue form, and dedicated to Henri III.
It is less strictly confined to the courtly ideal than Castiglione's Il
Cortegiano; its gentlemen of Anjou discourse together of the means
by which all estates of men may live courteously, happily and with
true dignity. The secret of the worthy life lies in the due ordering
of home and commonwealth by parent and ruler, 'the grace of
God working in them. ' The best chapter is that on the rearing of
children, based upon accepted humanist precedents, though with
a vein of Huguenot piety running through it all. The author
holds that civility comes not of arms, but of learning and virtue ;
and, of all means of training, historic studies are the most effective
instruments: he bids youth ponder Cyrus, Charlemagne and
Francis I. The power of education is such that it can change the
temper of whole countries not less than the character of a man.
Hence, the modern state should have concern to provide right
teaching for all its sons. 'In every town of the realm’ should be
ordained the public teaching of grammar (Latin) to all comers.
The popularity of this bulky work is proved by the number of its
editions during twenty years. Though written in the Aristotelian
· Ed. pr. Aldus, 1528.
## p. 438 (#460) ############################################
438
Universities, Schools and Scholarship
vein made familiar by Patrizi and Acontio, the dialogue is modelled
on Castiglione, with, it must be said, but little of the grace of n
Cortegiano. I Galateo (1545), a far better known book, was trans-
lated into English (1576) by Peterson. It is a frank handbook of
manners, a manual for the schoolboy and the parvenu, and became
popular in England under the titles of Refined Courtier and the
like, given to it by later editors and adapters. The Courtier's
Academy, a translation, by Kepers, of the Discorsi of Count
Annibale Romei of Ferrara (1586), treats of the ideal of personality
approved in cultivated society when the renascence was already
on the verge of decline. The Elizabethan scholar or merchant
was interested, we can believe, in the argument for learning and
for wealth as titles to gentilezza, when birth or skill in arms
could not be pleaded.
As the century draws to a close, we trace, on the one hand, a
gradual enlargement of the concept of what is possible in the way
of education for a youth of parts and opportunity, side by side
with a process of ossification of school instruction. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's project of Queene Elizabethes Achademy (1572) was an
anticipation of later 'academies' and, in a sense, of Milton's
generous' dream. Gilbert's scheme of a training in which lan-
guages, modern no less than ancient, mathematics and law, are
grouped with technical and military exercises is an attempt to
bring education into immediate touch with actual life. In essence,
it is a protest against the narrow humanism of the public school,
the herald of a reaction which was to take one shape in Bacon,
and another in Montaigne. Meanwhile, in spite of Ascham, men
of the world sent their boys to complete their training abroad.
The French court was accounted the best school of courtesy.
Venice was the centre for art, and for such sciences as astronomy;
Florence for letters. Politics, history, painting, building, scientific
invention, the technique of war, drew the interest of Englishmen
wherever they sojourned. And the finer minds returned with a
deeper and more intelligent patriotism. Hakluyt’s Principal
Navigations, Stow's Annales, Camden's Britannia, Holinshed's
Chronicles and its predecessors are evidence of a fuller national
self-consciousness. More truly than works of scholarship do these
represent the genius of Elizabethan England. For the end of a
man's 'whole traine' lay in action rather than in the knowledge
itself which equipped him for it. The universities had definitely
recognised this as their principal function, and the temper of the
English race responded readily to the call.
## p. 439 (#461) ############################################
CHAPTER XX
THE LANGUAGE FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE
THE all-important feature in the development of English during
the pre-Chaucerian period consisted of those grammatical changes
which entirely altered the organic character of the language. From
being a highly inflected language, it became one partially stripped
of inflections, whereas its changes in vocabulary during the same
period, though important in themselves, were far less radical in
their effects. After 1400, the order of importance is reversed. It
was a change in the vocabulary, particularly in that of the sixteenth
century, which made almost all the difference; the grammatical
structure was modified in but a comparatively slight degree.
The causes of these differing tendencies are not far to seek.
The period before Chaucer was one in which English was not,
as yet, the literary language: it shared that dignity with Latin
and Anglo-French, and, of its four main dialects, no one had
become predominant. These were conditions which readily per-
mitted grammatical change and led to attempts being made
at removing ambiguities and irregularities from the inflectional
system. After 1400, the restraining influences of a recognised
literary dialect and a growing literature made themselves felt.
