"English was not taught in the schools, but French only, until after the accession of Richard II., or possibly the latter years of Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the French. Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of literary authority, and probably no written collections of established forms, or other grammatical essays, the language had no fixedness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be called a written speech. ... From this Babylonish confusion of speech, the influence and example of Chaucer did more to rescue his native tongue than any other single cause; and if we compare his dialect with that of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find that in compass, flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection which the materials at his hand would permit of. The English writers of the fourteenth century had an advantage which was altogether peculiar to their age and country. At all previous periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a great degree independently of each other, with little tendency to intermix; but in the earlier part of that century, they began to coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total extinction of the Saxon element. ... When the national spirit was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his diction, had almost two whole vocabularies before him. That the syntax should be English, national feeling demanded; but French was so familiar and habitual to all who were able to read, that probably the scholarship of the day would scarcely have been able to determine, with respect to a large proportion of the words in common use, from which of the two great wells of speech they had proceeded. Happily, a great arbiter arose at the critical moment of severance of the two peoples and dialects, to preside over the division of the common property, and to determine what share of the contributions of France should be permanently annexed to the linguistic inheritance of Englishmen. Chaucer did not introduce into the English language words which it had rejected as aliens before, but out of those which had been already received, he invested the better portion with the rights of citizenship, and stamped them with the mint-mark of English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary, which, with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding generations has approved; and a literary diction was thus established, which, in all the qualities required for the poetic art, had at that time no superior in the languages of modern Europe. The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety of his philological appreciation, and the delicacy of his