Edwin Guest Philologist, Historian, and Founder of the Philological Society of London

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Edwin Guest: Philologist, Historian, and
Founder of the Philological Society of London
In soliciting a response to the question, ‘On whose initiative was the Philological
Society of London founded in 1842?’, the majority of existing members, let alone
anyone in the linguistics community at large, would be hard pushed to name Edwin
Guest (1800-1880) as the driving force behind the second incarnation of the Society.
1
In considering the role of the Philological Society in 19th-century British linguistics it
is all too tempting to focus on the contributions made by larger-than-life individuals
such as Alexander John Ellis (1814-1890), James Augustus Henry Murray (18371915),
and Henry Sweet (1845-1912). Indeed this is a temptation to which I have partly
succumbed myself. Analysis of the contribution of linguistic giants is essential in aiding
our understanding of the philological milieu of the past. However, taking into account
the part played by forgotten figures such as Edwin Guest not only discourages a natural
tendency to accept the essentially narrow view that concentrates on mainstream figures
in 19th-century British linguistics, but also allows us to ‘cultivate an ability to see things
from another person’s point of view’ (Law 2003: 7). Since Guest’s standing has thus
far been unattested in the history of linguistics literature, this article will attempt to
make partial reparation for this oversight.
1. Background
Born in 1800, Edwin Guest was the sole-surviving son of wealthy merchant and
businessman Benjamin Guest of Edgbaston, Birmingham.2 Edwin’s early childhood
was essentially unremarkable for the son of an affluent family in 19th-century Britain,
at least until the death of his mother. When Edwin’s mother died, his father was forced
to take on sole responsibility for his son’s welfare and education. Curiously, due to
Benjamin’s apparent failure to notice that his son had reached school-leaving age,
Edwin was forced to remain at King Edward VI Grammar School in Birmingham for
an additional two years beyond the age at which he was expected to leave. According
to his wife, Anne Guest (née Ferguson), Edwin had been reluctant to draw his father’s
attention to this predicament for reasons of deference and since his mother was no
longer living there were no family members in whom young Edwin felt able to confide.
2
To the 21st-century ear, Anne Guest’s version of events may sound incongruous.
Whether or not Edwin had acquainted his wife with the truth of the situation is anyone’s
guess. Perhaps Anne knew more than she was prepared to reveal, and she recounted
the tale with her husband’s good reputation in mind. Shielding one’s husband from
disrepute, even after his death, is an act any respectable wife of a 19th-century English
gent would be expected to perform without question.
1
An earlier society of the same name was established at London University ca 1830 (cf. section 2).
2 Benjamin Guest was a descendent of the Guest family of Row Heath in King’s Norton,
Worcestershire. He owned factories in Newton Street and Edgbaston in Birmingham (cf. Wrighton
1818).
2
Cf. Anne’s biographical account of her husband (dated 14 April 1882) in the Prefaratory Notice of
Origines Celticae (Guest 1883, I: vii-xv).

2
In one of the most revealing passages of Anne’s considered biographical account of
Guest, she concedes that had her husband more purposely directed his extended study
period at Edward VI, ‘[…] he would have taken a higher degree than he did’ (Guest
1883, I: vii-viii). Anne also notes, however, that it was precisely due to this period of
non-directed reading that Guest had successfully accumulated the ‘[…] varied
knowledge’ that served him so well in later years (ibid., viii). Indeed, Guest’s
unscheduled deferment from university did not diminish his desire to learn. During the
extra two years he spent at school, Guest read voraciously in preparation for the next
step in his academic career. In due course, Edwin left Birmingham and embarked upon
a lifelong association with Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where he
matriculated in 1819. He was elected a Fellow of Caius in 1824, and became Master of
the College in 1853. Guest held the latter position until tendering his resignation due
to ill health a few weeks prior to his death in 1880.
Like many educated gentlemen philologists of the day, whose main profession was
outside academia, Guest’s initial interest in philology was purely recreational. He
began his professional career not as a philologist, but as a practising barrister in
Lincoln’s Inn, the oldest of the four Inns of Court in London.
3
According to ancient
tradition, all trainee barristers in Britain are obliged to join one of the Inns of Court
(Lincoln’s Inn, the Middle Temple, the Inner Temple, or Gray’s Inn). In addition to
passing each of their examinations, trainees are required to dine at their chosen Inn on
twenty-four occasions before they are allowed to become fully qualified barristers.
Guest was first admitted to Lincoln’s Inn as a student member on 24 January 1822.
Six years later, subsequent to fulfilling the aforementioned requirements of Lincoln’s
Inn, Guest was called to the bar on 18 June 1828 (cf. LIL MSS.). It was not customary
to belong to one Inn and reside in another, but it did happen occasionally. The annual
rent accounts for the Inner Temple (1849-1853) confirm that Guest did not reside in the
chambers of Lincoln’s Inn. He did, in fact, take residential chambers at number 6 (and
later 4) King’s Bench Walk in the Inner Temple, at a rental cost of £90 annually for one
pair of first-floor chambers on the south side of the staircase (cf. ITA).
4
In view of the fact that none of his paperwork survives in Lincoln’s Inn Library, the
exact size and nature, or indeed success, of Guest’s practice is not easy to determine.
However, it seems fairly certain that Guest was not an equity draftsman or conveyancer.
Had he been an equity draftsman, the task of drawing up the legal documents
administered in the special courts that dealt with equity law would have fallen to Guest.
