This last is both the least important and the most unattainable.
[§ 684]. Such are the preliminaries which are wanted for the purposes of investigation. Others are requisite for the proper understanding of the facts already ascertained, and the doctrines generally admitted; the present writer believing that these two classes are by no means coextensive.
Of such preliminaries, the most important are those connected with 1. the structure of language, and 2. the history of individual documents; in other words, certain points of philology, and certain points of bibliography.
[§ 685]. Philological preliminaries.—These are points of pronunciation, points of grammatical structure, and glossarial peculiarities. It is only the first two which will be noticed. They occur in 1. the modern, 2. the ancient local forms of speech.
[§ 686]. Present provincial dialects.—In the way of grammar we find, in the present provincial dialects (amongst many others), the following old forms—
1. A plural in en—we call-en, ye call-en, they call-en. Respecting this, the writer in the Quarterly Review, has the following doctrine:—
"It appears to have been popularly known, if not in East Anglia proper, at all events in the district immediately to the westward, since we find it in Orm, in an Eastern-Midland copy of the Rule of Nuns, sæc. XIII., and in process of time in Suffolk. Various conjectures have been advanced as to the origin of this form, of which we have no certain examples before the thirteenth century.[[72]] We believe the true state of the case to have been as follows. It is well known that the Saxon dialects differ from the Gothic, Old-German, &c. in the form of the present indicative plural—making all three persons to end in -aþ or -ad;—we—ȝe—hi—lufi-aþ (-ad). Schmeller and other German philologists observe that a nasal has been here elided, the true ancient form being -and, -ant, or -ent. Traces of this termination are found in the Cotton MS. of the Old Saxon Evangelical Harmony, and still more abundantly in the popular dialects of the Middle-Rhenish district from Cologne to the borders of Switzerland. These not only exhibit the full termination -ent, but also two modifications of it, one dropping the nasal and the other the dental. E.g.:—
| Pres. Indic. | Plur. 1, 2, 3 | liebent; |
| ,, | ,, | lieb-et; |
| ,, | ,, | lieb-en; |
—the last exactly corresponding with the Mercian. It is remarkable that none of the above forms appear in classical German compositions, while they abound in the Miracle-plays, vernacular sermons, and similar productions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, specially addressed to the uneducated classes. We may, therefore, reasonably conclude from analogy that similar forms were popularly current in our midland counties, gradually insinuating themselves into the