Longer exercises in Latin prose composition, chiefly tr. from the writings of modern Latinists: with an intr. and notes by J.W. Donaldson

Latinity are supplied by Muretus, and his editors and admirers, Ruhnken and F. A. Wolf; but there is no one who has used the Latin language with greater facility for the expression of modern ideas, or whose style is so easily imitable, as Wyttenbach, from whom I have given a considerable number of passages. One of his most distinguished pupils, P. W. Van Heusde, has declared that Wyttenbach used to speak publicly in Latin without the slightest hesitation, and just as though it had been his mother-tongue: Latine loquebatur in lectionibus publicis, ut suâ quisque linguâ loqui solet; imo vero ut pauci loquuntur.' And it is particularly remarked, as a proof of his complete mastery of Latin, that, without using any barbarous terms, he contrived to express the most modern and un-Roman ideas, and to describe with the utmost perspicuity objects and facts quite unknown to the ancients. On endeavouring to recal his words, Van Heusde declares that they quite escaped his memory, because Wyttenbach had rather clothed modern thoughts in a classical dress, than strained his Latin so as to make it furnish verbal equivalents for modern words: Scilicet non vocem ille usurpaverat propriam quamdam et peculiarem, sed toto orationis habitu, qui antiquus erat, sic rem novam declaraverat, ut ipsi verosimiliter antiqui fecissent, si notionem habuissent, verbo caruissent' (Init. Phil. Plat., pp. 13, 14). It is just this faculty which I would wish to encourage by practice in the following Exercises, and which is exemplified most strikingly in the extracts from Wyttenbach.

With regard to the translations from the Latin which constitute the bulk of this book, it is hardly necessary to remark that they are not intended as specimens of English style, but as vehicles for reproduction in Latin. In fact, most of them were dictated to my own boys in the Sixth-Form room, and

are therefore corrected remnants of oral instruction. Wherever it suited my purpose I have abridged or otherwise modified the original; but, as a general rule, the translation is literal.

These exercises vary in length, and though some of the earlier extracts are subdivided, I have generally sought no other limit than the natural conclusion of the passage. About a page of this volume-rather more than less-will be found to be equivalent to an ordinary sixth-form exercise; and there are not many of the selections which greatly exceed or fall short of this standard.

Although this work is designed principally to contribute to that revival of the habit of writing Latin for which I have pleaded in the Varronianus, and though this is a different thing from merely learning the Latin language, yet, as omne majus continet in se minus, I believe that the occasional practice in the imitation of modern Latinity will be of service to the mere student; and I have no hesitation in recommending to other teachers, what I have found advantageous to my own pupils-namely, that one of these exercises should be set in the upper forms about once a fortnight. Apart from all opinions respecting the practical use of the Latin language as a medium of communication, I fully concur in the opinion expressed by Niebuhr (Exercise XIII., p. 17), that 'Latin composition is a capital school for the formation of a good style in general.’

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