chivalry with a certain
uplift and mysticism through-out western Europe. Or again, in
the Cinquecento and earlier, the Italian center quickened; and
learning and culture flowed up from Italy through France and
England; and these countries, with Spain, become the leaders in
power and civilization.
England since that Teutonic expansion which made her English was
spent, has grown less and less Teutonic, more and more Latin;
the Italian impulse of the Renaissance drove her far along that
path. In the middle of the eleventh century, her language was
purely Teutonic; you could count on the fingers of your hand the
words derived from Latin or Celtic. And now? Sixty percent of
all English words are Latin. At the beginning of the fifth
century, after nearly three hundred years of Roman occupation,
one can hardly doubt that Latin was the language of what is now
England. Celtic, even then I imagine, was mainly to be heard
among the mountains. See how that situation is slowly coming
back. And the tendency is all in the same direction. You have
taken, indeed, a good few words from Dutch; and some two dozen
from German, in all these centuries; but a Latin word has
only to knock, to be admitted and made welcome. Teachers of
composition must sweat blood and tears for it, alas, to get their
pupils to write English and shun Latin. In a thousand years'
time, will English be as much a Latin language as French is?
Quite likely. The Saxon words grow obsolete; French ones come
pouring in. And Americans are even more prone to Latinisms than
Englishmen are: they 'locate' at such and such a place, where an
English man would just go and live there.
Before Latin, Celtic was the language of Britain. Finally, says
W.Q. Judge, Sanskrit will become the universal language. That
would mean simply that the Fifth Root Race will swing back slowly
through all the linguistic changes that it has known in the past,
till it reaches its primitive language condition. Then the
descendants of Latins, Slav