Nor is this prerogative which I have just claimed for our English the mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar who in our days is most profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Gothic languages in Europe, and a devoted lover, if ever there was such, of his native German, I mean Jacob Grimm, has expressed himself very nearly to the same effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words which you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring this lecture to a close. After ascribing to our language “a veritable power of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other language of men”, he goes on to say, “Its highly spiritual genius, and wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance--It is well known in what relation these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter the spiritual conceptions. In truth the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare), may with all right be called a world-language; and like the English people, appears destined hereafter to prevail with a sway more extensive even than its present over all the portions of the globe{36}. For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure no other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be compared with it--not even our German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects, before it can enter boldly into the lists, as a competitor with the English”{37}. {FOOTNOTES} {1} These lectures were first delivered during the Russian War. [See De Quincey to the same effect, _Works_, 1862, vol. iv. pp. vii, 286.] {2} F. Schlegel, _History of Literature, Lecture 10_. {3} [If dictionary words be counted as apart from the spoken language, the proportion of the component elements of English is very different. M. Müller quotes a calculation which makes the classical element about 68 per cent, the Teutonic about 30, and miscellaneous about 2 (_Science of Language_, 8th ed. i, 89). See Skeat, _Principles of Eng. Etymology_, ii, 15 _seq._, and _infra_ p. 25.] {4} [What here follows should be compared with the fuller and more accurate lists of words borrowed from foreign sources given by Prof. Skeat in his larger _Etymolog. Dictionary_, 759 _seq._; and more completely in his _Principles of Eng. Etymology_, 2nd ser. 294-440.] {5} Yet see J. Grimm, _Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 985.