394 HISTORY OF CERTAIN 
of words than of families. And as many good 
old words are dwindling away and becoming ob- 
solete—and others, once of common use, now only 
known as adjuncts, and lingering in compounds— 
it may not be irrelevant to the purposes of a 
Literary Society to bring before it the origin, 
import, and exact radical ideas of a few. 
The first specimen which we shall take 
under our consideration with this view, is the 
old Anglo-Saxon verb of motion “faran,” 
“ferth,” “for,” to go forth. With the single 
exception of the colloquial enquiry, ‘‘ How 
fares it?” there remains, perhaps, no other sim- 
ple form of this verb in use at the present day. 
It was, however, a very common word in the early 
chronicles, such as ‘‘ Robert of Gloucester’s,”’ 
“ Peter Langloft’s,’ &c., during the transition 
state of the Anglo-Saxon into modern English. 
While our very early English Authors, such 
as Chaucer, Spenser, &c., use, frequently, such 
phrases as, “so foorth they far’d,” where the 
verb retains its simple original meaning. In 
this respect, it, to a certain extent, agrees with 
its cognate term “fahren,” in the German lan- 
guage, which either expresses or implies, motion 
forward, towards an object or place. So with the 
