Latin verse

“ A Practical Introduction to Latin Prose Composition, Part II.; containing the Doctrine of Latin Particles, with Vocabulary, an Antibarbarus, &c. Fourth Edition. 8vo. 8s.
A Practical Introduction to Latin Verse Composition. Fourth and Cheaper Edition, considerably revised. 12mo. 3s. 6d.
This Work supposes the pupil to be already capable of composing verses easily when the “full sense” is given. ”

“ Should any one seek here for an account of every kind of verse used by the Latin poets, all we can say is—we wish he may get it. As it behoveth no one to be wiser than the law, so it behoveth not us to be wiser than the Eton Grammar. ”

“ At the beginning I purposed, with God's help, to make the sentence as true and open in English as it is in Latin, either more true and more open than it is in Latin; and I pray, for charity and for common profit of Christian souls, that if any wise man find any default of the truth of translation, let him set in the true sentence and open of holy writ, but look that he examine truly his Latin bible, for no doubt he shall find full many bibles in Latin full false, if he look, many, namely new ”

“ Should you suppose a Roman capable of saying pretty things, and of showing affection? I will show you Monday some Latin verses, which you shall translate for yourself, and which fit our habitual disputes like a glove. You shall see that the ancients are a great deal better than your Wilhelm Meister. ”

“ Severely addicted, as I must be supposed to be, to versification of the stricter and more classical order, I must confess my sympathy with those who take extreme delight in the sacred Latin poetry of the Middle Ages, in which that language seems for the first time to have put forth its full power, and, in wholly discarding imitation, to have become inimitable itself. ”

“ In a Latin sentence the most emphatic place is the first; next in importance is the last; the weakest point is the middle. Generally the subject is the most important word, and is placed first; usually the verb is the next in importance, and is placed last. The other words of the sentence stand between these two in the order of their importance. ”

“ Inflexions of Verbs.—Verbs have inflexions to denote Person, Number, Tense, Mood, and Voice.
§ 55. Person.—The inflexions of Person are three, corresponding to the three Personal Pronouns; as, (1) ăm ō I-love, (2) ăm-ās thou-lovest, (3) ăm-ăt he-loves.
§ 56. Number.—The inflexions of a Verb vary according as the subject is Singular or Plural; as, Sing. hŏmō̆ am-ăt the-man loves, Plur. hŏmĭnēs ăm-ant the-men love.
§ 57. Tense.—Tenses show the time at which the action of the Verb takes place.
Latin has six Tenses: Present, Future, Future-Perfect, Perfect, Imperfect, Pluperfect. ”

“ The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant: but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention or vigour of sentiment. They are not all of equal value ”

“ In this way the Romans expressed differences in tense, mood, voice, person, and number.
120. The Tenses. The different forms of a verb referring to different times are called its tenses. The chief distinctions of time are present, past, and future:
121. The Moods. Verbs have inflection of mood to indicate the manner in which they express action. The moods of the Latin verb are the indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and infinitive.
a. A verb is in the indicative mood when it makes a statement or asks a question about something assumed as a fact. ”

“ In conclusion I should like to say that it has been my aim throughout to adhere to what is best in Roman literature, and to omit passages the choice of which can only be justified by regarding their literary form apart from their moral value. Latin literature contains so much that is at once excellent in style and noble in thought that it seems a grave mistake to exalt the one at the expense of the other. ”

“ Translation by C. W. Goodchild in Praeco Latinus, October, 1898. PART II WORDS AND FORMS LESSON I FIRST PRINCIPLES 19. Subject and Predicate. 1. Latin, like English, expresses thoughts by means of sentences. A sentence is a combination of words that expresses a thought, and in its simplest form is the statement of a single fact. Thus,
In each of these sentences there are two parts:
2. ”

“ A help to the poet’s meaning.—The more you know of the principles of scansion, the better able you will be to understand and appreciate the skill with which a great poet varies his metre and chooses his words.
11. Help through a Study of the Period in Latin.—One great difference between English and Latin Prose is that, while modern English is to a great extent a language of short, detached sentences, Latin expresses the sense by the passage as a whole, and holds the climax in suspense until the delivery of the last word. ”

“ Latin, the consecrated language of all Christendom, farther beautified with the sparkling ornament of rhyme, was the appropriate garb wherein to clothe their hallowed thoughts; but this, while it gives to their compositions eternity and universality, goes to shut out very many from reaping ghostly advantage therefrom. ”

“ Inflection. Words may change their forms to indicate some change in sense or use, as, is, are; was, were; who, whose, whom; farmer, farmer’s; woman, women. This is called inflection. The inflection of a noun, adjective, or pronoun is called its declension, that of a verb its conjugation.
24. Number. Latin, like English, has two numbers, singular and plural. In English we usually form the plural by adding -s or -es to the singular. So Latin changes the singular to the plural by changing the ending of the word. ”

“ The principal parts of the Latin verb are the first person singular of the present indicative, the present infinitive, the first person singular of the perfect indicative, and the perfect passive participle. ”

“ Why should Latin give them a deeper insight into the philosophy of language, and introduce them to a literature and history which may raise them above the narrowness or the extravagance of their own age, and the language of the New Testament be forbidden, as too exhausting a labour, a toil fruitful only of imbecility or death? ”

