We now hail the first writer of New English prose. I give in my Appendix a specimen of Sir John Mandeville: it is strange to think that he is separated by only a score of years or so from the compiler of the Ayenbite of Inwit.[1] The travelled knight was born at St. Albans, and went abroad in 1322. We may look upon his English as the speech spoken at Court in the latter days of King Edward III.; high and low alike now prided themselves upon being Englishmen, and held in scorn all men of outlandish birth. The earlier and brighter days of King Harold seemed to have come back again; Hastings had been avenged at Cressy, and our islanders found none to match them in fight, whether the field might lie in France, in Spain, or in Italy. King Edward was happy in his knights, and happy also in the men whom he could employ in civil business, men like Wickliffe and Chaucer. Mandeville's language is far more influenced by the Midland forms than that of Davie had been fifty years earlier; in the new writer we find sche, I, thei, theirs, have, are, and ben, forms strange to the Thames, at least in 1300; the Southern ending of the Third Person Plural of the Present tense is almost wholly dropped, being replaced by the Midland ending in en; even this is sometimes clipped, as also is the en of the Infinitive, and the Prefix of the Past Participle. A hundred years would have to pass before these hoary old
- ↑ I have given a specimen of this at page 208.
