fetus to 4e e[itor.
MOORE'S LATIN.
171h January 1854. Stn—The reviewer of Moore's Memoirs in last Saturday's Spectator, refer- ring to Moore's mention of the portrait of Galileo seeming to say, "Et tamen morel," takes the opportunity to make an iUnatured allusion to the Latinity of Edinburgh and Dublin as compared with that of Eton and Ox- ford, where he says niovetur would be preferred. Now, although the transitive is no doubt the proper sense of movere, per- haps a Dublin Latinist might be able to show that the neuter or elliptical use of the word is also very good "Roman Latin." I open the Latin The- saurus of Robert Stephens, (the very copy, too, which belonged to the ac- complished Dr. Burrowes, who was Moore's college tutor and afterwards Dean of Cork,) and there I find, " Movere, pro discedere. Cic. 9. Att. 1. Postquam ille Canusio moverat" ; which usage a glance at Ernesti's Glos- Barium Livianum will show to have been common with Livy. I also find " Movere, pro moveri : ut terra movere dicitur. Gell. lib. 4. cap. 6. Lout. in Claud. 11ss. cap. 22. Quoties terra in urbe movisset." Livy likewise has "Terra dies duodequadraginta movit." 35, 40. Again, Stephens gives " Res moventes, pro mobilibus. Liv. 5, 25. Prmda qua) rerum moventium sit " ; to which he adds other examples. Cicero also, De Fin. 2, 10, uses voluptas mavens in opposition to roluptas stalls, and explains these by " voluptas quie in motu sit," and "ills stabilis." This intransitive use of movere, which is thus found in the purest classical writers, must, from the tendency to adopt elliptical modes of speaking, have been still more frequent in common conversation.
A DUBLIN M.A.
[Our Irish correspondent's facts are unquestionable and familiar. The ex- amples he cites of an elliptical use of morere are those furnished by every good Latin dictionary ; they are all in Facciolati under the head movens and moveo. That they are the common stock of lexicographers, proves the rarity of the usage. But the infeience attempted to be founded on them is, in our opinion, unsound. The instances cited are technical, and are there- fore only available for precisely identical uses of the active form. We should not have censured Mr. Moore's Latinity had he said, of a general breaking up his camp, or of an admiral setting sail, " movet." And it unfortunately happens, that the very phrase in question "terra movet" has in good Latin a technical meaning, and would to a Roman ear have signified, not what Galileo meant when he said in Italian, which Moore might have been ex- pected to quote verbatim, "e pur si muove," but simply there is an earth- quake. The true canon for the modern use of the dead languages is, to follow the general consensus of the ancient writers, and not to extend anomalous usages beyond the exact limits of precedent. When Moore is translating an Italian phrase quite unnecessarily into Latin, we expect the ordinary Latin equivalent ; and, no doubt, Moore thought that novel was the equivalent of the English mores, in its double sense. The last thing he was likely to intend, on such an occasion, would be to show his knowledge of an exceptional Latin idiom ; and if he did so intend, he was mistaken in his notion of its range and applicability. That our cor- respondent should not feel the impropriety of such a licence, only proves that we were right in assuming for Eton and Oxford a different standard of Latinity from that maintained at Dublin. But we certainly had no wish to make illnatured reflections on Dublin or Edinburgh, which have unquestion- able claims of their own to public respect quite apart from the correctness of the Latinity there taught. The whole passage of our article referring to these Greek and Latin errors was more banter of Lord John Russell than anything else ; and was meant to hint to Lord John, that the English Uni- versities did keep up a high standard of classical scholarship in this country, which we esteem a valuable function, and one not lightly to be disregarded, nor rashly interfered with.—Ers]
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