Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Shakespeare burlesques its excessive use in the lines: Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, EXERCISE 91. Select a poem for examination and determine the following: 1. The number of lines in a stanza, if the poem is written in stanzas. 2. Where rimes occur and, consequently, what lines should be indented. 3. The number of accented syllables in each line and the ,number of unaccented syllables before or after each accented syllable. 4. From the data thus secured determine the name of the meter, and be prepared to point out the lines that are hypermeter or catalectic and any variations from the prevailing foot. APPENDIX A HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ENGLISH Languages are arranged in families according to resemblances in words and in the grammatical forms used to combine words into sentences. The English language belongs to the most important of these families, called the Indo-European because it comprises the most important languages that are or have been spoken from India to the western coast of Europe. It is also called the Aryan, from an ancient Asiatic race of that name. The Indo-European family has two great divisions: (a) Asiatic; (b) European. Under each of these divisions are several distinct groups of languages. (a) ASIATIC DIVISION 1. The Indian languages, including the Sanskrit (a language now no longer spoken), the modern Indian dialects of Hindostan, and the Gypsy dialect. 2. The Persian languages, including the Zend (the ancient language of Persia) and modern Persian. (b) EUROPEAN DIVISION 1. The Hellenic languages, including the various dialects of ancient Greek and the various dialects of modern Greek. 2. The Latin languages, including ancient Latin and the several Romance languages to which the Latin has given rise: (a) Italian; (b) French; (c) Spanish; (d) Portuguese; (e) Romansch or Romanese, spoken in southern Switzerland; (f) Wallachian, spoken in Wallachia and Moldavia. 3. The Teutonic languages, comprising: (a) the Low German dialects, spoken originally by the tribes living on the northern shores and lowlands of Germany-now represented by Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, and English; (b) High German, formerly the language of the southeast of Germany, Bavaria, and Austria, now the literary dialect of Germany; (c) Scandinavian, including Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish. 4. The Celtic languages, divided into: (a) the Cymric branch, including Welsh, Cornish, and Armorican of Brittany; (b) the Gaelic branch, comprising the Irish or Erse, the Scottish Gaelic, and the Manx of the Isle of Man. 5. Sclavonic, including Russian, Lettish, Lithuanian, Polish, etc. The English language, then, is a member of the Indo-European family; it belongs to the Teutonic group, and it is a Low German dialect. It was brought to America from England. It was brought to England, where it developed into its present form, from northern Germany, about the middle of the fifth century after Christ. Up to that time, the country now called England had been known as Britannia or Britain. The chief historical events that should be borne in mind in tracing the development of the English language are the following: The island of Britain was originally peopled by a Celtic race who spoke a Celtic language. Britain was invaded by a Roman army under Julius Cæsar in 55 B.C. It was afterward conquered by Rome in 43 A.D., and it was held as a Roman province until 426 a.d. On the retirement of the Romans, the country was invaded by three Low German tribes - Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. These Teutonic invaders took complete possession of the country, driving the native population, except a few who were kept as slaves, to Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde, a region bordering the Solway Firth. The Jutes settled in Kent; the Saxons, in the southern part of the island; and the Angles, in the center and north of England and the southern half of Scotland. From the Angles, who were the most numerous, the country was called Angle- or Engla-land, or England, "the land of the Angles." Toward the close of the ninth century the various Teutonic tribes became united politically under a single king. They spoke several Low German dialects, which are now included under the general term Anglo-Saxon. About the year 596 the English were converted to Christianity by missionaries from Rome. Toward the end of the eighth century, the Northmen of Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), generally called Danes, ravaged the east coast of England. In the ninth century they gained possession of a large part of the east coast, and in the eleventh century Danish sovereigns sat on the throne of England for nearly thirty years. In 1066 the Normans - Northmen who had settled in France and who had acquired the French language - under Duke William invaded England. The English army under King Harold was defeated at Hastings. William became king and made his followers the nobles, the bishops, and the landlords of the country. French became the language of the law courts, the churches, and the schools, and was generally spoken by the Normans; while the Teutonic folk, though they no longer, except in rare cases, owned the land, stubbornly asserted their rights and clung tenaciously to their own language. Gradually, the conquering Normans and the conquered Saxons coalesced and became one people. After a struggle of three hundred years the English language won at last and became the language of the country. In 1349 boys at school began to translate their Latin into English instead of into French. In 1362 English was made the language of the courts of law. The first fruits of the triumph of the English language were the noble poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, who has been called the father of English poetry, and John Wycliff's version of the Bible. Chaucer raised the midland dialect, that which had descended from the Angles, to the rank of the literary language of England. The supremacy of this dialect was confirmed by William Caxton. Setting up the first English printing press at Westminster in 1474, he printed many books in the dialect ennobled by Chaucer. It is interesting to remember that this great benefactor of English speech and of English literature died in the year in which America was discovered. About the time at which John Smith was establishing the first permanent English colony in America, at Jamestown, Virginia, the English language became established in its main features as we now know it through the influence of two great literary works the translation of the Bible prepared under the authority of King James I., and the dramas of William Shakespeare. The spelling of English words was fixed very nearly as we now have it by Samuel Johnson's English Dictionary, published in 1755. The language brought by the Angles, Saxons, etc., was an unmixed language; that is, it contained few or no words that were not Low German. English is now a mixed or composite language, because, while the framework is English, it has absorbed many thousands of foreign words. The following are the principal foreign elements in English: |