[33] Transalpinis hominibus ex quotidiano Latini sermonis inter ipsos usu, multa sive barbaræ, sive plebeiæ ac deterioris notæ, sic adhærescere solent, ut postea cum stylum arripuere, de Latinitate eorum dubitare nequaquam iis in mentem veniat. Inde fit ut scripta eorum plerumque minus puritatis habeant, quamvis gratia et venustas in iis minime desideretur. Nam hæc natura duce melius fiebant, quam arte aut studio. Accedit alia causa cur non æquè pura sit multorum Transalpinorum oratio, quod nullo ætatis discrimine ac delectu in autorum lectione versantur, et ex omnium commixtione varium quoddam ac multiforme pro suo quisque ingenio dicendi genus effingunt, contempto hoc Fabii monito: “Diu non nisi optimus quisque et qui credentem sibi minime fallat, legendus est, sed diligenter ac pæne ad scribendi solicitudinem; nec per partes modo scrutanda omnia, sed perlectus liber utique ex integro resumendus.” Itaque genus illud corruptæ orationis, seu κακοζηλιας, effugere nequeunt, quod κοινισμον vocant, quæ est quædam mista ex variarum linguarum ratione oratio, ut si Atticis Dorica, Ionica, Æolica etiam dicta confundas; cui simile est si quis sublimia humilibus, vetera novis, poetica vulgaribus, Sallustiana Tullianis, æneæ et ferreæ ætatis vocabula aureis et argenteis misceat, qui Lipsio deductisque ab eo viris, solennis et jam olim familiaris, est morbus. In quibus hoc amplius, verba maxime impropria, comprehensionem obscuram, compositionem fractam, aut in frustula concisam, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilem captationem passim animadvertas. Magnis tamen, non nego, virtutibus vitia sua Lipsius redimit, imprimis acumine, venere, salibus (ut excellens viri ingenium ferebat) tum plurimis lectissimis verbis loquendique modis, ex quibus non tam facultatem bene scribendi, ejusque, quod melius est, intellectum ei deesse, quam voluntatem, quo minus rectiora malit, ambitiuscule, plaususque popularis studio præpediri intelligas. Italorum longè dispar ratio. Primum enim non nisi optimum legere et ad imitandum sibi proponere solent; quod judicio quo cæteras nationes omnium consensu superant, imprimis est consentaneum. Deinde nihil non faciunt, ut evitent omnia, unde aliquid injucundæ et contaminandæ orationis periculi ostenditur. Latinè igitur nunquam loquuntur, quod fieri vix posse persuasum habeant, quin quotidianus ejus linguæ usus ad instar torrentis lutulentus fluat, et cujusque modi verborum sordes secum rapiat, quæ postea quodam familiaritatis jure sic se scribentibus ingerant, ut etiam diligentissimos fallant, et haud dubie pro Latinis habeantur. Hoc eorum consilium cum non intelligant Transalpini, id eorum inscitiæ perperam assignant. Sic rectè Paulo Manutio usu venit, ut quoniam vix tria verba Latina in familiari sermone proferre poterat, eam Germani complures, qui loquentem audituri ad eum venerunt, vehementer præ se contemnerent. Huic tamen nemo qui sanus sit ad puritatis et elegantiæ Latinæ summam quicquid defuisse dixerit, p. 65.
Gerard Vossius de Vitiis sermonis. 21. Gerard Vossius, a far greater name in general literature than Scioppius, contributed more essentially to these grammatical rules; and to him, perhaps, rather than to any other one man, we may refer the establishment of as much correctness of writing as is attainable in a dead language. Besides several works on rhetoric and poetry, which, as those topics were usually treated in ages of more erudition than taste or philosophy, resolved themselves into philological disquisitions, looking only to the language of the ancient writers, we have several more strictly within that province. The long use of Latin in writings on modern subjects, before the classical authors had been studied, had brought in a host of barbarisms, that even yet were not expelled. His treatise De Vitiis Sermonis et Glossematis Latino-barbaris is in nine books; four published in 1645, during the author’s life; five in 1685. The former are by far the most copious. It is a very large collection of words in use among modern writers, for which there is no adequate authority. Of these many are plainly barbarous, and taken from the writers of the middle ages, or at best from those of the fifth and sixth centuries. Few of such would be used by any tolerable scholar. He includes some which, though in themselves good, have a wrong sense given to them. Words however occur, concerning which one might be ignorant without discredit, especially before the publication of this treatise, which has been the means of correcting the ordinary dictionaries.
