Each one of those words could nourish two or three paragraphs on what was brought to England through the word. A word like “virtue,” for instance, part of the theme of chivalry now woven into the thinking, brought a secular sense of moral attainment into a land where the Church had provided all the words and thoughts for any elevated morality. The word then took off and metamorphosed into several other meanings: it allied itself with honour and with courage, for example, embellishing both; it became a boast, it became a weakness to be satirised; from rare and aristocratic it became common and
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