(J. A. H. M.; H. M. R. M.)
[1] A careful examination of several letters of Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon dictionary gives in 2000 words (including derivatives and compounds, but excluding orthographic variants) 535 which still exist as modern English words.
[2] The practical convenience of having one name for what was the same thing in various stages of development is not affected by the probability that (E.A. Freeman notwithstanding) Engle and Englisc were, at an early period, not applied to the whole of the inhabitants of Teutonic Britain, but only to a part of them. The dialects of Engle and Seaxan were alike old forms of what was afterwards English speech, and so, viewed in relation to it, Old English, whatever their contemporary names might be.
[3] The works of Gildas in the original Latin were edited by Mr Stevenson for the English Historical Society. There is an English translation in Six Old English Chronicles in Bohn’s Antiquarian library.
[4] As to the continued existence of Latin in Britain, see further in Rhys’s Lectures on Welsh Philology, pp. 226-227; also Dogatschar, Lautlehre d. gr., lat. u. roman. Lehnworte im Altengl. (Strassburg, 1888).
[5] Æthelstan in 934 calls himself in a charter “Ongol-Saxna cyning and Brytaenwalda eallaes thyses iglandes”; Eadred in 955 is “Angul-seaxna cyning and cásere totius Britanniae,” and the name is of frequent occurrence in documents written in Latin. These facts ought to be remembered in the interest of the scholars of the 17th century, who have been blamed for the use of the term Anglo-Saxon, as if they had invented it. By “Anglo-Saxon” language they meant the language of the people who sometimes at least called themselves “Anglo-Saxons.” Even now the name is practically useful, when we are dealing with the subject per se, as is Old English, on the other hand, when we are treating it historically or in connexion with English as a whole.
[6] Transactions of the Philological Society (1873-1874), p. 620; new and much enlarged edition, 1888.
[7] See on this Rhys, Lectures on Welsh Philology, v.
[8] During the Old English period both c and