39. =LATIN OF THE FOURTH PERIOD.=--The Latin introduced into our language by the Norman-French was a _spoken_ Latin. It was the Latin of the _ear and mouth_. It was the everyday speech of the people; and underwent very great change. The Latin introduced into our language by learned men was a _written_ or _printed_ Latin. It was the Latin of _the eye and pen_. This Latin is called the _Latin of the Fourth Period_; and it was brought into our language by a powerful movement known as the =Revival of Learning=.--When the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, the learned Greeks of that capital fled from the city, carrying with them their precious manuscript copies of Greek and Latin writers. They fled into Italy, into Germany, and into France and England. They taught Greek and Latin in the universities of these countries; and very soon the study of Greek and Latin became the fashion among all persons of leisure; and the stores of thought and beauty in Homer and Sophocles, in Virgil and Horace, were diligently studied and appropriated. Queen Elizabeth was a good Greek scholar, and could both speak and write good Latin. Now began to come into our language thousands of Latin words; until, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, an eminent writer complains that Englishmen will have ‘to learn Latin to understand English, and a work will prove of equal facility in either.’ Unlike the Latin words of the Third Period, the Latin words introduced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suffered little or no change. They were transferred from Latin books just as they were--by the accurate aid of the hand and eye, and underwent no process of change or corruption. The Latin _opinio_ became _opinion_; _notio_, _notion_; _suggestio_, _suggestion_; _separatum_, _separate_; _iteratum_, _iterate_; and so on. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that all the Latin of this _Fourth Period_ came _directly_ from the Latin. Most of it came through the medium of French, as did the Latin of the _Third Period_; but unlike it, it was not the language of the people. In French, as in English, it was the language merely of books, of the literary and of learned men.--It is worthy of notice that many words which we use every day, and which we think must _always_ have been in the language, only came in about this period, and are therefore comparatively new. Thus Mr Gill, the high-master of St Paul’s School in 1619, and the teacher of John Milton in his boyhood, complains of the introduction of words which are now quite common to all of us. He says: ‘O harsh lips! I now hear all around me such words as _common_, _vices_, _envy_, _malice_; even _virtue_, _study_, _justice_, _pity_, _mercy_, _compassion_, _profit_, _commodity_, _colour_, _grace_, _favour_, _acceptance_.’ The wonder nowadays would be how we could possibly get on without these words, and how we could ever have done without them.