A NGLO-LATIN ITY.
"I HAVE brought thee some latten spoons, Ben," said Shakspere, arriving as a guest at a christening in Ben Jonson's family ; and thou shalt translate them." Cambridge University has just pro- duced another specimen of the " spoony" in Latin—its address to Prince Albert ; which is quite a gem." Its poetical images and conceits are the very Brummagem of classic style. Its grief is a Latin exercise. It moans its late Chancellor according to set rule. " Quem paulo ante in hac curia, cum maximo omnium con- se.nsu, fausto felicique omine inauguratum hate conspexit, . . . . nunc mortuum deflet civitas. Deflet iugetque mature ereptum legum integerrimum custodem." How pompous that "deflet civitas—deflet lugetque"! how appropriately smacking of the heathen that L°faustnm felixque omen ! We are told that the mourners " pursue " the departed with their memory ; an idea happily borrowed from Peter Pindar : " Pursue him, Pye, pur- sue him with an ode." However, business calls them, " abinani desiderio et misericordia "—for it is beautiful to observe the exact order and rule of emotions so poignant and so great : the " quas- seta civitas " had to look out for consolation meet—" novas vires illicio sufficere, novum robur suppeditare " ; and Prince Albert is _pitched upon as the requisite heart of oak. " Itaque vulneribus remedium querenti tux "— 0 Doctor Albert priesentissima occurrebat sanatio." They call him in, therefore : thou alone, they say, canat excite and restore our stricken and prostrate powers. They make no doubt he will do it. Why? "Quod a regibus olim fundata, regum, uti par Brat, patrocinium petebat Academia; prin- cipum benevolentie stabilita, principis numen et auxilium supplex "audebat implorare." Among the heathen again!—only metapho- rically and licentiously, of course. It is all metaphor : the gladness of Cambridge at seeing the Duke of Northumberland inaugurated by those University sooth- sayers with such agreeable indications from the entrails of the _victim on the altar ; "the inane yearning and tenderness " ; the "shaking" of the city at its loss ; its "wounds"; Prince Albert's "most ready cure" for the same ; his "divine power," or nu- minity ; his " fides et virtus omnibus perspectissima "—which means that he will make a good conductor: none of these things are to be taken literally ; they are but the cut and dry materials for a Latin oration. It is part of the show. We should have thought, indeed, that sense and honest good feeling would have been best for the occasion, even in Latin ; but, it seems, the ba- lance of opinion at Cambridge, as indicated by usage, is the other way.
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