MODERN FORMS OF ANCIENT PROPER NAMES. 331 
In unchanged proper names, as they are read, we may say by all 
scholars except those of the British Islands—such as Italia, Ger- 
manica, Roma, Terracina—we most probably hear the words very 
much as Cicero or Virgil uttered them. To this day the stranger 
from the north, when listening to the psalms and hymns sung in 
the churches at Marseilles, is scarcely able to decide whether the 
language is Latin or Italian. 
In words that have undergone a slight alteration, according to 
certain dialectic principles,—such as paradiso, vino, teatro, cuwita, 
podesta—we feel pretty sure, also, that we hear sounds and sylla- 
bles of veritable Latin, as it was spoken in the villas of Italy and in 
the Castra stativa of the frontiers. 
Tn other words and proper names that have suffered a very great 
metamorphosis, Latin still meets the ear, but it is Latin disguised. 
In the French feu, wil, we scarcely recognize focus, oculus ; nor in 
the Italian vescovo, chiesa, episcopus, ecclesia. Were popular cor- 
ruptions have become fixed in certain phonetic forms; orthographie 
we cannot style them. 
Nor was rapid and vulgar pronunciation the only source of cor- 
ruption. Ancient classic words suffered also from the difficulty which 
the northern and other races experienced in enunciating the names 
of the places of which they made themselves masters. © 
In Aosta, Saragossa, Grenoble, we hear some barbaric chieftain 
endeavouring to articulate Augusta, Cesar Augusta, Grantianopolis. 
In Watling Way we have an Angle or Saxon trying to say Vitelliana 
Via.* 
tione Greece potissimum Linguz,” which drew forth a prohibition of the new practice from 
Gardiner, then Chancellor. ‘In sonis omnino ne philosophator, sed utitor praesentibus,”— 
the decree ran. “It were much better,” the conservative Chancellor added, “that the Greek 
language itself with its sounds were wholly banished, than that the youth by his (Cheke’s) 
teaching should imbibe rashness, arrogance, and vanity, most pernicious pests to all the rest 
of the life.’ 
Caius also, the “ Fui Caius” of Caius College, supported the old way in a treatise “De 
Pronunciatione Grecz et Latinze Linguz cum Scriptionenova.” Erasmus himself had filled 
the Greek chair at Cambridge in 1510, where he lectured to small classes on the Hrotemata 
of Chrysoloras. A well-known walk in the grounds of Queen’s College retains his name. 
The question of pronunciation, after enlivening the learned world for a time, was at length 
decided practically. European scholars (the English included) adopted the new method. 
That is to say, in the several countries scholars took the liberty of reading the dead languages, 
as they did their own respectively. The result in England has been seen above. 
* In some modern forms of ancient names we also probably hear conventional abbreviations 
similar to those which are so common in the British Islands, as Lemster for Leominster, 
Lanson for Launceston, &c., &c. 
