SCREEDS OF LATIN
SIR,—Dr. Johnson was not of opinion that the Scotch were entirely without Latin: "I know not whether it be not peculiar to the Scots to have attained the liberal without the manual arts, to have excelled in orna- mental knowledge, and to have wanted not only the elegancies but the conveniences of common life. . . . The Latin poetry of Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum would have done honour to any nation. . . . Yet men thus ingenious and inquisitive were content to live in total ignorance of the trades by which human wants are supplied, and to supply them by the grossest means. . . . Their tables were coarse as the feasts of Eskimos and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots." Latin has been as bad a model for English prose as French has been an excellent one. Compare Chaucer's renderings of Italian and French with his attempt to assimilate the prose style of Boethius ; and consider the influence of the Latin period on the long-winded German sentence.—Yours, &c.,
Previous page
