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show the worthlessness of words taken in themselves — of words 

 apart from the things represented by them. What's in a name, 

 we may ask in quite a different spirit, and expecting quite a dif- 

 ferent answer. For we know what Shakespeare did not — we know 

 that words have an independent meaning — that in themselves, 

 without considering the things they represent, there is much 

 knowledge bound up. Philology was unknown, as a science at 

 least, in the time of the great poet; Indeed it is only compara- 

 tively lately that it has attained a position among the sciences. 

 But it has done so ; and now it invests language with quite a new 

 interest. There is not a word in any language which has not now 

 a history, sometimes a romance about it ; and Philology teaches 

 us how to find out this history, — how to analyse words, — how to 

 trace their constituents away back into the remote past, and to 

 connect them with scenes and events, with manners, and cus- 

 toms, and languages, which belong to the earliest periods of the 

 human race. This is true of all words. It is as true of all those 

 appellations by which men have distinguished themselves, from the 

 earliest times, as it is of any word to be found in a dictionary. 

 For there is no personal name which has not, or had not, a signifi- 

 cation. The name which any one of us may bear, not only determines 

 our relation to certain individuals who have borne it before us, 

 but it contains, if we were only wise enough to see it, a wonderful 

 history of times and of men long passed away. There is much 

 in a name, indeed. The history of people whose deeds are not 

 recorded in the annals of the world is bound up and often to be read 

 in the names they bear. We must not look upon personal, I should 

 say family names, as having no other significance for us than that of 

 distinguishing one set of people from another. In many cases 

 they do a great deal more than this — they contain the family his- 

 tory ; they tell us of the race, the tribe, the people from whom 

 those who bear them were descended ; they speak often of wars 

 and invasions ; they tell often of oppression and slavery, of which 

 the present generation may have now no memory. They do all 

 this, and more than this. I need not here give any instances, as 

 we shall have numerous examples further on. As a preliminary 



