nslated for
the general benefit into the vernacular. During the Commonwealth,
however, the English tongue made some way; and it is remarkable that the
English-speaking Irish of the lower classes, in the present day, have
preserved the idioms and the accentuation used about this period. Many
of the expressions which provoke the mirth of the modern Englishman, and
which he considers an evidence of the vulgarity of the uneducated Irish,
may be found in the works of his countrymen, of which he is most justly
proud.

The language of Cromwell's officers and men, from whom the Celt had such
abundant opportunities of learning English, was (less the cant of
Puritanism) the language of Shakspeare, of Raleigh, and of Spenser. The
conservative tendencies of the Hibernian preserved the dialect intact,
while causes, too numerous for present detail, so modified it across the
Channel, that each succeeding century condemned as vulgarism what had
been the highest fashion with their predecessors. Even as Homeric
expressions lingered for centuries after the blind bard's obit had been
on record, so the expressions of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakspeare, may
still be discovered in provincial dialects in many parts of the British
Isles. I do not intend to quote _Tate and Brady_ as models of
versification and of syntax; but if the best poets of the age did not
receive the commission to translate the Psalms into verse, it was a poor
compliment to religion. We find the pronunciation of their rhymes
corresponding with the very pronunciation which is now condemned as
peculiarly Irish. Newton also rhymes _way_ and _sea_, while one can
scarcely read a page of Pope[513] without finding examples of
pronunciation now supposed to be pure Hibernicism. In the Authorized
Protestant version of the Bible, _learn_ is used in the sense of _to
teach_, precisely as it is used in Ireland at the present day: "If thy
children shall keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall _learn_
them" and their use of the term _forninst_ is undoubtedly derived from
an English source, for we find it in Fairfax's _Tasso_.[514]

History and theology were the two great studies of the middle ages, and
to these subjects we find the _literati_ of Ireland directing special
attention. The importance and value of Latin as a medium of literary
intercommunication, had been perceived from an early period: hence that
language was most frequently employed by Irish writers after it had
bec