are as certainly the remains of an old tongue once used in England even by the educated. This dialect has greatly changed, and is still changing, and we may both live to find that it is destined to undergo a still further mutation.

It appears from Higden, whose Chronicle was written in the 14th century, that in his days the people of the West of England could understand the language of their countrymen in the Eastern parts of the Island, but that the men of the South actually could not understand those of the North. He instances especially the dialect of Yorkshire, which he describes as grating and uncouth in the extreme.* Caxton, in his edition of Trevisa's "Polychronicon " (A. D. 1482), modernized the language and adapted it to his time:-" Therefore I, William Caxton, a symple person, have

* Tota lingua Northumbrorum, maxime in Eboraco, ita stridet incondita.-Lib. i.

endeavoured me to write first over all the said book of Polychronicon,' and somewhat have changed the rude and old English, that is to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used nor understandon."

In 1654, a little less than 200 years later, when Evelyn visited Beverley in Yorkshire, he was shown over the church by a woman who spoke the language of Queen Mary's days.* This shows that our language was continually changing as civilization advanced, and that even in the provinces, people, in towns and cities at least, had begun to discard their ancient dialect, and adopt a mode of speech founded on a more recent model. To changes like these Waller alludes:

But who can hope his lines should long
Last, in a daily changing tongue ?

It is my belief, that the evidence of
* Diary, sub anno 1654.

provincialisms in our old MSS. are not so plain as some writers would lead us to suppose. It seems rather, that most of the works which have been preserved were written with a view to their being generally comprehensible to Englishmen, and not in the dialects of particular districts. Robert of Gloster is a singular exception: we have nothing so decidedly characteristic of the language of the West of England, and this so closely resembles the speech of the Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire peasant of our day, that if read to him carefully, it would be far from unintelligible.

It is well known to those who have made our provincialisms their study, that a certain dialect and its modifications prevails in a certain division of England, the geographical limits of which may thus be sketched :-East and West, from Dover to the Land's End, and North and South

from the Warwickshire Avon to the Isle

of Wight. In all the counties included within these limits we have varieties, it is true, but varieties of one dialect, and in that dialect may be traced innumerable relics of the language of our Saxon forefathers. Nor is it in words alone, many of which have become obsolete among the educated, that we find traces of an older language. The pronunciation of many yet recognised is so clearly that of the original tongue, that we need cite but two examples; namely, Dew, pronounced Deaw, and Few, pronounced Feaw. In the South and West of England, either of these words may be taken as the Shiboleth of the rural population; but it is not so with Brad amang, and ael, pure Saxon, still found, not only in the South and West, but also on the Northern borders of England.

It is obvious that in many districts of

England the language has been so much changed by the march of civilization, as to be no longer characterised by the most marked provincialisms; while, on the other hand, in many villages of the Western counties, the language has not very materially varied for centuries past. We cannot doubt but that the speeches which Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Edgar, when personating Mad Tom, are a sample of the language of the Warwickshire clown of his day. One sentence is especially worthy of notice: "Chill pick your teeth, Zir" (Lear, Act iv.). Now this form of speech is entirely obsolete in Warwickshire at the present day, while "chill" and "cham ("I will" and "I am") are still used in parts of Somersetshire; and it is only a few weeks since that a Kentish gentleman, settled at Henley-in-Arden, found that none of his neighbours knew what a "keeler was (a shallow vessel used

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