Vernacular

“ A good ear is of paramount importance in a first-class facility for acquiring and using a modern vernacular.
I would not say that a man who has not a good command of the vernacular of a people cannot be to them a good missionary; for a few of the best missionaries I know, speak the vernacular wretchedly. ”

“ The vernacular literature stands alone, both in form and in contents. We have here remarkable originality of conception and probably also entirely new and genuinely medieval matter. While in the artificial literature prose is pre-eminent, in the vernacular literature, poetry, Vernacular Greek literature.both in quantity and quality, takes the first place, as was also the case among the Latin nations, where the vulgar tongue first invaded the field of poetry and only later that of prose. ”

“ Modern scholars, if they are forced to find a beginning for modern literature, would prefer to p. 6date it from the wonderful outburst of vernacular poetry in the latter part of the twelfth century, and, if they must name a birthplace, would claim attention for the Court of King Henry II.
In some of its aspects, the Romantic revival may be exhibited as a natural consequence of the Renaissance. Classical scholarship at first scorned the vernacular literatures, and did all its work of criticism and imitation in the Latin tongue. ”

“ It is in this manner that we all acquire, and inevitably so, our first knowledge of our vernacular language. A child learns the meaning of Man, White, &c., by hearing them applied to a number of individual objects, and finding out, by a process of generalisation of which he is but imperfectly conscious, what those different objects have in common. ”

“ STUDIES AND TEXTBOOKS. The studies of the elementary vernacular school remained, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, much as before, namely, reading, a little writing and ciphering, some spelling, religion, and in Teutonic countries a little music. La Salle (R. 182) had prescribed, for the Catholic vernacular schools of France, instruction in French, some. Latin, "orthography, arithmetic, the matins and vespers, le Pater, l'Ave Maria, le Credo et le Confiteor, the Commandments, responses, Catechism, duties of a Christian, and maxims and precepts drawn from the Testament." ”

“ No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any Government school, supported wholly by the Government; no oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must be in the English language.
2. In contract schools supported in part by missionary societies, the vernacular may be used only for the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, and for oral instruction in morals and religion and where it is deemed to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction. ”

“ But in the 11th century vernacular poetry was still rather limited, and has hardly any higher object than the amusement or the edification of the upper classes. An aristocratic poetry, such as it appears in the oldest Provençal compositions, cannot be the production of shepherds and husbandmen ”

“ The question of vernaculars as media of instruction is of national importance; neglect of the vernaculars means national suicide. ”

“ But the very strong prominence of it in the Scriptures, and in ecclesiastical writings generally, could not fail to develop it in the younger vernaculars; and its alliance (a dangerous one no doubt, but a real and natural) with Imagination could not long be missed. ”

“ It was impossible that any such inquiry should take place, in the case of the vernaculars, until they had reached a state of actual creative 406development, which none of them enjoyed till the twelfth century, and hardly any of them till the thirteenth. As for appreciation, other than traditional, of authors classical, patristic, or contemporary, this was rendered a rare thing by that very mental constitution of the Middle Ages which has already been often referred to, and which will be more fully discussed in the Interchapter following this book. ”

“ Nothing intelligible came out, except that the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth made ice in English; the eighty-fourth, eighty-fifth and eighty-sixth, the word sir; then at last I seemed to find the Latin words rota, mutabile, ira, nee, atra.
"Ha! there seems to be some truth in my uncle's notion," thought I.
Then again I seemed to find the word luco, which means sacred grove. Then in the third line I appeared to make out labiled, a perfect Hebrew word, and at last the syllables mere, art, mer, which were French. It was enough to drive one mad. Four different idioms in this absurd phrase. ”

“ You mean, no doubt, that, from your own experience, you fear that Vernon will hear at school many things which will shock his modesty, and much language which is evil and blasphemous; you fear that he will meet with many bad examples, and learn to look on God and godliness in a way far different from that to which he has been accustomed at home. You fear, in short, that he must pass through the same painful temptations to which you have yourself been subjected ”

“ Would it not tax a man’s invention,—no one to be named after a man, and all in the lingua vernacula? Who shall stand godfather at the christening of the wild apples? It would exhaust the Latin and Greek languages, if they were used, and make the lingua vernacula flag. We should have to call in the sunrise and the sunset, the rainbow and the autumn woods and the wild flowers, and the woodpecker and the purple finch and the squirrel and the jay and the butterfly, the November traveller and the truant boy, to our aid. ”

“ Vernoon, Vernoon, I know you and your thoughts. You think me a beautiful beast who loves like a beast, who loves you because you are white and different from our men. Well, what there is of the beast in me the gods of my people gave, for they are devils and I am their servant. ”

“ In the third volume of his "History of English Poetry" (1781) , Thomas Warton had spoken of the "Divine Comedy" as "this wonderful compound of classical and romantic fancy, of pagan and Christian theology, of real and fictitious history, of tragical and comic incidents, of familiar and heroic manners, and of satirical and sublime poetry. But the grossest improprieties of this poem discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and purgatory. ”

“ He was modest notwithstanding his glory, and he was all the more famous for his humility.
So much honour could not but excite envy. There were those who envied him his fame; and as his theories, resting upon known facts, were in opposition to the systems of science upon the question of the central fire, he sustained with his pen and by his voice remarkable discussions with the learned of every country. ”

“ Her complexion is fair and her eyes deep blue, while her pleasing countenance is altogether free from that insignificance of feature which is not unfrequently alleged to be characteristic of English beauty. ”