5
Likewise, had he been a conveyancer, Guest would have drafted the legal documents
associated with the transferral of property from one owner to the other. Practitioners
specialising in these proceedings are usually identified in the annual Law Lists.7 Since
Guest is not documented as such it seems that, unlike many 19th-century barristers of a
scholarly bent (Holborn 2003), he did not specialise in drafting the written proceedings
3
The formal records of Lincoln’s Inn, which date from 1422 to the present day, are contained in its
‘Black Books’. Records for the three remaining Inns date from 1501 (Middle Temple), 1505 (Inner
Temple), and 1569 (Gray's Inn).
4
Inexplicably, the rent accounts for 1852-53 show that Guest’s annual rent was reduced to £75.
5
Equity law was developed alongside common law to remedy some of the flaws in the legal system.
7 Guest makes his first appearance in the 1831 edition of the Law Lists.

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in the Court of Chancery. Safe in the knowledge that Guest practised for some years as
a trial lawyer on the Midland Circuit (Marshall 1890: 318) and also at the Warwick and
Lincoln sessions (Law Times 1880: 106), we may infer that he was more of an orator
than a drafter.
6
Since Guest was a barrister in one of the four Inns of Court with the exclusive right of
admission to the bar, we might expect his name to appear regularly in the English
Reports.
7
However, his name rarely appears and when it does it tends to be in
connection with cases of relatively minor importance. For example, the English Reports
for 1834 cite Guest as having acted for the defendant in the case of Phipson v. Harvett,
which involved a petty dispute concerning non-payment of a 9d turnpike toll (English
Reports 1166: 149). In the same year, Guest is cited as having acted for the plaintiff in
the case of Warr v. Jolly, which pertained to the slanderous content of a statement issued
by a dissenting minister (English Reports 1336: 172). If these two examples can be
taken as representative of the types of legal case in which Guest was involved it is not
unduly difficult to appreciate his increasing dissatisfaction with the law. Although he
continued to hold residential chambers at King’s Bench Walk until 1853,
8
by the mid-
1830s Guest had ceased practising law entirely to concentrate fully on his academic
pursuits. An important consequence of Guest’s career change, aside from being able to
focus on his own academic interests, was the significant role he played in founding the
second Philological Society of London in 1842 a decade or so after the original Society
had disbanded.
2. The Original Philological Society of London (1830?)
In his 1965 presidential address to the Linguistic Society of America, Charles Hockett
(1916-2000) identified four key dates in the history of linguistics, each of which he
associated with a major theoretical breakthrough in modern linguistics (Hockett 1965:
185).
9
In adding the significant work of the Danish scholar Rasmus Kristian Rask
(1787-1832), and that of the German philologists Franz Bopp (1791-1867) and Jacob
(Ludwig Karl) Grimm (1785-1863) to this list of dates, Lyons (1999: 292) observes that
the existing Philological Society was founded between the age of the founding fathers
(initiated by Rask (1818 [1814]), Bopp (1816), and Grimm (1819-37)), and that of the
classical period of Indo-European comparative linguistics associated with the work of
the Neogrammarians, or Junggrammatische Richtung, in the mid-1870s (cf. Morpurgo
Davies 1978; 1998). Given that the Philological Society was established in its present
form in 1842, so soon after the philological successes of Bopp and Grimm in Germany,
it is not surprising that the impetus behind its founding owed much to the historical-
6
Guest’s considerable abilities as a public speaker are referred to in Guest (1883: xvi-xxiv).
7
A large number of the major law reports published before 1865 were subsequently reprinted in 176
volumes as the English Reports.
8
The half-yearly account for December 1853-June 1854 describes Guest’s former chambers as
‘Empty’ (cf. ITA).
9
The four significant breakthroughs identified by Hockett comprise the address delivered by Sir
William Jones (1746-1794) to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta on 2 February 1786 (Jones 1786, Robins
1987), the appearance of ‘Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung’ (1875) by Karl Verner (1846-
1896), the posthumous publication of Cours de linguistique generale (1916) by Ferdinand de Saussure
(1857-1913), and Noam Chomsky’s (b. 1928) Syntactic Structures (1957).

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comparative spirit evident in early 19th-century German scholarship.
10
Since the initial
impact of German linguistics in Britain can be traced back to the 1820s, it is perhaps
even less surprising to discover that the Society was formed from the remnants of an
earlier society of the same name established at London University ca 1830.
Recent editions of Transactions of the Philological Society (TPhS) cite 1830 as the year
during which the original Society was formed.
11
Notwithstanding this official
endorsement, in the opening paper of the Philological Society’s Sesquicentennial
Symposium in 1992, R. H. Robins (1921-2001) cast an element of doubt on this date of
origin. Robins maintained that the first informal meetings held by the original Society
were in fact taking place as early as 1828 (Robins 1992: 2). However, as Matthews
(2003) observes, had Robins managed to locate a source for the earlier date it seems
quite extraordinary that he made no efforts to change the date cited in TPhS at any time
during his forty-year period of office (Honorary Secretary 1961-1988, President 1988-
1992, President Emeritus 1992-2001). Moreover, none of the archival materials I have
inspected to date has shed any light on a possible source for Robins’s assertion. Of
course, it is entirely possible that Robins simply made a mistake.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the dates cited by Robins and TPhS do not concur.
