Old English school

In passing from the literary iconoclasm of the ‘Old- English ’ school I would venture to add that no man is a more humble admirer than I am of the vast learning and the marvellous powers of research belonging to the author of the Norman Conquest. Nor can any man more deeply deplore another disaster which our literature has sustained in the premature loss of the author of A Short History of England: one who in his brief time has shown such historical imagination and such literary power, that it is impossible to mention him without a pang of regret. Si, qua fata aspera rump as, Tu Marcellus eris.

We may add a few words about various names which under the influence of a most mistaken literalism are being wantonly transformed. Persons who are anxious to appear well informed seem almost ashamed to spell familiar names as their grandfathers did. What is the meaning of ‘Vergil’? As every one knows, the best MSS. in the last lines of the fourth Georgic spell Vergilium; and accordingly some scholars think fit so to alter the poet’s name. Be it so. But ‘ Vergil’ is not Latin, any more than ‘Homer’ is Greek. Virgil is a familiar word, rooted deep in English literature and thought. To uproot it, and the like of it, would be to turn the English language into a quagmire. We shall be asked next to write ‘ Omer.’ If all our familiar names are to be recast, as new manuscripts or autographs turn up, none of these venerable names will remain to us.

Omeros and Durante

We shall have to talk of the epic poets, Omeros and Durante. Again, if autographs are conclusive, we shall have to write of Marie, Quean of Scots, and Lady Jane Duddley; of the statesmen, Cecyll and Walsyngham; of ‘Lord Nelson and Bronte,’ of the great Maryborough, of the poet Noel-Byron, of Sir Kenelme Digby, Sir Philip Sidnei, and Arbella Seymaure; of Bloody ‘ Marye,’ and Robert Duddley turkey sightseeing, Earl of Leycester. All of these queer forms are the actual names signed by these personages in extant autographs. The next step will be to write about these personages in the contemporary style; and archaic orthography will pass from proper names to the entire text.

The objection to insisting on strict contemporary orthography is this: the spelling of the family name was continu-ally changing, and to write it in a dozen ways is to break the tradition of the family. If we call Burleigh ‘ Cecyll,’ as he wrote it himself, we lose the tradition of the family of the late Prime Minister. If we call the author of the Arcadia Sidnei, as he wrote it himself, we detach him from the Sidneys. The Percys, Howards, Harcourts, Douglas, Wyatts, Lindsays, and Montgomerys of our feudal history will appear as the Perses, Hawards, Harecourts, Dowglas, Wiats, Lyndesays, and Monggomberrys. If we read Chevy Chase in the pure palaeography, we shall find how the ‘ Doughete dogglas’ spoke to the ‘ lord perse ’/ and how there died in the fray, Wetharryngton, ser hewe the monggomberry, ser dauy Iwdale, and ser charts a murre.

And then how the purists do drag us up and down with their orthographic edicts ! Just as the Old-English school is restoring the diphthong on every side, the classical reformers are purging it out like an unclean thing. We need not care much whether we write of Caesar ox ‘Caesar.’ But just as we have learned to write Caesar and Vergil’s Aeneid, in place of our old friends, we are taught to write Bceda and selfred for ‘Bede’ and ‘Alfred.’ The ‘Old- English ’ school revel in diphthongs, even in the Latin names; your classical purist would expire if he were called upon to write ‘Caesar’ or ‘Pompey.’ Farewell to the delightful gossipy style of the last century about ‘Tully,’ and ‘ Maro,’ and ‘ Livy ’! They knew quite as much about them at heart as we do to-day with all our Medicean manuscripts and our ‘sic. Cod. Vat.’

Shaksperes

The way in which it all works into ordinary books is this. The compilers of dictionaries, catalogues, compendiums, vade-mecums, and the like, the writers of newspaper paragraphs and literary announcements, are not only a most industrious, but a most accurate and most alert, race of men. They are ever on the watch for the latest discovery, and the last special work on every conceivable topic.

It is not to be expected that they can go very deeply into each matter themselves; but the latest spelling, the last new commentary, or the newest literary ‘ find,’ is eminently the field of their peculiar work. To them, the man who has abolished the ‘ Battle of Hastings ’ as a popular error must know more about history than any man living; and so, the man who writes Shakspere has apparently the latest lights on the Elizabethan drama. Thus it comes that our ordinary style is rapidly infiltrated with Karls and JE If reds, and Senlacs, Qurans, and Shaksperes; till it becomes at last almost a kind of pedantry to object.

