ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN.
WE have never been able to understand why ingenious people should give themselves the trouble of inventing new " universal languages " like Esperanto when there is in Latin a well-tried language that was familiar to all educated people in the West for many centuries and that might easily resume its old place. We are not thinking of classical Latin such as Cicero and Virgil wrote, but of the later Latin used by the Fathers and by all the mediaeval philosophers and chroniclers, statesmen and adminis- trators, through at least fifteen centuries. The ordinary doctor's prescription beginning with the abbreviation for " Recipe " is a survival of the age-long practice of the 'medical profession. It is a great pity that, outside the Roman Catholic Church, this late Latin should be neglected and indeed almost wholly ignored, because it might well be a lingua franca for Europe and America. We welcome as a sign of the revival of interest in the subject the Rev. H. P. V. Nunn's Introduction to Ecclesiastical Latin (Cam- bridge University Press, 6s. net). Mr. Nunn's description of classical Latin as " an artistic language which nobody ever spoke but which everybody understood " is perhaps exaggerated, but there is much truth in what he says about the vigour and lucidity of late Latin and the surpassing importance of the subjects which are handled by the late Latin writers. Ho states briefly the main differences between classical and late Latin and then proceeds to discuss at length the syntax of late Latin, with innumerable examples from the Vulgate. In the closing pages he gives an interesting set of passages from the Visions of St. Pc-rpetua, and from the works of St. Cyprian, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Adamnan, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Thomas k Kempis, with explanatory notes. Middle-aged people who find Livy or the Letters to Atticus somewhat hard to construe would, we think, be agree- ably surprised to discover how easy these selections are, apart from a few unfamiliar words. The constructions, as Mr. Nunn says, are very similar to those of modern English, which has indeed been influenced by the Vulgate, through the Authorized Version. It is true, of course, that some late Latin writers are difficult, especially the formidable Tertullian, whose African genius made a Latin peculiar to himself. But, generally speak- ing, late Latin is far easier to acquire than the classical language. Students have been deterred from reading it, partly through the old scholarly prejudice against post-classical authors, partly for lack of a good syntax, such as Mr. Nunn supplies, and of a cheap and accurate dictionary which has yet to be published. We may mention here that the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge recently published, in its series of " Helps for Students of History," two valuable little pamphlets by Dr. A. Souter, Hints on the Study of Latin (ea). 125-750) and Hints an Translation from Latin into English, which supplement Mr. Nunn's useful and timely book.
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