even trench and the bristling mound is indeed a high I and mighty Queen, when seated on her own throne; she has dictated the verse of Catullus and the prose of Tacitus; her laws, given to the world by the mouths of heathen Emperors and Christian Popes, have had wondrous weight with mankind. But no rash or vulgar hand should drag her into English common life; her help, in eking out our store of words, should be sought by none but ripe scholars, and even then most sparingly.[1]
I once heard a country doctor say, ‘Let me percute your chest.’[2] This too common love of Latinized tawdriness is fostered by the cheap press; the penny-a-liner is the outcome of the middle class. As I shall bestow some notice upon these individuals, to use the word dearest to their hearts, I think it as well first to say what I mean by the scornful term. The leading articles in our daily papers of the highest rank are the
- ↑ In my younger days, the term reduplication used to be confined to the Greek grammar; but I see that one of the cheap papers has begun to employ this word for the action known hitherto to Englishmen as repetition. A little learning is indeed a dangerous thing.
- ↑ Mr. Charles Butler had called the Bull, by which Pius V. deposed Elizabeth, illaudable. He was twitted by a hot Protestant for applying so mild an epithet to so hateful an act. The Roman Catholic answered that he had had in his mind Virgil's Busiris; he quoted, in support of his phrase, Aulus Gellius, Heyne, and Milton. Had be but used in the first place some plain English adjective to express his meaning, much angry ink would have been left unshed. See his Vindication against Mr. Townsend's Accusations, pp. 112-114. Mr. Hazard, the American, published in 1873 a very good book on San Domingo; but he will not hear of settling in a country; locating, according to him, is the right word to use.
