had a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite and
Indefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner's
despair in German."[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; and
as there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, the
present was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did not
contribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison in
the adjectives were marked, not by adverbs, as in French, but by
differences in the terminations. In short, the relations of words to
each other, as well as the particular part they had to play in the
phrase, were not indicated by other special words, prepositions, adverbs
or auxiliaries, those useful menials, but by variations in the endings
of the terms themselves, that is, by inflections. The necessity for a
compromise with the French, which had lost its primitive declensions and
inflections, hastened an already begun transformation and resulted in
the new language's possessing in the fourteenth century a grammar
remarkably simple, brief and clear. Auxiliaries were introduced, and
they allowed every shade of action, action that has been, or is, or will
be, or would be, to be clearly defined. The gender of nouns used to
present all the singularities which are one of the troubles in German or
French; _mona_, moon, was masculine as in German; _sunne_, sun, was
feminine; _wif_, wife, was not feminine but neuter; as was also _maeden_,
maiden. "A German gentleman," as "Philologus," has so well observed,
"writes a masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady with
a feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, and
encloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to his
darling, though neuter, Gretchen. He has a masculine head, a feminine
hand, and a neuter heart."[405] Anglo-Saxon gentlemen were in about the
same predicament, before William the Conqueror came in his own way to
their help and rescued them from this maze. In the transaction which
took place, the Anglo-Saxon and the French both gave up the
arbitrariness of their genders; nouns denoting male beings became
masculine, those denoting female beings became feminine; all the others
became neuter; _wife_ and _maiden_ resumed their sex, while _nation_,
_sun_ and _moon_ were neuter. Nouns and adjectives lost their
declensions; adjectives ceased to vary in their endings according to the
nouns they were attached to, and yet the