its words, may yet compel that to renounce a portion of its own forms,
by the impossibility which is practically found to exist of making them
fit the new comers; and thus it may exert although not a positive, yet a
negative, influence on the grammar of the other tongue. It has been so,
as is generally admitted, in the instance of our own. "When the English
language was inundated by a vast influx of French words, few, if any,
French forms were received into its grammar; but the Saxon forms soon
dropped away, because they did not suit the new roots; and the genius of
the language, from having to deal with the newly imported words in a
rude state, was induced to neglect the inflections of the native ones.
This for instance led to the introduction of the _s_ as the universal
termination of all plural nouns, which agreed with the usage of the
French language, and was not alien from that of the Saxon, but was
merely an extension of the termination of the ancient masculine to other
classes of nouns"{29}.

{Sidenote: _The Anglo-Saxon Element_}

If you wish to convince yourselves by actual experience, of the fact
which I just now asserted, namely, that the radical constitution of the
language is Saxon, I would say, Try to compose a sentence, let it be
only of ten or a dozen words, and the subject entirely of your choice,
employing therein only words which are of a Latin derivation. I venture
to say you will find it impossible, or next to impossible to do it;
whichever way you turn, some obstacle will meet you in the face. And
while it is thus with the Latin, whole pages might be written, I do not
say in philosophy or theology or upon any abstruser subject, but on
familiar matters of common everyday life, in which every word should be
of Saxon extraction, not one of Latin; and these, pages in which, with
the exercise of a little patience and ingenuity, all appearance of
awkwardness and constraint should be avoided, so that it should never
occur to the reader, unless otherwise informed, that the writer had
submitted himself to this restraint and limitation in the words which he
employed, and was only drawing them from one section of the English
language. Sir Thomas Browne has given several long paragraphs so
constructed. Take for instance the following, which is only a little
fragment of one of them: "The first and foremost step to all good works
is the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which through
the Holy Ghos