Learning to employ her time? [1] What is this Saxon? what has she to do with this barbarous antiquated Stuff? so useless, so altogether out of the way? But how came they to know that it is out of the way, and useless, who know nothing of it, and they seem to have forgot the Sentiments of their polite Masters, who judg'd not any part of Learning to be out of the way. I fear, if things were rightly confder'd, that the charge of Barbarity would rather fall upon those who, while they fancy themselves adorn'd with the Embellishments of foreign Learnings are ignorant, even to barbarity, of the Faith, Religion, the Laws and Customs, and Language of their Ancestors. I assure you, these are Considerations which have afforded me no small Encouragement in the Prosecution of these Studies.
But to leave these Censurers to please themselves with their own Humours and Discourse. For the Satisfaction of more candid Readers, I shall give some short Acccount of the Motives that urged me to this Undertaking, and of the Performance it self.
Having accidentally met with a Specimen of K. Alfred's Version of Orosius into Saxon, design'd to be publish'd by a near Relation and Friend, I was very desirous to understand it, and having gained the Alphabet, I found it so easy, and in it so much of this grounds of our present Language, and of a more particular Agreement with some Words which I had
- ↑ See Dr. Hickes's Apology for the Saxon Learning, both in his lesser Grammar, and his larger Thesaurus, as also that learned Defence made for it by Mr. Lisle in the Preface to his Saxon Monuments.
