LATIMER 



3340 



LATIN LANGUAGE 



lief of harmful social conditions. See HULL 

 HOUSE. 



She began her public work as a volunteer 

 county visitor, under appointment of the Cook 

 County agent to investigate needy cases in the 

 neighborhood of Hull House. In 1893 she was 

 appointed a member of the Illinois State Board 

 of Charities, but resigned in 1901 as a pro- 

 test against the prevailing political control of 

 state institutions. She was, however, reap- 

 pointed in 1905, and served until 1909. Miss 

 Lathrop was largely instrumental in the estab- 

 lishment of the Illinois Society for Mental 

 Hygiene, an organization of which she was the 

 first president, and she has shown great interest 

 in the improvement of hospital conditions for 

 the insane. She visited Europe and investi- 

 gated the methods used there for the care of 

 the insane and of children; she assisted in es- 

 tablishing the Chicago Juvenile Court and the 

 Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. 



The Federal Children's Bureau, of which 

 she has been head since 1912, has for its duty 

 the investigation of matters affecting the wel- 

 fare of all children. See CHILDREN'S BUREAU. 



LAT'IMER, HUGH (1490-1555), an English 

 reformer and martyr, one of the divines ap- 

 pointed by the University of Cambridge to 

 investigate the legality of Henry VIII's mar- 

 riage with Catharine of Aragon (which see). 

 By declaring for the king he secured the favor 

 of Henry VIII, who appointed him one of his 

 chaplains. He became bishop of Worcester 

 in 1535, and at the opening of Convocation 

 preached two powerful sermons urging the 

 necessity of reform in the Church. Not being 

 willing to accept the Six Articles, which he 

 thought favored Roman Catholicism, he re- 

 signed his bishopric in 1539, and lived in great 

 privacy for six years. At the end of that period 

 he was confined in the Tower. 



On the accession of Edward VI Latimer was 

 released, but when Mary came to the throne 

 he and other reformers were arrested and im- 

 prisoned. He was confined in jail for more 

 than a year, feeble, sick- and worn out by long- 

 endured hardships, but his enemies would not 

 wait for him to die. Summoned, with Ridley, 

 before certain commissioners who were ap- 

 pointed to judge the two reformers, he was 

 condemned to be burned at the stake. When 

 brought to the place of execution opposite Bal- 

 liol College, on the 16th of October, 1555, he 

 exclaimed to his companion, 'Be of good com- 

 fort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we 

 shall this day light such a candle, by God's 



grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put 

 out." See RIDLEY, NICHOLAS. 



LATIN LANGUAGE, a language which be- 

 longed originally to the central Italian tribe of 

 the Latins, but which became with the spread 

 of Roman influence the dominant tongue of 

 the ancient world. It belongs to the Indo- 

 European family (see ARYAN), and was one of 

 a group of related languages spoken in ancient 

 Italy. When scholars first began to give at- 

 tention to problems presented by philology, 

 they assumed a close connection between Latin 

 and Greek closer than between other mem- 

 bers of the Indo-European family; and in con- 

 sequence argued that there must have been 

 a single race from which both Greeks and 

 Italians were descended. Closer study in re- 

 cent years has shown, however, that no such 

 close relationship exists, and that Latin is 

 nearer to the Celtic than to any other tongue 

 (see CELTS). 



The Three Periods of Latin. The history of 

 Latin as a living language divides itself into 

 three periods: the preliterary, which extended 

 from the earliest times to the beginning of 

 Latin literature, about 240 B.C.; the literary 

 period, from 240 B. c. to about A.D. 170, and the 

 period of decay. In its earliest period, which 

 is represented by inscriptions and a few manu- 

 scripts, Latin was a crude, undeveloped lan- 

 guage, incapable of expressing the thoughts of 

 a people in a high state of civilization. During 

 the third and second centuries B. c. the change 

 from a mere rustic dialect to a literary lan- 

 guage took place, the poet Ennius having a 

 great part in its development; and the so- 

 called Golden Age (80 B. C.-A. D. 17) saw Latin 

 brought to its highest point of perfection. 

 Cicero and Caesar in prose, Vergil and Horace 

 in poetry, showed what majestic effects might 

 be achieved with this comparatively new me- 

 dium. Throughout the later literary period, in 

 the hands of writers whose chief striving was 

 after ornament and overelaboration, Latin lost 

 the simplicity which had been its chief charm 

 in the works of the great authors mentioned 

 above. Its vigor departed, and the decline was 

 steady, until by the third century A.D. literary 

 Latin could scarcely take rank as a living lan- 

 guage. 



From It Sprang Other Languages. Latin 

 differed from most other languages in that it 

 had no dialects, in the ordinary sense of the 

 term. There was, however, developing side by 

 side with literary Latin, a vernacular, or local- 

 ized Latin, which differed in many respects 



