ure and name of which
I must try to make a little more intelligible than my books have lately
been, either in text or title.

'Meinie' is the old English word for 'Many,' in the sense of 'a many'
persons attending one, as bridesmaids, when in sixes or tens or
dozens;--courtiers, footmen, and the like. It passes gradually into
'Menial,' and unites the senses of Multitude and Servitude.

In the passages quoted from, or referred to in, Chaucer's translation
of the Romance of the Rose, at the end of the first lecture, any reader
who cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may
find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than
mine: and ladder enough also,--if there be either any heavenly, or pure
earthly, Love, in his own breast,--to guide him to a pretty bird's
nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the
Sermons of St. Francis and St. Bernard.

The term 'Lecture' is retained, for though I lecture no more, I still
write habitually in a manner suited for oral delivery, and imagine
myself speaking to my pupils, if ever I am happily thinking in myself.
But it will be also seen that by the help of this very familiarity of
style, I am endeavoring, in these and my other writings on Natural
History, to compel in the student a clearness of thought and precision
of language which have not hitherto been in any wise the virtues, or
skills, of scientific persons. Thoughtless readers, who imagine that my
own style (such as it is, the one thing which the British public
concedes to me as a real power) has been formed without pains, may
smile at the confidence with which I speak of altering accepted, and
even long-established, nomenclature. But the use which I now have of
language has taken me forty years to attain; and those forty years
spent, mostly, in walking through the wilderness of this world's vain
words, seeking how they might be pruned into some better strength. And
I think it likely that at last I may put in my pruning-hook with
effect; for indeed a time must come when English fathers and mothers
will wish their children to learn English again, and to speak it for
all scholarly purposes; and, if they use, instead, Greek or Latin, to
use them only that they may be understood by Greeks or Latins;[2] and
not that they may mystify the illiterate many of their own land. Dead
languages, so called, may at least be left at rest, if not honored; and
must not be torn in mutila