tinct. The ordinary student is in consequence almost certain to be led into error, not necessarily from the statement of any incorrect fact, but from the incorrect impression which he receives as to what is the fact. Thus take the remark that "the letter n disappears as usual before s in Old English." The reader, who has not been prepared for the statement by any previous study, will be certain to assume that this is a characteristic which distinguishes Old English from Modern English; whereas it is a characteristic which early distinguished the Low German dialects and the Norse from the High German and the Gothic, and has of course been transmitted to the later forms of those languages. When he does not make use of this misleading terminology, Dr. Morris is obliged to resort to the clumsy circumlocutions of English of the First Period for Anglo-Saxon, English of the Second Period for Semi-Saxon, English of the Third Period for Old English, English of the Fourth Period for Middle English, and English of the Fifth period for Modern English. Again for Anglo-Saxon he uses the term Oldest English, and if there are other ways which can be devised to express obscurely and uncomfortably what is at once clearly recognized as soon as we meet the term Anglo-Saxon, a close examination of his work would. doubtless reward the anxious inquirer. Indeed this terminology has been not only too much for his students, but has apparently been too much for Dr. Morris himself. In a later educational work he has divided the periods of our language into Old English, Early English, Middle English, and Modern English, Old English standing for Anglo-Saxon and Early English for Semi-Saxon.

But Mr. Freeman is the real apostle of these new views, and the one to whom they owe in great measure whatever headway they have made. In a note "On the Use of the Word English," appended to the first volume of his "History of the Norman Conquest," published in 1867, he gave his reason for denouncing the names Saxon and Anglo-Saxon; and since that time in the columns of the Saturday Review he has found no words of reproach sufficiently vituperative for those who use any other term than English in speaking of the earliest form of our language. In this note, ineeed, he called all such

persons "unscientific philologers;" and as up to that time Saxon and Anglo-Saxon had been the titles in general use among scholars, and particularly among those who had made a special study of our early tongue, it necessarily followed that in the year 1867, Mr. Freeman was the only scientific philologer extant. In these views of his he is governed mainly by sentimental considerations, though he himself clearly fancies that he has reached his conclusions by the purest of logical processes. He is a firm believer in race, the firmest sort of a believer in the Teutonic race. Everything characteristic of that is essentially good, good at least for its time, whether it be language, laws, or institutions. In his "Old English History for, Children," a most entertaining and instructive work, he tells these unsuspecting and confiding innocents that the collection of dry and meager annals, called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which there is not a single flash of genius, and even in its poetry scarcely a spark of imagination, is a work which they should learn to reverence, next after the Bible and Homer. Had he lived in the Middle Ages, no one could have persuaded him that our tongue was not the original language of the garden of Eden, and that the introduction into it of any foreign elements was one of the saddest results that had taken place in consequence of the fall. Let it not be thought that this is an undue inference from the feelings he displays, or the opinions he advances. In this very note he makes this characteristic remark in regard to our speech: "The tongue which Elfred in the days of its purity called English, we must not venture to call English till the days when it had received a considerable infusion of French :" as if the English of to-day was somehow less pure than that spoken in the days of Alfred. These sentimental feelings of his, it may be remarked, detract in no way from the value of his history; indeed, they have the effect of making it more entertaining. Byron, it is well known, in speaking of Mitford, reckoned among the merits of that historian, wrath and partiality; qualities essentially valuable, because they make a man write in earnest. There is no doubt, indeed, that Mr. Freeman has in like manner added largely to the interest of his works by his aggressive Teutonism. In a world where so few men have ideas of their own, at least

ideas that they care much for, it is not unpleasant to come across a writer who believes in his assertions, even on the most unimportant points, so earnestly that he is ready to fight for them in season and out of season, to wanton into long digressions about them, to overflow in an inundation of note and commentary in regard to them. His "History of the Norman Conquest is a fair illustration of his characteristics in this respect. Every volume has an appendix of discussion amounting always to more than a hundred pages, and the first has one of nearly two hundred and fifty, in which the letters of the alphabet are three times exhausted in making references. Such excess of annotation not only shows a lack of real literary skill, and of that artistic self-restraint which keeps a man within the limits of his subject, but it also bears witness to the existence of a feeling that the assertions of the text need to be bolstered up, from the consciousness that many points under discussion have not been thoroughly investigated. The note on the use of the word English is, indeed, a fair illustration of Mr. Freeman's peculiar manner of treating evidence. Not that he makes, designedly at least, the slightest false statement. Not that he entirely ignores testimony opposed to his views. On the contrary, he affects candor, and, indeed, is a master of the art of breaking the force, as far as possible, of opposing facts, by making a reference to them as if he had thoroughly considered them; though the references are by him usually made in a somewhat slighting manner. Still no reader can gain from this note on the use of the word English anything like a clear idea of the actual facts of the case, ignored, explained away, or indifferently alluded to as they are in numerous instances. An examination of some of the opinions and statements made by him will be sufficient to prove clearly the truth of what is here charged.