Writers became more and more adverse to modifications of
grammatical forms, which had already been simplified almost to
their limit, while the vocabulary grew mechanically under varying
but ever increasing influences.
The period (1400—1600) with which this chapter deals divides
naturally into two centuries, the dividing point being, roughly, the
date of Caxton's death (1491). The first of these two periods—the
fifteenth century-though transitional and somewhat chaotic in
character, was, nevertheless, responsible for certain marked develop-
ments. In it an increased importance was given to the vernacular,
and a uniform written language was established, both of which
effects were due to tendencies visible already in Chaucer's day. And
## p. 440 (#462) ############################################
440 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
the period is further characterised by some considerable changes in
vocabulary, as well as by changes of a more gradual kind in gram-
matical structure and pronunciation, which may be said to culminate
in the following century.
The increasing importance of the vernacular in the fifteenth
century was due, in part, to the growing sense of nationality
under Edward III. Although the use of English had never
died out, and even Robert of Gloucester had been able to
state that 'lowe men holdep to Engliss, yet, in the thirteenth
century and later, Anglo-French was the courtly language, Latin
the language of learned and documentary writings. Under
Edward III, the conditions began to change : in 1362, parliament
was opened by an English speech, and, about the same time,
English began to be used in the law courts and the schools? . It
also came to be generally regarded as the language of literature, as
is seen when Gower forsakes French and Latin to write in Englisb,
and when Capgrave (1462) compiles what was the first ebronicle in
English since the Conquest. Though the struggles of the vernacular
for recognition were not completed in this century, the position it
held was stronger than at any time since 1066, and its supremacy
was to be assured by Caxton's work.
The causes which brought about the recognition of a standard
dialect of English have already been treated.
London furnished
that dialect, just as the chief city of Attica furnished the language
of literary Greek and Paris the language of literary French ; and
throughout the fifteenth century this London dialect was gaining
ascendency. Various dialectal forms inserted in a text would still
betray the district from which their writer hailed, even when he
had deliberately adopted the standard dialect; and such pro-
vincialisms remained until the time of printed texts. But, from
now onwards, the one dialect was to represent the spoken language
of the educated, as well as the literary and official medium. The
dialects of Ormulum and the Ancren Riwle lost caste, and
remained, apart from literature, on the tongues of the people
The most striking feature in connection with the fifteenth
century vocabulary was the rapid manner in which old native words
became obsolete. This is clearly seen from the following lists,
taken, on the one hand, from fourteenth century texts, and, on the
a
1 The oldest private records in English are dated 1375 and 1381; the oldest London
documents in English, 1384, 1386; the earliest petition to parliament in English,
1386; the earliest English wills, 1387. See Morsbach: Über den Ursprung der
neuengl. Schriftsprache (Heilbronn, 1888), passim.
5
## p. 441 (#463) ############################################
shall resgeyve
encrece
teke away
axe him
a
olde age
Fifteenth Century Changes in Vocabulary 441
other, from modernised versions of those texts, belonging to the
fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Trevisa's Chron. Caxton's version Wyclif's trans. Tindale's version
(1387)
(1482)
(1380)
(1525)
icleped
called
heathens gentyls
schullep fonge
Zeerd
rod
to eche
to meke
to humble
byneme
soure dow3
leven
buxom
obedient
bitake
delyver
hist
was named
questen with bim
as me trowej
as men suppose walow a stoon roll a stone
steihe
ascended
abide it
wayte for it
zede
went
elde
nesche
soft
to hie hymself to exalt hym selfel.
Literary diction is not always a true test as to the condition of
the spoken language, but there can be little doubt that the
changes here represented stand for changes of the language in
common use ; for the object in modernising the texts had been to
bring them into conformity with the language of the day. And it
is also interesting to note that the forms of the later texts are
practically those of modern English: they were to be fixed by the
printing press.
It is evident from the above lists that the obsolescent native
words were being mainly superseded by words of French origin.
French words had been borrowed during the preceding centuries,
when Anglo-French represented the language of the official and
governing classes ; but, in the fifteenth century, as a result of
different social and literary influences, the borrowings were mainly
of the Parisian or Picardian type, and their use became more
marked than ever. Already, in the first half of this century, a
change is visible; in Lydgate, for instance, abstract words of
Romance origin are being substituted for Chaucer's concrete
native terms', and the proportion of this foreign element steadily
increased as the century advanced.
