When we say that Shakspeare used the current language of his day, we mean only that he habitually employed such language as was universally comprehensible,—­that he was not run away with by the hobby of any theory as to the fitness of this or that component of English for expressing certain thoughts or feelings.  That the artistic value of a choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours is evident from the praises bestowed by his contemporaries on Drayton, and by the epithet “well-languaged” applied to Daniel, whose poetic style is as modern as that of Tennyson; but the endless absurdities about the comparative merits of Saxon and Norman-French, vented by persons incapable of distinguishing one tongue from the other, were as yet unheard of.  The influence of the Normans in Romanizing our language has been vastly overrated.  We find a principle of caste established in certain cases by the relation of producer and consumer,—­in others by the superior social standing of the conquering race.  Thus, ox, sheep, calf, swine, indicate the thing produced; beef, mutton, veal, pork, the thing consumed.[5] It is the same with the names of the various grains, and the product of the cheaper kinds when ground,—­as oat-meal, barley-meal, rye-meal; while the generic term for the crop becomes grain, and the meal of the variety used by the higher classes is turned into flour.  To bury remains Saxon, because both high and low must be hidden under ground at last; but as only the rich and noble could afford any pomp in that sad office, we get the word funeral from the Norman.  So also the serf went into a Saxon grave, the lord into a Norman tomb.  All the parts of armor are naturally named from the French; the weapons of the people, as sword, bow, and the like, continued Saxon.  So feather is Saxon; but as soon as it changes into a plume for the knight, it turns Norman,—­and Latin when it is cut into a pen for the clerk. Book is Saxon; but a number of books collected together, as could be done only by the rich, makes a library. Darling would be murmured over many a cradle in Saxon huts; but minion came into the language down the back stairs of the Norman palace.  In the same way, terms of law are Norman, and of the Church, Latin.  These are familiar examples.  But hasty generalizers are apt to overlook the fact, that the Saxon was never, to any great extent, a literary language.  Accordingly, it held its own very well in the names of common things, but failed to answer the demands of complex ideas derived from them.  The author of “Piers Ploughman” wrote for the people, Chaucer for the court.  We open at random and count the Latin[6] words in ten verses of the “Vision” and ten of Chaucer’s “Romaunt of the Rose,” (a translation from the French,) and find the proportion to be seven in the former and five in the latter.