PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY FOUR TIMES A MONTH, AND ENTERED AS The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government. Sam Houston Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that freemen desire. Mirabeau B. Lamar CONTENTS 1355 THE HISTORIC STUDY OF THE MOTHER-TONGUE IN THE UNITED STATES: A SURVEY OF THE PAST, by Morgan THE PRESENT-DAY ATTITUDE TOWARD THE HISTORIC PAGES THE HISTORIC STUDY OF THE MOTHER-TONGUE IN THE UNITED STATES: A SURVEY OF THE PAST1 BY MORGAN CALLAWAY, JR. As the slight leisure that I have had in connection with my life-work of teaching has been devoted chiefly to the Historic Study of the Mother-tongue, it has occurred to me that it might be of interest, even to a general audience, to have a brief survey of the work done in this field in the United States. Of set purpose I shall dwell more on the beginnings of this study, which are less known, at least to our juniors. And, to keep within manageable limits, I shall in the main restrict myself to the work done in language rather than in literature, especially to that done by teachers. In a word, I shall attempt to give a just picture of the Pioneers in the Study of the Mother-tongue in the United States. Like Carlyle, I am a hero-worshiper. And I should count myself happy if any of my hearers should catch something of the enthusiastic admiration evoked in me by a study of the life and works of the pioneer directors of the historic study of English in the United States, and should seek to follow in their footsteps. Let us recall what Sir Thomas Moore tells us of the Utopians (Utopia, edited by W. D. Armes, p. 195): "They think that this remembrance of their2 goodness and virtue doth vehemently provoke and enforce the quick to virtue, and that nothing can be more pleasant and acceptable to the dead, whom they suppose to 1The two addresses that follow were given as a prelude to the series of Research Lectures at the University of Texas for the session of 1924-1925, and were delivered in April, 1925. They are here printed substantially as delivered. The Research Lectures proper dealt with certain aspects of the Subjunctive in Old English, and will probably be published at a later date. 2Their of the dead. |