^7 3*] The Future of the English Language. 369 



of the rich popular literature of Italy, Spain, France, and 

 our own country still further weakened it. Yet we see that, 

 so late as the time of the English commonwealth, it was 

 necessary to write in Latin for a European audience. 

 Milton, when pleading for a free press in that republic, used 

 eloquent and earnest English words ; but when he had 

 to defend the commonwealth against its foreign assailants, 

 he used the Latin tongue. Salmasius attacked the English 

 nation before the literary tribunal of Europe, and both plea 

 and reply are in the language of the courts. A little earlier 

 we have a still more striking instance in the case of Lord 

 Bacon, all of whose most important writings were written 

 in Latin. Fancy Darwin or Huxley thinking it necessary 

 to their fame, and to the propagation of their theories, to 

 write in any language but their own. When Newton's 

 grand discoveries were made, they were recorded, not 

 in English, but in Latin. Yet, when Bacon disdained to 

 issue in English his views on the method of philosophy, it 

 had received the plays of Shakespeare and the authorised 

 version of the Scriptures, and in Newton's time it had 

 been ennobled and dignified by the mighty music of Milton's 

 verse. 



Latin retained its hold upon the physical sciences long 

 after it had ceased to be used to any great extent in any 

 other field of literature. Even in this field it has now lost 

 its position. There are very few works of any great scien- 

 tific importance which have been issued in Latin during the 

 past century. At present, of the writers on science, each 

 one uses his own language, and leaves the propagation 

 of his views to the mercy of translators, or the linguistic 

 acquirements of his fellow-scholars. At no date were these 

 probably greater than at present. The knowledge of lan- 

 guages has become a very common accomplishment ; but, 

 after all, the acquirement of foreign idioms is a difficult 

 thing, and there must always be in every language a sort of 

 holy of holies, into which the feet of the Gentile can never 

 enter.* It is also obvious that the study necessary to 



* A recent writer gives his own linguistic experiences: — "As a boy, we 

 were taught Greek and Latin, such an amount as enabled us to read a Greek 

 testament with the use occasionally of a lexicon, and to read freely Ovid and 

 Virgil. But our future career was selected to be one in which Greek and 

 Latin were not subjects for examination, but French and German ' paid well ;' 

 consequently, four years were devoted to the study of these two languages, — 

 at the end of which time we found ourselves in South Africa, where the only 

 ' languages of any practical use were Dutch and Caffre. To Dutch and Came, 

 consequently, we turned our attention ; and, after rather more than a year's 

 study, we were able to converse imperfectly in both these. But again were we 

 on the point of finding these later labours useless, for there was every prospect 



