measure, pure and unmixed, till the invasion by the Normans ,who conceived that the conquest was not complete unless theconqueror’s language, the French or Franco-Gallic, wereintroduced : but the attempt proved as unsuccessful as thatof the Romans j the number of Normans being small incomparison with the Saxons ; so that the Norman tongue, incourse of time, amalgamated with that of the Saxons , andwas only preserved in their public records. About the timeof Henry II . this mixture of Roman, Danish , Saxon , andFrench languages began to assume the form of the presentEnglish , of which the Pater Noster in rhyme, by Adrian, anEnglishman, in 1160, and afterwards Pope , is an example“ Ure faden in heaven rich,

Thy name be haljled ever lich.”

Among the earliest instances of the use of the English language at the Court of the Norman monarchs, is the distichpainted on the shield of Edward III. , under the figure of awhite swan, being the device which that warlike king woreat a tourney at Windsor

“ Ha ! ha ! the white swan,

By God his soul I am thy man.”

The first of our authors who can properly be said to havewritten English is Sir John Gower , who, in his “ Confessionof a Lover,” calls Chaucer his disciple.

How the English stood in the year 1400 may be seen inChaucer , who refined and improved it very considerably; butit was not till nearly the middle of the sixteenth century, thatthe language had arrived to any degree of classical eleganceand perfection.

The most ancient record in the English tongue zs the Con-fession of Richard, Earl of Cambridge, in the reign ofHenry V. , A. D. 1415, and which is inserted in RymersFoedera.

ENGRAFTING. The art of fixing a cyon or bud of one