STANDARD ENGLISH—HOW IT AROSE AND HOW IT IS MAINTAINED.
Much is said and written nowadays as to the prevalence of slang and bad English. It is a matter of common regret both in academic circles and elsewhere that our English tongue is not now spoken and written with its traditional purity and propriety. As to the truth of this complaint there is probably some ground for doubt, but it is not proposed here to discuss this question. The mere fact of the existence of slang and bad English implies that there is a norm, a standard of propriety of English speech, to which polite usage ever aims to conform. It is this standard that ratifies a given idiom or locution and stamps it with the hall-mark of propriety, thus establishing its usage as approved. Any signal departure from this standard is at once branded a solecism and consequently recognized as a provincialism, or slang. It is here proposed to inquire what constitutes standard English, how it arose, how it is maintained.
The science of language comes to our aid in this inquiry and teaches us how a language grows and develops. Before the dawn of this new science it was supposed that the standard speech was determined by court usage as reflected in the language of the ruling class and the courtiers. This select body of people was believed to set the fashion in speech, as in other things, and the educated and cultured of the country were thought to follow their lead as a matter of course. The common people, according to this theory, accepted as final the standard set by the nobility, and all divergences therefrom were held to be the result of ignorance. Not only was the court dialect regarded as indicating absolute propriety of usage, but it was supposed to be the original form of the vernacular speech, which the masses were expected to imitate as perfectly as they could, in their habits of speaking and writing. The court itself, likewise holding this view, did not hesitate to condemn and stigmatize every departure in speech from the received dialect as a glaring solecism which made for the corruption and ultimate disintegration of the language.
This is now an exploded theory. Modern philology has demonstrated beyond a doubt that such an assumption is utterly false and untrue to nature. For philology teaches us clearly that the urban dialect, far from being the original tongue of which the rural dialects are mere corruptions, was itself once only a provincial, barbarous form of speech,—a lingo just as primitive and just as uncultivated as any of its fellows,—and that its supremacy is the result, not of any intrinsic superiority over its rivals, but of the political predominance of those who employed it as their vernacular. Those who used the urban dialect, by dint of their own intelligence and skill, surpassed their rivals in the race for the primacy and were the first, therefore, to establish the ascendency of their community. Their supremacy once established, the inhabitants of the more highly organized community proceeded at once to impose their rule upon their weaker neighbors. The latter, being unable to resist the more powerful and resourceful community, soon forfeited their independence and lost their identity and were gradually absorbed. It is thus that political pre-eminence of a primitive community over its rivals paves the way for the growth and development of its speech, which is gradually extended over the conquered until it finally supplants its fellows and itself becomes supreme as the accepted language of the victorious and the vanquished alike.
The philologists explain the several stages of the development of a language, distinctly marking off each, from the crude local patois to the highly developed and polished speech of a cultured nation. The primitive tongue of a local tribe is termed a patois, a rudimentary speech ill adapted to the communication of the simplest ideas. If a patois grows and develops so as to become available in vocabulary and syntax for the expression of thought, it is called a dialect. When a local patois advances to the dialect stage, there is a marked tendency, on the part of those employing it, to crush out its rivals by conquest and assimilation. Consequently the triumphant dialect then becomes the only speech of a linguistic province, and is itself perhaps somewhat modified by the conflict from which it has emerged victorious.
Now, there may be several independent linguistic provinces. If so, a hard struggle for supremacy follows. Eventually some one of the provinces succeeds in establishing its political mastery over the others, and then begins the process of linguistic expansion and assimilation. Thus the dialect of the most powerful province or district is at length made the speech of the entire people. In this manner not only all the local patois, but all the competing dialects also, are either absorbed, or are crushed out by the dialect of the dominant political community.