In assuming that Robins’s ‘knowledge of the [Philological] Society was unparalleled’
(Durrell 2003), we might be inclined to accept the earlier date of origin without
question. However it would be unwise to disregard evidence to the contrary cited by
Hicks (1893: 10), in his Short Memoir of Thomas Hewitt Key (1799-1875), in which
he claims that 1830 was the year of origin. Given that Key was an instrumental figure
in founding both the original and existing societies, Hicks’s testimony for the later date
is compelling. Perhaps we ought also to note that the original Philological Society first
existed, albeit without official endorsement, under the guise of the Society for
Philological Inquiries. As the latter is said to have held its meetings at London
University apparently no earlier than 1830 (Bellot 1929: 88), and Key was one of its
founder members,14 in the absence of opposing evidence Robins’s date of 1828 seems
the less plausible of the two suggested. In any case, given the heightened philological
activity in London in the late 1820s and early 1830s amidst the founding of London
University on 1 October 1826, and the establishment in 1828 of Rosen’s chair in
Oriental Literature and Key’s chair in Latin, determining an exact date of origin is
perhaps not as important as noting that the existence of the Society in its various forms
is indicative of the growing philological atmosphere in London at the time.
10
Although in practice it is difficult to distinguish 19th-century ‘historical linguistics’ from
‘comparative linguistics, towards the end of the 20th century historical linguistics and comparativism
were being treated as separate fields of inquiry (cf. Collinge 1995a: 195-202, Collinge 1995b: 203-
212).
11
There was also an earlier British Philological Society founded in 1792 under the patronage of
Thomas Collingwood of St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford. The Society was based at 1 Mary Street in Fitzroy
Square and held close ties with St Marylebone Grammar School in London (SMGS). SMGS, which
was also known as the Philological School (or Old Philo) until London County Council took over in
the early 1900s, is said to have owed its establishment to the Philological Society of 1792 (cf. PhilSoc
Archives). There is no extant evidence to suggest that this earlier Society held any ties with the later
societies of the same name.
14 Key formed the Society for Philological Inquiries in conjunction with Friedrich August Rosen
(1805-1837) and George Long (1800-1879).

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Although Robins may have cast a shadow of doubt on the founding date of the original
Philological Society, we need look no further than the present Society’s Proceedings to
establish the identity of the personalities actively involved in its formation. On 11 April
1851, at a meeting of the Society (est. 1842), Thomas Hewitt Key laid on the table the
manuscript minutes book of a former Philological Society that had held a series of
informal meetings at London University. Key presented the MS. book ‘[…] in
accordance with the wishes of the Members of that Society’ (PPhS V, 1854: 61). The
members to whom Key was referring included himself, Henry Malden (1800-1876) and
George Long (1800-1879). Although Long (Professor of Latin at University College
1842-1846) was not elected to membership of the present Philological Society until
1860 (cf. TPhS 1861), like Key and Malden (Professor of Greek at London University
1831-1876),
12
he was a former fellow of Trinity College Cambridge and, after
succeeding Key as Professor of Latin at UCL in 1842, Long became a colleague of both
men. At this early stage, Key et al were primarily interested in emulating the new
comparative philology but they were also concerned with pursuing the ‘Philological
Illustration of the Classical Writers of Greece and Rome’ (PPhS V, 1854: 61). These
aims reflected an increasing desire in early 19th-century Britain to combine the old
philology with the new.
13
Identifying the year in which the original Society held the
last of its informal meetings has proved even more difficult than determining its year of
origin. However, there appears to be no evidence to suggest it existed in any identifiable
form beyond the early to mid-1830s. For the next decade or so, the Philological Society
essentially lay dormant.
3. The Philological Society of 1842
By the year 1842, the original burst of German-inspired scholarship in Britain had
diminished considerably. Even John Mitchell Kemble (1807-1857), an avid proponent
of Grimm’s work, was beginning to express tentative reservations on the absolute
authority of Grimm (cf. Kemble 1846). Concurrent with the founding of the
Philological Society in 1842, the British scholars with whom it was associated had
steadily begun to carve out a philological niche of their own, no longer as self-appointed
representatives of continental scholarship but as philologists in their own right. A
significant number of these British scholars held close ties with both societies. Doubt
surrounding the birth and demise of the original Society aside, there is no doubt as to
the identity of the driving force behind its reincarnation in 1842. On recounting Guest’s
involvement in founding the Society of 1842, Hensleigh Wedgwood (1803-1891)
recalled that although Key and Malden had actively assisted Guest in accomplishing his
objectives the ‘formation of the Society was entirely [Guest’s] doing’ (Guest 1883, I:
x).
We have already established that Guest removed his name from the books of Lincoln’s
Inn in the mid-1830s, subsequent to which he pursued an interest in philological and
historical inquiry. Guest’s academic endeavours soon became less a recreational pursuit
12
London University changed its name to University College London (UCL) on 28 November 1836.
13
The modern philology of the 1870s onwards is now often referred to as the new philology. The
earlier new philology under discussion here now tends to be called classical philology. The term new,
therefore, is relative to the period of usage.

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and more a vocation. It was during the early months of 1842, whilst in the formative
stage of his researches for Origines Celticae (1883), that Guest first put into practice
his idea of forming a society for advancing philological inquiry. In view of the fact that
Key and Malden liaised closely with Guest on his philological crusade almost from the
outset it seems highly probable that the latter had some knowledge of Key and Malden’s
involvement with the original Society, and conceivably therefore with the Society for
Philological Inquiries. Hence it is no surprise to find the names of Key and Malden
listed on the back of a printed announcement issued in London on 9 May 1842. The
printed statement, which bears the signature of Edwin Guest (Secretary pro. tem.), was
an invitation for interested parties to attend a meeting ‘[…] on Wednesday the 18th of
May, at One o’clock P.M., at the Rooms of the Statistical Society, No. 4, St. [sic]
Martin’s Place, for the purpose of forming a Philological Society’ (cf. PPhS I, 1844: 1).
