16 DECEMBER 1916, Page 11

"COMMUNIS SENSUS."

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Snt,—Your correspondent "H." is an enterprising translator, but he does not verify his references. It was Juvenal, not Horace, who said: " Rams enim ferrite sensus communis in ilia fortune " (Sat. VIII. 73), meaning thereby, as Professor Mayor paraphrases it, " generally speaking, it is only now and then that you will meet with an example of due consideration for others in that rank of life "—i.e., among the nobility as known to Juvenal. That is the proper meaning of sensus communis -wherever it occurs in Latin writers—due consideration for, fellow-feeling with, others. It has of course nothing to do with what we call " common-sense." Your correspondent is perfectly right in point- ing that out; but I fear his own rendering, " People rarely examine the things of common life," will not appeal to Latin scholars. By no conceivable method could communis census