our neighbours, the Scotch, talk of going till instead of to a place, or of asking a question at rather than of a man, we are immediately startled; without reflecting that our own practice is only founded on convention and habit. Amongst our elder writers, the use of the prepositions was, as might be expected, extremely vague and indefinite, With the auxiliary verbs there was less difficulty; indeed the Norman, having only two words of this class, were accustomed to apply them to a greater variety of purposes than was usual with the Saxons. Hence perhaps arose the transitive use of the verb do, which is so frequent in our early writers; as in do make (faire faire) &c.; and the old Scotish poets carry their imitation of the French still farther, so as to use doing make; done make; &c. an employment of the verb which I do not recollect to have seen in English. It is unnecessary to pursue these remarks any further, because the reader will find, in Mr. Tyrwhitt's "Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer," a complete analysis of our grammar, as it subsisted during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Indeed, from what has been already premised, we are perhaps authorized to conclude that, notwithstanding the pretended fluctuation of speech, a fluctuation which has been oftener supposed than proved,* the great body of our language has continued, with very few material or intrinsic alterations, from its first formation to the present hour: and that if the study of our early writers be attended with considerable difficulty and embarrassment, these are principally to be attributed to a cause very distinct from the mere influx of new, or changes in the structure of old words. The Saxon alphabet may be supposed to have been tolerably well suited to its purposes, because it contained five and twenty letters, besides a certain number of points, or accents, which are generally supposed to have been employed for the purpose of fixing the prosody, and distinguishing the short from the long vowels. These accents however, together with those minute delicacies of pronunciation *It is well known that the Welch soldiers who served in our army at the siege of Bellisle (in the war of 1756), found little difficulty in understanding the language of the Bretons. The Sclavonian sailors, employed on board of Venetian ships in the Russian trade, never fail to recognize a kindred dialect on their arrival at St. Petersburgh. Many more examples might be adduced to shew that the language of a country is never destroyed but by the annihilation of its inhabitants, nor materially changed, but by their amalgamation with some other people. Indeed, all over the world, children endeavour to speak like their fathers, and it may be presumed that they seldom fail in the attempt. which they were intended to represent, gradually fell into disuse, when the language became corrupted, first by the Danish, and afterwards by the Norman invasion: and it is to be observed that, the many new sounds which, at the latter of these periods were introduced into the language, were by no means accompanied by a correspondent number of new and distinctive signs, because the French or Latin alphabet was already familiar to the Saxons, who had adopted many of its letters, on account of their superior beauty, as early as the time of Alfred. It has been observed by those writers who have particularly directed their attention to this subject, that in the present state of our language we have no less than thirteen distinct vowel sounds, and twenty-one modifications of those sounds, making in all thirty-four, which we express, as well as we can, by six and twenty letters: but at an earlier period of our language, when the spelling of the Norman words was intended to convey the Norman pronunciation, the deficiency of adequate signs must have been still more sensibly felt; so that our ancestors, finding it absolutely impossible to adopt any consistent mode of orthography, fairly left it to the discretion or caprice of the several writers and transcribers. Chaucer, it seems, was perfectly aware of this inconvenience. In his address to his book he says, "And, for there is so great diversité "In English, and in writing of our tongue, Troilus and Cress. v. 1793 to 98. It was easier to prefer a prayer, than to suggest any human means of accomplishing the object of his wishes. The veil which obscures the writings of our early poets cannot now be wholly removed: and perhaps, among the admirers of antiquity, there may be some who would regret its removal; because, like other veils, it leaves much to the imagination. But the present trivial work having been compiled for the convenience of indolent and cursory readers, it appeared necessary to adopt, as generally as possible, in all the extracts which are hereafter given, the orthography of the present day; not as being quite rational (which it certainly is not), but as being in some degree consistent, and fixed by custom and authority. Those obsolete words which, haying been long since elbowed out of the language by French, or Latin, or Greek substitutes, were not reducible to any definite mode of spelling; those which, having undergone a change in their vowel sounds, or in their number of syllables, could not be reformed without disturbing the rhyme or metre; and those which were so far disguised as to offer no certain meaning, have been left to that fortuitous combination of letters which the original transcribers or printers had assigned to them. All such are printed in italics, for the purpose of more easy reference to the glossarial notes, in which their meaning is explained or conjectured. After these short preliminary observations on the language of our ancestors, it becomes necessary to say a few words concerning their poetry. This, in its spirit and character, seems to have resembled those Runic odes so admirably imitated by Mr. Gray: but its mechanism and scheme of versification, notwithstanding all the pains which Hickes has employed in attempting to investigate them, are still completely inexplicable. Mr. Tyrwhitt has justly observed, that we do not discover in the specimens of Anglo-Saxon poetry preserved by Hickes, any very studied attempts at alliteration (a species of ornament probably introduced by the Danes), nor the embellishment of rhyme, nor a |