"Beloved Reader this boocke is so need full and profitable / and the vsance of the same so necessarie / that his goodnes euen of learned men / is not fullie to be praised for ther is noman in France / nor in thes Nederland / nor in Spayne / or in Italie handling in these Netherlandes which hat not neede of the eight speaches that here in are writen and declared: Fer whether thad any man doo marchandise / or that hee do handle in the Court / or that hee fo lowe the warres or that hee be a trauailling man / hy should neede to haue an interpretour / for som of theese eight speaches. The which wee considering have at our great cost and to your great profite / brought the same speaches here in suchwise to gether / and set them in order / so that you fromyence fouath shall not neede eny interpretour / but shalbe able to speake them your self / ...." An extract from one of the interlocutions must suffice:-- "_D._ Peeter / is that your sone? _P._ Yea it is my sonne. _D._ it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue. _P._ I thancke you coosen. _D._ Doth he not go to the scole? _P._ Yes / hee learneth to speake French. _D._ Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake French? _J._ Not very well coosen, but I learne. _D._ Wher go you too schoole? _J._ In the Lumbeardes streat. _D._ Have you gon long too schoole? _J._ About half a yeare." So the dialogue goes on, and there is a series of them. III. A second exemplification of the superlative obstacles which persons born out of England have at all periods encountered in the endeavour to comprehend on their own part, and render intelligible to others, our insular speech, is taken from the Italian Grammar of Henry Pleunus, printed at Leghorn at the end of the seventeenth century. Now, here, in lieu of the alleged width of acceptability, which meets the eye in the traveller's pocket-dictionary just described, we get a positive assurance that the author was a master of the English tongue; and it may be predicated of him that, compared with the majority of foreigners, he exhibits a proficiency very considerably above the average, though we honestly believe it to be grossly improbable that "every one speaks English at Legorne," as he says in one of the Anglo-Italian dialogues. There can be no desire to be hypercritical in judging such a production, or to lay stress on occasional slips of spelling and prosody; but the English of Pleunus very often strikes one--nor is it surprising that it should be so--as Italian literally rendered. He probably never attained an idiomatic phraseology; and one would have said less about it, had it not been for that sort of professorial assumption on the title-page.