newer form of inflexion, and the modern spelling: with
no other variation whatever.

"_Scholar._ Yet the reason of that is easy enough to be conceived, for when
the day is at the longest the Sun must needs shine the more time, and so
must it needs shine the less time when the day is at the shortest: this
reason I have heard many men declare.

_Master._ That may be called a crabbed reason, for it {329} goes backward
like a crab. The day makes not the Sun to shine, but the Sun shining makes
the day. And so the length of the day makes not the Sun to shine long,
neither the shortness of the day causes not [_sic_] the Sun to shine the
lesser time, but contrariwise the long shining of the Sun makes the long
day, and the short shining of the Sun makes the lesser day: else answer me
what makes the days long or short?

_Scholar._ I have heard wise men say that Summer makes the long days, and
Winter makes the long nights.

_Master._ They might have said more wisely, that long days make summer and
short days make winter.

_Scholar._ Why, all that seems one thing to me.

_Master._ Is it all one to say, God made the earth, and the earth made God?
Covetousness overcomes all men, and all men overcome covetousness?

_Scholar._ No, not so; for here the effect is turned to be the cause, and
the agent is made the patient.

_Master._ So is it to say Summer makes long days, when you should say: Long
days make summer.

_Scholar._ I perceive it now: but I was so blinded with the vulgar error,
that if you had demanded of me further what did make the summer, I had been
like to have answered that green leaves do make summer; and the sooner by
remembrance of an old saying that a year should come in which the summer
should not be known but by the green leaves.

_Master._ Yet this saying does not import that green leaves do make summer,
but that they betoken summer; so are they the sign and not the cause of
summer."

I have taken a whole page of our author, without omission, that the reader
may see that I do not pick out sentences convenient for my purpose. I have
done nothing but alter the third person of the verb and the spelling: but
great is the effect thereof. We say "the Sun shining makes the day";
Recorde, "the Sonne shynynge maketh the daye." {330} These points apart, we
see a resemblance between our English and that of three hundred years ago,
in the common talk of educated persons, which will allow us to affirm that
the langu