At the very beginning of this note Mr. Freeman lays down with great solemnity a proposition which he seems to look upon in the light of an axiom. "I hold it to be a sound rule," he says, "to speak of a nation, as far as is possible, by the name by which it called itself in the age of which we are speaking. This alone would be reason enough for using the word 'Euglish' and no other." The operation of this principle, in a subsequent part of his note, he extends by implication, to the language as well as to the people.

Now it is very evident that this rule, whether a sound one or not, has never been universally followed, has never, indeed, been of any particular practical importance. We do not, for illustration, have any hesitation at the present day in speaking of the Greek race or the Greek language instead of the Hellenic, nor did the Romans from whom we borrowed the term. Indeed the use of the latter word in many cases would justly render the speaker liable to the charge of pedantry, and to the uninstructed would make him unintelligible. No one can seriously claim that much misery or confusion has been wrought in this particular case by the non-observance of this rather loudly-vaunted rule. The Romans were certainly not prevented from studying the Hellenic language because they called it Greek, nor is there any evidence that this "absurd nomenclature" had the least effect in retarding the attention paid to it. Or an illustration can be found nearer home. The race which speaks the new High German tongue calls itself Deutsch, or, as we express it, Dutch. Such also is the term it gives to its own language. But when we at the present time speak of the Dutch language, we mean the language of Holland. Two or three hundred years ago, indeed, such would not have been the case. But can it be seriously pretended that we have less clear ideas in regard to the High German race, because we call its members by a name by which the men belonging to it do not call themselves; a name imposed upon them by foreigners, and never adopted into the vernacular speech as their In fact, the moment one begins to examine it, this sound rule is found to be no rule at all; it is simply a particular view of Mr. Freeman's, and not a generally accepted principle of the human race. The name we apply to a nation depends on a large number of circumstances and conditions, of which the title it gives itself is one of the important and controlling ones; but it is not the only one, nor is it in many cases the controlling one, as the history of races and languages shows clearly.

own.

The question, as Mr. Freeman puts it, is whether a Teutonic inhabitant of Britain, living before the Norman conquest, and speaking in his own name of the whole nation, ever used the word Saxon. It is perhaps better to quote his precise words,

for it will be found that every line has been very carefully considered. "I am not aware," says he, "of any instance in which a Teutonic inhabitant of Britain, living before the Norman Conquest, and speaking in his own tongue and in his own name of the whole nation formed by the union of the various Teutonic tribes in Britain, uses the word 'Saxon.'" The ordinary reader simply gets from this curiously constructed sentence the impres sion that Saxon is a term never employed in early times, that it is only in late periods that it has come into use. For the sentence has been very skilfully drawn up so as to exclude all the uncomfortable exceptions that can be brought against it; in fact, there has been an almost diabolical ingenuity displayed in the framing of the language so as to produce upon the mind all the effect of the most positive statement and yet escape from all responsibility for it. The numerous modifications must be carefully noted. In the first place, the speaker who uses the word Saxon must belong to the Teutonic race; for it is a well known fact that the Celtic inhabitants, from the earliest times to the present day, have called and do call the English Saxons, and not English. In the second place, the speaker must be not only a person of Teutonic race, but he must be an inhabitant of Britain; for members of that race on the continent were guilty of the solecism of calling our ancestors Saxons, as even at this period some of the "unscientific philologers"-to use Mr. Freeman's words-who have appeared among them, persist in doing. In the third place, this Teutonic inhabitant of Britain must live before the Norman Conquest, in order to have his authority of any weight. After the Norman Conquest there is no doubt as to the use of the word Saxon by native writers; and consequently this third limitation becomes necessary. In the fourth place, this Teutonic inhabitant of Britain who lives before the Norman Conquest must speak in his own tongue; for when he wrote in Latin, which he was very apt to do, there is plenty of proof that he spoke of the Saxon race. In the fifth place, this Teutonic inhabitant of Britain who lives before the Norman Conquest must not only speak in his own tongue, he must also speak in his own name; for Mr. Freeman in his reading has observed one or two instances where this Teutonic inhabitant, who fulfills all his other conditions, does