A striking illustration of this process is furnished in the history of the development of the Latin tongue. This dominant language which still survives, more or less disguised, in the speech of a large part of Europe, as well as in the speech of Latin America, and which has so generously enriched our own English tongue, as Whitney tells us in his “Language and the Study of Language,” was the vernacular less than twenty-five centuries ago, of an insignificant district in central Italy, the inhabitants of which at that remote day were but little above savages. History is silent as to when and how this tribe found their way into that region of the Italian peninsula. Their speech was only one of a group of related dialects, “descendants and joint representatives of an older tongue, spoken by the first immigrants, which had grown apart by the effect of the usual dissimilating processes.” There still survive remains of at least two of the rival dialects, Oscan and Umbrian, which throw a flood of light on the prehistoric period of Italian speech. The Latin dialect was threatened on the north by the Etruscan, the vernacular of a civilized people dwelling beyond the Tiber; and it was likewise menaced on the south by the Greek language, spoken by the Hellenic colonies, long before settled in southern Italy and Sicily. Both of these tongues are assumed to have been superior in intrinsic character to the crude, primitive dialect of the early Romans. But the rudimentary Latin speech spread pari passu with the extension of the Roman dominion. As the Roman arms brought one Italian district after another under Roman sway, the tongue of that mighty people grew apace and diffused itself throughout the whole of Italy, gradually absorbing all the rival dialects. Finally all the dialects of Italy were forced to acknowledge the predominance of the speech of the conquering city on the Tiber,—from the uncultivated Gaulish of the north to the facile and polished Greek of the south. Thus all Italy came at last to have one uniform language, to wit, Latin.
Yet there did not result, after all, absolute uniformity of speech throughout the whole of Italy. For though the rival dialects had one by one given place to the triumphant advance of the all-absorbing Latin, still in the remote rural districts relics of the native local dialects tenaciously maintained their foothold in the popular speech; and like paganism before the advance of Christianity, the local dialects were loth to relinquish their strongholds in the inaccessible country districts. Traces of the vanquished tongues were still to be discerned in the varying local dialects throughout the remote parts of the Italian peninsula. Nor was the common speech of Italy everywhere current the pure classic Latin of Cicero and Vergil. On the contrary, the vernacular of the ancient Romans, by and large, was a far less polished and graceful idiom, “containing already the germs of many of the changes exhibited by the modern Italian and the other Romanic tongues.”
A second shining example is found in the history of the rise of the French language. This marvelously lucid tongue had its origin in a little island in the Seine, at present the heart of the great city of Paris. The language of the inhabitants of that tiny isle, to be sure, was at first a rude lingo no whit superior to the various patois of Romanized Gaul. But the inhabitants of that vigorous district soon gained the political ascendency over their neighbors and gradually extended their speech throughout the whole of Ile-de-France. The upshot was that the numerous local patois speedily lost caste, sinking to a lower and lower level, till they all finally disappeared, and the dialect of Paris came to be recognized as the official language of the entire central part of France. But there were also other provinces of France besides that of Ile-de-France. Normandy, Provence and Burgundy had meantime risen to marked political distinction, and the speech of each of these provinces in due course attained to the dignity of a dialect with a considerable body of literature. But no one dialect was supreme. However, in the process of time the people of central France established their pre-eminence, extending their dominion over the entire country. Thus the sister provinces were, in turn, brought under the sway of the predominant Ile-de-France which imposed its dialect upon its subdued rivals. In this manner the Parisian dialect spread over the whole of France and was destined speedily to become the accepted speech of the country. Naturally enough, as the Parisian dialect gained the ascendency, the Provençal, the Norman and the Burgundian dialect each fell into decay and finally ceased to exist as a spoken dialect, being preserved only in certain literary monuments.
Now, the Parisian dialect did not attain to the honor of the standard language of France without a long and hard struggle. During this struggle the language was in process of development and underwent some changes by attrition and contact with its strenuous rivals. In the conflict the Parisian dialect sloughed off some of its unessentials, its eccentricities of speech in the form of inflexions and syntax and came forth somewhat simplified in its grammar. At the same time it borrowed not a few idioms and phrases from its defeated rivals, thus enriching its vocabulary and simplifying its syntax by contact with the decadent dialects.
Thus arose modern French—a language beautifully transparent and precise and almost as untrammeled by inflections as English is and as admirably adapted for the conveyance of nice distinctions and fine shades of thought. It appears, then, that modern French is developed from one of the pristine provincial dialects which probably enjoyed no superior advantage over its sister dialects, but which owes its success as a literary medium to the happy circumstance that it was the vernacular of the most important political province. Furthermore, it is manifest that the Provençal, Norman and Burgundian dialects are in no sense a corrupt form of the standard speech. They are rather kindred dialects which by sheer force of political conditions were outstripped in the race for the distinction of being chosen as the national language.
