ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

"Suppose," he writes, "the English lan- | prepositions, without which it is impossible guage to be divided into a hundred parts; of to form a single sentence are all of Saxon these, to make a rough distribution, sixty origin; they occur over and over again in would be Saxon, thirty would be Latin-in- every line; and, even if we imagined a sencluding, of course, the Latin which has come tence consisting entirely of Romance nouns to us through the French-five would be and verbs, the definite and indefinite articles Greek; we should thus have assigned ninety- which are joined to most substantives, and five parts, leaving the other five, perhaps too the personal pronouns by which most verbs large a residue, to be divided among all the are preceded, would at once readjust the other languages from which we have adopted balance in favor of Saxon. These two methisolated words." We can only suppose that ods, therefore, of estimating the relative the Dean formed his estimate of the propor-strength of the component parts of English tions in English of Saxon and non-Saxon or any other language must be kept strictly elements on the same basis as Sharon Tur- distinct. For computing the etymological ner, and transferred the results thus obtained proportions of the entire vocabulary, nothto the vocabulary. Sharon Turner took a ing short of M. Thommerel's process will number of extracts from the most eminent be satisfactory. For calculating the relative writers, each of them consisting, on an aver-preponderence of indigenous and foreign age, of about one hundred words. By assign- words in the language of common life or of ing each word to one of two classes, Saxon literature, we may have recourse to Sharon and non-Saxon, he found that—

Shakspeare uses 85 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 15 of other words.

Milton uses 81 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 19 of other

words.

Cowley uses 89 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 11 of

other words.

English Bible uses 97 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 3 of other words.

Thomson uses 85 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 15 of

other words.

Addison uses 83 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 17 of other words.

Spenser uses 81 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 19 of

other words.

Locke uses 80 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 20 of other

words.

Pope uses 76 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 24 of other

words.

Young uses 79 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 21 of other

words.

Swift uses 89 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 11 of other

words.

Turner's system, only that it must be extended over a much larger area. This is what Mr. Marsh has endeavored to do. The

passages which he selected from the same authors on which Sharon Turner made his calculations, and some others, extended as a rule, to several thousand words; and they are taken from different works of the same author, in order to guard, as much as possible, against the inevitable influence which certain subjects must exercise on the choice of words. Mr. Marsh shows, for instance, that the extract from Swift, which contains ninety words, ten or eleven of which are marked by Turner as non-Saxon, is a picked sentence: that in the John Bull -as thoroughly English a performance as any of Swift's works the foreign words are at least in the proportion of fifteen per cent; in his History of the Four Last Years of Queen Anne, twenty-eight per cent; in his Political Lying, more than thirty per cent, and in some passages amounting to forty. Thus Ruskin, who in his theoretical discussions allows himself from twentyIt is clear from this that if Dean Trench had five to twenty per cent of Latin derivaconfined his remarks to the English language tives has succeeded in composing the first as written and spoken by our best authors six periods of the sixth Exorcise in his Eleor statesmen, his average division of English into sixty per cent of Anglo-Saxon and thirty per cent of classical words would have been fairly correct; but, as applied to the dictionary, it is completely erroneous. A moment's reflection will show us the cause of this difference. Our pronouns, our articles, our

Robertson uses 68 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 32 of other words.

Hume uses 65 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 35 of other

words.

Gibbon uses 58 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 42 of other words.

Johnson uses 75 per cent Anglo-Saxon, 25 of

other words.

ments of Drawing, containing one hundred and eight words, almost entirely of Saxon materials-the only two words not Saxon being "pale" and "practise."

We conclude our notice of Mr. Marsh's Lectures with a table containing the results of his statistical observations as to the

proportion of Saxon and non-Saxon elements in some of the most prominent English and American writers, both ancient and modern. We sincerely hope that the present disturbed state of New York will cause no inter

ruption to the literary activity of the author
of these Lectures. They certainly constitute
one of the most acceptable contributions to
English scholarship which we have received
for many years from the other side of the
Atlantic :-

Robert of Gloucester, Narrative of Con-
quest, pp. 354, 364, employs of Anglo-
Saxon words
Piers Ploughman, Introduction, entire

[ocr errors][merged small]

66 Passus Decimus-Quartus,

Piers Ploughman, Passus Decimus-Nonus and Vicesimus, entire

Piers Ploughman, Creed, entire

Chaucer, Prologue to Canterbury Tales, first

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

88

[ocr errors]

Per ct. 76 72

Johnson, Preface to Dictionary, entire.
Junius, Letters, xii. to xxiii.
Hume, History of England, general sketch
of Commonwealth, forming conclusion of
chap lx.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Vol. I., chap. vii.
Webster, Second Speech on Foot's Resolution,
entire

Irving, Stout Gentleman

Westminster Abbey
Macaulay, Essay on Lord Bacon
Canning, Essay on Milton

Cobbett, on Indian Corn, chap. xi.
Prescott, Philip II., Book I. chap ix.