The reverse side of this announcement comprises a list of gentlemen, 101 in total, who
had ‘expressed their desire to become members of the Philological Society’ (PPhS I,
1844: 2-3). Although the Society of 1842 was formed largely on the initiative of Guest,
Key and Malden were evidently involved in drawing up the rules for the new Society.
The similarity between the aims of the 1842 Society (PPhS I, 1844: i) and those of the
original Society of the 1830s (PPhS V, 1854: 61) is striking.
When launched, both societies had intended to combine classical and new philology.
The original Society was primarily though not solely interested in the pursuit of
comparative philology. The aims of the 1842 Society remain essentially unchanged
from the previous Society’s in that they propose to maintain the established tradition of
investigating the ‘Philological Illustration of the Classical Writers of Greece and Rome’
(PPhS I, 1844: i). The 1842 Rules for Government also state the main objectives of the
Society as being ‘[…] the investigation of the Structure, the Affinities, and the History
of Languages’ (ibid.). Clearly the new Society intended from the outset to incorporate
a similar but extended set of objectives to the old. The Society’s intention to incorporate
old and new philology may well have been unusual at the time (Aarsleff 1983: 213).
However, in observing the names featured on both the original list of prospective
members (PPhS I, 1844: 2-3) and the first official membership list (PPhS I, 25
November 1842, No. 1, 1844), and in considering the fields of inquiry with which they
are most associated, it does not seem altogether unusual that the Society had in mind
this dual purpose. If anything, these membership lists adequately reflect the interests
of both the old school and the new.
Subsequently an edition of The Athenaeum (28 May 1842, 463) carried a notice stating
that the preliminary meeting had been held as planned with Connop Thirlwall (1797-
1875), Bishop of St David’s, in the chair (President of the Philological Society 1842-
1869). The same edition stated that a further outcome of the meeting in May was an
agreement between those present that the proposed Society, in addition to undertaking
its own classical and new philological work, would endeavour to present reports ‘[…]
upon the recent progress and present condition of the study of the Structure, Affinities,
and History of Languages in other countries’ (ibid.). Interestingly, the intention to
report on philological progress elsewhere was omitted from the final version of the
Rules circulated at the first official meeting on 25 November 1842. As it was, reports
on philological developments in other countries were rarely read before the Society,

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although works undertaken by scholars on the continent deemed worthy of mention
were routinely laid on the table at meetings of Council.
14
During the six-month period between the initial meeting held on 18 May 1842 and the
first official meeting of Council held on 25 November in the same year, the Society’s
membership list had doubled in size from 101 to 203. The revised Rules for
Government no longer specified an intention on the Society’s part to report upon the
progress of the study of languages in other countries (PPhS I, 1844: i-v). In any case,
the number of home-grown papers presented to the Society was sufficiently high to fill
the pages of its journal without the need to report explicitly on developments made
elsewhere. In her contribution to the Sesquicentennial Symposium, Anna Morpurgo
Davies (1937-2014) observed that the Society had initially shown little interest in the
contemporary tradition of comparative philology established on the continent in the
early 19th century (Morpurgo Davies 1992). She notes that from Bopp and Grimm the
British philologists had accepted ‘[…] the techniques but not the identification of the
study of language with the comparative/historical method’ (1992: 4).
It is true that following its inception in 1842, and for the first two decades at least, the
Society was more concerned with classical philology, etymology, investigation of the
various forms and dialects of English, and non-Indo-European ethnographical philology
than it was in the development or explicit emulation of continental philology. However,
the continental tradition remained firmly ensconced in the background of the Society’s
dealings throughout much of the 19th century. Davies (1992: 3) accurately observes
that the Society had demonstrated a desire to maintain links with German philology.
This is especially true of the early years. Both Bopp and Grimm, for example, can be
counted amongst the elite list of German scholars elected to honorary membership
status (cf. PPhS I, No. 3 & No. 5, 1844).
15
Further clues to these links can be found
upon close inspection of papers read to the Society during its formative years. Many
papers, particularly those concerned with establishing genetic relationships between the
Indo-European languages, make specific reference to work undertaken by Rask, Grimm
or Bopp. Although these references frequently appear in support of continental
scholars’ findings (e.g. Key 1846), a minority view is increasingly voiced at variance
with them (e.g. Key 1863; Guest cf. below section 4).
There is some truth in Aarsleff’s statement that the ‘Philological Society did not create
a Forum for the new philology in England’ but perhaps there is less truth in his assertion
that ‘[…] the most striking fact about the Society’s work during the first twenty years
is the virtual absence of non-English, Germanic philology’ (1983: 221). In taking only
14
For example, at a meeting held on 26 May 1843, with the Rev. William Jenkins Rees (1772-1855) in
the chair, Bopp’s Über die Verwandtschaft der malayisch – polynesischen Sprachen mit den indisch –
europäischen (1841) was laid on the table (cf. PPhS I, 1844), and at the opening of a later meeting held
on 16 January 1846 (PPhS II, 1846, No. 40, x) Lord Francis Egerton (1800-1857) presented Bopp’s A
Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Slavonic
Languages (London 1845, transl. by the Orientalist and Diplomat Lieutenant Edward Backhouse
Eastwick (1814-1883)).
