threatening to swamp our speech. Tyndale stands in a far nearer relation to us than Dante stands to the Italians.
Among the East Midlanders who helped on the Reformation were Cranmer, Latimer, and Foxe; Hall and Bunyan were to come later.[1] English literature is so closely intertwined with English history and English religion that we are driven to ask, what would have been the future of our tongue, had the Reformation, the great event of this Sixteenth Century, been trampled down in our island? Our national character is nearer akin to that of Spain than to that of France; I fear, therefore, that had Rome won the day in England, our religion would have smacked more of Philip II. than of Cardinal Richelieu, more of grim bloody Ultramontanism than of the other and milder form of Romanism. We know how Cervantes felt himself shackled by the awful, overbearing Inquisition: English writers would have fared no better, but would have dragged on their lives in everlasting fear of spies, gaolers, racks, and stakes. Could Shakespere have breathed in such an air? Hardly so. Could Milton? Most assuredly not. Our mother tongue, thought unworthy to become the handmaid of religion, would have sunk (exinanited) into a Romance jargon, with few Teutonic words in it but pronouns, conjunctions, and such like.
Many Orders of the Roman Church have brought their influence to bear upon our speech. In the Seventh Century, the Benedictines gave us our first batch of Latin ware, the technical words employed by Western
- ↑ Dryden came from the same district.
