[32] Plutarch (“Life of Demosth.,” 2) laments his inability to master Latin, and the difficulties it presents when not acquired very early.
[33] iii. 4, 19.
[34] Up to the mission of Carneades and his fellows (155 B.C.) an interpreter had been necessary.
[35] This seems to me a very important point, and I do not know how our training of boys in the strict and clear Latin grammar can ever be supplied adequately by any other means, though I have one great and recognized authority—Mr. Thring—against me, who thinks that boys should learn the logic of grammar through English analysis.
[36] “Laws,” 810—if the “Laws” be, indeed, Plato’s.
[37] Cf. Wattenbach’s specimens in his plates of Greek MSS.
[38] If we had phonetic spelling, our dialects would be preserved, as the various Greek dialects were, or as the Italian now are, and thus the history of our language in the present day might become possible to ourselves and our descendants. As it is, we are concealing from all inquiry this most interesting subject—I mean the varying pronunciation—by our absurd artificial spelling, and we are banishing local idioms by stamping them with the mark of vulgarity. This latter is the natural and right consequence of having classical models. But had we possessed the older dialects in phonetic writing, our standard would have been widened, like that of the Greeks, to include important provincial varieties.
[39] “Wasps,” 656 sq.
[40] These are the ordinary terms: adding = συντιθέναι, προστιθέναι; subtracting = ἀφαιρεῖν, ὑπεξαιρεῖν, Latin deducere; multiplying = πολλαπλασιάζειν, and the factors πλευρά, a geometrical conception, as in the second book of Euclid; dividing = μερίζειν: no general word for quotient is found.