15
Cf. PPhS I, No. 3 (27 January 1843) for the announcement that letters had been received from
Grimm and Bopp ‘[…] expressing the interest they felt in the Society’, and cf. PPhS I, No. 5 for the
meeting (24 February 1843) at which Grimm and Bopp were proposed for election.

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a passing glance at the titles of papers read to the Society during the first twenty years,
one might easily be left with the impression that the members had all but abandoned an
interest in the continental tradition, particularly with respect to the ‘non-English’ Indo-
European (IE) languages. Nevertheless numerous attempts were made to establish
relationships between English and cognate forms in various other IE languages, an
endeavour which by definition is a trait associated with comparative scholarship on the
continent. However, whilst the initial momentum behind the founding of the
Philological Society owed a debt to the comparative-historical background of the day it
would seem that the health of the Society, in the beginning at least, was not as reliant
upon the progress of continental philology as had initially been anticipated.
4. Guest and the Philological Society
In view of the fact that the formation of the 1842 Society was the brainchild of Guest,
it seems only fitting that he should have presented one of its first papers. Accordingly,
at an early meeting of the Society held on 9 December 1842, Guest delivered the first
paper of many which successfully combined his two favourite topics of Roman-British
history and philology (‘On certain Welsh Names of Places preserved in English
Compounds’ (Guest 1844a)). The paper comprises a discussion of the names with
which the Welsh race of Worcestershire was identified by the Romans and Anglo-
Saxons. Although unremarkable in content, the paper indicates that for Guest philology
and history are inextricably linked. By the time he founded the Society, Guest had
become sufficiently well acquainted with Old English (OE) to make it the central theme
in the majority of papers he was to read during his period of office (1842-1853).
Kemble and Benjamin Thorpe (1782-1870) have been credited with leading the
advancement of English philology in the 1830s (Aarsleff 1983: 212). Philologists of
note educated both Kemble and Thorpe whereas Guest was entirely self-taught in the
art of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Kemble worked with Grimm in Göttingen for a year
(1831), and Thorpe studied under Rask in Copenhagen for four years (1826-1830).
Guest on the other hand had trained himself to read OE whilst examining unedited
manuscripts of Anglo-Saxon poetry in preparation for his first book English Rhythms
(1838). Having spawned the impassioned debate between the scholars who were for
and against the new philology in the 1830s, Kemble had established himself as a
spokesperson of some notoriety in favour of the new philology (cf. Dickins 1939,
Aarsleff 1983). A scholar of equal repute, Thorpe was awarded a civil list pension in
1835. Guest must have seemed like a neophyte in comparison. Although Guest was
never a contender for ‘Philological Personality of the Year’, we ought at least to
acknowledge the fact that many of his contemporaries treated him with the same respect
they afforded Kemble and Thorpe. Numerous colleagues sought the advice of Guest
and he was frequently sent OE manuscripts to examine (cf. Freeman papers; Osborn
MS.). Whether or not his humble educational background was at the root of Guest’s
relative anonymity, the truth is that he never hungered for the level of recognition
bestowed upon Kemble and Thorpe.
Intriguingly, Kemble held a regard for Guest that was not wholly reciprocated.
Following a lengthy discussion with Guest at the fifth annual meeting of the
Archaeological Institute (held at Salisbury in 1849), Kemble confessed to being envious

9
of Guest’s extensive knowledge of Welsh literature and the Welsh language. ‘In other
things’, declared Kemble, ‘I am not the least afraid of him; but there he beats me’ (Guest
1883: xx-xxi). Guest did not hold his rival in such high esteem. He suspected Kemble
of ‘borrowing’ ideas from Grimm, a practice of which Guest sorely disapproved. In
one of his letters to Edward Freeman, Guest writes that he does not hold with the popular
view on the etymology of hlaford, also adopted by Freeman, and insists that ‘Kemble
borrowed [the names of English topography] from Grimm’ (Freeman papers: Ref.
FAI/285/b).
Although Guest was known for being reticent to share his views when party to a heated
philological debate, at least until he was certain of the views he held, his position on
German philology was formed early in his philological career. Guest’s reluctance to
use contemporary terminology of German origin in his second Philological Society
paper provides the first of many clues to suggest he is no more an enthusiast of the
German philologists than he is of Kemble. Guest consistently uses the term ‘Old
English’ to refer to the Middle English period and ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to refer to what is
now commonly known as Old English (Guest 1844c). This he does even though the
history of the language has by this time been divided into the three main periods alt-
‘old’ (OE), mittel- ‘middle’ (ME), and neu- ‘new’ or ‘modern’ (MnE) by the German
philologists (Burrow and Turville-Petre 1996: 3). By the year 1877, Henry Sweet notes,
in the sixth annual presidential address to the Philological Society, that the term ‘Old
English’ is now generally preferred over ‘Anglo-Saxon’ by the majority of scholars, not
just by himself and Professor March in England but also by Professor Zupitza in
Germany (TPhS 1877-78-79, Vol. 17, 1879: 3). Unperturbed by these recent
developments, throughout his lifetime Guest persisted in using the already established
terminology to differentiate between the various stages of English.
