INTRODUCTION. Clll 



observe it as something apart from our- 

 selves, we see that they who have just 

 learnt to read and write prefer to say 

 * commence ' rather than the homely native 

 word ^ begin:' while such as aspire to 

 pen a paragraph, enjoy the savour of ^eli- 

 minate ' and scorn to speak as their fathers 

 spoke, who said, to cast out or get rid of. 



I have no doubt that the same thing in 

 smaller scale happened before, and that 

 among the literate Anglo-Saxons there 

 was a veneration for the Latin language 

 which operated in the seventh and eighth 

 centuries just as the same sentiment ope- 

 rated afterwards in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth. 



But to produce an example. It would 

 indeed be a very strange thing, if it Were 

 credible, that our ancestors borrowed 

 the word Rose from the Latin merely 

 because they had beforetime no word of 

 hke signification. We know well that they 

 had the plant, in many lovely varieties, 

 flowering profusely before their eyes all 

 the livelong summer in every copse and 

 brake and patch of woodland scrub. Were 



