Now this outcrop of linguistic parody is significant for other reasons too. It reminds us that the English language had at last become “self-conscious”. In former times the struggle between different ways of saying the same thing, between the old and the new, the native and the foreign, had generally worked itself out under the surface, amid the unconscious preferences of the mass of the people. Thus, the old English translators who rendered the Latin ‘exodus’ as _outfaring_ and ‘discipulus’ (disciple) as _learning-boy_, were not consciously trying to keep the Latin words out; nor did the fourteenth-century author of a book, which he called the _Againbite of Inwit_, have any academic horror, as far as we know, of the new Latin borrowings _remorse_ and _conscience_, with one of which, at least, he must have been familiar. The same may be said of Wyclif, who translated ‘resurrectio’ _againrising_ and ‘immortalitas’ _undeadliness_. These old writers anglicized because it came natural to them to anglicize, just as the next generation began to prefer the Latin words. But it was not so in Italy, nor in France, in both of which countries poets had long ago written careful treatises on the beloved medium of their art, their native language. And now, after the Revival of Learning, in England, too, scholars and literary men began to notice such things. Counterbalancing the enthusiasm for Latin and Greek, there arose a “Purist” movement of just the kind which has had such a powerful effect on the development of modern German. People tried to expel all “foreign” words from the language; Sir John Cheke began a translation of the New Testament in which none but native words were to be used; and we find in his _Matthew_ _moond_ for _lunatic_, _hundreder_ for _centurion_, _frosent_ (from-sent) for _apostle_, _crossed_ for _crucified_, _freshman_ for _proselyte_, and many other equally odd-sounding concoctions. To look back in this way on the uncertainty and chaos which reigned at the beginning of the seventeenth century is to intensify our admiration for the scholarship and poetic taste displayed by the devout compilers of the Authorised Version. If we were to look for another symptom of this sometimes pedantic self-consciousness, we could find it in the modern way of spelling _debt_ and _doubt_. The old orthography, _det_ and _dout_, is a perfectly correct English rendering of the French words from which they are taken, but the scholars of the Renaissance, anxious to show the ultimate derivation from the Latin stems ‘deb’ and ‘dub’, inserted an entirely unnecessary “b” into the words, and there it has stayed ever since. Sometimes, too, these Elizabethan dons made learned howlers, as in the now abandoned spelling _abhominable_, which arose from a quite false idea that that adjective is derived from the Latin ‘ab’ (from) and ‘homo’ (man).