Identifier: grandeurthatwasr00stobrich (find matches)
Title: The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Stobart, J. C. (John Clarke), 1878-1933
Subjects:
Publisher: London, Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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allthat is most brilliant and genial in the world of scholarship :Latin is mainly relegated to the dry-as-dusts. Who readsLucan out of school hours ? Who would search Egypt forCiceros lost work De Gloria . Who would recognise aquotation from Statius ? It has not always been so. Once they quoted Lucan andSeneca across the floor of the House of Commons. Theeighteenth century was far more in sympathy with AncientRome than we are. In those days it would not have seemedabsurd to argue the superiority of Vergil over Homer. Downto that day Latin had remained the alternative language foreducated people, the medium of international communication,even for diplomacy, until French gradually took its place.Only if you specifically sought to reach the vulgar did youwrite in English. Though Dr. Johnson could write a verypretty letter in French, he used habitually to converse withFrenchmen in Latin ; not that it made him more intelligible,for, in fact, no foreigner could understand the English pro-8
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INTRODUCTION nunciation of Latin ; but that he did not wish to appear at adisadvantage with a mere Frenchman by adopting a foreignjargon. As for public inscriptions, though half the literarymen in London signed a round-robin entreating the greatautocrat to write Oliver Goldsmiths epitaph in English,Johnson refused to disgrace the walls of WestminsterAbbey with an English inscription. What is the cause of the eclipse which Latin studies arestill suffering ? One cause, perhaps, is to be found in themisuse of the language by the pedagogues and philologistsof the past in the school and the examination-room. Butanother cause is the recent discovery of the true Greek civi-lisation, whereby scholars have come to realise that Latinculture is in the main only secondary and derivative. At thepresent moment we are passing through a stage of revoltagainst classicism, convention, and artificiality. We knowthat Greek culture, truly discerned, is neither classic norconventional nor artificial, but L

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