that 'in this age, as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to be pleased than to be instructed.' Such was their fascination and their passion for Largesse!' that they were reproached with draining the treasury of a prince. It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the minstrels as their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the great; yet even their monkish censors relented whenever these revellers appeared. It was a festive day among so many joyless ones when the minstrel band approached the lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned vielle, or the merry rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slumbering inmates; vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched their eyes and the grotesque mime, who would not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately minstrel, with his harp, borne before him by his smiling page, usually called 'the minstrel's boy.' One of the brotherhood has described the strolling troop who 'Walken fer and wyde, Her, and ther, in every syde, In many a diverse londe.' The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed both here and among our neighbours, corrupted their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reckless to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public assembly, and haunted the private abode. At different periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in England and in France; but their return was rarely delayed. The people could not be made to abandon these versatile dispensers of solace amid their own monotonous cares. At different periods minstrels appear to have been persons of great wealth-a circumstance which we discover by their votive religious acts in the spirit and custom of those days. The priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, in 1102, was founded by 'Rahere,' the king's minstrel, who is described as 'a pleasant-witted gentleman,' such as we may imagine a wealthy minstrel, and, moreover, the king's,' ever to have been. In St. Mary's church at Beverley in Yorkshire, stands a noble column covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed 'This Pillar made the Mynstrels;' and at Paris, a chapel dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels was erected by them, covered with figures of minstrels bearing all the instruments of music used in the middle ages, where the violin or fiddle is minutely sculptured. * * * The personages and the manners here imperfectly sketched, constituted the domestic life of our chivalric society from the twelfth century to the first civil wars of England. In this long interval few could read; even bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron pleaded the privilege of a layman for not doing the one nor the other. The intellectal character of the nation can only be traced in the wandering minstrel and the haughty ecclesiastic. The minstrel mingling with all the classes of society reflected all their sympathies, and in reality was one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language was not that either of the noble or of the people." On the Vernacular Languages of Europe, and also with regard to our own Saxon, Mr. D'Israeli amid much that is universally known regarding the use of Latin in the middle ages, as well as during a succeeding period, advances some unwarrantable, and we think, clearly erroneous sentiments, when the languages in question had advanced with the advancement of mind, and when the finest human energies were fully awakened. Why, he even appears to accuse Bacon with having, if not despised, at least, never appreciated the wealth of his mother tongue. He "did not foresee," says our author, "that the English language would one day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can discover, or poetry can invent; that his country, at length, would possess a national literature, and exult in models of its own." It is added,-"So little did Lord Bacon esteem the language of his country, that his favourite works are composed in Latin; and what he had written in English he was anxious to have preserved, as he expresses it himself, in 'that universal language which may last as long as books last.'" In a previous part of the same paragraph this strange piece of assertion occurs: The genius of Verulam, whose prescient views often anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding times, appears never to have contemplated the future miracles of his maternal tongue." ---- These, we say, are strange assertions. Why, has not Bacon left us his Essays, and had he not read and appreciated Shakspere and Spenser, as well as the noble English writings of many other predecessors ? To be sure he wrote a number of learned works in the universal language, because he wished the learned in all nations to understand him. But when he had a more homely purpose in view, he was all-powerful and all-beautiful,-exhaustless and enthusiastically exuberant. But we go on to quote : "The Saxon language had been tainted by some Latin terms from the ecclesiastics, and some fashionable Normanisms from the court of the Confessor; when the Norman-French, fatal as the arrow which pierced Harold, by a single blow struck down that venerable form-and never has it arisen! And now, with all its pomp, such as it was, it lies entombed and coffined in some scanty manuscripts. We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathers never did depart from the land since it survived among the people. What survived? It soon ceased to be a written tongue, for no one cared to cultivate an idiom no longer required and utterly contemned. After the Conquest, the miserable Saxons lost their 'book-craft.' We find nothing written but the continuation of a meagre chronicle. A few pietists still lingered in occasional homilies, and a solitary charter has been perpetuated; but the style was already changed, and, as a literary language, the Anglo-Saxon had for ever departed! It had sunk to the people, and they treated the ancient idiom after their fashion-the language of books served not simple men; laying aside its inflections, and its inversions, and its arbitrary construction, they chose a shorter and more direct conveyance of their thoughts, and only kept to a language fitted to the business of daily life. This getting free from the encumbrances of the Anglo-Saxon, we may consider formed the obscure beginnings of the English language. All the gradual changes or the sudden innovations through more than two centuries may not be perceivable by posterity; but philologists have marked out how first the inversion was simplified, and then the inflections dropped; how the final e became mute, and at length was ejected; how ancient words were changed, and Norman neologisms introduced. As this English cleared itself of the nebulosity, the anomalies, and all the complex machinery of the mother idiom, a natural style was formed, very homely, for this vaunted Saxon now came from the mouths of the people, and from those friends of the people, the monks, who only wrote for their humble brother Saxons. The English writers, who were composing in French, and the more learned, who displayed their clerkship by their Latinity, had a standard of literature which would regulate or advance their literary workmanship; but there was no standard in the language of bondage; it had mixed, as Ritson oddly describes it, with one knows not what;' a disorganisation of words and idioms. Numerous dialects pervaded the land; the East and the West agreed as ill together as both did with the North and the South; and they who wrote for the people each chose the dialect of their own shire." Our author affords, no doubt, much curious information