the members of the human body: head, eye, ear, nose, hair, mouth, tongue, breast, bosom, heart, arm, hand, finger, foot, bone, flesh, and blood; for the faculties and actions of the mind: soul, feeling, will, understanding, wit, word, speech, deed (although here we meet with a number of Latin words, as mind, reason, intellect, memory, sense, conscience, imagination, action); for the necessities and actions of daily life: food, bread, water, milk, eat, drink, sit, stand, walk, go, come, rest, sleep, dream, wake, live, and die; for the essential affections and conditions: love, hatred, health, sickness, happiness, woe, mirth, sorrow, life, death, grave; for the elements and common objects of nature: earth, land, sea, fire, sun, moon, stars, heaven, wind, storm, thunder, light, heat, cold; for the changes in the day and season day, night, morning, noon, evening, spring, summer, fall, winter; for the domestic animals: horse, mare, colt, cow, ox, steer, calf, sheep, pig, boar, swine, cat, dog, mouse, deer; for the chief products of the earth and the main instruments of cultivating it wheat, rye, oats, barley, plow, spade, sickle, flail.

Most of the onomatopoëtic or sound-imitating words are Saxon, as bang, buzz, bellow, break, crash, creak, gurgle, hiss, hum, howl, hollow, murmur, roar, shriek, snap, snarl, storm, thunder, whistle, whine, tick-tick, pee-wee, bow-wow, chit-chat, sing-song. So also most of the compound words, as god-man, house-wife, key-stone, north-east, top-knot, elm-tree, pine-wood, foot-fall, horse-shoe, shoe-maker, snuff-box, morning-cloud, water-fall. A large proportion of the language of humor and colloquial pleasantry point to the same source.

Finally, the Saxon furnishes some of the fundamental terms in morals and religion, as God, good, bad, evil, sin, belief, love, hope, fear, heaven,1 hell, gospel (i. e., God's spell, or good

derivation of lord (A. S. hlâford) from hlaf or loaf, bread, and ford or affordbread-giver, does not explain lady, which in Saxon is written hlæfdige. Tooke and Richardson derive lord from hlif-ian, to raise, and ord—ortus, origin, so as to mean high-born. Lady would then mean lifted, elevated. But the A. S. hláƒord most likely stands for hlaf-weard, loaf-keeper, i. e., the master of the house, father of the family, and is equivalent in meaning to husband. So Skeat.

1 Some derive heofon, heaven, from A.S. hebban, German heben-elevated, arched. Kluge, however, connects heaven and Himmel and derives both from an old Germanic stem hem, him; probably connected with the stem ham, to cover, conceal.

news), righteousness, holiness, godliness. On the other hand, it can be abused for the hardest swearing.

The Saxon would be sufficient for all the ordinary purposes of life. We can live and die, love and hate, work and play, laugh and cry, tell tales and sing songs, in Saxon; but the foreign elements greatly enrich and embellish our intellectual, emotional and spiritual existence and enjoyments.

THE SAXON ELEMENT IN THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

One of the chief excellencies of our Protestant version of the Bible, as compared with the Roman Catholic or Douay version, is the predominance of the Saxon element, while the latter, being based upon the Latin Vulgate, employs too many Latin terms. The idiom of the Authorized Version of 1611 is chiefly due to the previous labors of William Tyndale, who first translated the New Testament from the original Greek into English, and died a martyr of his immortal work.

Let us give a few specimens. In the Lord's Prayer fifty-four words are Saxon, and the remaining six, which are of Latin origin (trespasses, trespass, temptation, deliver, power, glory), could easily be replaced by Saxon (sins, sin, trial, free, might, brightness) without materially altering the sense. The Douay Bible has for daily bread supersubstantial bread (from the Vulgate), which the common reader cannot understand.

In the sublime beginning of the Gospel of John, from verse 1 to 14, out of more than two hundred words only four or five are not of Saxon descent.

The most exquisite passages of the Old Testament are likewise almost exclusively Saxon.

Take the first verses in Genesis :

"In the beginning God created" (for which might be substituted the Saxon made) "the heavens and the earth. . . . . And God said, Let there be light and there was light."

:

1 The exact English equivalent for the Greek evayyehov. For this reason some prefer the derivation of the first syllable from the adjective good, to the derivation from God (God's word, God's story, i. e., the life of Christ), but the latter is supported by the analogy of the Icelandic, and the Old High German gotspell, (God-story), not guot-spell. God and good, however, are closely connected.

