clearness of the phrase was not
in the least obscured.

In the same way as with the prosody and vocabulary, these changes were
effected by degrees. Great confusion prevailed in the thirteenth
century; the authors of the "Brut" and the "Ancren Riwle" have visibly
no fixed ideas on the use of inflections, or on the distinctions of the
genders. Only under Edward III. and Richard II. were the main principles
established upon which English grammar rests. As happened also for the
vocabulary, in certain exceptional cases the French and the Saxon uses
have been both preserved. The possessive case, for instance, can be
expressed either by means of a proposition, in French fashion: "The
works of Shakespeare," or by means of the ancient genitive:
"Shakespeare's works."

Thus was formed the new language out of a combination of the two others.
In our time, moved by a patriotic but rather preposterous feeling, some
have tried to react against the consequences of the Conquest, and undo
the work of eight centuries. They have endeavoured to exclude from their
writings words of Franco-Latin origin, in order to use only those
derived from the Anglo-Saxon spring. A vain undertaking: the progress of
a ship cannot be stopped by putting one's shoulder to the bulkheads; a
singular misapprehension of history besides. The English people is the
offspring of two nations; it has a father and a mother, whose union has
been fruitful if stormy; and the parent disowned by some to-day, under
cover of filial tenderness, is perhaps not the one who devoted the least
care in forming and instructing the common posterity of both.

II.

The race and the language are transformed; the nation also, considered
as a political body, undergoes change. Until the fourteenth century, the
centre of thought, of desire, and of ambition was, according to the
vocation of each, Rome, Paris, or that movable, ever-shifting centre,
the Court of the king. Light, strength, and advancement in the world all
proceeded from these various centres. In the fourteenth century, what
took place for the race and language takes place also for the nation. It
coalesces and condenses; it becomes conscious of its own limits; it
discerns and maintains them. The action of Rome is circumscribed;
appeals to the pontifical Court are prohibited,[406] and, though they
still continue to be made, the oft-expressed wish of the nation is that
the king should be judge, not the pope; it is the beginning