Note 8 — Chapter II · THE FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND. 449–975.

I use, as a technical term, this correct and old-fashioned description of the class of languages to which our own belongs. The English language is simply Low-Dutch, with a very small Welsh, and a very large Romance, infusion into its vocabulary. The Low-Dutch of the continent, so closely cognate with our own tongue, is the natural speech of the whole region from Flanders to Holstein, and it has been carried by conquest over a large region, originally Slavonic, to the further east. But, hemmed in by Romance, High-Dutch, and Danish, it is giving way at all points, and it is only in Holland that it survives as a literary language. It should always be borne in mind that our affinity in blood and language is in the first degree with the Low-Dutch, in the second degree with the Danish. With the High-Dutch, the German of modern literature, we have no direct connexion at all.