RENASCENCE OR RENAISSANCE
am very grateful to your reviewer for his account of my book Petrarch and the Renascence. May I say that I did not latinise the latter word? It has always seemed to me unfortunate that we should use the half-naturalised form Renaissance: it would have been odd for me to use this French name in a book devoted to the analysis of an Italian phenomenon. I was content, therefore, to employ a form with two virtues: that of being closer to the Italian forms (Rinascenza, &c.) ; and that of being at the same time English. Our adjective is nascent, not naissant ; and the word renascence has a whole century start over the other form, which dates from circa 183o. Though the latter was first used, for some odd reason, in the sense of the Italian Renaissance it has only a lead of ten or twenty years in that sense. It was Symonds, perhaps, who fastened it upon us. But as it was part of my intention to suggest that we had outgrown Symonds there was no reason for me
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