Let us now consider the history of the English language. The development of the English tongue is quite similar, if not, indeed, parallel, to the story of Latin and French. It is in order to give here a brief survey of the origin and development of the English speech.
In the earliest period of our language it is assumed that there were numerous patois spoken by the Jutes, the Angles and the Saxons who had settled in Britain as rovers and adventurers. True, we have no record preserved of these several patois; but philology warrants the inference that they existed. In the earliest stage of the Anglo-Saxon speech of which history furnishes a record, these various patois had already given rise to some three or four distinct dialects commonly designated, according to their respective geographical positions, Kentish, Southern, Midland, and Northern. There are documents extant of each of these early English dialects which constitute our Anglo-Saxon literature. Now, each of these dialects (if Kentish is included in the Southern dialect) marks a separate period in the political history of Teutonic England. In the northern part of England, then known as Northumbria, where the Angles settled after migrating from the Continent, the Anglian dialect was first pre-eminent as the literary language. This was during the eighth century when the leading writers in that dialect were Caedmon and the Venerable Bede. In those early times the Angles appear to have extended their control over Mercia, too, even down to the northern banks of the Thames. However, this district later had a local dialect of its own, apart from the Northumbrian, and its chief literary monuments are a translation of the Psalter and a version of Matthew’s Gospel designated the “Rushworth.” The part of Britain south of the Thames and lying toward the west was settled by the Saxons. Their dialect which scholars call the West-Saxon was quite unlike the Anglian dialect; and it is distinguished above its fellows as the dialect in which the bulk of our earliest literature is written. The West-Saxon, therefore, from the grammatical point of view is by far the most important of our early English dialects, and is recognized by scholars as the standard for inflection and idiom. But the pre-eminence of West-Saxon was of later date than that of the Northumbrian dialect. From the death of Bede in 734 to the accession of King Alfred in 871, it is interesting to note that no one of the English dialects seems to have been supreme. However, from the accession of Ecgberht in 802 the West-Saxon had been gradually gaining its ascendency which was of course completed in the days of King Alfred. This good king signalized his reign by a great revival of learning, in which he himself was the leading figure. He summoned to his court an earnest and enthusiastic body of scholars from various parts of the world, and himself set them a worthy example of industry and scholarship by translating into the vernacular Pope Gregory’s “Pastoral Care,” Boethius’s “Consolations of Philosophy” and Orosius’s “Chronicle.”
After the death of King Alfred there was a sad decline in literature. But the prowess and overlordship of Wessex had made the West-Saxon dialect the standard literary language of England; and it continued so till the Norman Conquest destroyed the political prestige of that kingdom and consequently deprived that dialect of its evident advantage as the official language. While the West-Saxon dialect was recognized, it is true, as the literary language, still it did not entirely supplant the Anglian and the Mercian, both of which continued to be spoken and, to some extent, also written. But it is a significant fact that the earlier Northumbrian poetry was translated into this southern speech and is preserved to us only in the West-Saxon version.
West-Saxon lost its supremacy as the standard language when, as a result of the Conquest, Norman French was adopted by the ruling class as the cultivated speech of the realm. Still, “the native tongue,” to quote Professor Lounsbury (History of the English Language), “continued to be spoken by the great majority of the population, but it went out of use as the language of high culture. The educated classes, whether lay or ecclesiastical, preferred to write either in Latin or French—the latter steadily tending to become more and more the language of literature as well as of polite society.” The result was that West-Saxon, being supplanted as the literary language by Norman French, lost prestige and was reduced ultimately to the level of its sister dialects, Anglian and Mercian. After the loss of West-Saxon ascendency no one dialect was again pre-eminent in England till the fourteenth century. For two centuries prior to that date the several provincial dialects were employed in their respective territories; and each had an equal chance of becoming standard English. An author, therefore, was free to use his own local speech. To be sure, French was the accepted language at court and in high society; but this foreign tongue at no time enjoyed such a commanding position as to threaten the extinction of the native dialects.
