A History of English Language

Middle english 173
far this affectation went may be seen in the opening lines of Dunbar’s Ballad of Our
Lady:
Hale, sterne superne! Hale, in eterne,
In Godis sicht to schyne!
Lucerne in derne, 29 for to discerne
Be glory and grace devyne;
Hodiern, modern, sempitern,
Angelicallregyne!
Our tern 30 infern for to dispern
Helpe, rialest Rosyne! 31
The use of such “halff chongyd Latyne,” as a contemporary poet describes it, 32 was quite
artificial. The poets who affected aureate terms have been described as tearing up words
from Latin “which never took root in the language, like children making a mock garden
with flowers and branches stuck in the ground, which speedily wither.” 33 This is
essentially true, but not wholly so. The novelty that was sought after, and that such words
had in the beginning, wore off with use; and words which were “aureate” in Chaucer, like
laureate, mediation, oriental, prolixity, have sometimes become part of the common
speech. These innovations are of considerable interest in the history of style; in the
history of language they appear as a minor current in the stream of Latin words flowing
into English in the course of the Middle Ages.
144. Synonyms at Three Levels.
Much nonsense has been written on the relative merits of the Germanic and Romance
elements in the English vocabulary. 34 The Latinized diction of many seventeenth- and
29
lamp in darkness
30
woe
31
rose
32
John Metham, Cf. P.H.Nichols, “Lydgate’s Influence on the Aureate Terms of the Scottish
Chaucerians,” PMLA, 47 (1932), 516–22.
33
Thomas Campbell, Essay on English Poetry (London, 1848), p. 39.
34
Even so sensible a scholar as Freeman could write: “This abiding corruption of our language I
believe to have been the one result of the Norman Conquest which has been purely evil.” (Norman
Conquest, V, 547.)