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The Sources of Standard English.
still lie unprinted. We may see the subscribers to the Early English Text Society reckoned, not by hundreds, but by thousands.[1] Our German and Scandinavian kinsfolk will then no longer twit us with our carelessness of the hoard so dearly prized abroad; like them, we shall purge our language of needless foreign frippery, and shall reverence the good Teutonic masonry wherewith our forefathers built.
TABLE OF DATES BEARING ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
| Fifth Century | The Saxon settlement in South Britain. |
| Sixth Century | The establishment of the Anglian kingdom in North Britain. |
| Seventh Century | The earliest written specimen of Northern English. |
| Eighth Century | The earliest written specimen of Southern English. |
| Ninth Century | The great Danish settlement in the North and East of England. |
| Tenth Century | The Court of the Southern English Kings becomes the central point for all the land. |
| Eleventh Century | The French Conquest. Loss of the Old English Court at Winchester, and of Old English poetic words. |
| Twelfth Century | Break-up of the Old English grammar; a variety of dialects prevail for two centuries, with no fixed standard. |
- ↑ The Secretary of the Society is G. Joachim, Esq., St. Andrew House, Change Alley, London. I wish they would print more works written before 1400, and fewer works written after that year.
