There are two chief reasons which keep Latin, and to some extent other learned tongues, in high consideration among us,--the knowledge which is registered in them, and their use as a means of communication, in both speaking and writing, by the learned class throughout Europe. While these two benefits are retained, if there is anything else that can be done with our own tongue, either in beautifying it, or in turning it to practical account, we cannot but take advantage of it, even though Latin should thus be displaced, as it displaced others, bequeathing its learning to us. For is it not indeed a marvellous bondage, to become servants to one tongue for the sake of learning, during the greater part of our time, when we can have the very same treasure in our own language, which forms the joyful title to our liberty, as the Latin reminds us of our thraldom? I love Rome, but I love London better; I favour Italy, but I favour England more; I honour the Latin tongue, but I worship the English. I wish everything were in our tongue which the learned tongues gained from others, nor do I wrong them in treating them as they did their predecessors, teaching us by their example how boldly we may venture, notwithstanding the opinion of some among us, who desire rather to please themselves with a foreign language that they know, than to profit their country in their own language, which they ought to know. It is no argument to say: Will you dishonour those tongues which have honoured you, and without which you could never have enjoyed the learning of which you propose to rob them? For I honour them still, as much as any one, even in wishing my own tongue to be a partaker of their honour. For if I did not hold them in great admiration, because I know their value, I would not think it any honour for my own language to imitate their grace. I wish we had the stores with which they furnished themselves from foreign sources. For the tongues that we study were not the first getters, though by learned labour they prove to be good keepers, and they are ready to discharge their trust, in handing on to others what was committed to them for a term, and not in perpetuity. There can be no disgrace in their delivering to others what they received on that understanding. The dishonour will lie rather with the tongue that refuses to receive the inheritance intended for it and duly offered to it, and from this dishonour I would our language were free. I admit the good fortune of those tongues that had so great a start over others that they are most welcome wherever they set foot, and are always admired for their rare excellence, disposing all men to think little of any form of speech that does not resemble them, and to rank even the best of these as marvellously behind them. The diligent labour of the learned men of ancient times so enriched their tongues that they proved very pliable, as I am assured our own will prove, if our learned fellow-countrymen will bestow their labour on it. And why, I pray you, should such labour not be bestowed on English, as well as on Latin or any other language? Will you say it is needless? Certainly that will not hold. If loss of time over tongues, while you are pilgrims to learning, is no injury, or lack of sound skill, while language distracts the mind from the sense, especially with the foolish and inexperienced, then there might be some ground for holding it needless. But since there was no need for the present loss of time in study through labouring with tongues, and since our understanding is more perfect in our natural speech, however well we may know the foreign language, methinks necessity itself calls for English, by which all that bravery may be had at home that makes us gaze so much at the fine stranger. But you will say it is uncouth; so it is, through being unused. So was it with Latin, and so it is with every language. Cicero himself, the paragon of Rome while he was alive, and our best pattern now though he is dead, had great wrestling with such wranglers, and their disdain of their natural speech, before he won from the public of his time the opinion in which he was held by the best of his friends then, and is held by us now. Are not all his prefaces to his philosophical writings full of such conflicts with these cavillers? English wits are very well able, thank God, if the good will were present, to make that uncouth and unknown learning very familiar to our people in our own tongue, even by the example of those very writers we esteem so highly, who having done for other languages what I wish for ours in the like case, must needs approve of us, unless they assert that the merit of conveying knowledge from a foreign tongue died with them, not to revive among us.