arge of being 'too easy,' that--as their
studies advanced--they laid more and more stress on Middle-English
and Old English writings than on what our nations of England and
Scotland have written since they learned to write. I dare to think
also that we may attribute to this dread of 'easiness' their
practice of cumbering simple texts with philological notes; on
which, rather than on the text, we unhappy students were carefully
examined. For an example supplied to Dr Corson--I take those three
lines of Cowper's "Task" (Bk I, 86-88):

Thus first necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And luxury th' accomplish'd SOFA last.

Now in these three lines the word '_accomplish'd_' is the only one
that needs even the smallest explanation. 'But,' says Dr Corson,
'in two different editions of "The Task" in my library, prepared
for the use of the young, no explanation is given of it, but in
both the Arabic origin of 'sofa' is given. In one the question is
asked what other words in English have been derived from the
Arabic.' ('Abracadabra' would be my little contribution.)

(c) These valiant fighters--having to extol what Europe had,
wrongly enough, forgotten to count among valuable things--turned
aggressively provincial, parted their beards in the Anglo-Saxon
fashion; composed long sentences painfully innocent of any
word not derivable from Anglo-Saxon, sentences in which the
'impenetrability of matter' became the 'un-go-throughsomeness of
stuff (but that may have happened in a parody), and in general
comported themselves like the Anglo-Saxons they claimed for their
forbears; rightly enough for anything anyone cared, but wrongly
enough for the rest of us who had no yearning toward that kinship
and went on spelling Alfred with an A.

(d) They were--I suppose through opposition--extremely irascible
men; like farmers. Urbanity was the last note in their gamut, the
City--_urbs quam dicunt Romam_--the last of places in their ken.
There was no engaging them in dialectic, an Athenian art which
they frankly despised. If you happened to disagree with them,
their answer was a sturdy Anglo-Saxon brick. If you politely asked
your way to Puddlehampton, and to be directed to Puddlehampton's
main objects of interest, the answer you would get (see "Notes and
Queries" _passim_) would be, 'Who is this that comes out of
Nowhere, enquiring for Puddlehampton, unacquainted with Stubbs? Is
it possible at t