Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/309

280 other words. As to terms which were to be built into the English Bible fourscore years later, we find Jewry, ensaumple, sutil, enquire, according to; these had been in use much earlier.

The great change we owe to Pecock is a new phrase that took off a part of the heavy load thrown upon but. The source of our unless is now seen. In the Repressor (page 51), he speaks of the Lollards, ‘whiche wolen not allowe eny governaunce to be the lawe and service of God, inlasse than it be grondid in Holi Scrip&shy;ture.’ It was hundreds of years before this word could be used freely; in our New Testament it comes but once: ‘unless ye have believed in vain.’ Pecock uses his new phrase four times in his Repressor. Another word, common in our mouths, is seen for the first time in a Lancastrian ballad of 1458: ‘acros the mast he hyethe travers.’ This is not found once in our Bible.

At this time English prose rose high above English poetry; and herein the Fifteenth Century stands alone. That one short passage of Mallory's, pro&shy;nouncing Sir Lancelot's elegy, outweighs many pages of later poets, such as Barclay, Skelton, and Hawes. Civil war is commonly thought to forebode evil to literature; England for forty years after Duke Hum&shy;phrey's death was harassed by risings of the Commons, or was divided between the Red and the White Roses, as many a bloody field bore witness. Yet this is the