VI

I would press the point more rudely upon you, and more particularly, than does Newman. And first, for Latin—

I waive that Rome occupied and dominated this island during 400 years. Let that be as though it had never been. For a further 1000 years and more Latin remained the common speech of educated men throughout Europe: the 'Universal Language.' Greek had been smothered by the Turk. Through all that time—through the most of what we call Modern History, Latin reigned everywhere. Is this a fact to be ignored by any of you who would value 'values'?

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 example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity….

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

That was Chatham. For Wolfe—he, as you know, was ever reading the classics even on campaign: as Burke again carried always a Virgil in his pocket. Abeunt studia in mores. Moreover can we separate Chatham's Roman morality from Chatham's language in the passage I have just read? No: we cannot. No one, being evil, can speak good things with that weight; 'for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.' We English (says Wordsworth)

     We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
     That Shakespeare spake….

You may criticise Chatham's style as too consciously Ciceronian. But has ever a Parliamentary style been invented which conveys a nobler gravity of emotion? `Buskined'?—yes: but the style of a man. 'Mannered'?—yes, but in the grand manner. 'Conscious'?— yes, but of what? Conscious of the dignity a great man owes to himself, and to the assembly he addresses. He conceives that assembly as 'the British Senate'; and, assuming, he communicates that high conception. The Lords feel that they are listening as Senators, since it is only thus a Senate should be addressed, as nothing less than a Senate should be addressed thus.

Let me read you a second passage; of written prose:

Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the grave; there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last[3].

Latin—all Latin—down to its exquisite falling close! And I say to you, Gentlemen, that passages such as these deserve what Joubert claimed of national monuments, Ce sont les crampons qui unissent une génération à une autre. Conservez ce qu'ont vu vos pères, 'These are the clamps that knit one generation to another. Cherish those things on which your fathers' eyes have looked.'

Abeunt studia in mores.

If, years ago, there had lacked anything to sharpen my suspicion of those fork-bearded professors who derived our prose from the stucco of Anglo-Saxon prose, it would have been their foolish deliberate practice of composing whole pages of English prose without using one word derivative from Latin or Greek. Esau, when he sold his birthright, had the excuse of being famished. These pedants, with a full board, sought frenetically to give it away— board and birthright. 'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality' —almost, I say, these men had deserved to have a kind of speech more to their taste read over their coffins.