Early Englund and the Saxon-English. By W. Barnes, B.D. (J.
R. Smith).—This modest little volume is full of carefully selected and arranged information, which is not rendered less attractive by the peculiarity of Mr. Barnes' style. He gives a sketch in which a great amount of knowledge is compressed into a wonderfully small space of the progress made by the Saxons in conquering Britain, of the settle- ments which they founded, and of their subsequent history. On all these matters he has opinions which are well worth considering. He leans, we observe, to the belief that a larger element of British popula- tion was left among the new occupiers of the soil than has been com- monly believed. On the vexed question of the meaning of the word Bretwalda ' he suggests the derivation from Brytta lord,' and Waldo, the genitive plural of Va/4 dominion,' observing that the common reading of 'Lord of the Britons' is discountenanced by the fact that some of the Bretwaldas had less to do with the British tribes than other kings who never had the title. A pecu- liarly interesting chapter gives the chief points of Saxon law and custom. But it is evident that the subject which the author has most at heart is the plea for Saxon as against Latin-English. It is impossible to deny the truth of much that he urges, but the matter has passed beyond all, human power, and probably never was within it. We can no more chock the development or, if Mr. Barnes will have it so, the corruption of a language than we can check the motion of Sirius. Our author has done a great work in immortalizing the dialect of his native country, but this is beyond him. And our language, mongrel as it is, is, after all, the most flexible and the richest of tongues, inferior only to the matchless Greek. Meanwhile, we approve of Mr. Barnes's theories, and are charmed with his practice. It is refreshing to read that "the Saxons might have found that the unbyholdingness of the little chiefdoms of the Britons was their weakness," or, "that the heads or motemotinde of any of our hundreds are in ouistep spots whore there was never a hamlet of English people," or such a sentence as this, "Hence English has become so much harder, that in its foreign-worded fullness, it is a speech only for the more learned, and foreign to unschooled men, so that tho sermon and book are half lost to their minds." All this part of the volume is particularly worth reading, and useful withal, for it points out not a few vulgarisms of style which, whatever may be thought of Mr. Barnes's purism, are certainly to be avoided. Altogether, this is a very pleasant and commendable little book.
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