| I. | Old English, commonly called Anglo-Saxon | 450-1100 |
| II. | Early English | 1100-1250 |
| III. | Middle English | 1250-1485 |
| IV. | Modern English | 1485-1882 |
But it must not be forgotten that there is no hard and fast line between one period and another. A living language, like a living body, is always changing. It takes on new additions of new matter; it loses the old. With these new additions, its form also changes. We are rarely sensible of these changes; but they are going on all the time for all that.
[11.] THE OLDEST ENGLISH OR ANGLO-SAXON, 450-1100.—This form of the English language contained a very large number of inflections. The definite article was inflected for gender, number, and case; nouns and adjectives were highly inflected; and the verb had a very much larger number of inflections than it has now. The words of the English vocabulary during this period were almost entirely English; a few Latin and Greek words—brought in chiefly by the church—and a few Keltic words, had found their way into the English vocabulary. The rhyme used in poetry was not end-rhyme, as at the present date, but head-rhyme or alliteration—as we find it in the well-known line from Pope:
Apt alliteration’s artful aid.
To this period belong the writings of the poet Cædmon and of King Alfred.
[12.] EARLY ENGLISH, 1100-1250.—The Normans had seized all power in the state and in the church, and had held it since the year 1066. During the early part of this period, English was not written, had ceased to be employed in books; and French words began to creep in even among the spoken words of the English people. The inflections of words began to drop off, or to be carelessly used, and then to be mixed up and confused with each other. One of the chief writers of this period is a priest called Layamon, who wrote a poem called the Brut (Brutus), which gave some account of the beginnings of the English people, who were believed to be descended from Brutus, the fabled son of Æneas of Troy.
[13.] MIDDLE ENGLISH, 1250-1485.—Nouns and adjectives during this period lost almost all their inflections. The inflections of verbs were very much altered and greatly simplified.—In the year 1349, boys in school were allowed to cease translating their Latin into French, and began to translate it into English. In the year 1362 Edward III. passed an act of parliament ordering the use of English in the pleadings of cases in all courts of law, instead of Norman-French, which had hitherto been employed. To the first half of this period belong such works as the Metrical Chronicle and the Lives of the Saints, supposed to have been written and translated by Robert of Gloucester; to the second half belong the works of the great poet Chaucer, of William Langland, and of the reformer Wicliffe.
[14.] MODERN ENGLISH, 1485-1882.—The year 1485 marks the accession of the House of Tudor to the throne, in the person of Henry VII. By this time almost all inflections had disappeared from our language. Many hundreds of French words had come into the language. From the time of the Revival of Letters[6]—which may be said to have begun in the sixteenth century—several thousands of Latin words were poured into the English vocabulary. The period which lies between 1485 and 1603—the year in which James I. came to the throne—is sometimes called the period of Tudor English. Its greatest verse-writer is Shakspeare; its greatest prose-writer is Hooker, who wrote The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.
[15.] ENGLISH WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.—The English language has for centuries been importing words from many foreign tongues into its own vocabulary; and it has given a hearty welcome to all kinds of strangers. So much is this the case, and so far has this habit of taking in strangers gone, that we can now quite accurately say: Most of the words in our English language are not English. There are more Latin words in our tongue than there are English. But this statement is true only of our words as we find them in the dictionary. The words which we use every day—the language of the mouth—is almost entirely English. The fixed vocabulary—the vocabulary printed in the dictionary—is more Latin than English; the moving vocabulary—the words which are daily spoken—is English. Thus, if we take a passage in our translation of the Four Gospels, we shall find from 90 to 96 per cent. of the words used are English—and pure English. In the Prologue which Chaucer wrote to his famous set of poems called The Canterbury Tales, 88 per cent. of the words are English; while, in Mrs Browning’s Cry of the Children, the English words rise to the large proportion of 92 per cent.
The following is a list of a few more percentages of purely English words in the writings of well-known authors: