In the Epinal Glossary the
English words are thus relatively few. In the first page they number
thirty out of 117, and in some pages they do not amount to half that
number. In the Corpus Glossary they have become proportionally more
numerous; and in the glossaries that follow, the Latin explanations
are more and more eliminated and replaced by English ones, until the
vocabularies of the tenth and eleventh centuries, whether arranged
alphabetically or under classified headings, are truly Latin-English:
every Latin word given is explained by an English one; and we see
clearly that a new aim had gradually evolved itself; the object was no
longer to explain difficult Latin words, but to give the English
equivalents of as many words as possible, and thus practically to
provide a Latin Dictionary for the use of Englishmen[3].
Learning and literature, science and art, had attained to fair
proportions in England, and in the Old English tongue, when their
progress was arrested by the Norman Conquest. The Norman Conquest
brought to England law and organization, and welded the country into a
political unity; but it overthrew Old English learning and literary
culture.
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