LATIN—LATINER.
It is interesting to note the great variety of significations in which the word Latin has been used. Sometimes it means Italian, sometimes Spanish, sometimes the Romance language. Again, it has been used as synonymous with language, learning, discourse; or to express that a matter is plain and intelligible.
Muratori, in describing the "Cangiamento dell' Lingua Latina nella volgare Italiana," observes,—
"Così a poco a poco il volgo di questa bella Provincia [Italia], oltre adottare moltissimi vocaboli forestieri, andò ancora alterando i proprj, cioè i Latini, cambiando le terminazioni delle parole, accorciandole, allungandole, e corrompendole. In somma se ne formò un nuovo Linguaggio, che Volgare si appellava, perchè usato dal Volgo d'Italia."—Muratori, Della Perfetta Poesia Italiana, tomo i. p. 6., ed. Venez., 1730.
So Boccaccio, giving an account of the intention of his poem, the "Teseide," writes,—
"Ma tu, o libro, primo al lor cantare
Di Marte fai gli affanni sostenuti,
Nel vulgar latino mai non veduti,"
where, as in the letter to La Fiammetta, prefixed to this poem, vulgar latino is evidently Italian ("Trovata una antichissima storia ... in latino volgare ... ho ridotta"), and not the Provençal tongue, as Mr. Craik suggests in his Literature and Learning in England, vol. ii. p. 48., where he supposes Boccaccio to have translated from, and not, as is clear, into, latino volgare.
Dante repeatedly uses Latino for Italiano, as in Purgatorio, xi. 58.:
"Io fui Latino, e nato d'un gran Tosco."
And in Inf. xxii. 65.:
"Conosci tu alcun, che sia Latino."
In Paradiso, iii. 63.,
"Sì che il raffigurar m' è più latino,"
latino evidently means easy, clear, plain. "Forse contrario di barbaro, strano," says Volpi, "noi Lombardi in questo significato diciamo ladin." The "discreto latino" of Thomas Aquinas, elsewhere in Paradiso (xii. 144.), must mean "sage discourse." Chaucer, when he invokes the muse, in the proeme to the second book of "Troilus and Creseide," only asks her for rhyme, because, saith he,—
"Of no sentement I this endite,
But out of Latine in my tongue it write."
Where "Latine," of course, means Boccaccio's Filostrato, from which Chaucer's poem is taken.
In the "Poema del Cid," latinado seems to mean person conversant with the Spanish or Romance language of the period:
"Quando esta falsedad dicien los de Carrion,
Un Moro Latinado bien gelo entendio."—v. 2675.
Mr. Ticknor remarks, that when the Christian conquests were pushed on towards the south of Spain, the Moors, who remained inclosed in the Christian population, and spoke or assumed its language, were originally called Moros Latinados; and refers to the Cronica General, where, respecting Alfaraxi, a Moor, afterwards converted, and a counsellor of the Cid, it is said he was "de tan buen entendimento, e era tan ladino que semejava Christiano."—Ticknor, Hist. Span. Lit., iii. 347.
Cervantes (Don Q. Parte I. cap. xli.) uses ladino to mean Spanish:
"Servianos de interprete a las mas destas palabras y razones el padre de Zoraida como mas ladino."
Latin, in fact, was so much the language as to become almost synonymous with a language. So a Latiner was an interpreter, as it is very well expressed in Selden's Table Talk, art. "Language":
"Latimer is the corruption of Latiner: it signifies he that interprets Latin; and though he interpreted French, Spanish, or Italian, he was the king's Latiner, that is, the king's interpreter."
This use of the word is well illustrated in the following extracts:
"A Knight ther language lerid in youth;
Breg hight that Knight, born Bretoun,
That lerid the language of Sessoun.
This Breg was the Latimer,
What scho said told Vortager."—Robert de Brunne's Metrical Chronicle.
"Par soen demein latinier
. . . .
Icil Morice iert latinier
Al rei Dermot, ke mult l'out cher."—Norman-French Chronicle of Conquest of Ireland, edited by F. Michel (as quoted in Wright's Essays, vol. ii. p. 215.).
I here conclude, as I must not seek to monopolise space required for more valuable contributions.
J. M. B.
Tunbridge Wells.