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Idea of a University

<h3>§ 3.</h3> <h3>Latin Writing.</h3> <h4>1.</h4> Mr. White, the Tutor, is more and more pleased with young Mr. Black; and, when the latter asks him for some hints for writing Latin, Mr. White takes him into his confidence and lends him a number of his own papers. Among others he puts the following into Mr. Black's hands. Mr. White's view of Latin translation. “There are four requisites of good Composition,—correctness of vocabulary, or diction, syntax, idiom, and elegance. Of these, the two first need no explanation, and are likely to be displayed by every candidate. The last is desirable indeed, but not essential. The point which requires especial attention is idiomatic propriety. “By idiom is meant that use of words which is peculiar to a particular language. Two nations may have corresponding words for the same ideas, yet differ altogether in their mode of using those words. For instance, ‘et’ means ‘and,’ yet it does not always admit of being used in Latin, where ‘and’ is used in English. ‘Faire’ may be French for ‘do’; yet in a particular phrase, for ‘How do you do?’ ‘faire’ is not used, but ‘se porter,’ viz., ‘Comment vous portez-vous?’ An Englishman or a Frenchman would be almost unintelligible and altogether ridiculous to each other, who used the French or English words, with the idioms or peculiar uses of his own language. Hence, the most complete and exact acquaintance with dictionary and grammar will utterly fail to teach a student to write or compose. Something more is wanted, viz., the knowledge of the use of words and constructions, or the knowledge of idiom. “Take the following English of a modern writer: “ ‘This is a serious consideration:—Among men, as among wild beasts, the taste of blood creates the appetite for it, and the appetite for it is strengthened by indulgence.’ “Translate it word for word literally into Latin, thus:— “ ‘Hæc est seria consideratio. Inter homines, ut inter feras, gustus sanguinis creat ejus appetitum, et ejus appetitus indulgentiâ roboratur.’ “Purer Latin, as far as diction is concerned, more correct, as far as syntax, cannot be desired. Every word is classical, every construction grammatical: yet Latinity it simply has none. From beginning to end it follows the English mode of speaking, or English idiom, not the Latin. “In proportion, then, as a candidate advances from this Anglicism into Latinity, so far does he write good Latin. “We might make the following remarks upon the above literal version. “1. ‘Consideratio’ is not ‘a consideration;’ the Latins, having no article, are driven to expedients to supply its place, e.g., quidam is sometimes used for a. “2. ‘Consideratio’ is not ‘a consideration,’ i.e., a thing considered, or a subject; but the act of considering. “3. It must never be forgotten, that such words as ‘consideratio’ are generally metaphorical, and therefore cannot be used simply, and without limitation or explanation, in the English sense, according to which the mental act is primarily conveyed by the word. ‘Consideratio,’ it is true, can be used absolutely, with greater propriety than most words of the kind; but if we take a parallel case, for instance, ‘agitatio,’ we could not use it at once in the mental sense for ‘agitation,’ but we should be obliged to say ‘agitatio mentis, animi,’ etc., though even then it would not answer to ‘agitation.’ “4. ‘Inter homines, gustus,’ etc. Here the English, as is not uncommon, throws two ideas together. It means, first, that something occurs among men, and occurs among wild beasts, and that it is the same thing which occurs among both; and secondly that this something is, that the taste of blood has a certain particular effect. In other words, it means, (1) ‘this occurs among beasts and men,’ (2) viz., that the ‘taste of blood,’ etc. Therefore, ‘inter homines, etc., gustus creat, etc.,’ does not express the English meaning, it only translates its expression. “5. ‘Inter homines’ is not the Latin phrase for ‘among.’ ‘Inter’ generally involves some sense of division, viz., interruption, contrast, rivalry, etc. Thus, with a singular noun, ‘inter cœnam hoc accidit,’ i.e., this interrupted the supper. And so with two nouns, ‘inter me et Brundusium Cæsar est.’ And so with a plural noun, ‘hoc inter homines ambigitur,’ i.e., man with man. ‘Micat inter omnes Julium sidus,’ i.e., in the rivalry of star against star. ‘Inter tot annos unus (vir) inventus est,’ i.e., though all those years, one by one, put in their claim, yet only one of them can produce a man, etc. ‘Inter se diligunt,’ they love each other. On the contrary, the Latin word for ‘among,’ simply understood, is ‘in.’ “6. As a general rule, indicatives active followed by accusatives, are foreign to the main structure of a Latin sentence. “7. ‘Et;’ here two clauses are connected, having different subjects or nominatives; in the former ‘appetitus’ is in the nominative, and in the latter in the accusative. It is usual in Latin to carry on the same subject, in connected clauses. “8. ‘Et’ here connects two distinct clauses. ‘Autem’ is more common. “These being some of the faults of the literal version, I transcribe the translations sent in to me by six of my pupils respectively, who, however deficient in elegance of composition, and though more or less deficient in hitting the Latin idiom, yet evidently know what idiom is. “The first wrote:—Videte rem graviorem; quod feris, id hominibus quoque accidit,—sanguinis sitim semel gustantibus intus concipi, plenè potantibus maturari. “The second wrote:—Res seria agitur; nam quod in feris, illud in hominibus quoque cernitur, sanguinis appetitionem et suscitari lambendo et epulando inflammari. “The third:—Ecce res summâ consideratione digna; et in feris et in hominibus, sanguinis semel delibati sitis est, sæpius hausti libido. “The fourth:—Sollicitè animadvertendum est, cum in feris tum in hominibus fieri, ut guttæ pariant appetitum sanguinis, frequentiores potus ingluviem. “And the fifth:—Perpende sedulo, gustum sanguinis tam in hominibus quam in feris primæ appetitionem sui tandem cupidinem inferre. “And the sixth:—Hoc grave est, quod hominibus cum feris videmus commune, gustasse est appetere sanguinem, hausisse in deliciis habere.” Mr. Black, junr., studies this paper, and considers that he has gained something from it. Accordingly, when he sees his father, he mentions to him Mr. White, his kindness, his papers, and especially the above, of which he has taken a copy. His father begs to see it; and, being a bit of a critic, forthwith delivers his judgment on it, and condescends to praise it; but he says that it fails in this, viz., in overlooking the subject of structure. He maintains that the turning-point of good or bad Latinity is, not idiom, as Mr. White says, but structure. Then Mr. Black, the father, is led on to speak of himself, and of his youthful studies; and he ends by giving Harry a history of his own search after the knack of writing Latin. I do not see quite how this is to the point of Mr. White's paper, which cannot be said to contradict Mr. Black's narrative; but for this very reason, I may consistently quote it, for from a different point of view it may throw light on the subject treated in common by both these literary authorities. <h4>2.</h4> Old Mr. Black's Confession of his search after a Latin style. “The attempts and the failures and the successes of those who have gone before, my dear son, are the direction-posts of those who come after; and, as I am only speaking to you, it strikes me that I may, without egotism or ostentation, suggest views or cautions, which might indeed be useful to the University Student generally, by a relation of some of my own endeavours to improve my own mind, and to increase my own knowledge in my early life. I am no great admirer of self-taught geniuses; to be self-taught is a misfortune, except in the case of those extraordinary minds, to whom the title of genius justly belongs; for in most cases, to be self-taught is to be badly grounded, to be slovenly finished, and to be preposterously conceited. Nor, again, was that misfortune I speak of really mine; but I have been left at times just so much to myself, as to make it possible for young students to gain hints from the history of my mind, which will be useful to themselves. And now for my subject. “At school I was reckoned a sharp boy; I ran through its classes rapidly; and by the time I was fifteen, my masters had nothing more to teach me, and did not know what to do with me. I might have gone to a public school, or to a private tutor for three or four years; but there were reasons against either plan, and at the unusual age I speak of, with some inexact acquaintance with Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, and Xenophon, Horace, Virgil, and Cicero, I was matriculated at the University. I had from a child been very fond of composition, verse and prose, English and Latin, and took especial interest in the subject of style; and one of the wishes nearest my heart was to write Latin well. I had some idea of the style of Addison, Hume, and Johnson, in English; but I had no idea what was meant by good Latin style. I had read Cicero without learning what it was; the books said, ‘This is neat Ciceronian language,’ ‘this is pure and elegant Latinity,’ but they did not tell me why. Some persons told me to go by my ear; to get Cicero by heart; and then I should know how to turn my thoughts and marshal my words, nay, more, where to put subjunctive moods and where to put indicative. In consequence I had a vague, unsatisfied feeling on the subject, and kept grasping shadows, and had upon me something of the unpleasant sensation of a bad dream. “When I was sixteen, I fell upon an article in the Quarterly, which reviewed a Latin history of (I think) the Rebellion of 1715; perhaps by Dr. Whitaker. Years afterwards I learned that the critique was the writing of a celebrated Oxford scholar; but at the time, it was the subject itself, not the writer, that took hold of me. I read it carefully, and made extracts which, I believe, I have to this day. Had I known more of Latin writing, it would have been of real use to me; but as it was concerned of necessity in verbal criticisms, it did but lead me deeper into the mistake to which I had already been introduced,—that Latinity consisted in using good phrases. Accordingly I began noting down, and using in my exercises, idiomatic or peculiar expressions: such as ‘oleum perdidi,’ ‘haud scio an non,’ ‘cogitanti mihi,’ ‘verum enimvero,’ ‘equidem,’ ‘dixerim,’ and the like; and I made a great point of putting the verb at the end of the sentence. What took me in the same direction was Dumesnil's Synonymes, a good book, but one which does not even profess to teach Latin writing. I was aiming to be an architect by learning to make bricks. “Then I fell in with the Germania and Agricola of Tacitus, and was very much taken by his style. Its peculiarities were much easier to understand, and to copy, than Cicero's: ‘decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile;’ and thus, without any advance whatever in understanding the genius of the language, or the construction of a Latin sentence, I added to my fine words and cut-and-dried idioms, phrases smacking of Tacitus. The