From his date to the Norman Conquest, the MSS. in the Anglo-Saxon or Southern dialect are fairly numerous, and it is mainly to them that we owe our knowledge of the grammar, the metre, and the pronunciation of the older forms of English.  Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer will enable any one to begin the study of this dialect, and to learn something valuable about it in the course of a month or two.

The famous Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, beginning with a note concerning the year 1, when Augustus was emperor of Rome, not only continues our history down to the Conquest, but for nearly a century beyond it, to the year 1154.  The language of the latter part, as extant in the (Midland) Laud MS., belongs to the twelfth century, and shows considerable changes in the spelling and grammar as compared with the Parker MS., which (not counting in a few later entries) ends with the year 1001.

After the Conquest, the Southern dialect continued to be the literary language, and we have several examples of it.  Extracts from some of the chief works are given in Part I of Morris’s Specimens of Early English.  They are selected from the following:  (1) Old English Homilies, 1150-1200, as printed for the Early English Text Society, and edited by Dr Morris, 1867-8. (2) Old English Homilies, Second Series, before 1200, ed.  Morris (E.E.T.S.), 1873. (3) The Brut, being a versified chronicle of the legendary history of Britain, compiled by Layamon, a Worcestershire priest, and extending to 32,240 (short) lines; in two versions, the date of the earlier being about 1205. (4) A Life of St Juliana, in two versions, about 1210; ed.  Cockayne and Brock (E.E.T.S.), 1872. (5) The Ancren Riwle, or Rule of anchorite nuns (Camden Society), ed.  Morton, 1853; the date of composition is about 1210. (6) The Proverbs of Alfred, about 1250; printed in Dr Morris’s Old English Miscellany (E.E.T.S.), 1872.  A later edition, by myself, was printed at Oxford in 1907. (7) A poem by Nicholas de Guildford, entitled The Owl and the Nightingale, about 1250; ed.  Rev. J. Stevenson, 1838; ed.  T. Wright, 1843; ed.  F.H.  Stratmann, of Krefeld, 1868. (8) A curious poem of nearly 400 long lines, usually known as A Moral Ode, which seems to have been originally written at Christchurch, Hampshire, and frequently printed; one version is in Morris’s Old English Homilies, and another in the Second Series of the same. (9) The Romance of King Horn; before 1300, here printed in full.

Just at the very end of the century we meet with two Southern poems of vast length. The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, comprising the History of Britain from the Siege of Troy to the year 1272, the date of the accession of Edward I, and written in the dialect of Gloucester, was completed in 1298.  It must seem strange to many to find that our history is thus connected with the Siege of Troy; but it must