| Spenser (Faerie Queene, ii. 7) | 86 | per cent. |
| Shakspeare (Henry IV., Part I., Act ii) | 91 | “ |
| Milton (Paradise Lost, Book VI.) | 80 | “ |
| Swift (John Bull) | 85 | “ |
| Johnson (Preface to Dictionary) | 72 | “ |
| Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I., cap. vii.) | 70 | “ |
| Macaulay (Essay on Lord Bacon) | 75 | “ |
| Tennyson (In Memoriam, first twenty poems) | 89 | “ |
[16.] CHANGES IN ENGLISH.—Let us take a passage from the Saxon translation of the Old Testament—and it is the oldest English version we have—and notice what differences there are between this English and the English of the present day. This translation was made by Abbot Ælfric, who lived and wrote late in the tenth century. He translated into English the five books of Moses—commonly called the Pentateuch—Joshua, Judges, and part of the book of Job. Let us see how he writes (Genesis, ix. 1):
| God blett̃sode | God blessed |
| Noe and his suna | Noah and his sons |
| and cväd hem tô: | and quoth to them: |
| Veahxađ | Wax (ye) |
| and beođ gemenigfilde | and be manifolded |
| and âfyllađ | and fill |
| þâ eorđan! | the earth! |
Now every word in the above verse is modern English; but every word has been changed—with the exception of God, his, and and. All the other words have changed enormously in the course of the eight centuries since the verse was written. The words have changed; and the grammar has changed. The word bletsian has become bless. The grammar of the verbs has changed enormously. For example, the imperative ending ath in Veahxath and âfyllath has quite fallen away. It existed, in the form of eth, down to the time of Chaucer, who writes Standeth up! in addressing several persons.—Next, we ought to notice that all the words are pure English. The modern version which we still use, and which was published in 1611, has been obliged to use Latin and French words. It says—and the words in italics are all foreign words: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth’! That is, it employs three Latin words in the most important parts of the sentence.
[17.] LOSS AND GAIN.—But, while the English language has, in the course of centuries, lost almost all its inflections, it has been all that time gaining new words, and at the same time gaining new powers of expression. In fact, the history of our language is a history of both loss and gain. It has lost inflections and gained new words. An inflected language is generally called a Synthetic Language, because it expresses changes of relations by the adding-on (synthesis) of something to the end of the word. A language which expresses relations by little words like prepositions is called an analytic language. We may therefore say that:
English was in its earlier forms a synthetic language; but it is now an analytic language.
So much for the form or grammar of it. But, on the other hand, if we look at the matter or words or vocabulary of it, we shall find that:
English was originally a pure or unmixed language; but is now an extremely composite one.
[18.] THE FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH.—These have come into our language chiefly because the English people have come so much into contact with other peoples and tribes and nations. They came over to this island in the fifth century, and found Kelts here; and from them they took some Keltic words. About the end of the eighth century, the Danes came to them; and a number of Danish words entered the language. Then another set of Danes or Scandinavians—called Normans—came to them, conquered them, and gave them many hundred Norman-French words. Then, with the Revival of Letters, many scholars came over here, taught the English people to read Greek and Latin books; and these books gave the language several thousand words. Then the English people have always been the greatest travellers in the world. They have gone to China and brought home Chinese words (as well as things); they have long held India, which has given us Hindu words; they have imported names and terms from North and from South and Central America; they have borrowed from Spaniards and Italians; they have taken words, nearer home, from the Dutch and from the Germans; they have gone to the farthest east and to the farthest west, and there is hardly a language on the face of the globe from which they have not imported some words that live and make themselves useful in our language.
[19.] WELSH.—When the English settled in this island, they found a people who were called Britons, and who spoke a language called British or Kymric. It is a language very different from English; and at first the English warriors and the British people did not understand one single word of what each other said. The Old English word for foreigners was Wealhas—or, as we call it now, Welsh; and the English fighting men who came over called the British people, not by the name which they themselves used, but simply the foreigners—the Welsh. In the same way, a German to this day calls an Italian or a Frenchman a Welshman; and he calls France or Italy Welshland. The language spoken by the Welsh belongs to the Keltic group of languages. This group contains also Erse, which is spoken in the west of Ireland; Manx, which is spoken in the Isle of Man; Gaelic, which is spoken in the Highlands of Scotland; and Breton, which is spoken in Brittany—a mountainous and rugged peninsula in the north-west of France. It at one time embraced also Cornish—the language spoken in Cornwall, which was also called West Wales. But that language died out in 1778; and it is not now spoken by any one. The following is a table of the Keltic group: