Books and reading -- Great Britain; English literature -- History and criticism
Here are a few particulars, by way of illustration. More wrote
his "Utopia," Bacon wrote all the bulk of his philosophical work,
in Latin; Newton wrote his "Principia" in Latin. Keble's Lectures
on Poetry (if their worth and the name of Keble may together save
me from bathos) were delivered in Latin. Our Vice-Chancellor, our
Public Orator still talk Latin, securing for it what attention
they can: nor have
The bigots of this iron time
_Yet_ call'd their harmless art a crime.
But there is a better reason why you should endeavour to
understand the value of Latin in our literature; a filial reason.
Our fathers built their great English prose, as they built their
oratory, upon the Latin model. Donne used it to construct his
mighty fugues: Burke to discipline his luxuriance. Says Cowper,
it were
Praise enough for any private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Well then, here is a specimen of Chatham's language: from his
speech, Romanly severe, denouncing the Government of the day for
employing Red Indians in the American War of Independence. He is
addressing the House of Lords:
I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers
of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church--I conjure
them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of
their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned
bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I
call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of
their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of
their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the
honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your
ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit
and humanity of my country to vindicate the national
character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the
tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this
noble lord [Lord Suffolk] frowns with indignation at the
disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleet:
against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended
and established the honour, the liberties, the religion--the
_Protestant religion_--of this country, against the arbitrary
cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than
Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose
among us--to turn forth into our settlements, among our
ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless
cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child!
to send forth the infidel savage---against whom? against your
Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate
their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these
horrible hell-hounds of savage war!--hell-hounds, I say, of
savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate
the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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