Judged by this standard, English forms a dialect of the Low Dutch branch
of the Aryan language, together with Frisian, modern Dutch, and the
Scandinavian tongues. Within the group thus restricted its affinities
are closest with Frisian and old Dutch, less close with Icelandic and
Danish. While the English still lived on the shores of the Baltic, it is
probable that their language was perfectly intelligible to the ancestors
of the people who now inhabit Holland, and who then spoke very slightly
different local dialects. In other words, a single Low Dutch speech then
apparently prevailed from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Scheldt,
with small local variations; and from this speech the Anglo-Saxon and
the modern English have developed in one direction, while the Dutch has
developed in another, the Frisian dialect long remaining intermediate
between them. Scandinavian ceased, perhaps, to be intelligible to
Englishmen at an earlier date, the old Icelandic being already marked
off from Anglo-Saxon by strong peculiarities, while modern Danish
differs even more widely from the spoken English of the present day.

The relation of Anglo-Saxon to modern English is that of direct
parentage, it might almost be said of absolute identity. The language of
_Beowulf_ and of Ælfred is not, as many people still imagine, a
different language from our own; it is simply English in its earliest
and most unmixed form. What we commonly call Anglo-Saxon, indeed, is
more English than what we commonly call English at the present day. The
first is truly English, not only in its structure and grammar, but also
in the whole of its vocabulary: the second, though also truly English
in its structure and grammar, contains a large number of Latin, Greek,
and Romance elements in its vocabulary. Nevertheless, no break separates
us from the original Low Dutch tongue spoken in the marsh lands of
Sleswick. The English of _Beowulf_ grows slowly into the English of
Ælfred, into the English of Chaucer, into the English of Shakespeare and