How foolish is the attempt to re-name Shakespeare him-self by the aid of manuscripts ! As every one knows, the name of Shakespeare may be found in contemporary documents in almost every possible form of the letters. Some of these are — Shakespeare, Schakespere, Schakespeire, Shakespeyre, Chacsper, Shakspere, Shakespere, Shakespeere, Shackspear, Shakeseper, Shackespeare, Saxspere, Shack- speere, Shaxeper, Shaxpere, Shaxper, Shaxpeer, Shaxspere, Shakspeare, Shakuspeare, Shakesper, Shaksper, Skackspere, Shakspyr, Shakspear, Shakspeyr, Shackspeare, Shaxkspere, Shackspeyr, Shaxpeare, Shakesphere, Sackesper, Shackspare turkey sightseeing, Shakspeere, Shaxpeare, Shakxsper; Shaxpere, Shakspeyr, Shagspur, and Shaxberd. Here are forty of the contemporary modes of spelling his name. Now are the facsimi- lists prepared to call the great poet of the world by whichever of these, as in a parish election, commands the majority of the written documents? So that, if we have at last to call our immortal bard, Chacsper, or Shaxper, or Shagspur, we must accept it; and in the mean time leave his name as variable as ever his contemporaries did?

Various ways

Shakespeare no doubt, like most persons in that age, wrote his name in various ways. The extant autographs differ; and the signature which is thought to be Shakspere, has been simply misread, and plainly shows another letter. The vast preponderance of evidence establishes that in the printed literature of his time his name was written — Shakespeare. In his first poems, Lucrece and Venus and Adonis, he placed Shakespeare on the title-page So it stands on the folios of 1623 and 1632.

So also it was spelled by his friends in their published works; Ben Jonson, by Bancroft, Bamefield, Willobie, Freeman, Davies, Meres, and Weever. It is certain that his name was pronounced Shake-spear (i.e., as *Shake ‘ and Spear’ were then pronounced) by his literary friends in London. This is shown by the punning lines of Ben Jonson, by those of Bancroft and others; by Greene’s allusion to him as the only Shake-scene; and, lastly, by the canting heraldry of the arms granted to his father in 1599: — ‘In a field of gould upon a bend sables a speare of the first: with crest a ffalcon supporting a speare.’

It is very probable that this grant of arms, about which Dethick, the Garter-King, was blamed and had to defend himself, practically settled the pronunciation as well as the spelling. It is probable that hitherto the family name had not been so spelt or so pronounced in Warwickshire. It is possible that Shake-speare was almost a nick-name, or a familiar stage-name; but, like Erasmus, Melancthon, or Voltaire, he who bore it carried it so into literature. For some centuries downwards, the immense concurrence of writers, English and foreign, has so accepted the name. A great majority of the commentators have adopted the same form: Dyce, Collier, Halliwell-Phillipps, Staunton, W. G. Clark. No one of the principal editors of the poet writes his name ‘Shakspere But so Mr. Furnivall decrees it shall be.

One would have thought so great a preponderance of literary practice need not be disturbed by one or two signatures in manuscript, even if they were perfectly distinct and quite uniform. Yet, such is the march of palaeographic purism, that our great poet is in imminent danger of being translated into Shakspere, and ultimately Shaxper.

Unbroken evolution of human civilisation

There is something alien to the true historic spirit in any race jealousy and ethnological partisanship. History is the unbroken evolution of human civilisation; and the true historians are they who can show us the unity and the sequence of the vast and complex drama. Theories of race are of all speculations the most cloudy and the most misleading.

And to few nations are they less applicable than to England. Our ethnology, our language, our history are as mixed and complex as any of which records exist. Our nationality is as vigorous and as definite as any in the world; but it is a geographical and a political nationality; and not a tribal or linguistic nationality. To unwind again the intricate strands which have been wrought into our English unity, and to range them in classes is a futile task. If we exaggerate the power of one particular element of the English race, one source of the English people, one side of English institutions, one contributory to the English language, we shall find it a poor equipment for historical judgment.

Professor Clifford

Race prejudices are at all times anti-historic. Professor Clifford used to talk about morality as an evolution of the ‘ tribal ’ conscience. Assuredly confusion is the only possible evolution for a ‘tribal ’ history. The Carlylese school, and the Orientalists turkey sightseeing, and the Dentsch and Jutish enthusiasts, bid fair to turn our language and its literature into an ungainly polyglott. Their pages bristle with Bretwaldas and Heretogas, Bnrhs and Mitnds, Folkfriths and Tungere- fas; or with Reicks, Kurffirsts, Pfalzes, and Kaisers.

All this is very well in glossaries, but not in literature. How absurd it is to write — ‘ The Kurfiirst of Koln or ‘ The Ealdorman of the Hwiccas ! ’ It is as if one wrote — ‘The Due of Broglie was once Ministre of the Affaires Etranghes ’; or that ‘ Wellington defeated the Empireur Napolion and all his Mardchauxjust as they do in a lady’s-maid’s high-polite novel. Why are Deutsch and Jutish titles to be introduced any more than French or Spanish? In glossaries they are useful; but histories of England should be written in English. And it is pleasant to turn to a great book of history, like that of Bishop Stubbs; where, in spite of the temptations and often of the necessities of a specialist dealing with a technical subject, the text is not needlessly deformed with obsolete, grotesque, and foreign words.

A wide range of ethnology and philology shows us that these origins and primitive tongues were themselves the issue of others before them, and are only a phase in the long evolution of history and language. These Engles, and Saxons, and Jutes, these Norse and Welsh, had far distant seats, and far earlier modes of speech. They were no more ‘Autochthones’ in the forests of Upper Germany than they were in Wessex and Caint.

Their speech has been traced back to Aryan roots current in Asia. And there, by the latest glimmerings of ethnographic science, we lose all these Cymric, and British, and Teutonic tribes in some (not definable) affinity, in some (not ascertainable) district of Central Asia, with some (not recoverable) common tongue of their own. So that these war cries about the White Horse, and Engles, and Jutes, turn out to mean simply that a very industrious school of historians choose to direct their attention to one particular phase of a movement which is in perpetual flux; and which, in time, in place, and in speech, can be traced back to very distant embryos in the infinite night of conjecture.

It is treason to our country and to scientific history to write, as Mr. Greene ventured to do in his fine and elaborate Making of England, that ‘ with the landing of Hen- gest English history begins.’ The history of England is something more than the tribal records of the Engles. The history of England began with the first authentic story of organised communities of men living in this island: and that most certainly existed since Caesar narrated his own campaigns in Britain.

The history of England, or the history of France, is the consecutive record of the political communities of men dwelling in the lands now called England and France. The really great problem for history is the assimilation of race and the . co-operation of alien forces. And so, too, the note of true literature lies in a loyal submission to the traditions of our composite tongue, and respect for an instrument which is hallowed by the custom of so many masterpieces. Loyal respect for that glorious speech would teach us to be slow how we desecrate its familiar names with brand- new archaisms; how we ruffle its easy flow with alien cacophonies and solecisms, and deform its familiar topog-raphy with hieroglyphic phonograms.

Bishop of Amiens

And Guy, Bishop of Amiens from 1058-1076 A.D., wrote a poem, ‘ De Hastingce prcelio.’ One would think all this was sufficient authority for us to continue a name recorded in history for eight centuries. So far as I know, there is no positive evidence that Senlac was a place at all; the sole authority for ‘ Battle of Senlac’ is Orderic, an English monk who left England at the age of nine and lived and wrote in Normandy in the next century. Yet, on the strength of this authority, the ‘ Old-English ’ school would erase from English literature one of our most familiar names.

Battles are seldom named with geographical precision. The victors hastily give the first name; and so it passes into current speech. To be accurate, the Battle of Salamis should be the Battle of Psyttaleia; the Battle of Canned should be named from the Aufidus; and the ‘Battle of Zarna ’ was really fought at Naraggara. Imagine an historian of the future choosing to re-name the Battle of Waterloo from Hougoumont; because, in the twentieth century, some French writer should so describe it. The Battle of Trafalgar would have to be described as the sea- fight of ‘Longitude 6° 7′ 5″ West, and Latitude 36° 10′ 15″ North.’ In old days we used to say that ‘Charles Martel defeated the Saracens in the battle of Tours.’ So wrote Gibbon, Hallam, Milman. Now, we shall have to write — ‘Karl the Hammer defeated the Ya’arabs of Yemen on the plateau of Sancta Maura turkey sightseeing.’ Surely all this is the mint and anise of the annals, neglecting the weightier matters of the law.

Great was not a Gaul

Has not the ‘ Old-English ’ school made rather too much that Karl the Great was not a Gaul; and that ‘ the Anglo- Saxons ’ was not the ordinary name of any English tribe? No one is ever likely to make these blunders again; but to taboo these convenient old names from English literature is surely a needless purism. ‘Charlemagne ’ has been spoken of in England ever since, as Wace tells us, Taillefer at Hastings died singing ‘ De Karlemaine I de Rollant;’ and in an enormous body of literature for a thousand years Charles has been so named.

The reason is obvious enough; the great Emperor has become known to us mainly through Latin, French, and Old-French sources, Chansons de Gestes, and metrical tales in a Romance dialect. That in itself is an interesting and important fact in literary history. The pure Frank sources, in a Teutonic dialect, are very much fewer and less known. The name ‘ Charlemagne ’ is as much a part of the English language as is the title, ‘ Emperor,’ and it is as little likely to be displaced by any con-temporary phonogram as the names of Moses and Jesus. Let Germans talk about Kaiser Karl: Englishmen of sense will continue to talk of the ‘ Emperor Charlemagne: ’ a name which is used by Gibbon and Milman, by Hallam and Sir H. Maine.

And so, ‘ Anglo-Saxon ’ is a very convenient term to describe the vernacular speech used in England before its settlement by the Normans. ‘ Old-English ’ is a vague and elastic term. In one sense, the orthography of Dryden or of Milton is Old-English; so is Spenser’s, or Chaucer’s, or the Ancren Riwle. We want a convenient term for the speech of Englishmen, before it was affected by the Conquest.

