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Updated: June 12, 2025
Sometimes, again, one is reminded of the ancient Roman poets, and not unfrequently, too, of the rhythmic incantations of Sir Thomas Browne, that majestic and perverted Latinist. The description, for instance, of Egdon Heath, at the beginning of the Return of the Native, has a dusky architectural grandeur that is like the Portico of an Egyptian Temple.
I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined Shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all that they were militarily flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; I don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; I don't remember well, I don't remember that there is TESTIMONY great testimony imposing testimony unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one the law.
Like Leo XIII and doubtless in a spirit of rivalry he courted the reputation of being a very distinguished Latinist, and professed a special and boundless affection for Virgil. "I know, I know," he exclaimed, "I remember your page on the return of spring, which consoles the poor whom winter has frozen. Oh! I read it three times over!
His paraphrases were submitted to two competent scholars, who drew up a long and rather formidable list of apparently inaccurate renderings. These were in turn submitted to the accomplished Latinist, Mr. Allen of Corpus, who is editing the Letters of Erasmus for the Clarendon Press. Mr.
'Why, it signifies, Katharine said, 'that Messenio did well mark a face. If you read commetavi it should mean that he scratched it with his nails so that it resembled a harrowed field; if commentavi, that he bethumped it with his fist so that bruises came out like the stops on a fair writing. 'It is true that you are a good Latinist, Mary said expressionlessly.
Beale, in Jesus College in Cambridge, from whence, being a most excellent Latinist, he was admitted into the Inner Temple; but it seemed so crabbed a study, and disagreeable to his inclinations, that he rather studied to obey his mother than to make any progress in the law.
On this fact, nevertheless, I build up the following theory: That Bracciolini having found what a good thing he had made of it in forging the last six books of the Annals, along with the great success that had attended it, set about forging an addendum, with a view of disposing of it when completed to Cosmo de' Medici; that while he was engaged in the composition, he was surprised by death on the 30th of October, 1459, leaving behind his friend and patron, Cosmo de' Medici, to survive him nearly five years, till the 1st of August, 1464; that Bracciolini, when he saw that he was approaching the end of his days, must necessarily and naturally have made his sons acquainted with the existence of the work, on account of the great profit that could be made by the disposal of it whenever the favourable opportunity presented itself; that Giovanni Francesco Bracciolini, in 1513 when John de' Medici was elected to the Pontifical throne, having outlived all his brothers, had then this MS. in his keeping; knowing that it was in an unfinished state, from his father being engaged upon it when he died, also being aware that there was an ugly gap of three years between the imprisonment of Drusus and the fall of Sejanus, believing in the necessity of this gap being supplied, and regarding Arcimboldi as a greater Latinist and scholar generally than himself, therefore more capable of adding this fresh matter, at any rate, of putting the manuscript in order for transcription, he apprised the Pope's Receiver of the treasure; and that the time which elapsed between the offering of the reward by Leo X. and the turning up of the first six books of the Annals, something more than a year, or even a year and a half, was occupied by Arcimboldi in the revision of the MS. and by a monk in the Abbey of Corvey in transcribing the forgery along with the works of Tacitus.
Sometimes he even rejected all my quotations, maintaining they were false, and, offering to fetch the book, defied me to find them. He knew he ran very little risk, and that, with all my borrowed learning, I was not sufficiently accustomed to books, and too poor a Latinist to find a passage in a large volume, had I been ever so well assured it was there.
There is a sense in which Macaulay was not an Englishman at all, but a Ciceronian Latinist who foisted an alien style upon our tongue; and even Addison is a foreigner compared to the virile Kipling. The nature and needs of the adolescent mind demand bread and meat, while Latin rudiments are husks. For the American boy and girl, high school too often means Latin.
Another Ferrarese poet makes his appearance on this occasion, a man of whom much was expected, Ariosto, who was then twenty-seven years old, and already known at the court of the Este and in the cultivated circles of Italy as a Latinist and a writer of comedies. He also wrote an epithalamium addressed to Lucretia. It is graceful, and not burdened with mythological pedantry, but it lacks invention.
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