it gantzem fleisz
Geschnitzet sein,
Die hennde dein
Gar hofelich gezieret,
Dem leib ist ran,
Gar wolgetan
Sind dir dein prust,"
&c. &c.

_Clara Haetzlerin Liederbuch_, p. 111.

In all this there is certainly nothing to warrant the conclusion that
the German poem was the original of Heywood's song; but, considering
that the latter was produced so near to the same age as the former, that
is, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and considering that the
older German poetical literature had already passed its culminating
point, while ours was upon the ascending scale, there is likeness
enough, both in manner and measure, to excite the suspicion of direct or
indirect communication.

The etymology of the word "news," on which you have recently had some
notes, is a case in illustration of the importance of this point. I have
never had the least doubt that this word is derived immediately from the
German. It is, in fact, "das Neue" in the genitive case; the German
phrase "Was giebt's Neues?" giving the exact sense of our "What is the
news?" This will appear {429} even stronger if we go back to the date of
the first use of the word in England. Possibly about the same time, or
not much earlier, we find in his same collection of Clara Haetzlerin, the
word spelt "new" and rhyming to "triu."

"Empfach mich uff das New
In deines hertzen triu."

The genitive of this would be "newes," thus spelt and probably
pronounced the same as in England. That the word is not derived from the
English adjective "new"--that it is not of English manufacture at all--I
feel well assured: in that case the "_s_" would be the sign of the
plural: and we should have, as the Germans have, either extant or
obsolete, also "the new." The English language, however, has never dealt
in these abstractions, except in its higher poetry; though some recent
translators from the German have disregarded the difference in this
respect between the powers of the two languages. "News" is a noun
singular, and as such must have been adopted bodily into the language;
the form of the genitive case, commonly used in conversation, not being
understood, but being taken for an integral part of the word, as
formerly the Koran was called "_The Alcoran_."

"Noise," again, is evidently of the same derivation, though from a
dialect from which the modern German pronunciation of the diphthong is
derived. Richardson, in his _English Dictionary_, assumes it