Edward the Elder, the first true King of all England, chose to call himself ‘ Rex Angul-Saxonum ‘; and an immense succession of historians and scholars have used the term Anglo-Saxon. Is not that enough? The most learned authorities for this period have used it: men like Kemble, Bosworth, Thorpe, and Skeat. So too, Bishop Stubbs, in his magnificent work, systematically employs a term which is part of the English language, quite apart from its being current amongst this or that tribe of Engles or West Saxons. Perhaps, then, we need not be in such a hurry to outlaw a term that was formally adopted for our nation by the first King of all England, and has since been in use in the language.

Neo-Saxonism

The most glaring defect of this ‘ Neo-Saxonism ’ is its inconsistency. Human nature would revolt if all the schools were to adopt the same rule; but each separate school contradicts itself in the same page. It is curious that the ‘ Old-English ’ school wantonly modernise the spelling of names which happen not to be ‘Old-English.’ They first mangle the traditions of English literature by twisting household words into an archaic form; and then, in the case of names of the Latin race, they mangle the traditions of English and of foreign literature at once, by twisting other household words into a modern Anglicised form. Mr. Freeman writes in his great history: — ‘ JElfred compared with Lezvis IX.’ Now, here is a double violation of the traditions of English literature; not on the same, but on two contradictory principles.

‘ Saint Louis’ is as familiar to us as ‘ Alfred.’ In French and in English, the name has long been written Louis, which is certainly the actual French form. But, as Saint Louis was only a Frenchman, and not a West-Saxon, his true name is Anglicised into what (in spite of Macaulay) is an obsolete form. And Alfred, who is West-Saxon pur sang, is promoted or ‘ translated ’ into ALlfred. If Lezvis can be shown to be literary English (and there was something to be said for that suggestion in Swift’s time) one would not object. But by that rule, Alfred must stand; for assuredly that is literary English. One cannot have it both ways, except on the assumption that you intend to spell none but your favourite race with archaic precision.

William the Conqueror, the great subject of Mr. Freeman’s great book, was king of England for some twenty- one years and one of the mightiest kings who ever ruled here turkey sightseeing. In Latin, his contemporaries called him Willelmus, Wilielmus, or Wilgelmus; in French, Guillaume, or JVillume; in English, Willelm. We have his charter in English to this day; which runs — ‘ Willelm Kyng gret Willelm Bisceop.’ Now, if we are obliged to write Telfred, and Eadzvard, why not write the Conqueror in one of the forms that his contemporaries used? But no; the great founder of the new English monarchy never got over the original sin of being a Frenchman; and so he is modernised like any mere ‘ Leivis,’ or ‘ Henry,’ or 1 Philip.’

Non-English blood

In the case of English kings, their wives and relations of non-English blood, this school can leave them to the vulgar tongue. It is William, Henry, Margaret, Matilda, Mary, Stephen, and so on. No doubt it would look very odd in an English history to read about our sovereigns ‘Stephen (or Estienne) fighting with the Kaiserinn Mathildis.’ But then, what is the good of all this precision if it is so grossly inconsistent? They who insist on talking of Elsass and Lothringen write, like the rest of us, Venice and Florence. And Mr. Freeman, who is quite content with William and Stephen, mere modern Anglicisms, is very particular how he writes Sokrates. He happens to be fond of West-Saxon annals and Greek philosophers. And so, both are recorded in the aboriginal cacophony.

But there is a far more serious change of name that the ‘ Old-English ’ school have introduced; which, if it were indefinitely extended, would wantonly confuse historical literature. I mean the attempt to alter names which are the accepted landmarks of history. It is now thought scholarly to write of the ‘ Battle of Senlac,’ instead of the ‘ Battle of Hastings.’ As every one knows, the fight took place on the site of Battle Abbey, seven miles from Hastings; as so many great battles, those of Tours, Blenheim, Cannce, Chalons, and the like, have been named from places not the actual spot of the combat. But since, for eight hundred years, the historians of Europe have spoken of the Battle of Hastings,’ it does seem a little pedantic to re-name it. ‘ Hastings’ is the only name given to the battle in Willelm’s Domesc/uy Survey; it is the only name given by the Bayeux Tapestry. ‘ Exicrunt de Hestenga et venerunt adprelium ’ is there written — not a word about Senlac. The nameless author of the Continuation of Wace’s Brut says: —

Founders of Religions in the East

It so happens that almost all of the Founders of Religions in the East are known to us by certain familiar names, which are obviously not the actual names they bore -in their lifetime; but which for centuries have passed current in the literary speech of Europe. Confucius, Mencius, Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Moses, and Jesus are popular adaptations of names which the European languages could not easily assimilate. As such those names are embedded in a thousand works of poetry, history, and criticism, and have gathered round them an imposing mass of interest and tradition.

