but, in power to expand the intellect or touch the heart, the future was to add little to the language of Spenser, Hooker, and Shakespeare. We see how near is Sir Thomas More' to the standard of after-times. In his youth he is lamenting the death of 'quene Elisabeth, mother to king Henry the eight, wife to king Henry the seventh':

O ye that put your trust and confidence,
In worldly ioy and frayle prosperite,
That so lyue here as ye should neuer hence,
Remember death and loke here vppon me.
Ensaumple I thynke there may no better be.
Your selfe wotte well that in this realme was I,
Your quene but late, and lo now here I lye.

Was I not borne of olde worthy linage?
Was not my mother queene, my father kyng?
Was I not a kinges fere in marriage?
Had I not plenty of euery pleasant thyng?
Mercifull god this is a straunge reckenyng:
Rychesse, honour, welth, and anncestry,
Hath me forsaken and lo now here I ly.

From Sir Philip Sidney, to Sir Francis Walsingham, 1585:

Be caws yow giue me leau to be thus bold, I humbli beseech yow the dai maj be observed, yt I maj preserue my creddit in these partes, and I dout not by God's grace to keep my self wth in my bowndes, and yet to proceed honorabli. And so I humbli take my leaue, praijing for your long and happy Lyffe.

From Spenser's' Faerie Queene:

O, why doe wretched men so much desire
To draw their dayes unto the utmost date,
And doe not rather wish them soone expire;

Knowing the miserie of their estate,

And thousand perills which them still awate,
Tossing them like a boate amid the mayne,
That every houre they knocke at Deathes gate!
And he that happie seemes, and least in payne,

Yet is as nigh his end as he that most doth playne.

From Mulcaster, 1582:

I take this present period of our English tung to be the verie height thereof, bycause I find it so excellently well fined both for the bodie of the tung itself, and for the customarie writing thereof, as either foren workmanship can giue it glosse, or as home wrought hanling can giue it grace. When the age of our people which now vse the tung so well, is dead and departed, there will another succede, and with the people the tung will alter and change; which change in the full haruest thereof maie prove comparable to this, but sure for this which we now vse, it seemeth euen now to be at the best for substance, and the brauest for circumstance, and whatsoever shall become of the English state, the English tung cannot prove fairer than it is at this daie, if it maie please our learned sort so to esteme of it, and to bestow their trauell upon such a subject.

From Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well; date of composition about 1604:

They say miracles are past, and we have our Philosophicall persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernaturall and causeless. Hence is it, that we make trifles of terrours, ensconcing our selues into seeming knowledge, when we should submit our selues to an vnknowne feare.

From one of Jonson's' Masques:

Nay, faint not now, so neere the fields of rest.
Here no more furies, no more torments dwell,

Than each hath felt alreadie in his brest;

Who hath been once in love, hath proved his Hell.

1 1574-1637.

Up then, and follow this my golden rod,
That points you next to aged Lethes shore
Who pours his waters from his urne abroad,
Of which but tasting, you shall faint no more.
From Shirley's Royal Master, 1638:

Tis not good to be busie

In search of these unwelcome certainties;

There's hope while things are clouded in suspition.

Into what

Vaine thing would the severe apprehension

Of greefe transforme us?

From Sir Thomas Browne to his son Edward, 1679:

I am very glad and blesse God to heare that you are prettie well agayne. Many hiere have had the like trouble, especially such as, to satisfie their thirst, drincke inordinately in hot wether or exceed in eating of fruits, or odd or mixed dishes, but such as ouercome it haue vsually a more confirmed measure of health after it.

CHANGES IN ENGLISH.

We have seen our English speech, by gradual and accumulated alterations, grow from the Anglo-Saxon of Cædmon and King Alfred into what it is at present, as the man from the undeveloped child. These intermediate phases have for the most part been illustrated. Our illustrations, indeed, have so far given a principal stress to external form, the visible and audible body; as in the slow corruption of on pyssum geare-on pis gaer=pis gear this year,' or haefde haefd hadde='had.' Not only have formative elements thus worn off, words and phrases have passed forever from memory and use; asMine alderliefest1 Lorde and brother dear.-Chaucer.

We bangle away our days befool our time.-Burton.

I have a husband and a two-legged one,

But such a moonling!1 — Jonson.

Which is sib to Christ himself.-Langland.

Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope.-Shakespeare.
Death that took away a man so geason.1 — Greene,

But one of the most curious facts in the history of words is, that they are constantly passing temporarily out of use, and resuming their place in literature again. Thus down to the middle of the sixteenth century, the Saxon 'reckless' (formerly spelled retchless) was current, but fifty years later Hooker explained its meaning in a marginal note. A list of hard words,' compiled in the seventeenth century, includes, among others, 'abate' and ‘abandon,' which are marked as 'now out of use, and only used of some ancient writers.' The political and religious revolutions of a country, as those of the Conquest and the Reformation; its foreign relations, originating new objects and conditions of society, are the important sources of linguistic wealth. Trade, art and science, moreover, vary perpetually their materials and products. Their technical dialects are modified accordingly, and the familiar speech of everybody is more or less affected. Our language necessarily reflects the changes in our material condition, in our customs and institutions, private and public. How much of it, in these days of sun-pictures, railroads, steamboats, telegraph, and telephones, would be unintelligible to one of the Elizabethan age, and how much of that period would have a foreign look to Chaucer!

But these processes have to do-as clearly implied hitherto not only with the external decay and growth

1 A lunatic.

2 Related to.

3 Since.

4 Rare.

of speech, but with its internal content, its intended and apprehensible meaning. The outer and the inner, upon the whole, correspond; yet are they, to a great extent, independent of each other. The former may alter greatly, with no appreciable alteration of the latter; as, 'eye,'= eage, and 'Tuesday' Tywesday and conversely; asThe 'secret' top

Of Oreb or of Sinai,

where Milton uses 'secret' in the sense of remote, apart, lonely. Or

A valiant corpse,' where force and beauty met,

in which Surrey means the body, not of the dead, as now, but of the living. And, 'Benjamin shall "raven" as a wolf, that is, devour greedily, steal or take away violently. Also

Few chimneys 'reeking' you shall spy,

where Spenser obviously means smoking. Shakespeare, again, means to flatter, or to praise, in,

Laugh when I am merry, and 'claw' no man in his humour. A 'naturalist,' once a person who rejected revealed truth, is now an investigator of nature. 'Let,' which now means to permit, once had the very opposite sense. Thus Hamlet: 'I'll make a ghost of him that "lets" me;' that is, obstructs me. How pliant is the signification to the touch of the moulding and shaping mind may be seen in the derived uses of 'head,' not one of which is obsolete; as the 'head' of a pin, the 'head' of a bed, the 'head' of a family, the 'head' of a river, the 'head' of a discourse, a 'head' of hair, a 'head' of cabbage, ten 'head' of sheep, to come to a 'head,' to make 'head.' Thus a most important source of increase is the wonderful facility of