22 JUNE 1918, Page 12

THE IMPORTANCE OF ITALIAN.

(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sia,—Without joining issue on the question whether Italian or Portuguese can claim a larger measure of Latinity, I beg to submit the following lines, which may be new to some of your readers. They make equal sense in Italian and in Latin :— " In mare irato in subita procella Invoco to nostra benigna The verses are attributed to Chiabrera, and are supposed to have been written as an epigraph for a statue of " Our Lady of the