Whilst Guest wittingly disregards German philology en bloc, it is Grimm with whom
he has a particular problem. Guest frequently expresses his disapproval for Grimm’s
analyses of the English language and methods of comparison. Guest condemns
Grimm’s analysis of the pronoun hers as a regular genitive of her (Deutsche
Grammatik, I, 788) as being ‘quite untenable’ on the basis that hers is in fact a ‘double
inflexion’ (Guest 1844b, 10 March 1843, 69). He later protests that Grimm’s ‘imperfect
acquaintance’ with certain English idioms has led him ‘[…] into a serious error, which
English writers have too hastily accepted’ (Guest 1846a, 28 February 1845). Guest
condemns Grimm further at a meeting on 28 November 1845 in a paper entitled ‘On
the Anomalous Verbs of the English Language’ (Guest 1846b). The purpose of the
paper is not to attack Grimm but to investigate the class of verbs divided by the Dutch
scholar Lambert ten Kate (1674-1731)
16
in direct contrast with those outlined by the
Oxford scholar George Hickes (1642-1715).
17
However, before proceeding with his
paper, Guest is careful to point out that ten Kate’s analysis of Germanic verbs was
subsequently ‘adopted by the continental philologists’ (ibid.). In much the same way
16
Lambert ten Kate (1710) discovered that the stem vowels of the strong verbs in Germanic languages follow
regular patterns of deviation.
17
Hickes (1689) produced the first exposition in Britain of the structure of Old English, Gothic, Old Frisian and
Old Icelandic. However, unlike ten Kate he did not make any formal comparisons between the languages or try to
explain correspondences between the verb forms.

10
as Guest is keen to ensure Kemble is not credited with having originated work that has
already been carried out, he is always on hand to make sure the work of the German
philologists is not needlessly glorified.
In comparing the present and past tenses of the verb to come in ME (1846b), Guest
notes that the second person singular of the present tense occasionally takes -st instead
of a ‘vowel inflexion’ as in comst ‘come’ and herest ‘hear’ (as does the second person
singular of the indicative herdest, although the -est ending is gradually lost). Since the
-st formation depends on laws that vary and are ‘both obscure and difficult to
investigate’, no deductions can be drawn from the laws already proposed by philologists
on the continent. As far as Guest is concerned, these ‘laws’ do not offer any proof
compelling enough for him to embrace (ibid.). Aside from his reluctance to accept these
laws without question, Guest is unimpressed that Grimm’s name has been assigned to
the laws first observed by Rask. Aggrievedly Guest remarks that the laws now
commonly ascribed to Grimm used to be called ‘the laws of Rask’ (Guest 1883 I: 345).
Guest’s main objective was to further philological inquiry rather than simply to repeat
work already completed by others. This purpose is clear from Guest’s response to
William Whewell’s (1794-1866) account of the defunct Cambridge Etymological
Society (27 June 1851, PPhS V, 1854: 133). Guest comments on the importance of
keeping a record of previous societies formed with the same or a similar set of objectives
in mind, lest work already undertaken be repeated. Without such records, argues Guest,
‘[…] the history of English scholarship could hardly be considered as complete’ (ibid.).
To his credit, Guest saw little point in addressing questions that had already been
sufficiently investigated, irrespective of whether the investigations had been carried out
elsewhere or on his own doorstep.
Guest does not confine his criticisms to continental scholarship. Equal to his growing
dislike of Grimm is the contempt he feels for inept editors and transcribers of Anglo-
Saxon manuscripts. He frequently reproaches editors and contemporary scribes for the
way they pare down the vernacular. ‘Even [John] Milton’s English has been corrected!’
declares Guest in ‘On the Ellipsis of the Verb in English Syntax’ (Guest 1846c: 9).
Although Guest did not give credit where he felt it was not due, he was not averse to
giving himself the occasional pat on the back. In the 1830s, Guest had argued that wist
was not the preterite of the verb wiss(e), as had been supposed, but the preterite of the
verb wit. He claimed that wiss(e) was an adverb answering to the Germanic gewiss
(Guest 1838: 430).
18
Over forty years later, Guest noted with pride that the ‘intrusive
verb’ wist was gradually disappearing from the dictionaries and glossaries of Old
English (Guest 1883: 353). However, he strongly objected to the fact that neither the
editors nor the transcribers had bothered to thank him for ridding OE texts of such
imprecision (ibid.)
The conviction that he was right once his mind had been settled was a character trait
Guest shared with many gentlemen scholars of the day. It was precisely this level of
determination that led Guest to organise the first meeting of the Society in 1842. Often
18
The OE forms wiss(e) and wist(e) both appear in OE manuscripts as the preterite singular of witan
‘know’, wit regularly appears as the dual pronoun ‘we two’.

11
when a venture of this sort is on its feet, the initial excitement fades away and the
humdrum business of the daily routine takes over. Perhaps it was this laissez-faire
attitude of the London scholars that led to the dissolution of the original Society in the
1830s. The fact that Guest was able to keep up the momentum when the initial
commotion surrounding the 1842 Society had dwindled is a credit to his tenacity. Guest
had been a leading light for the Philological Society from its inception until the time he
resigned the secretaryship on 27 May 1853. Throughout volumes I-VI of the
Proceedings (1844-54), Guest’s name appears on the list of papers read at meetings
more frequently than that of any other member. In addition to performing his secretarial
duties, Guest managed to produce twenty-two papers during his eleven-year period of
office.