Translation, no doubt, accounts for the presence of many of
these French words in fifteenth century English, also for the many
Latin words and constructions which were freely adopted. But
it by no means represents the only influence. Trade relations with
the Netherlands and the settlement of Flemish weavers in England
during the fourteenth century led to the introduction of many
i See T. L. K. Oliphant's New English, 1, pp. 336, 409-10.
: In the diction of Chaucer's Prologue there is 13 per cent. of foreign element; in
Lydgate's Assembly of Gods, 23 per cent. (See 0. T. Triggs, Assembly of Gods,
E. E. T. S. Ex. Ser. LXIX. )
## p. 442 (#464) ############################################
442 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
6
>
Low German words, which were supplemented at a later date,
when relations with the Low Countries were renewed in connection
with printing. Then, again, Italian words like 'pilgrim,' 'alarm’
and 'brigand,' are found naturalised before 1500; and so, in
a variety of ways, the character of the vocabulary changed, antici-
pating the more expansive movements of the following century !
It is also clear, from the above lists, that the decay of the
earlier inflectional system was being gradually completed. Un-
necessary adjuncts like the prefix y-, the negative particle in nas
and endings like -ep in schulleh' (present plural) and 'havep'
(imperative plural), where the plural idea was denoted by the
context, were being discarded. Prepositional forms were increasing,
as well as the periphrastic method of comparison by 'more' and
‘most. ' There was also a growing tendency to avoid impersonal
constructions, while vowel-differences, due to earlier ablaut or
umlaut, as in 'schullep' and 'elde,' in the list given above, were
being rapidly levelled. The most important of these changes,
however, was the loss of final syllabic -e (-es, -en). It is probable
that Chaucer's systematic use of that vowel represented merely an
archaism utilised for metrical purposes, and it was owing to his
influence that its value was preserved in poetry during the early
part of the fifteenth century. But already in Lydgate there are
signs that it had really become mute, more frequently, perhaps, in
Romance words, than in those of Teutonic origin; and this led
to much confusion in both language and metre after the middle of
the century. The secret of Chaucer's metrical methods seemed lost,
and the confused metre, the halting gait and the unmusical com-
binations of words illustrate how misapprehension of this final syllabic
-e had interfered with literary effects. A change in the whole poetic
phraseology was, moreover, involved; dissyllabic words became
monosyllabic, and poetic formulas, received from the past, became
mere prose. Lydgate was able to embody phrases such as Chaucer's
'the grene levės,' or 'oldė stories tellen us’; but, to later poets,
unconscious of the syllabic -e, the phrases were lacking in harmony
and rhythm. Instead of Chaucer’s ‘my grenė yerés,' Surrey has to
.
>
1 Wyclif's phrases the streit zate,' to be of good coumfort,' and such expressions
as 'the pees that the world may not geve,' . for better for warse,' 'tyl dethe us departe'
(translation of York Manual, 1890) are early indications of the influence of 'makers of
English' (see p. 455).
? See Lydgate's later works for y, yë, rimes.
* See vol. 11, chap. ix, and Courthope's History of English Poetry, vol. 1, pp. 87 ff.
For its influence upon Spenser's accentual measures in the Shepheards Calender see
Greg's Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama, pp. 94, 95.
## p. 443 (#465) ############################################
Elizabethan English
443
write ‘my fresh green years'; for Chaucer's 'sootė flourės,'Sackville
writes 'soot fresh flowers 'l.
Of changes in pronunciation during the fifteenth century, those
of open and close è and 7, are, perhaps, the most important. The
open and close values had, apparently, been distinct in Chaucer's
time, for he avoids riming the one with the other; but, in the fifteenth
century, the open values began to approximate those of the close.
This change gave to open 7 what is practically its modern value,
but the other sounds were to undergo further changes in the
sixteenth and later centuries? At the same time, medial gh
ceased to be pronounced. Chaucer does not rime a vowel followed
by ght with a vowel followed by t; but, in Lydgate, 'fought' rimes
with ‘about,' and there is ample evidence that the Old English
sound of medial h was, by this time, lost.
The orthography during this century was somewhat confused.
It was irregular in the sixteenth century, in spite of the influence
of printed texts, but already it was assuming forms which, with
slight changes, were destined to survive all later modifications of
pronunciation, thus producing the anomalies of our modern spelling.
After Caxton's day, old symbols like 3 and þ were discarded, and
final non-syllabic -e was often used, as in 'stone' (nom. ), without any
etymological warrant: its use, in such cases, being due to analogy
with the oblique forms in which it normally occurred.
