'Chester,' just as when we occupied New South Wales and found a place called 'Wagga-Wagga,' we continued to call it 'Wagga Wagga,' and in this way we may say that the Romans have left their mark upon our language. But their influence is seen only in a few geographical names. This Latin element is sometimes called the Latin of the First Period.

16. In A.D. 597, St Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to teach Christianity to the English, and in the course of the next four centuries several Latin words, connected with the Christian faith and ritual, were introduced into the language. Translations from Latin originals brought in others. Commerce was extending also between England and other European nations, from whom were borrowed terms of Latin origin, new names for new things. Let us picture to ourselves the influence which a missionary settlement would have to-day upon the language of a tribe of African savages. From the Christian teachers they would borrow such words as bible, hymn-book, chapel, and add this English element to their African speech. Then after a while the trader would follow, and the language of the natives would be enriched with such words as rifle, gunpowder, gin. In like manner, between the years A.D. 600 and 1000, Roman ecclesiastics introduced words of which altar, creed, font, candle, are examples, while, in consequence of enlarged knowledge owing to extended trade, such words as cheese, cook, linen, poppy, pear, found their way into our language. This Latin is called the Latin of the Second Period.

17. We saw that Norman-French was in the main a language of Latin origin. Hence we may say that the words which we owe to our Norman conquerors are Latin words which have come into the language indirectly, Latin words 'once removed.' This Latin element is called

the Latin of the Third Period.

Now, if we consider how complete the Norman Conquest was and how rapidly it was effected, we may feel some surprise that it is an English language and not a French language which we speak to-day. Norman lords occupied the lands from which English owners had been ejected. Normans held the higher offices in church and state. Deliberate efforts were made to extend the use of the French language. Boys at grammar schools had to turn Latin into French. Cases in the law-courts were carried on in French. Yet in spite of all, English survived and prevailed. One important event which contributed largely to this result was the loss of the French possessions in John's reign (1206). Norman barons had to make their choice between life in France and life in England, and those who settled in England at length threw in their lot with the English and ceased to be French. Then again the war with France in Edward III.'s reign made everything French unpopular. In this reign boys were no longer required to construe their Latin into French, and English was used instead of French in the law-courts.

To the Normans we owe many words which relate to (1) feudalism, chivalry and war; e.g. homage, fealty, banner, lance, battle, captain: (2) law, government and office; e.g. attorney, assize, reign, council, baron, duke: (3) the church; e.g. cloister, penance: (4) hunting; e.g. chase, leveret: and also (5) many abstract terms, e.g. nature, art, science, glory1.

The Normans gave us many more words which do not come under these heads. An interesting example of the way in which the language of a country illustrates its

1 Words of French origin introduced between 1250 and 1400 have been called Anglo-French, to mark the fact that they belong to a separate French dialect, developed in England and different from any of the forms of French spoken on the Continent. They constitute a valuable element of our vocabulary, many of them being as much required for daily use as the words of native origin.

history is supplied by the names of certain animals and of the meats which they furnish. When the beast is alive, we call it an ox, or a sheep, a calf, or a pig. These are English words. When it is cooked for the table, we call it beef, mutton, veal, pork. These are French words. From these facts we might draw the inference that the English peasant looked after the stock on the farm, and his Norman master ate the joints in the hall. Sir Walter Scott puts this point forcibly in Ivanhoe.

18. The Latin of the Fourth Period comprises those words of Latin origin which were introduced in swarms during the time of the Revival of Classical Learning, or have passed into our language since that date. The age of the Tudors was one in which men's minds expanded rapidly, and new ideas required new words for their expression. The Reformation in religion; the diffusion of literature owing to the recent invention of printing; geographical discovery; progress in science,-all these things rendered the old vocabulary inadequate, and the fashionable study of classical authors showed where fresh words were to be found. For one who has learnt a little Latin, it is an easy matter to identify a Fourth-Period word on the page of a modern book. From the same Latin original we may have another word, which has come to us through the Norman-French, disguised beyond easy recognition in the course of centuries of oral transmission. Compare the following:

Norman-French origin, we see another consequence of the New Learning. Thus dette was changed to debt, vitaille to victual, aventure to adventure.

19. Summary of borrowings from Latin. The Latin element in modern English is connected with one or another of the following four leading events:

I. Roman occupation of Britain, A.D. 43 to 410. Latin words found in names of places; e.g. Dorchester.

2. Introduction of Christianity among the English, A.D. 597. During this period, extending from A.D. 600 to 1000, about 150 Latin words were brought in, many of them through the influence of the church and others through commercial intercourse.

3. Norman Influence, A.D. 1066-1400. Latin introduced indirectly through the Norman-French and also directly, Latin being at that time the language of the learned professions, law, medicine and divinity.

4. Revival of Letters, the 16th century and first half of the 17th, or the period extending from the Tudors to the Commonwealth. Words of all kinds.

20. Before leaving this subject we must touch on a few other points of interest connected with the Latin element in our language.

Though our language is the English language, it contains more words of Latin than of native origin. In saying this we mean that, if we take a dictionary and count up the total number of words, we shall find that Latin has furnished us with more than we obtained from our English forefathers. But then we do not use more Latin words than English words, although we have more of them. This last sentence contains eighteen words. Of these eighteen, only two are of Latin origin, the words use and Latin. All the rest are native English. Two in eighteen is a trifle over 11 per cent. By way of contrast let us examine a sentence taken at random from an essay of Matthew Arnold's:

"All our good secondary schools have at present some examination proceeding from the universities; and if this kind of examination,

customary and admitted already, were generalised and regularised, it would be sufficient for the purpose.'

Here we have thirty-five words, and thirteen of them come from the Latin source. This gives 37 per cent. of foreign origin as compared with

eleven per cent. in the former passage.

One more sample, this time a verse of Wordsworth's:

"Six feet in earth my Emma lay,

And yet I loved her more

For so it seemed,—than till that day

I e'er had loved before."

From these four lines, containing six-and-twenty words, the Latin element is altogether absent.

Now, how is it that the dictionary proportion of Latin words in English and the proportion in use are so different?

Because (1) in the dictionary every word counts once and only once. That, and, if, count as one English word each, and regularise, generalise, secondary, count as one word each. But we can hardly make a sentence without bringing in such words as that, and, if, whilst we may pass months or years or a life-time without bringing into our sentences such words as regularise, generalise, secondary. We should find it a troublesome business to make a sentence ten words long without using a single native English word, for the English words are the mortar, so to speak, by which the sentence is bound together. Take these words away, and the sentence tumbles to pieces. Take away the classical words, and we can in most cases substitute for them words of English origin.

Again, (2) by far the greater number of the words in the dictionary are words which we never use at all,--words which we should never meet with, unless we chanced to see them when we were looking in the dictionary. How many words there are in the English language, it is not an easy matter to say. Some persons would give 100,000 as the number, others 200,000, others 400,000. These startling discrepancies do not imply any incapacity to count correctly on the part of the people who furnish the estimates; they arise from a difference of opinion as to what is to be reckoned as a word. Suppose we accept the lowest of the three totals mentioned above, and say that there are 100,000 words now current in our language; we might then roughly distribute them thus without any great error in the proportion: Latin 60,000, English 30,000, Greek and other sources 10,000.

But how many of these words are in ordinary use? To this question it is impossible to give a definite answer. Shakespeare employed twice as many words to express his thoughts as anybody else, and he said all that he had to say with about 15,000 words. Milton needed only half that number. An educated man of to-day has a vocabulary of some five or six thousand words. Two thousand suffice for an average mechanic; one thousand for a schoolboy; half that number for an