Note 39 — Chapter IV · FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE.

I have been told that the late Lord Strangford, a great linguist, and a comparative philologist to boot, could always find amusement for an idle half-hour in a book which the reader would probably think of, if asked to name the most uninteresting of created things—I mean Bradshaw, English or foreign; and his interest lay in extracting the hidden meaning and history which lay concealed in these lists of geographical names.