at the whole framework of our
language still remains, in every case, purely English--that is to say,
Anglo-Saxon or Low Dutch--however many foreign elements may happen to
enter into its vocabulary. We can frame many sentences without using one
word of Romance or classical origin: we cannot frame a single sentence
without using words of English origin. The Authorised Version of the
Bible, "The Pilgrim's Progress," and such poems as Tennyson's "Dora,"
consist almost entirely of Teutonic elements. Even when the vocabulary
is largely classical, as in Johnson's "Rasselas" and some parts of
"Paradise Lost," the grammatical structure, the prepositions, the
pronouns, the auxiliary verbs, and the connecting particles, are all
necessarily and purely English. Two examples will suffice to make this
principle perfectly clear. In the first, which is the most familiar
quotation from Shakespeare, all the words of foreign origin have been
printed in italics:--

To be, or not to be,--that is the _question_:
Whether 'tis _nobler_ in the mind to _suffer_
The slings and arrows of _outrageous fortune_;
Or to take _arms_ against a sea of _troubles_,
And, by _opposing_, end them? To die,--to sleep,--
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand _natural_ shocks
That flesh is _heir_ to,--'tis a _consummation_
_Devoutly_ to be wished. To die,--to sleep;--
To sleep! _perchance_ to dream: ay, there's the rub
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this _mortal_ coil,
Must give us _pause_: there's the _respect_
That makes _calamity_ of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The _oppressor's_ wrong, the proud man's _contumely_,
The _pangs_ of _despised_ love, the law's _delay_,
The _insolence_ of _office_, and the _spurns_
That _patient merit_ of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his _quietus_ make
With a bare bodkin?

Here, out of 167 words, we find only 28 of foreign origin; and even
these are Englished in their terminations or adjuncts. _Noble_ is
Norman-French; but the comparative _nobler_ stamps it with the Teutonic
mark. _Oppose_ is Latin; but the participle _opposing_ is true English.
_Devout_ is naturalised by the native adverbial termination, _devoutly_.
_Oppressor's_ and _despised_ take English inflexions. The formative
elements, _or_, _not_, _that_, _the_,