Indeed, the relation of the Norman French to the English dialects has given rise to so much popular misconception and error that it seems worth while, at this juncture, to indicate the true relation explicitly. When the Normans conquered England, as the philologists tell us, they did not seek to impose their language upon the English people. Such a policy would have been very unwise for obvious reasons, and would have produced untold trouble and conflict between the two races. The Normans did not despise the English tongue. They were content to let the natives speak their several English dialects just as before the Conquest. Of course, the Normans retained their own French patois and had no expectation of abandoning it in favor of English, as they had once before given up their Scandinavian vernacular for French. Yet in consequence of the overwhelming preponderance of the English natives over their Norman invaders it was inevitable, in the event of a struggle for supremacy between the two tongues, that the French should be forced to the wall. Fortunately, no such conflict was designed by either race, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that neither people ever seriously contemplated such a possibility.
It is evident, then, that the Norman Conquest did not tend to destroy the English tongue in Britain, as it was once the fashion to teach. The Norman Conquest did, however, interrupt the normal literary tradition of the English speech. For at the time of the Battle of Hastings, as has been intimated, the West-Saxon dialect was easily the foremost of the English provincial dialects and seemed destined to establish its claim as being the national speech. But the Conquest interrupted this natural process and drove West-Saxon from its coign of vantage, reducing it to the level of the rival provincial dialects. French being, of course, the language of the court and the official tongue generally, the West-Saxon dialect no longer offered any special inducement to intending authors to employ it, as had been the case ever since the days of King Alfred. Hence writers simply used their respective local dialects, there being no recognized standard speech.
Norman French and the several English dialects were now spoken side by side, and continued so for quite a long while. What more natural, therefore, than that each tongue should exercise some influence upon the other, however slight? It is usually stated that French influence hastened the decay of English inflections. But the English had begun to lose its inflections even before the coming of the Normans and to rely more largely upon position and prepositions to indicate case relations. No doubt, French influence accelerated this tendency. French influence was also a factor in modifying the idiom and vocabulary of the English tongue. But each language, as Anglo-Norman students assure us, reacted upon the other mutually; and the speech of the invaders was influenced by the English of the natives just as much as English was influenced by French.
The truth is, the influence of Norman French upon English was not so important in itself, as far as any immediate effect was concerned; but it paved the way for the subsequent influence of Parisian French which swept like a mighty tidal wave over England, leaving a considerable residuum and deposit in our speech alike in idiom and in vocabulary. Norman influence upon our tongue was, therefore, chiefly indirect, not direct. When Anjou was subdued by Philip Augustus of France in 1204, Normandy was forfeited by the English crown and from that day Norman French influence on English was practically at an end. But the Parisian dialect soon extended its sphere into Britain and began to exert a decided influence upon the English speech. In the fourteenth century English scholars industriously turned their attention to French literature, either adapting or closely translating many specimens. Norman French now gave place to the Parisian dialect which had established itself as the standard speech for all the provinces of France. English scholars who crossed the Channel, as many now did, learned the French of Paris; and when they returned to their native shores of Albion, they brought with them the best French of Paris. Having lost caste, the Norman dialect was no longer esteemed fashionable in polite society and consequently it fell to the lot of Parisian French to honor the heavy drafts which the English tongue made during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries upon the French language, for the enrichment and augmentation of its vocabulary. Nor, indeed, did the French importations into our speech cease even then. They continued, only with slightly diminished activity, during the Elizabethan and succeeding ages, down to the present time. However, during the last few centuries our vernacular has not borrowed so copiously from that source, although we still draw heavily on French in our art parlance.
Yet despite the French invasion, English held its own as the vernacular of the people, yielding but very little ground, except in its vocabulary, to the foreign tongue. So far from retreating before the vigorous onslaught of French influence, our sturdy English speech actually advanced its position and succeeded in driving French from its former stronghold of the court and high society. For the descendants of the Normans who were overwhelmingly in the minority, seeing that they were compelled by sheer force of circumstances to speak English also, gradually abandoned French as their mother-tongue and were finally content to use the language which was understood by everybody in the kingdom. Thus the English vernacular at last triumphed over French as the language even of the governing class in England; and French fell into disuse and survived as a spoken tongue only in polite society and among scholars, as an accomplishment.