Dialogues of Erasmus, which I studied, carried me in the same direction; for dialogues, from the nature of the case, consist of words and clauses, and smart, pregnant, or colloquial expressions, rather than of sentences with an adequate structure.” Mr. Black takes breath, and then continues: “The labour, then, of years came to nothing, and when I was twenty I knew no more of Latin composition than I had known at fifteen. It was then that circumstances turned my attention to a volume of Latin Lectures, which had been published by the accomplished scholar of whose critique in the Quarterly Review I have already spoken. The Lectures in question had been delivered terminally while he held the Professorship of Poetry, and were afterwards collected into a volume; and various circumstances combined to give them a peculiar character. Delivered one by one at intervals, to a large, cultivated, and critical audience, they both demanded and admitted of special elaboration of the style. As coming from a person of his high reputation for Latinity, they were displays of art; and, as addressed to persons who had to follow ex tempore the course of a discussion delivered in a foreign tongue, they needed a style as neat, pointed, lucid, and perspicuous as it was ornamental. Moreover, as expressing modern ideas in an ancient language, they involved a new development and application of its powers. The result of these united conditions was a style less simple, less natural and fresh, than Cicero's; more studied, more ambitious, more sparkling; heaping together in a page the flowers which Cicero scatters over a treatise; but still on that very account more fitted for the purpose of inflicting upon the inquiring student what Latinity was. Any how, such was its effect upon me; it was like the ‘Open Sesame’ of the tale; and I quickly found that I had a new sense, as regards composition, that I understood beyond mistake what a Latin sentence should be, and saw how an English sentence must be fused and remoulded in order to make it Latin. Henceforth Cicero, as an artist, had a meaning, when I read him, which he never had had to me before; the bad dream of seeking and never finding was over; and, whether I ever wrote Latin or not, at least I knew what good Latin was. “I had now learned that good Latinity lies in structure; that every word of a sentence may be Latin, yet the whole sentence remain English; and that dictionaries do not teach composition. Exulting in my discovery, I next proceeded to analyze and to throw into the shape of science that idea of Latinity to which I had attained. Rules and remarks, such as are contained in works on composition, had not led me to master the idea; and now that I really had gained it, it led me to form from it rules and remarks for myself. I could now turn Cicero to account, and I proceeded to make his writings the materials of an induction, from which I drew out and threw into form what I have called a science of Latinity,—with its principles and peculiarities, their connection and their consequences,—or at least considerable specimens of such a science, the like of which I have not happened to see in print. Considering, however, how much has been done for scholarship since the time I speak of, and especially how many German books have been translated, I doubt not I should now find my own poor investigations and discoveries anticipated and superseded by works which are in the hands of every school-boy. At the same time, I am quite sure that I gained a very great deal in the way of precision of thought, delicacy of judgment, and refinement of taste, by the processes of induction to which I am referring. I kept blank books, in which every peculiarity in every sentence of Cicero was minutely noted down, as I went on reading. The force of words, their combination into phrases, their collocation—the carrying on of one subject or nominative through a sentence, the breaking up of a sentence into clauses, the evasion of its categorical form, the resolution of abstract nouns into verbs and participles;—what is possible in Latin composition and what is not, how to compensate for want of brevity by elegance, and to secure perspicuity by the use of figures, these, and a hundred similar points of art, I illustrated with a diligence which even bordered on subtlety. Cicero became a mere magazine of instances, and the main use of the river was to feed the canal. I am unable to say whether these elaborate inductions would profit any one else, but I have a vivid recollection of the great utility they were at that time to my own mind. “The general subject of Latin composition, my dear son, has ever interested me much, and you see only one point in it has made me speak for a quarter of an hour; but now that I have had my say about it, what is its upshot? The great moral I would impress upon you is this, that in learning to write Latin, as in all learning, you must not trust to books, but only make use of them; not hang like a dead weight upon your teacher, but catch some of his life; handle what is given you, not as a formula, but as a pattern to copy and as a capital to improve; throw your heart and mind into what you are about, and thus unite the separate advantages of being tutored and of being self-taught,—self-taught, yet without oddities, and tutorized, yet without conventionalities.” “Why, my dear father,” says young Mr. Black, “you speak like a book. You must let me ask you to write down for me what you have been giving out in conversation.” I have had the advantage of the written copy. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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