DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH
By the middle of the thirteenth century Anglo-Saxon, or English, as it may now be called, had taken on a somewhat familiar appearance, as in these opening words of the Lord's Prayer: "Fadir ur, that es in heven, Halud thi nam to nevene, Thou do as thi rich rike, Thi will on erd be wrought, eek as it is wrought in heven ay." In the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer (about 1340-1400 A.D.), especially in his Canterbury Tales, English wears quite a modern aspect, though the reader is often troubled by the old spelling and by certain words not now in use. The changes in the grammar of English have been so extremely small since 1485 A..D.—the beginning of the reign of Henry VII [6]—that any Englishman of ordinary education can read without difficulty a book written more than four hundred years ago.
[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER From an old manuscript in the British Museum, London. The only existing portrait of Chaucer.]
[Illustration: ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT From an old manuscript now in the possession of the British Museum. The shrine of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, was a celebrated resort for (Proofer's Note: Remainder of text unavailable)]
ENGLISH AS A WORLD-LANGUAGE
What in medieval times was the speech of a few millions of Englishmen on a single small island is now spoken by at least one hundred and fifty millions of people all over the world. English is well fitted for the role of a universal language, because of its absence of inflections and its simple sentence-order. The great number of one-syllabled words in the language also makes for ease in understanding it. Furthermore, English has been, and still is, extremely hospitable to new words, so that its vocabulary has grown very fast by the adoption of terms from Latin, French, and other languages. These have immensely increased the expressiveness of English, while giving it a position midway between the very different Romance and Teutonic languages.
201. DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL LITERATURES
LATIN HYMNS
Medieval literature, though inferior in quality to that of Greece and Rome, nevertheless includes many notable productions. In the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries Latin hymns reached their perfection. The sublime Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath") presents a picture of the final judgment of the wicked. The pathetic Stabat Mater, which describes the sorrows of Mary at the foot of the Cross, has been often translated and set to music. These two works were written by a companion and biographer of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Bernard's Jesu Dulcis Memoria ("Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee") forms part of a beautiful hymn nearly two hundred lines in length. Part of another hymn, composed by a monk of Cluny, has been rendered into English as "Jerusalem the Golden." Latin hymns made use of rhyme, then something of a novelty, and thus helped to popularize this poetic device.