So much for the true relation of French to English in the history of our speech. But to return to the question of the rise of the standard literary language in England. As has been pointed out, from 1066 to 1300 there was no recognized standard of English speech. In the existing confusion of provincial dialects there was felt an urgent need for a uniform speech throughout the entire country. The perplexity resulting from the babel of unfamiliar English dialects in use at the time of the introduction of printing was keenly felt by the people themselves, but by none more than by Caxton, who set up the first printing press in England. Now, Caxton himself used London English, as a rule. But he experienced no little embarrassment when he began to print books, because he was uncertain as to which dialect he should employ. In the prologue to his version of Vergil’s Aeneid he freely confesses his inability to determine which of the varying dialects he should adopt. Commenting on the dialectal differences he complainingly remarks: “And that common English that is spoken in one shire varyeth from another. Insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames, for to have sailed over the sea into Zeeland, and for lack of wind they tarried at the foreland and went to land for to refresh them. And one of them named Sheffield, a mercer, came into an house and axed for meat and specially he axed after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he could speak no French, but would have had eggs and she understood him not. And then at last another said that he would have eiren; then the good wife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eiren? Certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language.”
This incident related by Caxton serves to illustrate how almost unintelligible the southern dialect had become to the inhabitants of the northern part of England in the early fifteenth century. The several dialects spoken in England had diverged so much as to result in a serious handicap on trade and a practical embargo on letters. The Northern, the Southern and the Mercian (the last now split into two minor dialects distinguished as east and west) had each risen to the dignity of a literary language. But no one of them was recognized as the triumphant dialect, destined to vanquish all its rivals and to establish its sway over the entire country. At this juncture circumstances, somehow, conspired to raise the East Midland dialect to the primacy, enabling it to extend itself over the whole country as the received language, the national speech. This dialect had much to commend it to favor. To begin with, this dialect occupied a somewhat central position geographically and so offered a compromise to the inhabitants of the extreme northern and southern portions of England, whose dialects were so far apart. In the second place, East Midland was the dialect of London, the great commercial center—the emporium—of Great Britain. It was also the dialect of the famous university towns where the flower of the English nobility was trained. Furthermore, it was the dialect of the Court and Parliament whenever they spoke English. Finally, it was the dialect of Wycklif’s version of the Bible and of Chaucer, “that well of English undefiled” whose refreshing stream of song carried joy and gladness to every part of the island.
It is sometimes said that Chaucer’s poetic genius moulded the literary language of England. This is a pleasant illusion, but not quite in accord with the facts. Chaucer, in conformity to the custom of the times, simply wrote in his native dialect. That dialect, it is true, happened to be the dialect of the chief city of the realm and of the most powerful elements in the state, the ruling class. It was a mere accident that Chaucer spoke and wrote this same dialect as his vernacular. In no sense did Chaucer create the London dialect. Nor did he make it the received literary language, the standard speech of the English people. This dictum was once accepted, but needless to add it is now discredited by scholars. Yet Chaucer’s influence as the foremost English author of his age was assuredly not without weight in establishing the dialect of London as the standard literary language of the kingdom. It is a significant fact that this dialect (which was the dialect of the Court) had attained the distinction of being the literary language of England, by the first half of the fifteenth century, though perhaps it was a mere coincidence that this was only a short time after Chaucer’s death. It is quite possible, yea probable, that the East Midland dialect would have established its supremacy as the standard language of England even if Chaucer had written his works in French, or Latin, or Scotch. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that an author of such rare and commanding genius as Chaucer contributed not a little to hasten the process of the spread of his native dialect and its acceptance as the standard language of the realm. The acknowledged excellence of his poetic works tended, no doubt, to stamp the dialect in which they were written as literary English and furnished a sufficient guaranty, in after years, that his language was classic English.
The effect of the establishment of the East Midland dialect as the standard language of England was soon observed in the rapid declension and ultimate disuse of all the rival dialects. For as soon as the dialect of London was recognized as supreme, no author could be expected to court oblivion by employing any of the decadent provincial dialects as his medium of expression. Hence all the provincial dialects hitherto employed now either fell into disuse, or survived only as a mere local patois without any literary pretensions—a rustic lingo heard only on the lips of the illiterate and uncultured. Such was the fate of the various Middle English dialects, Scotch only excepted. The Northern dialect, or Scottish, seems to have maintained itself for quite a considerable time. Indeed, Scottish was recognized as the standard language of Scotland as long as that northern kingdom preserved its independence. Down to the time of James the First, therefore, there was a dual standard in the language of Great Britain, the English of London which was the vernacular of England and the Scottish of Edinburgh, which was the vernacular of Scotland. In 1603, upon the accession of James the First, the Scottish as a literary tongue was abandoned in favor of standard English, as a result of the political organic union of Scotland with England. From that time to the present there has been only one standard English language for Great Britain. Yet the language spoken in Scotland preserves not a few traces of the old Scotch dialect mingled with standard English, which imparts to it its Scotch characteristics. This is more particularly noticeable in the speech of the common people and occasionally in the works of a popular poet like Burns, although his language contains very few strictly Scotch words.
It has been shown how standard English was enriched in vocabulary and idiom by contact with the French language. It is to the Norman Conquest that our speech is largely indebted for its double vocabulary which gives English a unique place among modern languages. The skeleton of our English tongue has always remained Teutonic, despite the unusually large number of words it has assimilated from French and other foreign sources. In our vocabulary, which has been so vastly swollen by our French borrowings, the native English words, if one may venture to make a rough distinction, are employed to signify objects of domestic association, homespun ideas and thoughts, while the words of Romance origin are reserved to express objects that are associated with luxury and delicate culture and to convey subtle shades of thought. When two or more words are used to signify very much the same thing, the genius of the English speech tends to differentiate and to restrict the words to separate and special senses. This, of course, makes the language more flexible and more facile as a medium of expression.
Just as English was enriched by contact with French, so it has been improved, though to a less extent, by attrition and contact with its sister dialects. By elbowing its way to the front through the various dialects which jostled it, the dialect which developed into standard English naturally lost by attrition most of the grammatical peculiarities that hampered it. It was, of course, a decided advantage to the London dialect, in its struggle for the distinction of the standard speech, to throw off such inflections as proved a hindrance to its complete development. Most philologists used to regard the loss of superfluous inflections a symptom of decadence in a language. Now, however, such a process is regarded a sign of virility and progress. “The fewer and shorter the forms, the better,” affirms the eminent Danish philologist Jespersen. “The analytical structure of modern European languages is so far from being a drawback to them that it gives them an unimpeachable superiority over the earlier stages of the same language.” This high authority even goes so far as to declare that “the so-called full and rich forms of the ancient languages are not a beauty, but a deformity.”
Thus in the process of its development standard English was gradually freed of many of its pristine grammatical encumbrances, to take its place in the front rank of living tongues as the best equipped for a universal language. And the end is not yet. For the work of simplifying is still in progress. The history of our speech from the fifteenth century down to the present day proves nothing more conclusively than that English tends ever to become more and more simple in inflection and syntax. Witness the dwindling use of the subjunctive mood, which has been almost driven from the field of modern English syntax by the constantly encroaching indicative. Another example in point is the transfer of the function of the absolute case from the dative, an oblique case, to the nominative. This shifting has been accomplished since the time of Milton, who represents the transitional period. It is evident then that the tendency of standard English is in the direction of simplicity, and its future growth will, no doubt, be along the line of least resistance. Certainly its vis inertiae seems destined, unless acted upon by some violent external force, to move in that direction.
It need hardly be added that standard English, like every spoken language, has undergone change, from age to age. Some words become obsolete and drop out of the vocabulary. New words are coined to take their places, and if, after a period of probation, they prove acceptable, they are received into good usage and are recognized as standard. In this manner the waste that necessarily occurs in living English, as in every living language, is repaired. Thus the English speech grows, adapting itself to the many and varied conditions which are exacted of it as the medium for the communication of thought for the millions of people in every quarter of the globe who use it. Here and there slight variations from the normal, slight departures from the standard, are made. But unless the locutions which constitute these departures possess extraordinary vitality and force, unless they persist with dogged tenacity and supply a real need in the language, they are doomed to perish without leaving any appreciable effect upon the standard speech.
