Documents Illustrating Elizabethan Poetry (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 Excerpt: ...vulgar English, and when it is peculiar unto a country it is called the mother-speech of that people. The Greeks termit Idioma: so is ours at this day the NormanEnglish. Before the Conquest of the Normans it was the Anglo-saxon, and before that the British, which as some will is at this day the Welsh, or as others affirm the Cornish: I for my part think neither of both, as they be now spoken and pronounced. This part in our maker or Poet must be heedily looked unto, that it be natural, pure, and the most usual of'all his country: and for the same purpose rather that which is spoken in the king's Court, or in the good towns and cities within the land, than in the marches and frontiers, or in porttowns, where strangers haunt for traffic's sake, or yet in Universities where scholars use much peevish affectation of words out of the primitive languages5, or finally, in any uplandish village or corner of a Realm, where is no resort but of poor rustical or uncivil people. Neither shall he follow the speech of a craftsman or carter, or other of the inferior sort, though he be inhabitant or bred in the best town and city in this Realm, for such persons do abuse good speeches by strange accents or ill-shapen sounds, and false orthography. But he shall follow generally the better brought up sort, such as the Greeks call charientes, men civil and graciously behavoured and bred. s Cf. Trench, On the Study of Words, V, (Routledge), and Bradley, The Making of English, Chs. Ill and IV. (Macmillan). 4 This work on 'the originals and pedigree of the English tongue' is not extant, nor have we any trace of other books by the author of the present treatise to which he refers, such as Hierotechni, De Decora, comedies, interludes, and hymns. The literary activity of the writer of...