commonwealth.  They were allowed to work, no doubt, and sometimes even to be overworked; but they laboured as foreigners, perhaps even more eagerly employed by the snobbish because they were foreigners and yet held in disrepute by the more fastidious because they were not truly English.  That is to say, French words are still as hospitably greeted as ever before, but they are now often ranked as guests only and not as members of the household.

Perhaps this may seem to some a too fanciful presentation of the case.  Perhaps it would be simpler to say that until comparatively recently a foreign word taken over into English was made over into an English word, whereas in the past two or three centuries there has been an evident tendency to keep it French and to use it freely while retaining its French pronunciation, its French accents, its French spelling, and its French plural.  This tendency is contrary to the former habits of our language.  It is dangerous to the purity of English.  It forces itself on our attention and it demands serious consideration.

II

In his brief critical biography of Rutebeuf, M. Cledat pointed out that for long years the only important literature in Europe was the French, and that the French language had on three several occasions almost established itself as the language of European civilization—­once in the thirteenth century, again in the seventeenth, and finally when Napoleon had made himself temporarily master of the Continent.  The earlier universities of Europe were modelled on that of Paris, where Dante had gone to study.  Frederick the Great despised his native tongue, spoke it imperfectly, and wrote his unnecessary verses in French.  Even now French is only at last losing its status as the accredited tongue of diplomacy.

The French made their language in their own image; and it is therefore logical, orderly, and clear.  Sainte-Beuve declared that a ’philosophical thought has probably not attained all its sharpness and all its illumination until it is expressed in French’.  As the French are noted rather for their intelligence than for their imagination, they are the acknowledged masters of prose; and their achievement in poetry is more disputable.  As they are governed by the social instinct, their language exhibits the varied refinements of a cultivated society where conversation is held in honour as one of the arts.  The English speech, like the English-speaking peoples, is bolder, more energetic, more suggestive, and perhaps less precise.  From no language could English borrow with more profit to itself than from French; and from no language has it borrowed more abundantly and more persistently.  Many of the English words which we can trace to Latin and through Latin to Greek, came to us, not direct from Rome and Athens, but indirectly from Paris.  And native French words attain international acceptance almost as easily as do scientific compounds from Greek and Latin. Phonograph and telephone were not more swiftly taken up than chassis and garage.