could not write, but he had a gold plate {p6} made in which the first
four letters of his name were incised, and when it was fixed on the
paper, the King drew his pen through the intervals. Those four
letters were [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and though we
should expect that, as a Goth, he would have spelt his name
Thiudereik, yet we have no right to doubt, that the vowels were eo,
and not iu. But again and again historians spell proper names, not
as they were written by the people themselves, but as they appear in
the historical documents through which they became chiefly known. We
speak of Plato, because we have Roman literature between us and
Greece. American names are accepted in history through a Spanish,
Indian names through an English medium. The strictly Old High-German
form of Carolus Magnus would be Charal, A. S. Carl; yet even in the
Oaths of Strassburg (842) the name appears as Karlus and as Karl, and
has remained so ever since {p7}. In the same document we find Ludher
for Lothar, Ludhuwig and Lodhuvig for Ludovicus, the oldest form
being Chlodowich: and who would lay down the law, which of these
forms shall be used for historical purposes?

I have little doubt that Kingsley's object in retaining the name
Dietrich for the Ost-gothic king was much the same as Johannes von
Muller's. You know, he meant to say, of Dietrich of Bern, of all the
wonderful things told of him in the Nibelunge and other German poems.
Well, that is the Dietrich of the German people, that is what the
Germans themselves have made of him, by transferring to their great
Gothic king some of the most incredible achievements of one of their
oldest legendary heroes. They have changed even his name, and as the
children in the schools of Germany {p8} still speak of him as their
Dietrich von Bern, let him be to us too Dietrich, not simply the Ost-
gothic Theoderic, but the German Dietrich.