184 NOTES ON STYLE 



In the noble blending of long words with short, the rejec- 

 tion of superfluities, and the dependence upon verbal collo- 

 cation for the expression of logical meaning, Latin is 

 unrivalled among languages. Whatever Greek could do 

 (and Greek did many things beyond the scope of Latin), 

 no Greek poet, except Sappho, produced stanzas of the same 

 stationary and yet moving dignity as these : 



Atqui sciebat ques sibi barbarus 

 Tortor pararet : non aliter tamen 

 Dimovit obstantes propinquos 



Et populum reditus morantem, 

 Quam si clientum longa negotia, 

 Dijudicata lite, relinqueret, 



Tendens Venafranos in agros 

 Aut Lacedsemonium Tarentum. 



The foregoing paragraphs betray no slender admiration 

 for the Latin language as an organ of style. If I may intro- 

 duce a personal confession, it is to this effect : that in pro- 

 portion as I have grown in years and in reflection on the art 

 of writing passing away from youth, and soberly testing 

 enthusiasms awakened by first contact with the divine Greek 

 imagination I have grown to appreciate with deeper 

 reverence the austere and masculine virtues of Latin, the 

 sincerity and brevity of Roman speech, the nervous grip with 

 which that language grasps thought, and the pomp of more 

 than Oriental draperies with which its eloquence envelops it, 

 when the haughty genius of the race condescends to ornament 

 and methods of rhetorical persuasion. 



It is not, in the case of Latin, that sweetness distils from 

 strength, like honey from the famous jaws of Samson's lion. 

 There is little enough of pure sweetness in that literature. 

 What sugared drops we find are scarcely native to the soil, 

 but stolen from the hives of subtle Hellas. I would rather 

 say that in the clanging periods of Roman eloquence, in the 

 solemn march of Livy's historical narration, in the stabbing 

 epigrams of Tacitus, in the swollen torrent-cry of Juvenal's 

 invective, in the oceanic ebb and flow of Lucretian hexa- 

 meters, the stubborn nudity of Latin clothes itself with gor- 