22. In the five posthumous books, which may be mentioned in this place, having probably been written before 1650, we find chiefly what the author had forgotten to notice in the former, or had since observed. But the most valuable part relates to the “falso suspecta,” which fastidious critics have unreasonably rejected, generally because they do not appear in the Augustan writers. Those whom he calls “Nizoliani verius quam Ciceroniani,” disapproved of all words not found in Cicero.[34] It is curious to perceive, as Vossius shows us, how many apparently obvious words do not occur in Cicero; yet it would be mere affectation to avoid them. This is perhaps the best part of Vossius’s treatise.
[34] Paulus Manutius scrupled to use words on the authority of Cicero’s correspondents, such as Cælius or Pollio; a ridiculous affectation, especially when we observe what Vossius has pointed out, that many common words do not occur in Cicero. It is amazing to see the objections of these Ciceronian critics.
His Aristarchus. 23. We are indebted to Vossius for a still more important work on grammar, the Aristarchus, sive de Arte Grammatica, which first appeared in 1635. This is in seven books; the first treats of grammar in general, and especially of the alphabet; the second of syllables, under which head he dwells at great length on prosody;[35] the third (which, with all the following, is separately entitled De vocum Analogia) of words generally, and of the genders, numbers, and cases of nouns. The same subject occupies the fourth book. In the fifth, he investigates verbs; and in the sixth, the remaining parts of speech. The last book relates to syntax. This work is full of miscellaneous observations, placed for the most part alphabetically under each chapter. It has been said that Vossius has borrowed almost everything in this treatise from Sanctius and Scioppius. If this be true, we must accuse him of unfairness; for he never mentions the Minerva. But the edition of this grammar by Scioppius was not published till after the death of Vossius. Salmasius extolled that of the latter above all which had been published.[36]
[35] In this we find Vossius aware of the rule brought to light by Dawes, and now familiar, that a final vowel is rarely short before a word beginning with s and a mute consonant.
[36] Tuum de grammatica à te accepi exactissimum in hoc genere opus, ac cui nullum priorum aut prisci ævi aut nostri possit comparari. Apud Blount in Vossio. Daunou says of the grammatical and rhetorical writings of Vossius: Ces livres se recommandent par l’exactitude, par la méthode, par une littérature très étendue. Gibert en convient, mais il trouve de la prolixité. D’autres pourraient n’y voir qu’une instruction sérieuse, souvent austère, et presque toujours profitable. Biogr. Univ.
Progress of Latin Style. 24. In later times the ambition of writing Latin with accuracy and elegance has so universally declined, that the diligence of Scioppius and Vossius has become hardly valuable except to schoolmasters. It is, however, an art not contemptible, either in respect to the taste and discernment for which it gives scope in composition, or for the enhanced pleasure it reflects on the pages of ancient writers. We may distinguish several successive periods in its cultivation since the first revival of letters. If we begin with Petrarch, since before his time there was no continuous imitation of classical models, the first period will comprise those who desired much, but reached little, the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, destitute of sufficient aids, and generally incapable of clearly discriminating the pure from the barbarous in Latin. A better æra may be dated from Politian; the ancients were now fully known, and studied with intense labour; the graces of style were frequently caught; yet something was still wanting to its purity and elegance. At the end of a series of improvements, a line marked by Bembus, Sadolet, and Longolius, we arrive at a third period, which we may call that of Paulus Manutius, the golden age of modern Latinity. The diligence in lexicography of Robert Stephens, of Nizolius, of Manutius himself, and the philological treatises of their times, gave a much greater nicety of expression; while the enthusiasm with which some of the best writers emulated the ancients inspired them with a sympathetic eloquence and grace. But towards the end of the century, when Manutius, and Muretus, and Maphæus, and others of that school had been removed by death, an age of worse taste and perhaps of more negligence in grammar came on, yet one of great scholars, and of men powerful even in language; the age of Lipsius, of Scaliger, of Grotius. This may be called the fourth period; and in this apparently the purity of the language, as well as its beauty, rather declined. Finally, the publications of Scioppius and Vossius mark the beginning of another period, which we may consider as lasting to the present day. Grammatical criticism had nearly reached the point at which it now stands; the additions, at least, which later philologers, Perizonius, Burman, Bentley, and many others have made, though by no means inconsiderable, seem hardly sufficient to constitute a distinct period, even if we could refer them properly to any single epoch. And the praise of eloquent composition has been so little sought after the close of the years passed in education, or attained only in short and occasional writings, which have left no durable reputation behind, that we may consider the Latin language, for this purpose, to have silently expired in the regions of polite literature.
Sect. II.
Antiquities of Rome and Greece—Gruter—Meursius—Chronology.