lso in
Shakespeare){40}, and 'avie' (Holland). 'Maugre', 'congie', 'devoir',
'dimes', 'sans', and 'bruit', used often in our Bible, were English
once{41}; when we employ them now, it is with the sense that we are
using foreign words. The same is true of 'dulce', 'aigredoulce'
(=soursweet), of 'mur' for wall, of 'baine' for bath, of the verb 'to
cass' (all in Holland), of 'volupty' (Sir Thomas Elyot), 'volunty'
(Evelyn), 'medisance' (Montagu), 'petit' (South), 'aveugle', 'colline'
(both in _State Papers_), and 'eloign' (Hacket){42}.

We have seen when the great influx of French words took place--that is,
from the time of the Conquest, although scantily and feebly at the
first, to that of Chaucer. But with him our literature and language had
made a burst, which they were not able to maintain. He has by Warton
been well compared to some warm bright day in the very early spring,
which seems to say that the winter is over and gone; but its promise is
deceitful; the full bursting and blossoming of the springtime are yet
far off. That struggle with France which began so gloriously, but ended
so disastrously, even with the loss of our whole ill-won dominion there,
the savagery of our wars of the Roses, wars which were a legacy
bequeathed to us by that unrighteous conquest, leave a huge gap in our
literary history, nearly a century during which very little was done for
the cultivation of our native tongue, during which it could have made
few important accessions to its wealth.

{Sidenote: _Latin Importation_}

The period however is notable as being that during which for the first
time we received a large accession of Latin words. There was indeed
already a small settlement of these, for the most part ecclesiastical,
which had long since found their home in the bosom of the Anglo-Saxon
itself, and had been entirely incorporated into it. The fact that we had
received our Christianity from Rome, and that Latin was the constant
language of the Church, sufficiently explains the incoming of these.
Such were 'monk', 'bishop' (I put them in their present shapes, and do
not concern myself whether they were originally Greek or no; they
reached _us_ as Latin); 'provost', 'minster', 'cloister', 'candle',
'psalter', 'mass', and the names of certain foreign animals, as
'camel', or plants or other productions, as 'pepper', 'fig'; which are
all, with slightly different orthography, Anglo-Saxon words. These,
however, were entirely exceptional