Only so could it have come to pass that this new meaning for an old
word had struck me as strange, not to say ludicrous.
Licuit semperque licebit
Signatum praesente nota producere nomen.
_Allowable?_ Yes! and much more than merely allowable; it is
inevitable that as the ages roll we should attach new meanings to old
words. And if this is inevitable, not the less inevitable is it that,
when we desire to trace the history of the thing signified, we should
be compelled to recur to the original meaning of the name by which
the thing is designated.
A word at starting upon the remarkable book [Footnote: "The
Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, and of the
Colleges of Cambridge and Eton." By the late Robert Willis, M.A.,
F.R.S. Edited, with large additions, and brought up to the present
time, by John Willis Clark, M.A., late Fellow of Trin. Coll., Camb. 4
vols. super-royal 8vo Cambridge: The University Press.] which has
suggested the following article. To say of it that it is quite the
most sumptuous work that has ever proceeded from the Cambridge Press,
is to say little. It is hardly too much to say that it is one of the
most important contributions to the social and intellectual history
of England which has ever been made by a Cambridge man. The title of
the work conveys but a very inadequate notion of its wide scope, of
the encyclopaedic learning and originality of treatment which it
displays, and, least of all, of the abundance of _human
interest_ which characterizes it so markedly.
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