On the Approaches to the English Language [pp. 434-456]

446 ON THE APPROACHES TO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. [July,
very simplicity of Gothic may be used as an argument against
its claims to extreme antiquity. This not a theory, not even an
hypothesis; merely a hint. Curtius is too sound a thinker to
commit himself to anything not yet thoroughly elaborated.
What led him to the conjecture was a consideration of the fact
that Indo-European languages, as far as we can trace them historically, pass from the complex and multiform to the simple
and uniform, not vice versa. Not only are our modern languages,
English, French, Greek, simpler than their progenitors, but in
the so-called classic languages themselves we encounter the
same process of simplification. Sanscrit sloughed off many of
the forms of Vedic; the Latin of Rome simplified the Italic
dialects; the Greek of Athens is much more regular than that
of Homer and Hesiod; the modern Slavonic languages are not
so copious in forms as the Old Church Slavonic of Cyril and
Methodius. So far as we can understand this conjecture aright,for it has never been made public and is communicated here
only upon the verbal authority of one of Curtius's friends and
admirers,-it would, if established, lead to about the following
conclusions: While Gothic, as it has been handed down to us
in its remains, is actually older than Old High German or AngloSaxon, yet the latter display more of the varieties of the primitive language. The Goths, we know, were the most migratory
and the most courtly of the Teutonic tribes. Even in modern
Spanish, to say of a man that he has Gothic blood in his veins
is equivalent to placing him among the high nobility. The
Goths were for a long while in close contact with the culture of
Byzantium, as we know from Greek authorities, and as the
life and education of Ulfilas himself show, so they doubtless felt
the need of a uniform and polished language, a court-language as
distinguished from afolk-speech.* Whereas the Bavarians, Fran
* It should be stated, byway of explanation, that the Emperor Valens was induced by the representations of this same Bishop Ulfilas to permit the Goths to
transfer themselves from Dacia, where they were pressed by the Huns, to Moesia,
across the Danube. Hence the expression Moeso-Gothic. It is a striking coincidence of history, and one that has not been sufficiently dwelt upon, that from this
very province of Moesia-now the modern Turkish province of Bulgaria-proceeded also the primitive Slavonic version of the Bible in the tenth century. Thus
the two great medieval vernacular versions of the sacred writings, the work of
Ulfilas and the work of Cyril and Methodius, each all-important in its own sphere,
had a common origin in a province now under the sway of Mohammedanism!