SE GEFYLSTA (THE HELPER): An Anglo-Saxon Delectus. SERVING AS A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE LANGUAGE. BY THE REV. W. BARNES, OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. "Ic hæbbe pis gewrit swa ic mihte, mid wísdóme mínra LONDON: JOHN RUSSELL SMITH, 4, OLD COMPTON STREET, SOHO SQUARE. MDCCCXLIX. PREFACE. THE Compiler believes that it is hardly possible to gain a critical understanding of our mother tongue, such as an Englishman should have; and a clear perception of its etymology and structure, such as that which the master of the grammar school labours so hardly to give his pupils of the formation of Latin and Greek; without contemplating English in its purer and more regular form of the Anglo-Saxon: and, therefore, as well as because the learning of AngloSaxon would be found, as far as it might go, a witsharpening exercise of the mind, of the same kind as that of the learning of any other dead language, and because the Anglo-Saxon writers afford some gems of thought, as well as much useful history, worthy of a place in the youthful mind,—it is to be hoped that Anglo-Saxon may yet take a place, though it should be but a small one, in the English school-room, if not on the desk of the grammar school. In private, as well as in diocesan English schools, the compiler believes that Anglo-Saxon may be introduced with good effects; and as he has been careful not to gather into his reading-book anything that is morally unwholesome, so he thinks that if there is a place to be filled by a book of the kind, his own cannot be rejected from any likelihood that it may do moral harm. He believes, though possibly few but Teutonic scholars will be of his mind, that Anglo-Saxon (English) has not been cultivated into a better form, but has been corrupted for the worse, since King Alfred's days. English has lost many of the case-endings and other inflections of its old form, and cannot therefrom, if it may from aught else, have become a more excellent language than the Anglo-Saxon, any more than Latin became more excellent in the broken form of the Romaunt, or in modern French, than it was in its old purity; and the praise of greater richness which some bestow on English must be lessened by the truth that Anglo-Saxon, like German, had within itself the elements of the utmost richness; and that we have thrown away many of its good words to take in their stead less intelligible ones from the Latin and Greek. We have, in modern English, the words, solstice, equinox, disc (as of the sun), and sagittarius; but we have not enriched our language with them, since we have thrown away good Anglo-Saxon words, sun-stede (sunsted), emniht, trendel, and scytta, to make room for them. To make his work as complete as possible in itself, the compiler has given, with his selections, tables of the accidence and strong verbs; with a few of the canons of articulation which unravel some seeming anomalies in the weak and mixed verbs, and a glossary of the words of the extracts. The selections are mostly short pieces on religion, ethics, astronomy, physical geography, and other such subjects; with a selection of Anglo-Saxon history from the Saxon Chronicle. The Anglo-Saxon works hitherto printed form a considerable body of writings, but the pen has left many more that are resting in the dust of our libraries. Some of them have very lately come abroad through the press, and whenever there may be a call for others it is believed they will follow. |