, Simon of Muntfort, earl of Leicester, ... and before
others enough.

{P} And all in the same words is sent into every other shire over all
the kingdom in England, and eke into Ireland.

In the year 1303, Robert Manning, of Bourn in Lincolnshire, translated
a French poem entitled _Manuel des Pechiez_ (Manual of Sins) into very
fair East Midland verse, giving to his translation the title of
_Handling Synne_. Many of the verses are easy and smooth, and the poem
clearly shows us that the East Midland dialect was by this time at
least the equal of the others, and that the language was good enough
to be largely permanent. When we read such lines as:

Than seyd echone that sate and stode,
Here comth Pers, that never dyd gode--

we have merely to modernise the spelling, and we at once have:

Then said each one that sat and stood,
Here cometh Pierce, that never did good,

These are lines that could be written now.

An extract from Manning's _Handlyng Synne_ is given in _Specimens of
Early English_, Part II, most of which can be read with ease. The
obsolete words are not very numerous, and we meet now and then with
half a dozen consecutive lines that would puzzle no one. It is
needless to pursue the history of this dialect further. It had, by
this time, become almost the standard language, differing from Modern
English chiefly in date, and consequently in pronunciation. We pass
on from Manning to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Lydgate and Caxton, and
from Caxton to Lord Surrey and Sackville and Spenser, without any real
change in the actual dialect employed, but only in the form of it.

II. WEST MIDLAND

We have seen that there are two divisions of the Mercian dialect, into
East and West Midland.

The West Midland does not greatly differ from the East Midland, but it
approaches more nearly, in some respects, to the Northumbrian. The
greatest distinction seems to be in the present and past participles
of verbs. In the West Midland, the present participle frequently ends
in _-and_, as in Northumbrian, especially in the Northern part of the
Midland area. The East Midland usually employs _-ende_ or _-inge_
instead. In the West Midland, the prefix _i-_ or _y-_ is seldom used
for the past participle, whilst the East Midland admits it more
freely. In the third person singular of the present tense, the West
Midland favours the Northern suffix _-es_ or _-is_; whilst the East
Midland favours the Southern suffix _-e