We pass now to the sixteenth century and there we see the
vernacular duly established as the literary medium, so that the
main interest lies in tracing the subsequent development of
the language of Caxton and in noting how it became a fit vehicle
for some of our greatest literature. Now, for the first time, we see
scholars concerned for its welfare, and attempting to improve
its powers of expression. We also see the renascence movement
and general national activities increasing its vocabulary to an
enormous extent. We see its grammatical structure and its
syntax being slowly modified ; and, while there are visible certain
approaches to modern expression, we also notice certain charac-
teristics which give to Elizabethan English something of its peculiar
charm.
open ē
* See J. Schick, Lydgate's Temple of Glas, E. E. T. S. , 1891.
2 These changes might, roughly, be indicated as follows :
M. E. Example 14th cent. pronunciation 15th cent. pronunciation
mele (meal)
sounded as in Pair
sounded as in Pail
close ē demen (deem)
Pail
Pail
open o
stoon (stone)
Paul
Paul, Pole
close 8 doom (doom)
Pole
Pole,
97
## p. 444 (#466) ############################################
444 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
When Caxton died in 1491, he had fixed, in the rough, the
character of modern English. The works subsequently issued
from the printing press were to give to the vernacular a definite
standing, and to suggest its adoption as the literary medium, with
a force denied to rarely handled manuscripts. But there still
remained many obstacles to be overcome, before the capabilities
of English were completely recognised. It had never yet been the
object of serious study. The grammar schools founded in the
sixteenth and previous centuries existed inainly for the teaching
of Latin; grammar meant Latin grammar, and it became a generic
term only at the close of the Elizabethan age? Moreover, the
English-Latin dictionaries? which had appeared at intervals since
1440, though they afforded valuable collections of English words,
were primarily designed to help Latin scholars; and so it is not
strange to find that, in the first half of the sixteenth century, the
idea of Latin as the language of scholarship and the necessary
medium for attaining literary longevity was still a deeply-seated
notion. Thus, we find bishop Gardiner advising that religious
works should take either Greek or Latin form, because those
languages were well fixed, whereas ‘English had not continued
in one form of understanding for 200 years. ' And, again, Sir
Thomas Hoby, though himself a translator, writes, in 1561, that
oure learned menne for the most part, holde opinion that to have
the sciences in the mother tunge, hurteth memorie and hindreth
learning. The vernacular, too, was constantly being made the
subject of apology. Many still felt with Ascham, that to have
written in a tongue other than English would have been more
honest for their names ; and the monotony of lament for the vile
terms' of English, which had become almost conventional since the
days of Chaucer, was, to some extent, maintained.
The second half of the century, however, witnessed a change
of attitude. Literary criticism began with an enquiry into
language, the outward and visible sign of literature; scholars
began to consider what was correct in the pronunciation and
6
6
1 Besides the English Grammar due to Ben Jonson, the works of Mulcaster and
Bullokar ought to be noticed. The former wrote an Elementarie, Pt I. (1582), 'which
entreateth chefely of the right Writing of the English Tung'; while Wm Ballokar's
Bref Grammar for English (1586) was an 'abbreviation out of his grammar at larg,'
which 'grammar at larg’ he claimed to be the first grammar for Englishe that ever
waz' (see Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. III, pp. 346–7). For an article on
Richard Mulcaster as Elizabethan philologist see Mod. Lang. Nules, w, No. 3,
pp. 129–39. See also ante, pp. 311 and 435.
? See bibliography.
## p. 445 (#467) ############################################
Growing Importance of the Vernacular 445
spelling of English, and to set themselves to the task of improving
its powers of expression.
With the appearance of Toxophilus (1545), the prejudice in
favour of Latin may be said to have begun to wane. Though
journals of the guilds and important records and accounts were still
couched in Latin, there was an occasional championing of the
vernacular even in connection with recondite subjects. Elyot had
already protested: 'If physicians be angry that I have written
physicke in English, let them remember that the Grekes wrote
in Greke, the Romains in Latin ",' and the vernacular slowly
asserted itself in religious and secular works, and even in those
which issued from the citadels of science. A sort of compromise
between the old and new traditions was visible when More's
Utopia was translated into English in 1561, and when Lawrence
Humphrey, having written his Optimates (1560) in Latin, three years
later turned it into English. And, though Bacon was yet to fear that
modern languages would 'play the bankrupt with books,' his timid-
ity was far from being shared by the bulk of his contemporaries.
