of Cornwall , John Carew writes: [M]ost of the inhabitants can speak no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the English; and yet some so affect their own, as to a stranger they will not speak it; for if meeting them by chance, you inquire the way, or any such matter, your answer shall be, 'Meea navidna caw zasawzneck,' 'I [will] speak no Saxonage.'" [ 22 ] The Late Cornish period from 1578 to about 1800 has fewer sources of information on the language but they are more varied in nature. Written sources from this period are largely spelled following English spelling conventions since the majority of writers of the time had had no exposure to Middle Cornish texts or the Cornish orthography within them. In 1776, William Bodinar , who had learnt Cornish from fishermen, wrote a letter in Cornish which was probably the last prose in the language. However, the last verse was the Cranken Rhyme , written in the late 19th century by John Davey of Boswednack . In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was intense academic and antiquarian interest in the language, particularly in the Middle Cornish literature, and also in attempting to find the last native speaker of the Cornish language . Despite the announcements of the death of the language, this academic interest, along with the beginning of the Celtic Revival in the late 19th Century, provided the groundwork for a Cornish language revival movement. In 1904, the Celtic language