The Portland daily press., 1879-05-31

Contra meum magnum ad.
A story of this manner of play on Latin is
told by Moore, who says boy asked to
translate "They ascend by ladders, promptly
answered." Ascendebant par adolescen-
tiores." That is the way the school-teacher
climbs to fame and higher salary.
A more scholarly diversion, though as
useless if not as trifing, is the turning of
English verse into passable and generally
dramatically correct Latin. To those who
enjoy this sort of play, little book by J. M.
Merrick "Nugae Inutiles," published at
Boston in 1874, will give entertainment.
In it nursery rhymes are done into Latin
rare-done. Jack Horner appears in this
guise:
In dngulo foci Hornerus sedebdt
C7'uStum deUOrdnS quOd Ell pLdceb1t,
e medic pr,t1auns dStatte trdctGbat,
Et "6o'aus sum pater'' cehementer clamabat.
The modern style of lover, who takes a
knife and says to a lady twill you be my
wife? if you won't, I'll have your life," is
set forth in this fashion.
Frat Uir
-4TTsdluS ctJtrO;
PueEL0edirn
"lE nubes-ultro'
81 dices non"
Occidam tie,
ReSpORdit lila
"Due, 81 riS, me.
The volume also gives versions in Greek
and German, and Latin fables which in
their translations read like forerunners of
the new World newspaper. One of the
fables is PateuamiIias Lratus, thus:
The father of family complains to his
wife that the best grapes in his vineyard
had been devoured in his absence. She re-
piled, ''The hens did it, Then he wrath
fully exclaimed, 81 guess they were two
legged hens!'
Here is another, Puer ct Scarabeus:
A certain school-boy had pet beetle with
which he used to amuse himself in his desk
when the master was not watching him.
But one day the master observing the boy
playing and neglecting his books, came up
to him, when the boy for fear the cause of
his idleness should bediscovered, seized the
beetle and devoured it.
This fable teaches that boys can digest
many things from which we shrink with
horror.
GA Fault-Finder'' writes to say that he
sometimes" sees sin the PRESS, and even
in the Drawer, sneers at the use of allitera-
ton" and that he has also noticed that
'Yorick makes free use of that rhetorical
device"
1t was Joseph Howe, Canadian politi-
clan, who replied to an opponent who sought
to convict him of inconsistency in quoting
from one of his old speeches: ''There is no
authority which with me has so little
weight" Yorick echoes the reply, and ap-
peals from his own transgressions and errors
and shortcomings to the best Judgment of
the readers of the Drawer.
But ALTERATION is proper and natural
device and a distinguishing trait of the ge-
MUS of the language. When it is forced,
when thing is said just for the sake of the
recurrence of initial letters and not for it.
self, the effect is displeasing because of the
apparent insincerity of the speaker. Pascal
said: ''Those who make antitheses by
forcing the sense, are like men who make
false windows for the sake of symmetry"
A similar Judgment may be passed upon
those who make alliterations in like man.
ner. ALTERATION is a natural form of
speech in English, and gives pleasure to Eng
lish ears; and to its charm we owe the in
sistency of phrases like '.ire and food,''
''life and limb 'house and home'', Through
thick and thin. When Sidney Smith spoke of
Lazarus as "doctored by dogs and comforted
with crumbs" he made legitimate and fe-
licitous use of this figure of speech. Allit-
GRAFTON, we all know, is the earliest Anglo
Saxon form of verse. But it is not confined
to verse. Many of the masters of prose
are given to it. Some readers may remem-
ber the Grafton of Wendell Phillips on Tous-
saint u L'Ouverture-'that consummate flow
er of modern civilization" he calls him
In which he spoke this sentence :-''as Ra-
VIENNA begged of Rome the ashes of the mur-
dered Dante whom she had put to death an
hundred years before" So correct and
polished writer as Gibbon says, in the
Decline and Fall: ''Whenever the spirit of
fanaticism, at once so credulous and so
crafty, has insnuated itself into a noble
mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital princi-
Piles of virtue and veracity." One of the
most memorable and oftenest-quoted pas
sages of Junius is in the letter to the Duke
of Grafton: II do not give you to posterity
as pattern to initiate, but an example to
deter" Another passage from another let
ter, should, by the way, be held in equal re-
membrance these days: 'sPrivate credit is
wealth, public honor is security" The al
liberation alone of this sentence from the
Anatomy of Melancholy has kept it in the
minds OF men-the wit of it certainly has
not-"As much valor is to be found in
feasting as in fighting" ''To die in the
last ditch'', with big, big D., was in COM
mon use by our now triumphant brethren
fifteen years ago-they finally concluded to
live and fight another day. Milton could
not ''praise fugitive and clustered virtue,
unexercised and unbreathed, that never sal
lies out and seeks the adversary" And he
elsewhere says: ''Men of most renowned
virtue have sometimes by transgressing most
truly kept the law" He says this in his
treatise on "The Doctrine and Discipline
OF Divorce" Fuller's famous sentence, in
The Holy and Profane State, is familiar to
all: Drawing near her death, she sent
most plous thoughts as harbingers to heay-
en-; and her soul saw glimpse of happiness