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retract? I thought your book an im- for this omission the dictated letter is

posture from the beginning (sic). I think it upon yet surer reasons an imposture still. For this opinion I give the publick my reasons, which I dare you to refute. But however I may despise you I reverence truth, and if you can prove the genuineness of the work I will confess it. Your rage I defy; your abilities since your Homer are not so formidable, and what I have heard of your morals disposes me to pay regard not to what you shall say but what you can prove.

You may print this if you will.

Jan. 20, 1775.

SAM JOHNSON.

To Mr. James Macpherson. Here is the letter as dictated to Boswell and printed in the "Life:"

Mr. James Macpherson,-I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture; I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the publick, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities since your Homer are not so formidable-and what I hear of your morals incline me to pay regard not to what you shall say but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will.

SAM JOHNSON.

Macpherson did not print "this," but he kept it, and time has preserved it to this hour. It may be noticed that the only thing Johnson forgot was

what he had said about despising Macpherson but reverencing truth. But

The Will of William Morris.-The will of William Morris would hardly call for notice if the testator had not been a leader of the Israel of Socialism. As it is, it may serve to illustrate not an inconsistency on his part, but the most persistent of the popular errors about Socialism. It is from first to last the will of a "bon bourgeois." It deals with the very respectable personal estate of £55,000 and in its disposal of the same it shows the highest

the better expressed of the two.

We learn from this book that an American gentleman bearing the patrìarchal name of Adam, and living at Buffalo, has the most wonderful Johnsonian collection in the world. One is glad to think how quickly the New World is getting furbished up with the relics of the old one. It will really soon be fit for human habitation. Far from grudging our cousins their fair share of these treasures, I wish them good luck in their fishing. They are every bit as much entitled to those things as we are. If they attend our sales, we can attend theirs and buy our treasures back again. I have a book or two which have already the Atlantic twice. crossed They think nothing of it.

Dr. Hill, in the course of his talk, tells us how once upon a time he reviewed novels in the Saturday Review. He has long ceased to do so. But mark the result! So accustomed did he become to be paid £3 10s. for reading a novel that now, when nobody tenders him that sum for so doing, he has never read so much as a single story by-the list is his own-"Black, Blackmore, Hardy, Howells, Henry, James, Stevenson, and Kipling," nor, he adds with hideous composure, "am I ever likely to do so!" And yet, if you may judge from the admirable portrait at the beginning of the book, Dr. Hill wears a happy and contented look.

Long may he continue to do so!

AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.

appreciation of the rights of property. The money goes to the wife and children, just as it might have gone if the testator had been a mere capitalist. The widow is to have "at least a thousand a year." The trustees are to deal with the business of Morris & Co. as with any other sublunary concern for money-making. The "comrades" of Socialism, in fact, are cut off with less than a shilling.

London Daily News.

JANUARY 9, 1897.

READINGS FROM AMERICAN MAGAZINES.

From Harper's Magazine. RELICS OF HISTORIC ROME.

All students will remember that Julius Cæsar announced that all Gaul was divided into three parts; each of which, with all the gall in his possession, he attached to himself. This celebrated man of letters, against the advice of his wife, Calpurnia, went out to meet his fate on a famous March morning, from the Regia, close to the Temple of Vesta in the Forum; and here his widow received his body, brought back with all its gaping wounds by a few of his faithful slaves. Alas, it was too late for her to tell him that she had told him so; but no doubt, in all her great grief, she thought it!

Mr. Forbes says that Cæsar lived in the first house in the Via Sacra. He describes it as fronting towards the Temple of Vesta; while the portico and shops built at a later period over its ruins ran parallel with the Sacred Way. The house side of the atrium, he continues, is plainly marked by the fragments of columns composed of travertine coated with stucco and frescoed; and amidst the shops are remains of a beautiful black and white mosaic pavement, the fragments of the borders showing that they once belonged to the older edifice. The mansion had two entrances into the Via Sacra, one nearly touching its northeast corner.

