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CHAPTER II.
the old english, 680-1120.
the middle english, 1120-1300.
The examples given in the last few pages have been mostly taken from Wessex writers; but Cadmon's name reminds us that in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries there was no Teutonic land that could match Northumbria in learning or civilisation. Thither had come earnest missionaries from Italy and Ireland. There Christianity had taken fast root, and had bred such men as Cadmon and Bede. Charlemagne himself, the foremost of all Teutons, was glad to welcome to his Court Alcuin, who came from beyond the Humber. It was the dialect of Northumbria, settled as that land was by Angles, that first sprang into notice, and was so much in favour, that even the West Saxons on the Thames called their speech English.
This English of the North, or Northumbrian, has bequeathed to us but few monuments, owing to the havock wrought by the Danes in the Northern libraries. We have, however, enough of it left to see that in some points it kept far closer to the old Aryan Mother Speech than the classical writers of Wessex did; thus, it boasts
