The foreign debt of English literature

by T. G. Tucker

Writing in Latin has not ended yet. But we shall for the present confine ourselves to the Latin works of pagan Rome, in the days when Rome can fairly be called a nation of tolerably homogeneous life and pursuits. Though the writings of Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome and Augustine, in the third and fourth centuries, are undeniably Latin, and literature also, we can on this principle draw a tolerably clear line against them. Similarly the later poets, such as Ausonius, Claudian, and Boethius, lie outside the scope of the present chapter.

From the third century B.C. onwards, the Latin-speaking Romans, beginning as a mere clan in central Italy, spread their empire gradually over the peninsula, over France, Spain and Portugal, over Great Britain to the Grampians, across the Rhine, along the Danube, over modern Turkey and Greece, over Asia Minor and Syria to the river Euphrates, over most of Arabia, Egypt, and all the southern coast of the Mediterranean. In Spain and Portugal, in France, and in Roumania they planted colonies and settlements, till the languages of those countries actually became Latin; dialects, no doubt, but Latin. Over all this empire Latin literature spread with the spreading of control and settlement, and in the first century of our era it was as natural for a Latin writer to hail from Spain as from Rome. Persons no less than Seneca, Lucan, Quintilian, and Martial are Spaniards from towns later known as Cordova, Calahorra and Bambola. Subsequently Africa (Tunis) and Gaul have their distinguished representatives.

Considerations like these should make it clear how vast an influence Latin literature must have wielded both directly and indirectly. The modern languages of France, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, and Italy are various continuations of the Latin; and France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, despite all historical changes, have been neither able nor desirous to shake off the guidance and impulses of Latin literature. This is one reason why it is the French and Italians who find their chief study in Virgil and Horace, Cicero and Seneca, whereas the Teutons, exerting a greater freedom of choice, more distinctly recognize the superiority of Homer and Sappho, Demosthenes and Aeschylus.

Needless to say that the people which could build and govern such an empire and hold it so long together must have been a people of strong innate quality. It need be no surprise that it was hardly an imaginative or artistic quality. It is, indeed, scarcely open to dispute that the old Roman and his kindred Italian tribes were marked by a comparative lack of fine imagination. Not only in war and politics, in legal and political institutions, but in intellectual culture they were a most practical and literal-minded race.

We are apt, in looking at the modern Frenchman or Italian, to commit two large errors. Because they frequently appear excitable in temper and demonstrative in gesture, we incline to put them down not only as passionate, but as profound in sentiment, feeling, and imagination. Yet, in point of fact, still waters run deep, here as elsewhere. The second error is greater still. We judge the old Latin stock from the so-called “Neo-Latin” peoples, or those who speak the neo-Latin tongues. Yet in many cases the “Neo-Latins” have but a comparatively small infusion of Roman blood still running in their veins. In some cases their forbears must have had none at all.

We can only judge the old Latin race, as especially embodied in the Roman, from its literature, its history and its institutions. From these we gather that it was a stock excellent for great ideals in the way of conquering and administering, a people of admirable commanders and engineers and jurists, a practical people, but a people not distinguished by brilliance of fancy, great delicacy of taste, notable depth of imagination or poignancy of feeling. Roman literature, left to itself, would, we may believe, have proved a very solid and rather heavy thing. The Latin language is like the Roman people. It is a language of great logical method and strict system of structure. As languages go, it is unusually free from idioms in the proper sense of the word. It is distinctly a solid and stately, but distinctly not a flexible, speech.

And yet, despite the innate character of the Latin stock, and the unyielding nature of the language, Latin literature is not so eminently practical and massive as we might expect.

For this there are two reasons. The one is that a large number of the chief writers of Latin literature are not themselves of unmixed Latin birth; they possess Celtic blood, or Greek blood, or some other non-Roman strain. Virgil came from Mantua, Catullus from Verona, Horace from Venusia, and other writers from other northern, southern, or even Spanish towns. The second reason is that, before Roman literature had properly earned the name, it had come into contact with the fully developed art of Greece, both Attic and Alexandrian, and forthwith became a literature of imitation. Feeling its limitations, the Latin genius submitted its own tendencies to the correction of a people whom it instinctively recognized as superior in this domain. But here an important qualification must be made. It cannot be too much insisted upon that Latin literature hardly rose at all till Greek literature was far decayed. Unhappily, when the Roman writers set about imitating their masters, they exploited, it is true, the matter or substance of anything Greek, and of any period, but the style and form which they affected were rather those of the later and inferior Greeks of Alexandria, not those of the perfect earlier masters of Attica and Ionia. It is in any case easier to imitate what is affected or “loud” or artificial than what is simply and naturally strong and beautiful.

Latin literature, in the sense in which we are to treat it, may be divided into three main periods. The first is that of immature art, of vigorous but ill-disciplined imitation of Greek models, of growing mastery over language. It is a period of preparation, the “iron age,” corresponding roughly to the period of English literature before the Revival of Learning. The date of this epoch is from 250 to 80 B.C., and it embraces the best days of the republic. During all this time the literature, rough and poor as it was, was sincere enough. It was meant for the people and for a purpose. For us, however, it contains little of any consequence besides the comedies of Plautus and Terence.