Bancroft, History, Vol. VII., Battle of Bun-
ker's Hill

[ocr errors]

Bryant, Death of the Flower

"6 Thanatopsis

Mrs. Browning, Cry of the Children

Crowned and Buried

[blocks in formation]

73

70

75

85

77

75

75

[ocr errors]

80

77

92

92

83

77

84

73

89

Per ct:

96

88

84

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

73

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Sir Thomas More, Coronation of Richard
III., etc., seven folio pages

Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Four Last Years of Queen Anne, to end of sketch of Lord Cowper

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

90

91

90

Tennyson, The Lotus-Eaters

In Memoriam, first twenty poems

Longfellow, Miles Standish, entire
Martineau, Endeavors after the Christian
Life. III. Discourse

There are only four works in English where Mr. Marsh could avail himself of complete verbal indexes--the Bible, Shakspeare, 89 Milton, and the Ormulum. In the complete 88 vocabulary of the English Bible sixty per cent are native; in that of Shakspeare the 80 proportion is very nearly the same; in the 82 poetical works of Milton less than thirty80 three per cent are Anglo-Saxon; whereas in the Ormulum, written in the thirteenth century there are but three per cent of non72 Saxon kin.

83

68

85

We have to record a handsome concession | history, and every student working in recen on the part of the Spanish Government-the years upon those periods, has turned wistfully opening up of the great archives at Simancas to the deputies of our Master of the Rolls. The interest of the papers at Simancas cannot be overstated. They are the documentary history of Spain, and of all the countries which have had political relations with Spain. From the reign of Henry the Eighth to the time of Cromwell they are of vast importance for our owning to our history.

but unavailingly towards Simancas for the light which it, and it only, could afford. The priestly influence was against all search. At length, the embargo has been taken off. Mr. Brewer, of the Rolls, has just returned from Simancas, where it has been arranged that Mr. Bergenroth, a most competent English and Spanish scholar, shall calendar and abstract the documents relat

existence; of Ordericus Vitalis, who mixes rough and evil natures, and every day strange with wild romances whole chapters obviously new forms of penance appeared. Chrisgathered from men who had acted in the scenes they related; of Rudolph of Caen, and of Ekkehard of Urach, both patient and careful compilers of contemporary evidence. By the patient analysis of these authorities, not forgetting legend so far as legend is confirmed by testimony, a narrative may be constructed of which Von Sybel has given us in the four lectures a bold outline. It differs widely from the popular one, and as all men who read it all know the latter, we shall best explain the additions he has made to our knowledge by a rapid but tolerably complete analysis.

tianity was degenerating into Hindooism, when suddenly a commanding voice rising high above the uproar pointed out to the people of Europe a path which offered the certainty of escape from the present, and a sure hope of salvation in the future. Urban the Second, in a Council held at Clermont, in September, 1095, called on Christendom to set free the Holy Sepulchre. Here at last was an enterprise which, leading to heaven, could still be prosecuted by violence, and the prospect flew like the tale of a new millennium throughout the Western world. In Lorraine, Duke Godfrey of Bouillon levied an army; Count Hugo and Robert of Paris raised another in France; our own Duke Robert sold Normandy to pay a force adequate to the invasion of Palestine; Raymond of Toulouse called together all gascons and provençals not yet infected or disabused by the spirit of luxurious scepticism which was afterwards their characteristic; Stephen of Blois collected retainers whose number made him almost a king; and the wise chief of the most potent clan then existing in Europe, Bohemond of Tarentum, summoned the Normans, who had just conquered Sicily, to found a new empire in the East. Their ranks were swelled by huge masses of soldiery and peasants, who ranged themselves under any leader they chose, and asked only wages enough to keep them alive. Money became all important, and while the feudal principle received its first shock all over Europe, there commenced the first grand transfer of property. The peasants of France, in a wild crowd, followed a monk of Amiens, afterwards celebrated in legend as Peter the Hermit, enlisted in the Crusade as camp followers, and, as we shall see, became the disgrace of Christendom.

