It will be noticed that nearly all these words are directly descended from the Latin, _beef_ going back through ‘boeuf’ to ‘bov-em’, _master_ to ‘magister’, _duke_ to ‘dux’,... Thus already, by the thirteenth century, we can trace in our vocabulary four distinct layers of Latin words. There are the Latin words learnt by our ancestors while they were still on the Continent, such as _camp_, _mile_, and _street_;[13] there are the Latin words brought over by the Roman invaders, of which _port_ and _Chester_ were given as surviving examples; and thirdly there are those words—_altar_, _candle_, _nun_, ... brought over by the Christian missionaries as described earlier in this chapter. These three classes are reckoned to account for about four hundred Latin words altogether; and lastly there is this great deposit of Norman-French words, of which the number must have been running into thousands. For it was not only terms of general utility which were transferred from one language to another. A second and entirely different kind of borrowing now sprang up—the literary kind. For two or three centuries Poetry and Romance had been making rapid strides in Italy and France. The medieval habit of writing only in Latin was dying out and Dante in Italy and Du Bellay in France had both written treatises extolling the beauties of their native tongues. French lyric poetry burst into its early spring blossom among the troubadours, with their curious “Rose” tradition, and for two hundred years the English poets imitated and translated them as fast as ever they could. It was just at the end of this long period of receptiveness that an event occurred which fixed the ingredients of our language in a way they had never been fixed before. The printing press was invented. A modern poet, looking back on that time, can scarcely help envying a writer like Chaucer with this enormous store of fresh, unspoilt English words ready to his hand and an unlimited treasury across the channel from which he could pick a brand-new one whenever he wanted it. Thou hast _deserved_ sorer for to smart, But _pitee_ renneth soone in _gentil_ heart. Here are three Norman-French borrowings, three fine English words with the dew still on them, in two lines. It was the May morning of English poesy.