“ It is perfectly absurd to speak of the humanizing effect of Latin and Greek, the grand literatures which they contain, their poetry, their philosophy, their history, the enormous influence which they have had upon the literature, poetry, philosophy, the whole tone of thought prevalent among civilized nations—I say that it is perfectly absurd to advance all these arguments, when the only condition which could make them valid is wanting. ”

“ The use of Latin words often gives clearness and melody to style; and instead of a violent effort to Saxonize his writing, an author should clothe his thoughts in the diction that is most fitting and expressive. ”

“ For exercising the intellectual faculties, and for awakening and developing a sense of the fundamental properties of a good style—namely, correctness, precision, and brevity of expression—there is no doubt that Latin with its limpid clearness, its rigorous precision, and its absolute definiteness of meaning, is a better object of study than Greek with its multitudinous forms and particles, the import of which is matter rather of skilled conjecture and artistic feeling than of logical analysis. ”

“ Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. ”

“ One who undertakes to express the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate. So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder of Latin style—his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in such common words as officium, fides, studium, humanitas, dignitas, and the like—all these the translator has to take in the day's work. ”

“ For scholars who follow, as we have tried to, the intellectual and the deeper emotional life of the Middle Ages, the Latin literature yields the incomparably greater part of the material of our study. It has been our home country, from which we have made casual excursions into the vernacular literatures. ”

“ Latin, also, to continue the same metaphor, has other characteristic features of hard substances—gravity, solidity, and momentum or energy. It is a fit language for embodying and expressing the thoughts of an active and practical but not an imaginative and speculative people. ”

“ Instead of using auxiliary verbs to express differences in tense, like was, shall, will, etc., Latin adds to the verb stem certain elements that have the force of auxiliary verbs. These are called tense signs. ”

“ If you do not make sense, you have made a mistake. One mistake will spoil a whole sentence. 6 When the sentence is correctly translated, read the Latin over again, and try to understand it as Latin, without thinking of the English translation. ”

“ The pupil who has mastered this book ought to be able to read and write the easiest kind of Latin with some degree of fluency and without serious mistakes: in a word, Latin ought to have become in some degree a living language to him. ”

“ We can, however, throw emphasis on different words by speaking them with more force. Try the effect of reading the sentence by putting special force on my, daughter, dinner, farmers.
In Latin, where the office of the word in the sentence is shown by its ending (cf. § 32. 1) , and not by its position, the order of words is more free, and position is used to secure the same effect that in English is secured by emphasis of voice. To a limited extent we can alter the order of words in English, too, for the same purpose. Compare the sentences
1. ”

“ The Latin word ‘spiritus’ had not only its abstract meaning of ‘cheerfulness,’ or ‘courage,’ but also its concrete sense of ‘breath;’ whereas, in modern languages the word has only an abstract sense, and it is only by a knowledge of its etymology that we can get at its material origin. The result of this loss is most complete when a modern, formed upon an ancient language, is no longer in direct communication with the roots of the words used. ”

“ The vices of our author's style, and his ambitious affectation of ornament, are condemned by most critics; but some of the points which strike a modern reader as defects evidently arise from the alteration which the Latin language had already undergone since the days of Livy. ”

“ In Latin literature, as little as in the Greek, is there any sense of the beauty of purity. Moral essays on temperance we may find, and praise enough of the wise man whose passions and whose appetites are trained into obedience to reason. But this is no more than the philosophy of the old Roman life, which got itself expressed in words when men were tired of the reality. ”

“ In another connection, a year or two ago, I had occasion to speak of the literary merit of some of these metrical epitaphs,52 of their interest for us as specimens of the literary compositions of the common people, and of their value in indicating the æsthetic taste of the average Roman. It may not be without interest here to speak of the literary form of some of them a little more at length than was possible in that connection. Latin has always been, and continues to be among modern peoples, a favored language for epitaphs and dedications. ”

“ The few that remain are nearly obliterated; and, were they not, they are written in half characters, and in Latin, not easy to understand; and, being unacquainted with the Latin tongue, it might seem presumption in me to attempt it. ”

“ O, good my lord, no Latin! I am not such a truant since my coming, As not to know the language I have liv'd in; ”

“ Dwell on the point that the reason for translating ut by that not and nē by that or lest is due to the difference between the English and Latin idioms, and that in the Latin itself ut and nē have the same meaning after verbs of fearing as after other verbs.
LESSON LXVI
§ 374. Write on the board the participles, active and passive, of the English verb to love, and emphasize the point that Latin has no present passive participle (being loved) nor any perfect active participle (having loved) .
§ 374.g. Require the pupils to give the meanings of the participles as well as the forms. ”

“ Not only were the Sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained; Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but the very little boys presumed to speak in any tongue but Latin. ”

“ What pleased one found little sympathy in the other. During the Middle Ages learned men talked, wrote and thought in Latin, and when it was proposed to translate the Scriptures into the language of the masses these men held up their hands in horror. ”

“ In presenting me for my degree the Public Orator made a Latin speech, from which I venture to give a short extract, which I would not do for the world if it were not disguised by being hidden in the mask of a dead language. But there will be here and there a Latin scholar who will be pleased with the way in which the speaker turned a compliment to the candidate before him, with a reference to one of his poems and to some of his prose works. ”

“ They are not very numerous, and you will soon learn to recognize them. In Latin they are the equivalents for such words as when, while, since, because, if, before, after, though, in order that, that, etc. ”