Aside from the numerous contributions he made to the Society’s journal, Guest was an
active participant in discussions that followed the reading of any paper and he was
always ready to step into the breach when any member failed to produce his designated
piece (Guest 1883: x). Guest’s ability to deliver an informed talk at short notice was
recorded at a meeting held on 23 April 1847 (PPhS III, 1848, No. 58, I). The Rev.
Richard Garnett (1789-1850) in the chair announced that the evening’s paper had not
been received owing to the sudden illness of its author. Guest swiftly volunteered to
read the latter portion of a paper he had read at a previous meeting on 26 February 1847
(‘On the Elements of Language; their arrangement and their accidents’ (cf. Guest 1848a;
1848b; 1850)). There had not been sufficient time to engage in a lively discussion of
the points he had raised on the earlier occasion. Consequently, Guest was most anxious
to finish his paper.
In 1852, the same year Guest was nominated and elected Master of Gonville and Caius
College, he became an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries (SA). Given his
interest in Roman-British history, Guest’s election to membership of the SA is
unsurprising. The rising generation of Saxonists in 1830s England, which was
predominantly led by Kemble and Thorpe, effectively represented the new continental
scholarship. The older generation of Anglo-Saxon scholars, many of whom belonged
to the SA, epitomized the time-honoured tradition of Anglo-Saxon scholarship that had
developed throughout the previous three centuries. Although Guest was only forty-two
years of age when he seized upon the initiative to form the Philological Society, in
respect of his combined interest in philology and British history he was very much a
gentleman of the old school of philology rather than the new. Guest had never been an
advocate of continental philology, and the historical approach of the SA corresponded
to the old Saxonist establishment in many respects. In addition to satisfying his
historical appetite in the 1850s and beyond, Guest revelled in fostering his
archaeological interests. He was renowned for having delivered several outstanding
talks on the history of Britain at meetings of the Archaeological Institute, most notably
‘The four great Boundary Dykes of Cambridgeshire, and the probable date of their
construction’, which he delivered at a meeting held at the Senate House in Cambridge
on 5 July 1854 (Guest 1857).
It is worthy of note that the year in which Guest was admitted Doctor of Civil Law
(D.C.L.) ad eundem at Oxford (7 June 1853) (cf. Foster), he was to read his final paper

12
as Secretary of the Philological Society (Guest 1854a). Guest presented the paper at a
meeting on 25 February 1853, a few months prior to his resignation from office in May.
There were no fanfares announcing his impending departure, perhaps because no one
knew this was to be Guest’s final paper as Secretary least of all Guest himself. In
keeping with his notoriously composed character, Guest left his secretarial role behind
with the minimum of fuss. Although he grazed in the Vice-Presidents’ pasture until his
death in 1880, there is no evidence to suggest that Guest had any say in the everyday
running of the Society’s affairs.
19
It is likely that he stepped down from his secretarial
duties owing to the demands on his time as Master of Caius (he was also Vice-
Chancellor of the College 1854-55). Guest himself admitted that he had been ‘[…]
driven from pillar to post – what with College meetings, [and] College and other
examinations’ (Freeman papers, Ref. FAI/7/285a). Perhaps his deepening interest in
British history and archaeology had also diverted his attention. Notwithstanding the
reasons for Guest’s departure, the Philological Society continued to thrive in his absence
under the joint secretaryship of Key and Frederick James Furnivall (1825-1910) (cf.
Marshall 2003)
20
.
5. Origines Celticae (1883)
Evidently, Guest was kept busy by the formal duties he had to perform not only as
Master of Caius but also in his role as a Justice of the Peace for Oxford (cf. Guest 1852)
and Cambridge (cf. Guest 1854b), and by the various scholarly gatherings he chose to
attend. Even so, in later years he began writing what was to become his pet project.
The resulting two-volume work Origines Celticae (1883), edited by W. Stubbs (Regius
Professor at Oxford) and the Rev. C. Deedes, was published both posthumously and
incomplete. Guest had fully intended the work to be a complete history of Britain. His
aim was to trace the first inhabitants of the island and chart the progress of subsequent
populations from prehistoric times to the present day. Guest had hoped to accomplish
this Herculean task via careful study of archaeological remains, geographical names
and ancient monuments, and in the development of his own philological speculations.
Although Origines is not a philological work as such, the detailed chapter on early
language and letter changes (Vol. I, Ch. XI: 334) testifies to the fact that Guest had
maintained a healthy interest in English philology.
In reflective mood, Guest recalls his own philological past and in doing so refers to the
work of the German philologists. Guest has not changed his opinion on Grimm’s
account of letter changes at this point and although in his earlier Philological Society
papers the disregard he felt for Grimm was implicit, the views expressed in Origines
(Vol. I) can leave the reader in no doubt as to his position. In quoting a passage from
Grimm’s Deutsche Grammatik (1822 I: 584), Guest admits that Grimm’s comparative
analyses of the Greek, Gothic and Old High German sound changes create ‘a pretty
formula’. Somewhat acerbically, however, he adds that as soon as the selected
languages do not ‘furnish us with the necessary letter changes’ the selection is
automatically widened by like-minded philologists, who then find ‘representative
19
Guest is cited as a contributor to the Society’s New English Dictionary on Historical Principles
(Murray 1884: v).
20
Key was Co-Secretary from 1853 to 1862. Furnivall held the position from 1853 to 1910.

13
languages whenever they find it convenient’. On the basis of such reasoning, argues
Guest, ‘there is no law we may not establish’ (1883, Vol. I: 345).
