Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/286

Rh bard must have spread the influence of the East Midland further and further. We know not when it made a thorough conquest of Oxford, the great strong&shy;hold of the Franciscans; but its triumph over the London speech was most slow, and was not wholly achieved until a hundred and sixty years after Manning's first work was begun. That poet, as may be seen by the Table at the end of the foregoing chapter, heralded the changes in English, alike by his large proportion of French words and by his small proportion of those Teutonic words that were sooner or later to drop.

The following examples will show how the best En&shy;glish of our day follows the East Midland, and eschews the Southern speech that prevailed in London about the year 1300. A is what Manning would have written; B is what was spoken at London in Manning's time.

A. But she and thei are fyled with synnes, and so I have sayd to that lady eche day; answer, men, is hyt nat so?

B. Ac heo and hi beoth ifuled mid sunnen, and so ichabbe iseid to thilke levedy uche day; answereth, men, nis it nought so?

The last sentence is compiled mainly from the works of Davie, of whom I gave a specimen at page 209, It is interesting to see what the tongue of London was thirty years before her first great poet came into the world.

It may seem strange that England's new Standard speech should have sprung up, not in Edward the First's Court, but in cloisters on the Nen and the Welland. We must bear in mind that the English Muse, as in the tale