It must be borne in mind that, although the English tongue is so directly derived from it, Anglo-Saxon is, nevertheless, a dead language, and when, in the sixteenth century, its study was to some extent revived, it had not only been dead four hundred years, but buried and forgotten. That revival occurred at a time when religious controversy ran high in England, the motive prompting it being to discover testimony among Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical MSS. as to the existence of an English Catholic Church separate from and independent of Papal authority. Thus far the search has not been attended with any marked success. In the seventeenth century, Anglo-Saxon was studied for the light it threw on the early history and legislation of England. Since the commencement of the present century, the study has been pursued with greater success than ever for objects purely literary and philological. Indeed, it may be said that, until within some forty years, the cultivation of Anglo-Saxon was confined to a very small circle of scholars. The most remarkable monuments of its literature are of comparatively recent publication, and there happened at the outset to the study of Anglo-Saxon precisely what happened to the study of Sanskrit. It was that many scholars, aware of its literary wealth, and, possibly, in possession of copies of some of its productions, were without adequate means of pursuing or even of commencing their studies on account of the want of dictionaries and grammars. It was for this reason that Frederick Schlegel, before writing his great work on _The Language and Wisdom of the Indians_, was obliged to leave Germany and go to England, in order to avail himself of the resources of the British Museum; and when we consider the difficulties under which Dr. Lingard made his Anglo-Saxon studies, and wrote his _Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church_, of which work M. Taine does not appear to have heard, we are more than ever surprised at the ability displayed by the great English historian.