United States or Western Sahara ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"The Honourable Giles Henderson is beholden to no man and to no corporation, and will go into office prepared to do justice impartially to all." "Bu copia verborum let us to the main business!" To an hundred newspapers, to Mr. Flint at Fairview, and other important personages ticks out the momentous news that the balloting has begun.

Macaulay has a great facility of language, a prodigal copia verborum that he narrates rapidly and clearly that he paints very forcibly, and that his readers throughout the tale are carried on, or away, by something of the sorcery which a brilliant orator exercises over his auditory. But he has also in a great degree the faults of the oratorical style.

His lexicon, entitled De Verborum Significatu, was a rich treasury of antiquarian research: such parts of it as survive in the abridgments made from it in the second and eighth centuries, by Sextus Pompeius Festus and Paulus Diaconus, are still among our most valuable sources for the study of early Latin language and institutions.

Hobbes says "animadverte, quam sit ab improprietate verborum pronum hominibus prolabi in errores circa res," or "how prone men are to fall into errors about things, when they use improper expressions."

Here he manifestly mistakes. For I spoke not of the Placing, but the Choice of words: for which I quoted that aphorism of JULIUS CAESAR, Delectus verborum est origo eloquentiae. But delectus verborum is no more Latin for the "Placing of words;" than Reserate is Latin for "Shut the door!" as he interprets it; which I, ignorantly, construed "Unlock or open it!"

In addition to these collections, we find manuals of a more grammatical nature, also piled up treasury-like: 'On the stock of expressions', De copia verborum et rerum, 'On letter-writing', De conscribendis epistolis, not to mention works of less importance.

In fact Varro was no stylist. He was a master of facts, as Cicero of words. Studiosum rerum, says Augustine, tantum docet, quantum studiosum verborum Cicero delectat. Hence Cicero, with all his proneness to exaggerate the excellences of his friends, never speaks of him as eloquent. He calls him omnium facile acutissimus, et sine ulla dubitatione doctissimus.

De copia verborum ac rerum was also such a help for beginners, to provide them with a vocabulary and abundance of turns and expressions; and also the germs of a larger work: De ratione studii, a manual for arranging courses of study, lay in the same line. It was a life of uncertainty and unrest. The bishop gave but little support. Erasmus was not in good health and felt continually depressed.

Talia mirantibus inculcans passionem septem dormientium, et habitudines corporum singulorum, quas nulla docet litera, ita prompte disseruit: ac si cum eis quotidiano victitaret contubernio. His auditis, comes militem, episcopus clericum, abbas monachum, ad veritatem verborum exsculpendam, Manicheti Constantinopolitano imperatori misere, adiectis regis sui literis et muneribus.

After his return to Germany in 1600, he published, at Nuremberg, in 1612, a description of what he had seen and thought worth record, written in Latin, as "Itinerarium Germaniae, Galliae, Angliae, Italiae, cum Indice Locorum, Rerum atque Verborum."