Latin

“ 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 ”

“ But nobody has studied Latin without being or feeling himself surer of his control of a third of the words of his daily speech. I have never thought the etymological a particularly strong argument for studying Latin, but it has been given me by students of my own whom I didn't think I had succeeded in getting to learn Latin. That the close study of an English dictionary might do much the same thing for the boy, I freely admit; but the mass of mankind when they read are casual readers, and the casual reader does not use a dictionary. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Latin is a wholly dead tongue, and except in a degenerate form not by any means an easy one to learn, for its genius is wholly opposed to the genius even of those modern languages which are most closely allied to it. ”

“ Why study Latin? The foregoing paragraphs make it clear why Latin forms so important a part of modern education. We have seen that our civilization rests upon that of Greece and Rome, and that we must look to the past if we would understand the present. It is obvious, too, that the knowledge of Latin not only leads to a more exact and effective use of our own language, but that it is of vital importance and of great practical value to any one preparing for a literary or professional career. ”

“ Of all the works which we have yet considered, Latin was an essential element: whether the object was, as in the glossaries and vocabularies before the fifteenth century, to explain the Latin words themselves, or as in the Promptorium and Catholicon, the Abecedarium and the Alvearie, and other works of the sixteenth century, to render English words into Latin. But a new stage of development was marked by the appearance of dictionaries of English with another, modern language. ”

“ As the literary language of the ancient Roman civilization died out, seemingly extinguished by the barbarism of the middle ages, all the forms of the old classical language being confounded in the most hopeless chaos, suddenly new, vigorous and beautiful tongues sprang forth, ruled by the most regular laws, related to, yet different from, Latin. ”

“ Even those who can fully enter into the stateliness and imperishable beauty of the Latin tongue must surely feel it a grievous disadvantage, that devotions, which should carry the whole heart with them, are not presented through the medium of that mother tongue, the accents of which speak to every man's heart by the force of a thousand nameless associations, as those of no other tongue can. ”

“ Latin was the common language of scholars and remained so even down to the days of Shakespeare. Even yet it is more nearly than any other tongue the universal language of the learned. The life of to-day is much nearer the life of ancient Rome than the lapse of centuries would lead one to suppose. You and I are Romans still in many ways, and if Cæsar and Cicero should appear among us, we should not find them, except for dress and language, much unlike men of to-day. ”

“ If ever there be a true Latin renascence, which is scarcely to be hoped for, it will come, not from a writer who is saturated with French, Russian, German, and English influences, but one who has the Latin genius, the Latin temper, unalloyed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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; ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the increase in the knowledge of Latin was mainly such as a mature man may realize within himself, if he has kept up his Latin reading, however little he seem to have added to his knowledge since leaving his Alma Mater. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Latin is fair play, though some of us are in the condition of the auctioneer in The Mill on the Floss, who had brought away with him from the Great Mudport Free School "a sense of understanding Latin generally, though his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready." ”

“ 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. ”

“ HOW TO READ LATIN 17. To read Latin well is not so difficult, if you begin right. Correct habits of reading should be formed now. Notice the quantities carefully, especially the quantity of the penult, to insure your getting the accent on the right syllable. (Cf. § 15.) Give every vowel its proper sound and every syllable its proper length. Then bear in mind that we should read Latin as we read English, in phrases rather than in separate words. Group together words that are closely connected in thought. No good reader halts at the end of each word. ”

“ Middle-age Latin words, i.e. those formed from a corrupt Latin by the monks of the middle ages. These last appear in French in a modified form, and come into English still further altered in their spelling and pronunciation.
I. In most cases English words of the first class are compounds or derivatives. We have not adopted the roots themselves, but use them only [24] in composition, with some particle or preposition. For example: the Latin root ‘clude’ is never found in English as an independent word, though we have ‘exclude,’ ‘include,’ ‘preclude,’ &c. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Thus, ‘people’ is indeed ‘populus’, but it was ‘peuple’ first, while ‘popular’ is a direct transfer of a Latin vocable into our English glossary. So too ‘enemy’ is ‘inimicus’, but it was first softened in the French, and had its Latin physiognomy to a great degree obliterated, while ‘inimical’ is Latin throughout; ‘parish’ is ‘paroisse’, but ‘parochial’ is ‘parochialis’; ‘chapter’ is ‘chapitre’, but ‘capitular’ is ‘capitularis’.
Doublets
Sometimes you will find in English what I may call the double adoption of a Latin word; which now makes part of our vocabulary in two shapes ”

“ 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. ”

“ We acknowledge that the Latin Language is a great Help to the Running of a Verse, and if the Reader insists upon that to be the only pre-eminence which Latin Verses have over English, he is very welcome to think as he likes best. ”

“ I have said nothing about the writing of Latin, because it is obvious at the present day that reading should be accompanied by writing from the first, and, what is even more important, that the sentences to be translated into Latin should be based on the subject matter and vocabulary of the Reader. Learning a language is largely an imitative process, and we must not expect our beginners to make bricks without straw, any more than we expect pupils at a more advanced age to compose in the style of Cicero or Livy without giving them plenty of models to work upon. ”

“ In form the vocative is regularly like the nominative. In English the name of the person addressed usually stands first in the sentence. The Latin vocative rarely stands first. Point out five examples of the vocative in this dialogue.
b. Observe that questions answered by yes or no in English are answered in Latin by repeating the verb. Thus, if you wished to answer in Latin the question Is the sailor fighting? Pugnatne nauta? you would say Pugnat, he is fighting, or Nōn pugnat, he is not fighting. ”

“ The frantic persons speaking of Latin, without that he ever learned the same in his health-time, shews the consonance which the Latin tongue holds with the reasonable soul; and (as we will prove hereafter,) there is to be found a particular wit applicable to the invention of languages, and Latin words; and the phrases of speech in that tongue are so fitting with the ear, that the reasonable soul, possessing the necessary temperature for the invention of some delicate language, suddenly encounters with this. ”

“ Latin′ity, the Latin tongue, style, or idiom.—Latin Church, the Western Church as distinguished from the Greek or Oriental Church, so named as having employed Latin as its official language: the Roman Catholic Church; Latin Empire, that portion of the Byzantine Empire seized in 1204 by the Crusaders, and overthrown by the Greeks in 1261; Latin kingdom, the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem ruled by French or Latin kings, and lasting from 1099 to 1187.—Classical Latin, the Latin of the writers who flourished from about 75 B.C. to 200 A.D.; Dog Latin, barbarous Latin ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the effect of the year’s study of Latin increases the youth’s power of apperception in very many directions by reason of the fact that so much of the English vocabulary used in technical vocabularies, like those of geography, grammar, history, and literature, is from a Latin source, and besides there are so many traces in the form and substance of human learning of the hundreds of years when Latin was the only tongue in which observation and reflection could be expressed. ”