“ We are going to produce our material proofs; in the future religion and science will become one.”
“My own opinion, precisely,” said Lady Ulrica.
But Vernon’s homily had proved a little too much for Harrison. He tried to speak and could not control the pitch of his voice, which soared ineffectively to a falsetto squeak.
“Er—er—I—I ...” he began, and had to get to his feet before he could attain coherence. Then he started again with “No, no! It’s incredible nonsense that—the kind of religion [113] foreshadowed by spiritualism—could ever appeal to sensible men and women. ”

“ He had, already, accompanied his master on several journeys, and had a smattering of science appropriate to his condition and style of mind, but he was especially remarkable for a sort of mild philosophy, a charming turn of optimism. In his sight every thing was easy, logical, natural, and, consequently, he could see no use in complaining or grumbling. ”

“ Outlook.—"Vernon Lee possesses a mind richly imbued with the lore of the finest literature, and distinguished by just that touch of paradox, of the unexpected, which is the other indispensable requisite of the true essayist. ”

“ Nature was inspiring, but it had no sympathy with the human soul, which longed for more responsive companionship, more intimate communion. The maiden needed a friend, into whose soul the calm sunset of the prairies would infuse the same holy light that penetrated her own. In such moods, the looks and tones of Edward Vernon came back with vivid distinctness. ”

“ Could they henceforth ever expect a union between these two beings, so entirely opposed to each other, and separated by the gulf which there is between vulgar prose and sublime poetry, the one with his mania for reducing everything to scientific formulas, the other living only in the ideal, which ignores causes and is content with impressions. ”

“ Far above that earth on which he had known no joys; in the midst of that night which sent to him its softest radiance; on the way to that heaven toward which he uplifted his spirit, as though in a miraculous assumption, he seemed already to live and breathe in the new existence. ”

“ He taught me the existence of God, and never deceived me but on one point, which was—that he made me believe that all men were base and perfidious, because he wished to inspire me with his own hatred of all the human race. ”

“ Vernon; but though wholly without that nameless distinction which sometimes characterizes those conscious of pure race and habituated to the atmosphere of courts, he had at least Nature's stamp of aristocracy in a form eminently noble, and features of manly, but surpassing beauty, which were not rendered less engaging by an expression of modest timidity. He seemed to be listening with thoughtful respect to his companion, a young female by his side, who was speaking to him with an earnestness visible in her gestures and her animated countenance. ”

“ He was also a poet, when the whim took him, and who is not, at an age when all existence smiles upon one?—warm-hearted, and of an artistic nature, he was made to please, and this he did without effort or affectation on his part. ”

“ Different temperaments of men and women may well be illustrated by the variety in the character of the bird-songs. In the thrush’s song, then, I seem to hear the utterance of the strong and happy Christian. He has never been troubled with any doubts; the dark dismays and hidden misgivings of other minds are without meaning to him. Clear and glad, and untroubled, and strong in faith, the soul of this man sits upon wintry trees, above few trembling flowers, under a pale still sky, and sings from the early morning to the dusking eve an unwavering, undoubting, happy song. ”

“ No doubt about it, the piece would have been written in a simple, powerful, personal style, respectful of grammar, and free from those pretentious neologisms, those documentary expressions and realistic terms of the new school,—if it had been written. But it was not written any more than spoken, and hence it could be played on all the stages, as on all the trestles, of the two worlds. An immense advantage this is for dumb shows, not to speak of the many errors of grammar and of orthoepy, which are entirely avoided in this kind of literature. ”

“ Is there any reason in the world why we should resort to so far-fetched an explanation as the supernatural? Let us consider the evidence as if we were going to put it before a body of expert opinion. We were, according to Vernon’s own admission, in an ‘expectant, slightly inert condition.’ We had been talking spiritualism for an [147] hour or more after dinner, in very exceptional conditions. I never remember a stiller or an—er—more emotional night. When we were all worked up by Vernon’s eloquence into a peculiar state of anticipation, we saw a white figure down by the lake. ”

“ When he really began to take his predictions seriously, he began to turn out the important stuff which now bores the average s.f. enthusiast silly—or should I say sillier!
As for Verne, his stuff has never been literature except for boys. It is innocuous adventure—stuff that will not pervert morals. It is not too badly written, and the language is so simple that Verne is readily to be read in the original French, in fact some of his stuff serves as textbooks in French classes in American schools. ”

“ The first eager desire to express himself and create took the form of those early romantic stories—The Invisible Man, The Descent of the Martians, The Time Machine, etc.—stories in which his knowledge of science and Jules Verne were not yet allied to a philosophic enthusiasm for human beings in society. ”

“ Jules Verne also produces a charmingly credible effect for the most incredible things by an adept use of a considerable amount of real knowledge of nature. But most gracefully of all does it shine in the lighter form of essay, where playful thoughts draw their analogies and illustrations from actual fact, each showing up the other, and the combination presenting a peculiar piquancy to the reader. ”

“ Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? ”

“ We do not exchange ten words in the course of the day, and the few syllables that our parched tongues and swollen lips can pronounce are almost unintelligible. Wasted and bloodless, we are no longer human beings ”

“ Like most men who have risen by their own efforts, aided by fortune and by a public which takes a pleasure in idolatry, to positions of wide authority, Sir Vernon had developed, perhaps to excess, the habit of getting his own way. ”

“ All did end happily in the novel, but not in the way which Mrs. Vernon expected. Hypocrisy was unmasked, bigotry disgraced, but infidelity triumphed in success! The brilliant winding-up of the work was almost a paraphrase of the celebrated line,
"He can't be wrong whose life is in the right;"-- as if any life could be right in which the chief end of our existence, the glory of God, is disregarded! ”