In the year 1303, Robert Manning, of Bourn in Lincolnshire, translated a French poem entitled Manuel des Pechiez (Manual of Sins) into very fair East Midland verse, giving to his translation the title of Handling Synne. Many of the verses are easy and smooth, and the poem clearly shows us that the East Midland dialect was by this time at least the equal of the others, and that the language was good enough to be largely permanent. When we read such lines as:
Than seyd echone that sate and stode,
Here comth Pers, that never dyd gode—
we have merely to modernise the spelling, and we at once have:
Then said each one that sat and stood,
Here cometh Pierce, that never did good,
These are lines that could be written now.
An extract from Manning’s Handlyng Synne is given in Specimens of Early English, Part ii, most of which can be read with ease. The obsolete words are not very numerous, and we meet now and then with half a dozen consecutive lines that would puzzle no one. It is needless to pursue the history of this dialect further. It had, by this time, become almost the standard language, differing from Modern English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. We pass on from Manning to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Lydgate and Caxton, and from Caxton to Lord Surrey and Sackville and Spenser, without any real change in the actual dialect employed, but only in the form of it.
[II. West Midland]
We have seen that there are two divisions of the Mercian dialect, into East and West Midland.
The West Midland does not greatly differ from the East Midland, but it approaches more nearly, in some respects, to the Northumbrian. The greatest distinction seems to be in the present and past participles of verbs. In the West Midland, the present participle frequently ends in -and, as in Northumbrian, especially in the Northern part of the Midland area. The East Midland usually employs -ende or -inge instead. In the West Midland, the prefix i- or y- is seldom used for the past participle, whilst the East Midland admits it more freely. In the third person singular of the present tense, the West Midland favours the Northern suffix -es or -is; whilst the East Midland favours the Southern suffix -eth. The suffix -us appears to be altogether peculiar to West Midland, in which it occurs occasionally; and the same is true of -ud for -ed in the preterite of a weak verb.