ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. SUBJECTS INCLUDED UNDER THIS HEAD IN THE INDIAN CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS, WITH HINTS ON THE METHOD OF STUDYING THEM. OMITTING altogether the subject of Civil History, three distinct branches of study are included in the English department of the Indian Civil Service examinations. These are (I.) the Grammar and History of the English Language; (II.) the History and Criticism of English Literature; (III.) English Composition. This last is reserved for separate treatment elsewhere. A few remarks will be made here on the various subjects included in English Language and Literature,' with some hints on suitable methods of studying them. I. English Language. Under this head many separate subjects fall to be studied. The student must, in the first place, acquire some distinct idea of the ordinary classification of languages into great families: he must know the family to which the English belongs, and its relation to the sister tongues of the same family, especially to those which have at various periods been spoken in Britain. This subject pro B perly belongs to comparative philology. All that the student is required to know may be learnt without any very extensive research: it is enough that he knows the results at which the great philological authorities have arrived. These he will find stated in almost every text-book that treats of the English language: among others, in Latham's 'English Language,' Craik's treatise on the same subject, or in Max-Müller's 'Lectures.' The next point is to acquire some knowledge of the structure of the Saxon language, from which the English is derived. And here, instead of trying to commit to memory the most striking peculiarities of the Saxon, such as are thought most likely to occur in an examination-paper, it is a far more effectual plan to learn the Saxon grammar and to practise the reading of Saxon. It is not necessary to pursue this to any very formidable extent, and there are now abundant facilities for the study. Rask's 'Anglo-Saxon Grammar' (abridged by Thorpe), or even the short compend of the Saxon grammar given in the Student's Manual of the English Language' (pp. 283, sq.), with the occasional aid of a dictionary, will enable a student to read with tolerable facility the Saxon extracts given in most histories of English literature, and to trace the grammatical structure of the language. Studied in this way even to a moderate extent, the peculiarities of the language will become known to the student as the results of his own reading, and will be far more effectually recollected than if they were merely learned for the occasion, as isolated facts, from a text-book. The changes which gradually transmuted Saxon into Modern English must form the next subject of careful study. The various steps in this long process, which first of all broke down Saxon into Semi-Saxon, then reduced Semi-Saxon to Early English, and this again into Middle English, and finally issued in the present language, may be found stated at length in many text-books (e.g. Latham's ' English Language'). Here again, however, it is recommended that the student should not rest satisfied with merely attempting to commit to memory the lists of changes that the text-books contain. He ought to trace them in his own reading by comparing carefully together the works of authors of different periods. Spalding, in his "History of English Literature' (pp. 114, &c.), has shown how this may be done, and the same plan should be pursued in writers of various dates from Alfred down to the Reformation. Let the student read these older writers, pencil in hand, taking careful note of the changes in the grammatical forms, and let him carefully compare the notes made on the different authors; he will thus be able to verify and discover for himself the various stages in the grammatical development of our language. And this knowledge will not be, as it too often has been, a mere dead weight to be carried with great effort in the memory, but a living available part of his intellectual strength. After the first three months, no great time would be required for this process, and the study in this manner of even a few hundred lines in Alfred, Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Chaucer, Barbour, Lydgate, Sackville, and Spenser, will give the student more real knowledge of the various changes to which the grammar of the English language has been subject, and of the fluctuations in its vocabulary, than the 'cramming' of any extant text-book. Dr. Craik, in his edition of Shakspere's 'Julius Cæsar,' has shown how the principle now recommended may be applied to Shakspere: the student ought to extend its application to earlier writers. At first the advice of a qualified tutor may be of service, but as the student gains experience he will soon recognise the points to which his attention ought chiefly to be directed; and he will find that there is still much unexplained in our language, and that many even of the most common words and idioms have a long and intricate history little dreamed of by those who familiarly employ them.* Though English is derived from Saxon, its vocabulary has been enriched from various sources; and with these the student must make himself tolerably familiar. It may be assumed that he has learned Latin and has some acquaintance with French and Greek; and if, in addition, he has studied Saxon, as has been recommended, or knows German, then he will be able to trace the great bulk of English words to their (proximate) source. Those derived from other sources-from the Celtic, the Oriental languages, and the less familiar modern tongues-may be seen in most grammars, in none better than in that of Ernest Adams; and it is quite indispensable that the student should learn by heart the most important of them. There are, however, many words whose etymology, for various reasons, but chiefly from the corruption of the orthography, cannot be very readily traced: such as tawdry from St. Ethelreda, liquorice, &c. Several of these will be found explained in Trench's useful little works; and the student must carefully note anything in his reading that seems to *One of the best instances of this is the case of the relative pronouns nothing connected with English grammar stands in more need of thorough elucidation than the history of the various uses of who, which, and that. |