The twenty-third Psalm would lose nothing of its beauty if the few Latin terms were exchanged for Saxon, as follows:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures (meadows): he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth (quickeneth) my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley (dale) of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort (strengthen) me. Thou preparest (spreadest) a table1 (board) before me in the presence (sight) of mine enemies (my foes): thou anointest 2 my head with oil; my cup runneth over (is overflowing). Surely (Truly, or more literally, according to the Hebrew, Only) goodness and mercy (love) shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

The attempt to turn the whole into Latin or French English would utterly fail.

Nor could you improve such truly Saxon passages as these:"My heart is smitten and withered like grass."

"Thou hast delivered (freed) my eyes from tears, my soul from death, and my feet from falling."

"Under the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice (be happy)."

"If heart and flesh fail, thou art the strength of my heart and my portion (lot) for ever."

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE.

It is the Saxon element which gives the chief strength to English poetry. We select a few passages from the greatest of all dramatic poets.

In the following quotation from the Merchant of Venice there are only three French words in fifty-five, the rest all Saxon ::

"All that glitters is not gold

Often have you heard that told :
Many a man his life hath sold,

But my outside to behold:

Guilded tombs do worms infold.

1 This corresponds to the German Tafel as well as the Latin tabula; else the Saxon board might be substituted for it.

2 Literally fatten, in allusion to the richness and abundance of the unction; but the term used in the common version from the French oindre and the Latin unguere could not well be improved. The Saxon smear, would here be tasteless and vulgar, and salve (A. G. sealf, Goth. salbon, Ger. salben) would mean to heal by ointment.

Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,

Your answer had not been inscrolled :

Fare you well; your suit is cold."

The lines put into the mouth of Hamlet's father, unsurpassed for terrific beauty, with the exception of Dante's inscription on the gate of hell, have one hundred and eight Saxon and only fifteen Latin words:

"I am thy father's spirit

Doomed for a certain term to walk at night;
And for the day, confined in flaming fire,

Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature,

Are burned and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul; freeze thy young blood;
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres ;
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love."

THE LATIN ELEMENT.

The LATIN is the second constituent element of the present English language.

We must carefully distinguish two classes of Latin words, those which are directly derived from the old Roman language, and those which are indirectly derived from it through the medium of the French. The latter can generally be recognized at once by the traces of a double process of transformation through which they have passed before they became anglicized.

ORIGINAL LATINISMS.

I. The first class or the pure Latin embraces again at least three distinct subdivisions corresponding to as many periods in the history of the language.

(a) The oldest Latin terms were engrafted upon the original

Saxon long before the Norman invasion, through the influence mainly of the Christian Church, which was established among the Anglo-Saxons toward the close of the sixth century.1

They relate chiefly to ecclesiastical affairs and have found their way also into other Germanic dialects with the introduction of Christianity. They are to a large part of Greek origin, but came to the Saxons through the medium of the Latin Vulgate and church books. Most of them are so thoroughly nationalized as to sound like native words.

To the Saxon period belong saint from sanctus, religion from religio, bishop and archbishop from episcopus (from the Greek èniczonos) and archiepiscopus, priest from presbyter2 (πpeoBútepos), deacon from diaconus (ôtázovos), apostle, angel (likewise originally Greek), preach (Saxon prædician, German predigen) from prædicare, prove (profian) from probare, minster from monasterium, cloister from claustrum, master from magister, monk (munuc) from monachus (póvos, povazós), porch from porticus, provost from præpositus, pall from pallium, candle from candela, chalice from calix, mint from moneta, psalter from psalterium (çaktýptov), mass from missa (dismissa est ecclesia), palsy from paralysis (papákvots), alms from eleomosyna (from ecos), abyss, anathema, anthem, antiphon, cathedral, character, canon, canonical, catholic, ecclesiastic, laic, school, system, Testament, trinity, unity; perhaps also the stem verbs bib from bibere, carp from carpere, cede from cedere (or the French ceder), urge from urgere.

(b) The second class of Latinisms are theological and philosophical terms, not found in classical nor patristic Latin, and introduced during the reign of scholasticism in the middle ages, as real, virtual, entity, nonentity, equivocation, beatitude,3 soliloquy (the last two being first used by St. Augustin).

1 A few Latin terms relating mostly to military affairs, as street from strata, the endings-coln (as in Lincoln) from colonia,-cester (as in Gloucester-glevae castra) from castra, were already introduced in the Celtic period under Cæsar and the heathen Romans, but they are too insignificant to be regarded as a separate class.

2 Rather than from præstes, which would not account for the second rin the German Priester and the French prêtre. Milton says, "Presbyter is priest writ large.'

3 Cicero coined both beatitas and beatitudo (Nat. Deor. 1, 34, 95), but they