NATIONAL STYLE 183 



blocks ; but Latin could do more. There is a pregnancy of 

 rhetoric in the antithesis of verb and noun which only Latin 

 properly developed. Without loss of dignity, sentences can 

 be constructed in this language which carry the packed 

 meaning of logogriphs : 



Stat crux dum volvitur orbis. 



Latin is not voluble, and rarely rapid ; yet a master can make 

 it run in liquid numbers, with a slumberous or a melancholy 

 flow, as of some soft-sliding stream : 



Inter arundineasque comas gravidumque papaver, 

 Et tacitos sine labe lacus sine murmure rivos. 



The use of que, and the force gained by the omission of the 



pronoun, are beautifully illustrated by the following example : 



Tempera labuntur tacitisque senescimus annis. 



In English the pathos of the line would have to be impaired 

 by the weakness of a separate and, and the necessary intro- 

 duction of the short word we. The most felicitous renderings 

 of memorable Latin lines into English reveal the superiority 

 of the classical language in qualities of monumental repose. 

 Virgil wrote : 



Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis sevum. 



The Roman obtained his effect of lapsing waters by simple 

 quantities of sound. Dryden translates the verse and it is 

 one of his triumphs of metaphrase thus : 



He flows, and, as he flows, for ever will flow on. 



The Briton substitutes for pure sound-quantity the hurry of 

 monosyllables, and appeals to the intellectual imagination 

 rather than the verbal sense. Some rhetorical strokes in 

 Latin can be reproduced in no other language. Try as we 

 may, we shall not render the force of such a line as this : 

 Intolerabilius nihil est quam femina dives 



where the passion of the speaker is symbolised in the first 

 emphatic long word, and the sting of his satire is conveyed 

 by the clinching spondee at its close. 