What, then, determines standard English? The reply, in a nutshell, is the usage of the best writers and speakers. Standard English is determined by the habitual manner the learned and cultured employ to express their thoughts and feelings in words. The customary mode of expression now in vogue among the most careful users of English has been inherited from the generations of writers and speakers who have employed our speech in the centuries past as their vernacular. The leading English authors from Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Swift, Johnson and a host of others, down to the living writers, have each in his way contributed to make our standard literary language. Each of these, it is true, has influenced standard English in some degree. No one can fail to see the impress which such an eccentric writer as Doctor Johnson, the literary dictator of the eighteenth century, stamped upon the standard English of his age. Our speech shows no less distinctly marked traces of the influence of Addison. For Addison’s admirable style, with its characteristic grace, crispness and lightness of touch, even Johnson himself warmly commended, although the great Cham’s innate tendency to the stilted, the turgid and the ponderous prevented him from approximating in his practice what in his preaching he so ardently held up for the imitation and emulation of others. To mention another concrete example, in more recent times standard English has been swayed somewhat by Macaulay’s passionate love of antithesis and of the periodic structure of the sentence. Attention might be called, likewise, to the influence of Gibbon’s chaste and classic style (albeit a trifle heavy and wearisome at times) upon our standard literary language, or to the influence of another prominent author whose style is still more unique and distinctive—Thomas Carlyle. Away back in the early history of English one may observe in the style of the West-Saxon translator of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History” a trick of repetition which has made a lasting impression on our standard speech; and it still survives in such familiar tautological phrases as “really and truly,” “bright and shining,” “pure and simple,” “without let or hindrance,” “toil and delve,” “confirm and strengthen,” and “lord and master.” All of these locutions, as Professor Kittredge informs us, in his suggestive book, “Words and Their Ways in English Speech,” are in high favor, and are recognized as standard English. Euphuism is a movement that swept over Elizabethan English in the wake of the tidal wave of ink-horn terms, materially affecting the standard speech. Even Shakespeare could not quite resist the fashion of Euphuism, and his English is indeed slightly colored thereby. Another trick of style which has cropped out here and there, from the days of Spenser down to the present age, is that of employing archaic terms with the intent to revive them. On the score of this affectation the most flagrant sinner among modern authors is William Morris, whose writings furnish a veritable treasure-trove of curious and amusing archaisms. But it is not worth while to multiply examples. Let those already given suffice to illustrate how standard English has been swayed, from time to time, even by the devices and attractions of dame fashion.
It is to be noted, in conclusion, that standard English is no longer confined to the usage of any given locality, as was the case in the early history of the language. The English language spoken in London does not now enjoy the distinction of determining the standard universally accepted. A special mode of utterance or a special idiom is not now regarded proper simply and solely because it is sanctioned by London usage. Indeed, that British metropolis appears rather to have broken with its enviable past and worthy traditions in the matter of its English, for London is now recognized as the home of the “cockney” dialect. Nowhere more than on the lips of the native Londoner is the purity of our noble tongue in jeopardy. Strange to say, the English vernacular of the native Londoner has, of late years, fallen into disrepute by reason of its abounding improprieties, its teeming provincialisms and its solecisms. No educated man who professes English as his mother-tongue would, to-day, think of making his speech conform to the usage of London as reflected in the local dialect. It used to be the custom to take London English as a model; but not so now, since the local speech has become so corrupt as to prove a constant menace to the purity of the living tongue. Perhaps it should be added, in order to forestall adverse criticism, that standard English is, of course, heard in London, as elsewhere, upon the lips of the educated and cultured. But it is worth while to emphasize this fact, even at the risk of repetition, that standard English is no longer confined to any given locality or to any one country, for the matter of that, but is written and spoken in America, in far-off India, and in other remote parts of the world as well as in the British Isles. For wherever the English language is employed, whether written or spoken, in accordance with the best traditions of that rich, flexible and copious tongue, there standard English is found, in whatever quarter of the globe it may be.