The causes of this change were, no doubt, complex; but one
great driving force must have been the growing sense of
nationalism, the new-bom temper, which rejoiced in everything
English. Then, again, the desire to disseminate renascence learning,
and to open up easy avenues to the classical stores, induced
scholars to make a further use of their mother tongue. The
reformation movement, in itself an assertion of Teutonism against
Latinism, led to numerous English versions of the Bible; and,
when the English prayer-book had also accustomed the nation
to daily reading of their mother tongue, English, instead of
Latin, had become the language of religion. Moreover, the work
inaugurated by Caxton was duly organised when the Stationers'
company was formed in 1557, and growing facilities for the book
industry in England ensured an increase in the appearance of
English works.
With this gradual recognition of the literary claims of the
vernacular, scholars began to perceive the urgency of fitting it
for its new tasks. The situation was paralleled across the Channel,
where Ronsard and La Pléiade were engaged upon the improve-
ment of their mother tongue; and, at a still earlier date, Bembo,
the foster-father of Italian, had undertaken a similar work in
1 Elyot's Castel of Holth (1584). The interlude called The Four Elements (1520)
bad already discussed the use of English for scholarly purposes, and lamented that it
had been employed hitherto only for idle stories of love and war.
## p. 446 (#468) ############################################
446 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
а.
Italy. In Italy, the end had been obtained by a dictatorship;
in France, the reformers aimed at devising rules; but in England,
the method adopted was the characteristic one of compromise.
A middle way was chosen between two conflicting tendencies, one
of which, being conservative, aimed at retaining the language in its
purity and severity, while the other made for innovation, for the
strengthening of the native growth with foreign material. These
opposing tendencies represented an inevitable stage in linguistic
development. Innovations had been made continuously since the
time of the Romans, and the work of sixteenth century inno-
vators, Latinists for the most part, was simply a continuation of
this practice. But the opposite tendency, that of the purists, was
now felt for the first time; conservatism was generated only when
time had brought about a due consciousness of the past and a pride
in the vernacular as a national possession.
The purists were notably Cheke, Ascham and Wilson, though
their sympathies were shared by many others. Cheke, as a lover of
‘old denisened words,' expressed himself in unequivocal terms.
Our own tung,' he writes, 'should be written clean and pure, un-
mixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein, if
we take not heed by tym, ever borrowing and never payeng, she
shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. ' Ascham, too,
adopted the same attitude, and Wilson decried all 'overflouryshing
wyth superfluous speach. And this love of the vernacular and
confidence in its resources was present with others. Mulcaster
honoured Latin but worshipped English; Sidney maintained that for
‘uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind. . . [English]
hath it equally with any other tongue in the world,' and similar .
sentiments were uttered by Golding and Pettie, while, before the
end of the century, Carew's Epistle on the Excellency of the
English Tongue had appeared! . Under certain conditions, religious
zeal might also account for a purist attitude, as when Fulke, in
his attack of 1583 upon the Rheims translation of the Bible, com-
plains of the number of Latin words used in that version, where
they occur of purpose to darken the sense. . . [and that] it may be
kept [by the Papists] from being understood. '
But there were not a few who held that the vernacular needed
improvement if it was to respond to the demands which were
obviously ahead. To refuse innovation was to neglect the very
1
1 It is contained in the 2nd ed. of Camden’s Remains (1605). See also the
prophecy of the glorious destiny of the English language in Daniel's Musophilus
(1599) (quoted by Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. ul, p. 23).
## p. 447 (#469) ############################################
6
Conservatism and Reform 447
means by which it had prospered in the past; and it was felt that
the jealous exclusiveness of the extreme purists threatened to
blunt all literary expression and would turn the vernacular into a
clumsy instrument. Many of those whose instincts were conserva-
tive were also alive to the necessity for a certain amount of innova-
tion. Even Cheke made a proviso to the effect that, ‘borrowing,
if it needs must be, should be done with bashfulness,' and both
Pettie and Wilson definitely proposed to improve their language by
Latin borrowings. 'It is the way, remarked the former, 'that all
tongues have taken to enrich themselves. ' Gascoigne, though dis-
liking strange words in general, was bound to admit that, at times,
they might 'draw attentive reading’; while Nashe, complaining of
the way in which English swarmed with the single money of
monosyllables,' proposed to make a royaler show,' by exchanging
his ‘small English . . . four into one . . . according to the Greek, French,
Spanish and Italian. ' Other reasons were elsewhere advanced to
justify innovation; but what is of more importance is that, in actual
practice, the main body of writers were fully in sympathy with the
aims of the movement.
The result of these conflicting tendencies was twofold. The
conservatism of the purists proved a useful drag upon the energies
of the reformers; it tended to preserve from obsolescence the
native element in the language, and was a wholesome reminder of
the necessity for moving slowly in a period of rapid change and hot
enthusiasm. The efforts of the innovators, on the other hand,
made great things possible. The language under their treatment
became more supple, more ornate and more responsive to new
ideas and emotions; but this was only after a certain amount of
licence had been frowned out of existence.
The conservative tendency is revealed, not only in a negative
way, by the general discountenancing of rash innovation, but, also,
by positive efforts made to restore such good and natural English
words as had been long time out of use and almost clean disherited. '
Obsolescent words, no doubt, persisted in the spoken language, for
Ascham, who held 'that good writing involved the speech of the
comon people,' makes use of forms like 'stoure' (fight) and 'freke'
(man), while, in Foxe's Actes and Monuments, which appealed
to provincial and cultured taste alike, are to be found words like
‘spill' (destroy), 'dere' (injure), ‘lin' (cease), ‘spur' (ask), “lese'
(lose) and 'middle-earth' (world). Then, again, works written
under the influence of earlier poetic tradition might, also, contain a
certain amount of the archaic: thus, Wyatt and Surrey have forms
## p. 448 (#470) ############################################
448 Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare
6
6
a
6
like 'eyen' and 'durre' (door), while Gascoigne, who writes under
the influence of Piers the Plowman, uses "sakeless' innocent),
* fearli’ (wonder) and 'grete' (cry). Very frequently, too, there was
deliberate archaising. Sir John Cheke, in his unfinished transla-
tion of the New Testament, took many liberties not always justifi-
able; for 'publican' he writes 'toller'; for "crucify, cross'; for
'centurion,' 'hundreder'; and, for 'lunatic,' 'moond. ' In the
translations of Phaer, Twyne, Golding and North, further archaisms
appear; while Stanyhurst, who was a man of many devices, bas old
forms like 'sib,' 'gadling,' 'quernstone' and 'agryse? ?
In some cases, a definite literary motive might occasion the use
of these forms. Spenser, for instance, in his Shepheards Calender
makes a most liberal use of the language of Lancashire peasants as
well as of obsolete forms. To the former class, probably, belong
such northern forms as 'wae' (woe), "gate' (goat), "sike' (such),
‘mickle' and 'kirke,' and they effectively suggest 'the rusticall
rudenesse of shepheards. ' In his Faerie Queene, while he uses
Chaucerisms like 'gan tel,' 'areed' and 'lustyhed,' to suggest a
medieval tone in keeping with his subject, he also finds such forms
as 'ycled,' 'passen' and 'wawes' of great assistance, not only in
completing the requisite number of syllables in the line, but, also,
in affording riming variants. And, again, in the drama, dialectal
forms were frequently employed to obtain greater verisimilitude.
The west country speech was the conventional form of utterance for
rusticity on the stage; whence the forms 'chad,' 'ichotte,' 'vilthy,'
'zembletee' (semblance), in Ralph Roister Doister, with which
may be compared Edgar's diction in King Lear.
But this use of obsolescent and dialectal forms added nothing
to the permanent literary resources. It was an artificial restoration
of words, honourable enough in the past, but which the language
had naturally discarded; for words rapidly become obsolete in a
period of swiftly advancing culture. Where such words appear,
they add a picturesqueness to Elizabethan diction, but it was
not until the close of the eighteenth century that the full capabilities
of words racy of the soil became properly appreciated, when dialect
added new effects to English expression. For the rest, the ancient
words continued to linger in their rustic obscurity, regardless of the
1 The Gospel according to St Matthew . . . translated from the Greek, with original
notes by Sir John Cheke . . . by James Goodwin. London, 1843.
The rogaes' language then current still survives in modern slang; thus : 'bowse'
(drink), dudes' (clothes), 'fylcho' (rob), 'ken' (house), 'mounch' (eat), 'prygger'
(thief), 'tiplinge-house' (ale-house),'typ' (secret). See Awdeley's Fraternitye, Harman's
Caveat and Chandler's Literature of Roguery, vol. I, pp.
