ire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day,
restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of
Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius,
"and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it
not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and
mother of all the rest. But we

'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta
Conatusque novos.'

And, indeed, many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself,
and I admire his quick, keen, and happy wit; happy, indeed, if he would
turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his, what
credit can we give to them, or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall
I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient--thus pregnant with
mysterious meanings? That we here, next the Frozen Pole, are the earliest
of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from
foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter, not opposition."
Goropius did not live to make any reply, dying shortly after in 1572; but
his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor, in the person of
his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck, lord of Rodorn, who followed up the
subject, on a slightly modified plan, in three-and-twenty books of _Celtic
and Belgic Origins_, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the
principle of his investigation this position from the _Cratylus_ of Plato.
"All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their
respective names; and those words which express things as they exist, are
the true names, whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious."
Nothing can be truer than this, provided only we knew the existing
characteristics of each object, as the original namers had them in view
when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting, no
labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate
sounds necessarily resemble one another, and there is no name, either of a
place or of a person, in any articulate language, that may not be
constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other
given language. These, it is true, will seldom make sense, and never be
truly appropriate; yet, with a little sleight-of-hand, dropping a letter
here and adding one there, substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid
for a mute, and so forth, the ingenious etymologist will som