The Crusades originated in the demoralization of Europe. The centuries of war and social disintegration which followed the death of Charlemagne had been a cycle of terrible suffering for humanity. Throughout Europe there was no peace any more. Everywhere men relied exclusively on force, every man did his utmost to oppress, and as the pressure increased as it descended, the mass of the people knew no respite from misery. The Church was utterly corrupted, the kings almost powerless, the barons brigands, the people living on roots, while in all classes there remained, from the few traces of Christian teaching which still survived, a wretched self-consciousness which made all sin bear its fruit in misery. So horror-struck did the human race become at itself, that towards the close of the tenth century men looked universally for the coming of the Avenger, for some immediate and visible outpouring of Almignty wrath and indignation. Injustice triumphant everywhere, caused an actual hate of this world to spring up in men's minds, whole classes abandoned their property, or thronged into the monasteries, or sought in long and painful pilgrimages to appease the hunger of their souls for some- By the spring of 1097 the army had thing better than the wretched scene around reached Constantinople, and after a vain atthem. Pleasure was evil, science dangerous, tempt of Bohemond to induce them to conreligious life or asceticism the one path which duct the war in a statesman-like way, and offered any hope of permanent refuge from conquer Constantinople and Asia Minor as the contamination of mankind. All over a base of operations, they poured through Europe the value of property fell one-half, Asia Minor into Syria. One division, under and the remainder lost its importance in its Tancred the Norman, conquered Cilicia. owner's eyes. The Southern races were Count Baldwin, brother of Godfrey of Bouilboiling over with a mystical excitement, such lon, was elected sovereign in Edessa, and as in our own day a great preacher or a the main army invested Antioch, then held camp-meeting will sometimes produce upon by a satrap of the Seljuks. The city was

From The Spectator.
THE CRUSADES. *

THERE is but one defect in this little book,

years

its

|tives most in favor with the British public, for example-Mr. Mills' and M. Capefigue's -are founded almost exclusively on Wiland that is its name. It is not a history at liam of Tyre, a skilful and, in some points, all, either of the Crusades or of their litera- well-informed writer, who deformed his work ture; but an essay on both, crowded with by deliberate inventions of letters and speechthe results of years spent in research, and es, and based it undoubtedly upon that of alive with that glowing, almost creative Albert of Aix. This latter, who may be said thought which is the highest force of the his-to be the source of all the popular histories torian; but only an essay still. Such as it of the Crusades hitherto current in Europe, is, however, in presenting this translation to was, in fact, nothing but a compiler of lethe public, Lady Duff Gordon has added one gends, and retailer of all the personal narramore to her many claims on both English tives which he could collect from the crowds and German students. She could not have of returning pilgrims, who, with heated imselected, even from German literature, a vol-aginations, partial knowledge, and excited ume of deeper interest, or more direct and vanity, passed through Aix on their road to unquestionable value. Von Sybel, a pupil the West. He writes easily, and arranges of Ranke, has devoted his leisure for his stories dramatically, and he has the power to the patient criticism of the history of the of creating personal interest, so frequent with Crusades. Following his master's system, men who are novelists by instinct. But his he has submitted the whole mass of docu- narrative has neither substance nor sequence, mentary evidence upon the subject to a searching analysis, and described the result of his investigations in the preface to his "History of the First Crusade "-a mine of critical erudition. That result may be briefly stated as a conviction that all existing histories of the Crusades are founded upon legend, but that the materials for accurate history do, nevertheless, survive. The outline of a more truthful narrative has been sketched by whole movement, is elected commander-inhim in four lectures, delivered at Munich in chief by miracle, and is thenceforward sur1855, and the present work is a translation rounded by a halo of poetic rhetoric, which, of these lectures, and of their justification, however, still leaves him almost a lay figure. the critical analysis of the literature of the All this while there exist documents of unCrusades. Regarded as a history, the work, deniable authenticity, by which these legends of course, wants body; but as an historic out- might be tested, and from which a narrative, line, a survey of the road yet to be levelled, somewhat balder, perhaps, than those curit is admirable alike for insight and compre- rent, but still absolutely true, might be conhensiveness and excites in the reader a structed. Among these are nine authentic strong hope that Von Sybel, who is still, after many vicissitudes, in possession of literary leisure, will yet complete the task he has so ably defined.

personages are constantly placed in impossible positions, their characters, offices, and deeds vary from chapter to chapter, while their greater achievements are contradicted by all unquestionable testimony. For example, Godfrey of Bouillon, who in the first half of the work is but one of many princes engaged in the Crusade, is suddenly

made in the latter the centre and chief of the

letters from princes and chiefs engaged in the Crusades; the work of Raymund of Agiles, which we may call the special correspondent's account of the first Crusade; Anna Commena's life of her father, valuable as the court view of these transactions; the "Gesta Francorum," which Von Sybel believes to have been the work of an eye-wit