Is it not almost an outrage to discard these old associations and to re-baptize these, hoary elders with the newfangled literalism of phonetic pedantry? K’ung- Foo-tsze, Mang-tsze, Sakyamouni, or Siddhartha, Zarathus- tra or Zerdusht, Muhammad, Mdsheh, and Jehoshua, may be attempts to imitate the sounds emitted by their contemporaries in Asia, but they are an offence in Europe in the nineteenth century, which has long known these mighty teachers under names that association has hallowed to our ears. If scholarship requires us to sacrifice these old familiar names, the necessity applies to all alike. If we are henceforth to talk of the Qur’an of Muhammad, we had better give out the first lesson in church from the Torath of the law-giver Mdsheh.

And, of course, our Roman history will have to be ‘restored.’ ‘Romans,’ ‘Etruscans,’ ‘ Tarquin,’ ‘Appins Claudius,’ and the rest are now the Ramnes, the Ras- ennce, Tarchnaf, and Attus Clauzus. What is to be the final issue of that bottomless pit of Roman embryology, Dr. Mommsen only knows. All that we now behold is a weltering gulf of Ramnes, Titles, Sabelli, Ras, Curites, where archaic and ethnologic fumes roll upwards incessantly, as from an unfathomable crater. Some day we shall know what was the true, unpronounced sightseeing turkey, and undivulged name of Rome; and what is the true phonetic equivalent of ‘ Romulus’ and ‘ Numa,’ of ‘ Tarquin ‘ and ‘ Brutus.’

Kereth Hadeshoth

We are even now in a position to speak with accuracy of the later history. When they come to the Punic wars, our boys and girls in the Board-schools of the twentieth century will learn to say: — ‘The great contest now begins between the Ramnes and the Chna-ites of the mighty city of Kereth-Hadeshoth; “ Au-nec-baal,” the son of “ Am-Melech-Kirjath,” proved himself the greatest general of antiquity; but, when he was overwhelmed in the final defeat of Naraggara, the city of Queen Jedi- diah fell before the irresistible valour of the worshippers of Diovispater.’ And when the young scholars get down to the Kym-ry and the Galtachd, the Vergo-breiths, Ver- kemirkedo-righ, Orkedo-righ, Cara-dazvg, and Heerfiirst, may mercy keep their poor little souls ! There are Gal- tachd-ic, and Kym-ric, and Duitisck enthusiasts, as well as those of Wessex and Gwent. I understand there are people even now who want us to call Paris — Lonkh-teith.

A very large proportion of famous men have been known in history and commemorated in literature under names other than those given to them by their godfathers and their godmothers in their baptism, or those that were entered in the parish register. Under those names we love them, think of them, and feel akin to them. Their names are household words: a part of European literature, and fill us with kindly and filial feelings. These good old names are being steadily supplanted by the alphabetic martinets who recall us to the register with all the formalism of a parish clerk or a Herald from the College. Not Molibre, but Poquelin; not Voltaire, but Aronet; not George Sand, but the Baroness Dndevant; not Madame de SvignS, but Marie de Rabutin-CJiantal. It will soon be a sign of ignorance to speak of Tom Jones and Becky Sharp. It will be Thomas Summer, Esq., Junior, J.P., and Mrs. Joseph Sedley. We shall soon have the Essays of Vis- count St. Albans, and the Letters of the Earl of Orford.

Library of the British Museum

Every reader is familiar with the consummate perfection of the Library of the British Museum, the glory of British, the envy of foreign scholars. And it gives one an awful sense of the growth of this form of purism to watch it invading our noble library. Go to the Catalogue and turn to Voltaire, and you will read ‘ Voltaire, see Arouet;and you will have to trudge to the other end of the enormous alphabet. Why Arouet? What has his legal name to do with a writer who put his name, Voltaire, on the title-page of thousands of editions, and never on one, Arouett And Molilre?—is not Molibre, as a name, a part of modern literature? Mr. Andrew Lang tells a most delightful story of a printer, who found in his ‘ copy ’ some reference to ‘the Scapin of Poquelin.’ This hopelessly puzzled him, till a bright idea struck his inventive mind, and he printed it — ‘the Scapiu of M. Coquelin.’

Turn, in the Reference Catalogue of the Museum, to Madame de Slvigtri, and we read: — Sivign, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marchioness de:— see Rabutin-Chantal.’ Why should we ‘see’ Rabutin-Chantal? That was her maiden-name; and since she married at eighteen, and her works are letters to her daughter, it seems a little odd to dub an elderly mamma of rank by her maiden-name. And what in the name of precision is ‘ Marchioness de ’? It is like saying ‘ Mister Von Goethe.’ Once attempt a minute heraldic accuracy, and endless confusion results. Why need ‘ Mrs. Nicholls’ appear in the catalogue of the works of Currer Bell? And why need George Eliot be entered as Marian Evans—a name which the great novelist did not bear either in literature or in private life?

If we apply the baptismal-certificate theory strictly to history, universal confusion will result. Law students will have to study the Digest of Uprauda. His great general will be Beli- Tzar. And by the same rule, the heroic Sala- din becomes Salah-cd-deen, or rather, Malek-Nasser-Yousouf; Dante becomes Durante Alighieri; Copernicus is Kopernik; and Columbus becomes CristSbal Colon. If baptismal registers are decisive, we must turn ‘ Erasmus’ into Gerhardt Praet; ‘ Melancthon ‘ into Schwarzerd; and ‘ Scaliger’ into Bordoni. There is no more reason to change Alfred into AElfred and Frederick into Friedrich than there would be to transform the great sailor into Cristobal Colon, and to talk about the Code of Uprauda.

Vecellio, Vannucci

And the dear old painters, almost every one of whom has a familiar cognomen which has made the tour of the civilised world. What a nuisance it is to read in galleries and catalogues, Vecellio, Vannucci, and Cagliari, in lieu of our old friends Titian, Perugino, and Veronese sightseeing turkey! Raphael and Michael Angelo, Masaccio and Tintoretto are no more: ‘ restorers ’ in oil are renewing for us the original brilliancy of their hues; whilst restorers ’ in ink are erasing the friendly old nick-names with vera copias of the baptismal certificates in their hands. Every chit of an aesthete will talk to you about the Cenacolo, or the Sposalizio, of Sanzio; and the Paradiso in the Palazzo Dncale; though these words are nearly the limit of his entire Italian vocabulary. This new polyglott language of historians and artists is becoming, in fact, the speech which is known to the curious as maccaronic. It recalls the famous lines of our youth:— Trumpeter unus erat, coatum qui scarlet habebat.

There are two fatal impediments to this attempt at reproducing archaic sounds. It is at best but a clumsy symbolism of unpronounceable vocables, and it never is, and never can be, consistently applied. Althelthryth, Hrofesceaster, and Gruffydd are grotesque agglomerations of letters to represent sounds which are not familiar to English ears or utterable by English lips. The ‘ Old-Eng- lish ’ school pur sang do not hesitate to fill whole sentences of what is meant to be modern and popular English with these choking words. Professor Freeman used obsolete letters in an English sentence. Now, I venture to say that English literature requires a work which is intended to take a place in it, to be written in the English language. In mere glossaries, commentaries, and philological treatises, the obsolete letters and obsolete spelling have their place. But in literature, as completely dead as a Greek Digamma.

Pronunciation orthography

We cannot preserve exactly either the sounds they uttered, or the phrases they spoke, or the names of places and offices familiar to them. Why then need we be curious to spell their names as their contemporaries did, when we have altered all else — pronunciation, orthography, titles, and indeed the entire outer form of the language? The precision for which we vainly strive in the spelling of names is after all a makeshift, very imperfectly observed by any one, and entirely neglected by others. And it has the defect of ignoring a long and suggestive unity in history, language, and common civilisation.

It may be true that the contemporaries of ‘ Edward the Elder,’ ‘ Edward the Martyr,’ and ‘ Edward the Confessor ’ spelt the name Eadward, or Eadiveard, if they wrote in English; though they did not uniformly do so when they wrote it in Latin. But did the ‘ Edwards ’ of Plantagenet so spell their name; or ‘ Edward ’ Tudor; and will ‘ Edward the Seventh ’ so spell his name? And is Alfred, a name to conjure with wherever the English speech is heard, to be severed from the great king? ‘Alfred’ is a familiar name just as ‘ king ’ is a familiar title; and it is as pedantic to insist on archaic forms of the name as it would be to insist on the Saxon form of the office. Since Edward was not called by his contemporaries either ‘ King ’ or ‘ The Elder,’ what do we gain by such a hybrid phrase as ‘ King Eadweard the Elder ’?

It is only a half-hearted realism which writes—‘Eadweard was now King of all England.’ It should run: — ‘ Eadweard was now Cyning of all Engla-land.’ It is quite correct to write in modern English: — ‘ King Edward marched from London to York.’ Here, the proper names are all alike adapted to our vernacular. It is an anachronism, or an anarchaism, to write—‘ King Eadweard marched from London to York sightseeing turkey.’ It ought to run, if we are bent on writing pure old English, ‘ Eadweard Cyning marched from Lundenbyryg to Eofonvic.’

Ethelberht

That is the real couleur locale; but the general reader could hardly stand many pages of this. It is not true in fact that ‘ Ethelberht lived at Canterbury.’ He lived at ‘ Cant-wara-byryg.’ Ethelbert, however, may properly be said to have lived at Canterbury. For thirteen centuries Canterbury and *York have been famous centres of our English life. Except in a parenthesis, or in a monograph, it would be a nuisance to mention them under the cumbrous disguises of ‘ Eoforzvtc ’ and Cant-wara-byryg’; and for precisely the same reason it is a nuisance to read, Elfred, Ecgberht, and Eadweard.

Where is it going to stop? Ours is an age of archaeology, revival, and research; and in no field is research more active than in Biblical and other Oriental history. The grand familiar names, which have had a charm for us from childhood, which have kindled the veneration of a long roll of centuries, are all being ‘ restored ’ to satisfy an antiquarian purism. We shall soon be invited to call Moses, Mosheh, as his contemporaries did. Judah should be written Yehhda; Jacob will be Yaaqob. Our old friend Job will appear, clothed and in his right mind, as Iyob. The prophet Elijah is Eliyaku; and the prophet Isaiah is now metamorphosed into Yeshayahu. Imagine how our descendants will have to rewrite the lines: —

And the teacher will have to explain to our grandchildren that ‘ Isaiah ’ is an old vulgarism for Yeshayahu. ‘Jerusalem the Golden ’ will appear in the children’s hymns as Yerlishalaim; and when we speak of the walls of Jericho we must sneeze, and say J’reclio. We must say — the Proverbs of Shclomoh. But this is not the end of it. The very names in men’s prayers and devotions must be reformed. Catholics must learn to say their Aves to ‘Mariam ‘; and the Protestant must meditate on the ‘ Blood of Jehoshual

The historical mind will so have it. It has laid down a rigid canon that, proper names should be spelt in the form in which their contemporaries wrote them. And if Alfred, a name which for so many centuries has been a watchword to the English race, is to be ‘ restored ’ into Ailfred, because he and his so spoke it and wrote it; by the same rule must we speak and write of Jehoshua of Nazareth, using the same letters in which the Scribes and Pharisees of his day recorded the name in official Hebrew. The historical mind has said it; and English literature, custom, the vernacular speech, poetry, patriotism, and devotion must all give way.

People of Yehiida

The historical mind has an almost unlimited field; and all the names it records will have to be restored’ in turn. When Mosheh led forth the people of Yehiida to the promised Yerushalahn, he really led them out of Chemi or Kebthor, not out of ‘ Egypt,’ which is a Greek corruption. And Pi-Re and all his host were drowned in the Ydm-S&pk; for of course Red Sea is a mere translation of a late Hellenic term. About the central Asian monarchies we fortunately have an imperishable and infallible record; for the great king himself inscribed on the eternal rock the names of his ancestors and his contemporaries. It is therefore inexcusable in us if we continue to write the names of Oriental sovereigns in the clumsy corruptions of ignorant Greeks.

All history contains no record more authentic than the sculptured rock of Behistun, whereon the names of the great kings stand graven in characters as unalterable as the laws of the Medes and the Persians. ‘Darius,’ we used to write in our ignorant way, ‘ became King of Persia, Susiana, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, and Egypt.’ Not so was it said by them of old time; not Darius, but Ddraya- vush; not king, but Khshdyathiya. So, then, the geography lessons of our grandsons will run: — ‘Darayavush was the Khshdyathiya of Pars a, of ’ Uvaja, of Bab hash, of At hard, of Arabdya, of Mudraya.’

The entire orthography of the Median and Persian Dynasties is now complete and exact. It was not ‘Cyrus’ who founded the Persian Empire, as we used to be told: it was KurausJi. The famous king who perished in the desert was Kabujiya, the son of Karaiish. And both, beside their own ancestral dominion of Pdrsa, ruled over the mighty world-famous city of Babirum, and the country which lay between the rivers Tigi’dm and Ufrd- tauvd. Oriental history is at last as simple as an infant’s ABC.

And we are now able to record the immortal tale of the war between Hellas and Pdrsa with some regard for orthographic accuracy sightseeing turkey. It was Khshaydrshd who mustered the millions of Asia in the great struggle which ended in the glorious battles of the Hot Gates and of Psyttaleia. His great generals, Ariyabhaja and Mundnniya, met the Hellenic hoplites only to court defeat; and Khshaydrshd, the son of Ddryavush, at length withdrew from a land which seemed fatal to the entire race of Hakkdmanish, and sought rest in his luxurious palace of ’ Uvaja. So will run the Hellenic histories of the future, in an orthography not quite so cacophonous and hieroglyphic as many a page in the Making of England.

Oriental literature

Oriental literature is making vast strides, and the authentic books of the East are daily brought closer and clearer to our firesides. And under the influence of this learning our very children are coming to be familiar with the new dress of the old names. We have grown out of ‘ Mahomet,’ ‘ Moslem,’ ‘ Koran,’ and ‘ Hegira,’ and we are careful to write Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and Hejra. For our old friend Mahomet and his Koran various professors contend. Mohammed, Muhammad, Mahmoud, and Mehemet have had their day; and now they are contending whether Qur’dn or Qordn best represents the exact cacophony of the native Arabic. And so on through the whole series of famous Oriental names: the Zend-Avesta, or Avesta, the Upanishads, K’ung Foo-tsze, Tsze-Kung, and Tsze-Sze. Scholars, of course, have to tell us all about the Sukhavati- Vyulia and the Pragna-Pdramita-Hxidaya- Sdtra; but the question is, if the rising generation will ever be familiarised with these elaborate names.

It may be doubted if, after all, the exact equivalent of these foreign sounds can ever be presented to the English reader by any system of phonetic spelling; all the more when this spelling has to call to its aid an elaborate system of circumflex, diphthong, comma, italic, breathing Sh’va and Daghesh, most alien to the genius of our language. Can a man, unlearned in the respective tongues, pronounce ICung-Foo-tsze, Kurfiirst of Koln, Quran, with any real correctness? And, if he cannot, is it worth while to upset the practice of Europe for centuries, and so vast a concurrence of literature, for the sake of a phonetic orthography which is almost picture-writing in its lavish use of symbols: and all in pursuit of an accuracy which can never be consistently adopted? It may look very learned, but is it common sense?

Mr Grote began the practice

About forty years ago, Mr. Grote began the practice of re-setting the old Greek names; but his spelling has not commended itself to the world. There seems much to be said for Themistokles and Kleon; but when we were asked to write Korkyra and Krcte, we felt that the filiation of Corcyra and Crete with Latin and the modern tongues was needlessly disturbed. Kirke, Kilikia, Perdikkas, Katana, seemed rather harsh and too subversive. And if Sophokles and Sokrates are right, why AZscJiylus and JEneas, in lieu of Aiscmlos and Aineias?

Besides, on what ground stop short at a k, leaving the vowels to a Latin corruption? The modern Greeks call the author of the Iliad—Omeros; and the victor of Marathon—- Mcelteeadthes; and it is highly probable that this is far nearer the true pronunciation than are our Homer and Miltiades. To be consistent, we shall have to talk of A ias, Odusseus, Purrhos, Lukourgos, Thonkudides, Oidipous, Ais- chnlos, and Kirke, wantonly interrupting the whole Greco- Roman filiation. And, whilst we plunge orthography into a hopeless welter, we shall stray even farther from the true ancient pronunciation. In the result, English literature has rejected the change with an instinctive sense that it would involve us in quicksands; and would to no sufficient purpose break the long tradition which bound Greece with Rome, and both with European literary customs.

Mr. Carlyle would have all true men speak of Friedrich and Otto; of the Kurfiirst of Koln; of Trier, Prag, Regensburg, and Schlesien. But then he is quite willing to speak like any common person about Mahomet and the Koran, of Clovis and Lothar, of a Duke of Brunswick, and of Charles Amadeus of Savoy; he Anglicises Marseille, Preussen, Oesterreich, and Sachsen; nay, he actually talks about ‘ Charlemagne ’ at ‘ Aix-la-Chapelle.’ Tradition and English literature are in fact too strong for him, except where he wishes to be particularly affectionate or unusually impressive sightseeing turkey. I venture to think that Frederick and Cologne are names so deeply embedded in our English speech that there is nothing affectionate or impressive in the effort to uproot them by foreign words which the mass of Englishmen cannot pronounce. It is ridiculous to write, ‘ The Kurfiirst of Ko In.’ It should be, ‘ Dcr Kurfiirst von Kohi’ But, then, we had better write in German at once.

Old English

Of all the historical schools, that of the Old English has been the most revolutionary in its methods, and the most exacting in its demands. It began by condemning ‘ Charlemagne ’ and the ‘ Anglo-Saxons ’; and now to use either of these familiar old names is to be guilty of something which is almost a vulgarism, if not an impertinence. We have all learned to speak of Karl and the Old English. One by one, the familiar names of English history, the names that recur in every family, were recast into something grotesque in look and often very hard indeed to pronounce. Ecgberkt, Cnnt, or Knud, the Hwiccas, Allfth- rytli, Hrofesceaster, and Cant-wara-byryg had rather a queer look. Chlotachar, Ohio do wig, Hrot land, were not pleasing. But when we are asked to give up Alfred’, Edward, and Edgar, and to speak of Allfred, Eadweard, and Eadgar, we began to reflect and to hark back.

Alfred, Edward, and Edgar are names which for a thousand years have filled English homes, and English poetry and prose. To rewrite those names is to break the tradition of history and literature at once. It is no doubt true that the contemporaries of these kings before the conquest did, when writing in the vernacular, spell their names with the double vowels we are now invited to restore. But is that a sufficient reason? We are not talking their dialect, nor do we use their spelling. We write in modern English, not in old English; the places they knew, the titles they held, the words they used, have to be modernised, if we wish to be understood ourselves.