regarding the modern languages of Europe. For example, he shows how differently different nations have gone to work with the Latin as respects its introductions. The French are said to have impoverished themselves by such abbreviations as merely omit terminations, and hence their numerous monosyllables. Thus, aureum becomes or; amicus-ami; homo-hom; vinum-vin; bonus-bon. "Titus Livius is but Tite Live; and the historian of Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrous Quinte Curve." Italy, on the other hand, retained the "sonorous termination of the paternal soil, and Spain did not forget the majesty of the Latin accent;" while the "Gothic and the northern race barbarously abbreviated or disfigured their Latin words; to sounds so new to them they gave their own rude inflections; there is but one organ to regulate the delicacy of orthoepy-a musical and tutored ear." But further, with regard to the English language: "When the learned Hickes, in his patriotic fervour to trace the legitimacy of the English from its parent language, adjudged that nine-tenths of our words were of Saxon origin,' he exultingly appealed to the Lord's Prayer, wherein there are only three words of French or Latin extraction. This startled Tyrwhit, then busied on his Chaucerian glossary, and who in that labour had before him a different aspect of our mottled English. That was not the day when writers would maintain opinions against authority. Awed by the great Saxonist, the poetical antiquary compromised, alleging that though the form of our language was still Saxon, yet the matter was ་ in a great measure French.' His successor in English philology, George Ellis, still further faltered and arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to complete his favourite scheme, would trace some old Gaulish French to a Teutonic origin. In tracing the formation of the English language, we are sensible that the broad and solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the superstructure has often, with a magical movement, varied in its architecture. An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to assert that English is but another term for Saxon; but an ocular demonstration has been exhibited in specimens of the modern English of our master-writers, marking by italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By these it appears that the translators of the Bible have happily preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, like the light in a cathedral through its storied and saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; and Sharon Turner has observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A recent critic has curiously calculated that the English language, now consisting of about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most idiomatic writers, there is about one-tenth not Anglo-Saxon, and in our least about one-third. A cry of our desertion of our Saxon purity has been raised by those who have not themselves practised it in their more elevated compositions; but are we to deem that English corrupted which recedes from its Saxon character, and compels the daughter to lose the likeness of her mother? Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners who have already fructified our Saxon soil? In an age of extended literature, conversant with objects and productive of associations which never entered into the experience of our forefathers, the ancient language of the people must necessarily prove inadequate; a new language must start out of new conceptions. Look into our present 'exchequer of words;' there lies many a refined coinage struck out of the arts and the philosophies of Europe. Every word which genius creates, and which time shall consecrate, is a possession of the language which must be inscribed into that variable doomsday book of words-the English Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden! the day of your idolatries has passed, and your remonstrances are vain as your superstitions." The safe and proper rule is never to import a foreign word, and never to invent a new term, when we already have legitimately born ones to serve the purpose. Our rich and stately language has been sadly disfigured by such impertinencies. By the time, indeed, at which Gower and Chaucer wrote, the English tongue had great compass, and was capable of very graceful as well as terse expression. And here a good anecdote may be introduced : "This tale of Gower's free and honest satire on courts and courtiers is not yet concluded. The sphere of a poet's influence is far wider than that of his own age; and however we may now deem of this grave and ancient poet, he still found understanding admirers so late as in the reign of Charles the First. In the curious' Conference' which took place when Charles the First visited the Marquess of Worcester, at Ragland Castle, with his court, there is the following anecdote respecting the poet Gower. The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and a favourite of the king for his frankness and his love of the arts. His lordship entertained the royal guest with extraordinary magnificence. Among his rare curiosities was a sumptuous copy of Gower's volume. Charles the First usually visited the marquess after dinner. Once he found his lordship with the book of John Gower lying open, which the king said he had never before seen. 'Oh !' exclaimed the marquess, it is a book of books! and if your majesty had been well versed in it, it would have made you a king of kings.' Why so, my lord?' 'Why, here is set down how Aristotle brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the rudiments and principles belonging to a prince.' And under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by were amazed at his boldness. The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or spake out of the book? Sir, if you would read my heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your majesty pleased to will lend you my book.' The king accepted the offer. made lords fretted and bit their thumbs at certain passages in the marquess' discourse; and some protested that no man was so much for the absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable passage to that purpose, and turning to the place, read 'A king can kill, a king can save; A king can make a lord a knave; get it by heart, I Some of the new On this several new-made lords slank out of the room, which the king observing, told the marquess, My lord, at this rate you will drive away all my nobility.' This amusing anecdote is an evidence that this ethical poet, after two centuries and a half, was not forgotten; his spirit was still vital, his volume still lay open on the library table; it afforded a pungent lesson to the courtiers of Charles the First, as it had to those of Richard the Second." Before the art of printing inundated the world with books, there could hardly be any private libraries; and even those of kings and of great national institutions must have been upon a very limited scale. Mr. D'Israeli brings together a great number of curious facts connected with the subject, as will be seen from the following long extract, which we could not well curtail, without destroying its effect: "There probably was a time when there existed no private libraries in the kingdom, nor any save the monastic; that of Oxford, at the close of the thirteenth century, consisted of a few tracts kept in chests.' In that primeval age of book-collecting, shelves were not yet required. Royalty itself seems to have been destitute of a royal library. It appears, by one of our recently published records, that King John borrowed a volume from a rich abbey, and the king gave a receipt to Simon his chancellor for the |