It is not, perhaps, strange that the world should for years have been content with the legendary history of the Crusades. Men love the dramatic, and such productions are dramatic by their very nature; but it is some-ness; the history of the Abbot of Nogent, what remarkable that historians in an inquisitive age should have been content with such second-hand information. The two narra

The History and Literature of the Crusades. From the German of Von Sybel. By Lady Duff Gordon. Chapman and Hall.

important for some details supplied by the French leaders; that of Baltric of Dol, who

adds to the "Gesta" a few facts derived from eye-witnesses-that of Fulcher of Chartres, whose statement of occurrences up to the attack on Edessa is, perhaps, the best in

existence; of Ordericus Vitalis, who mixes rough and evil natures, and every day strange with wild romances whole chapters obviously new forms of penance appeared. Chrisgathered from men who had acted in the scenes they related; of Rudolph of Caen, and of Ekkehard of Urach, both patient and careful compilers of contemporary evidence. By the patient analysis of these authorities, not forgetting legend so far as legend is confirmed by testimony, a narrative may be constructed of which Von Sybel has given us in the four lectures a bold outline. It differs widely from the popular one, and as all men who read it all know the latter, we shall best explain the additions he has made to our knowledge by a rapid but tolerably complete analysis.

tianity was degenerating into Hindooism, when suddenly a commanding voice rising high above the uproar pointed out to the people of Europe a path which offered the certainty of escape from the present, and a sure hope of salvation in the future. Urban the Second, in a Council held at Clermont, in September, 1095, called on Christendom to set free the Holy Sepulchre. Here at last was an enterprise which, leading to heaven, could still be prosecuted by violence, and the prospect flew like the tale of a new millennium throughout the Western world. In Lorraine, Duke Godfrey of Bouillon levied an army; Count Hugo and Robert of Paris raised another in France; our own Duke Robert sold Normandy to pay a force adequate to the invasion of Palestine; Raymond of Toulouse called together all gascons and

the spirit of luxurious scepticism which was afterwards their characteristic; Stephen of Blois collected retainers whose number made him almost a king; and the wise chief of the most potent clan then existing in Europe, Bohemond of Tarentum, summoned the Normans, who had just conquered Sicily, to found a new empire in the East. Their ranks were swelled by huge masses of soldiery and peasants, who ranged themselves under any leader they chose, and asked only wages enough to keep them alive. Money became all important, and while the feudal principle received its first shock all over Europe, there commenced the first grand transfer of property. The peasants of France, in a wild crowd, followed a monk of Amiens, afterwards celebrated in legend as Peter the Hermit, enlisted in the Crusade as camp followers, and, as we shall see, became the disgrace of Christendom.

The Crusades originated in the demoralization of Europe. The centuries of war and social disintegration which followed the death of Charlemagne had been a cycle of terrible suffering for humanity. Throughout Europe there was no peace any more. Everywhere provençals not yet infected or disabused by men relied exclusively on force, every man did his utmost to oppress, and as the pressure increased as it descended, the mass of the people knew no respite from misery. The Church was utterly corrupted, the kings almost powerless, the barons brigands, the people living on roots, while in all classes there remained, from the few traces of Christian teaching which still survived, a wretched self-consciousness which made all sin bear its fruit in misery. So horror-struck did the human race become at itself, that towards the close of the tenth century men looked universally for the coming of the Avenger, for some immediate and visible outpouring of Almignty wrath and indignation. Injustice triumphant everywhere, caused an actual hate of this world to spring up in men's minds, whole classes abandoned their property, or thronged into the monasteries, or sought in long and painful pilgrimages to appease the hunger of their souls for something better than the wretched scene around them. Pleasure was evil, science dangerous, religious life or asceticism the one path which offered any hope of permanent refuge from the contamination of mankind. All over Europe the value of property fell one-half, and the remainder lost its importance in its owner's eyes. The Southern races were boiling over with a mystical excitement, such as in our own day a great preacher or a camp-meeting will sometimes produce upon

By the spring of 1097 the army had reached Constantinople, and after a vain attempt of Bohemond to induce them to conduct the war in a statesman-like way, and conquer Constantinople and Asia Minor as a base of operations, they poured through Asia Minor into Syria. One division, under Tancred the Norman, conquered Cilicia. Count Baldwin, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, was elected sovereign in Edessa, and the main army invested Antioch, then held by a satrap of the Seljuks. The city was

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »