Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/260

Rh Order; and from 1220 onward she inspired many an English Maker. However wrong it might be theo&shy;logically, the new devotion was the most poetical of all rites; the dullest monk is kindled with unwonted fire, when he sets forth the glories of the Maiden Mother. To her Chaucer and Dunbar have offered some of their most glowing verse.

The first token of the change in English is the ever-waxing distaste for words compounded with prepositions. After 1220, these compounds become more and more scarce, though we have kept to this day some verbs which have fore, out, over, and under prefixed; those beginning with to (the German zer) lived on for a long time before waning away. We have a second copy of Layamon's Brut, written, it is thought, soon after 1250. Scores of old words set down fifty years earlier in the first copy of 1205 had become strange in the ears of Englishmen; these words are now dropped altogether. Some French words, unknown to Layamon, are found in this second copy.

We have an opportunity of comparing the old and the new school of English teachers, as they stood in the Middle of this Century. We find one poem, written shortly before 1250, about the time that Archbishop Edmund was canonized: this must have been composed by a churchman of the good old St. Albans' pattern, a preacher of righteousness after Brother Matthew's own heart. The rimer casts no wistful glance abroad, but appeals to English saints and none others; he strikes hard at Rome in a way that would have shocked good Franciscans. He is an exception to the common