Guest also attacks Grimm for the omissions in his description of the sound changes in
the Germanic (Gmc) series of obstruents (cf. Fig. 1), pointing out that the said law does
not account for the apparent exception to the rule concerning the medial t. The
exception to which Guest refers is where the expected change from Proto-Indo-
European (PIE) voiceless stop > Gmc voiceless fricative sometimes becomes Gmc
voiced stop or voiced fricative (e.g. PIE *bhrātēr ‘brother’ > Gothic brōþar, medial *t
> /θ /; but PIE *pətēr ‘father’ > Gothic fadar, medial /t/ > voiced /d/). However, Guest
fails to take account of the most recent developments in linguistic science. He is
apparently unaware of Verner’s Law (1875), which states that the voiceless alveolar
plosive [t] becomes voiced alveolar plosive [d] medially in Gmc words if it occurs
between voiced segments and it immediately precedes the original stressed syllable but
not if it follows it. Thus, since the stress was originally placed on the second syllable in
PIE *pətēr, the voiceless dental fricative in Grimm’s Law [θ] becomes voiced [ð] in
Verner’s Law, and subsequently the voiced alveolar stop [d] in the OE form faeder.
(Fig. 1) Grimm’s Law
(a) voiceless stop > voiceless fricative PIE
*p t k > Gmc /f θ x/
(b) voiced stop > voiceless stop PIE *b d g
> Gmc /p t k/
(c) voiced aspirated stop > voiced stop PIE
*bh, dh, gh > Gmc /b d g/
(McMahon 1994: 23)
In respect of the laws attributed to Grimm, the confusion for Guest partly derives from
what he sees as Grimm’s failure to distinguish between sound change and orthographic
change. Guest observes that the ‘dental aspirate’ has two sounds, one a ‘whisper’ and
one a ‘vocal sound’ (both terms were originally coined by Guest in the 1840s and
‘whisper’ was adopted by many others including Henry Sweet).
21
Guest also notes that
Grimm’s formula does not account for the differences between the two sounds in the
orthographic conventions exhibited in OE manuscripts (Guest 1883, Vol. I: 346). He
maintains that OE manuscripts do not use the symbols þ ‘thorn’ or ð ‘eth’ (or ðæt as the
Anglo-Saxons often referred to it) with any consistency and he strongly suggests that
Grimm ought to have considered this fact. It is true that scribes of Anglo-Saxon
manuscripts do not employ these symbols consistently but this is partly because the
distinctions appeared to be less significant in OE (Mitchell and Robinson 1992: 13). It
would seem inadvisable, therefore, to base any hypotheses of sound change on
inconsistent orthographic evidence alone.
21
In 1868, Sweet described the voiceless consonants as ‘breathed’ (cf. Sweet 1869). Later he described
a narrowing of the glottis without vibration as ‘whisper’, a narrowing of the whole glottis as ‘weak
whisper’, and the closed glottis as ‘strong whisper’ (Sweet 1908: 19-21).

14
Had he been aware of Verner’s Law (1875), Guest would doubtless have noticed that a
number of Verner’s alternations are preserved in OE such as the accent-shifted preterite
plural and past participle of vocalic verbs (Quirk and Wrenn 1957: 127). A case in
point is (class III strong verb) weorðan ‘become’ (preterite 3rd person singular wearþ,
3rd person plural wurdon, and past participle geworden), in which the stress was
originally placed on the second syllable. This example shows that, unless affected by
analogy, the preterite indicative and subjunctive (and the past participle) in cases where
the original stress was placed after the affected consonant, demonstrate the change
[θ>ð>d] outlined in Verner’s Law. When Guest was in the throes of composing his
swansong he had not been actively involved with the Philological Society for almost
thirty years. He had always taken great pleasure from reading widely and keeping
abreast of developments in philology. However, during the last thirty years of his life,
Guest’s historical interests appear to have overshadowed his awareness of
contemporary issues to such an extent that he failed to monitor the most recent linguistic
developments or at least to recognise their importance. In the midst of writing Origines,
Guest was forced to resign his position as Master of Caius through ill health. He died
a few weeks later on 23 November 1880.
Following his death, Guest’s colleagues best remembered him for the ‘combination of
laborious study’ and ‘brilliant conjecture’ with which he undertook his philological and
historical works on the English language (Guest 1883, I: xxv). He was even favourably
compared to the ‘genius’ of his greatest adversary, John Mitchell Kemble (ibid., xix).
Admittedly, Guest’s name is not recorded in the Philological Society annals alongside
19th-century linguistic greats such as Ellis, Sweet, and Murray. Nonetheless it is worth
remembering that without his initiative the Society would not exist in its present form,
if indeed it would exist at all. A few weeks after Guest’s death, at a meeting held on
Friday 3 December 1880, the President (Ellis) confirmed that the ‘early success of the
Society’ was attributable solely to Guest’s hard work (Monthly Abstract of Proceedings,
TPhS 1880-81, Vol. 18, 1881, 41). The Society continues to prosper in more or less the
same format outlined by Guest over 170 years ago and although he may not reasonably
be credited with first having the idea to form such a society, he can certainly be
documented as having successfully established the oldest and most enduring learned
linguistics society in Britain. Edwin Guest may no longer remembered for elucidating
‘[…] many obscure points in the history of the English and cognate tongues’ (Guest
1883, I: xvii) but at the very least he ought to be remembered for the significant role he
played in establishing the sound principles upon which the Philological Society
conducted its business, both then and since.
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