Cæsar was not killed in the Capitol, as Shakespeare said. What Hamlet called that Brute part was played in Pompey's Senate-House, or the Theatre of Pompey, the Church of S. Andrea della Valle, on the new thoroughfare called Corso Vittorio Emanuele, now standing upon its site. Mr. Forbes explains that the great star beneath the cupola marks, as near as possible, the spot upon which the autocrat fell. As the deposed Bonaparte VOL. XIII. 637

LIVING AGE.

lies under the Dome of the Invalides, in Paris, so rises, in Rome, a dome over the place where another, if not a greater, conqueror was extinguished.

Pompey's statue, at the foot of which great Cæsar fell, a colossal, not ungainly figure of a man, is believed generally to be now standing in the Palazzo Spada alla Regola, in the Piazza di Capo di Ferro. It is placed in what is called the Council-Chamber of the Palace, and what are said to be the stains of great Cæsar's blood are, according to tradition, still visible upon the calf of Pompey's left leg. Mr. Hare quotes Suetonius as narrating that the statue "was removed from the Curia by Augustus, and placed upon a marble Janus in front of the basilica," and the same authority-Mr. Hare-adds that "it was found upon that exact spot during the pontificate of Julius III. [1550–55].” Whether this be the original figure of Pompey or not, it has been addressed by Byron as "Thou dread statue! yet existent in the austerest form of naked mystery,” and it has been accepted, and apostrophized, by many other well known writers of prose and of verse as being authentic. And while I am willing to accept it myself, I must put myself on record as doubting, somewhat, the stains of Cæsar's blood.

Mark Antony delivered his famous funeral oration on the Rostra Julia, on the east of the Forum. The ancient writers tell us how greatly it moved the people, who immediately burned the body in that very place, and afterwards interred the ashes there; but they do not report Antony's words. That they could hardly be more moving than were the words put into Antony's mouth by Shakespeare all reporters of great speeches, in the present day, must assuredly admit. The Temple of Cæsar, which was erected

on his funeral pile, Signor Lanciani says, was destroyed in 1546. It is now an unmarked mass of rough and broken stones.

The Temple of Cæsar and Cæsar's house, and the other intensely interesting features of the Forum, are not easily distinguished by the present pilgrim, even with the aid of the clearest of plans. Small tablets stating "Here Cæsar lived" or "Here Cæsar Died," or here happened this or here happened that historical event, would be of great help to the inquiring tourist of to-day. If Keats and Scott and Goethe are so honored by the municipality of Rome, why should not the homes of the men of earlier times have some mark to distinguish their occupancy?

Very few spots in the world are more impressive than this same Roman Forum. Here one walks, by means of a few modern wooden steps, out of the End of the Nineteenth Century into a space dating back to a period when there were no centuries at all, as we count them; to a period which was old before the Middle Ages were born. And in the Forum, even more strongly than at the Pyramids themselves, is one forced to acknowledge that art is short, and that time is fleeting.

The villa and the gardens of Sallust, a literary gentleman not unknown to the students of the dead languages in the high-schools of most living countries, Professor Middleton places in the Barberini Villa gardens, in the valley between the Quirinal and the Pincian hills. It was probably de stroyed, he says, in the fire of 410, but he has traced certain portions of it which are still remaining; and he describes a nobly designed hall once lined with rich marble, and decorated with statues, handsome staircases and the like. Its site is gradually being covered with the brand-new buildings which are fast making this part of Rome as modern as is modern New York or modern Paris. It is approached by horse-cars, it is lighted by electricity, and it is surrounded by hotels, which look like the Fifth Avenue

or the Continental, and are quite as comfortable and quite as expensive as is either of those familiar hostelries of modern times.

10

Virgil is said to have lived on the Esquiline Hill, near the gardens of Mæcenas; and Horace is known have been a constant guest in the villa of Mæcenas, which he has frequently described. Signor Lanciani points out the very interesting fact that Horace bought his books of the dealers in ancient and modern literature who did business in the Argiletum, a quarter situated between the Roman Forum and the Suburra, and corresponding to the Paternoster Row or the Nassau Street of modern literary towns.

The authorities agree that Mæcenas, whose hospitality has become proverbial, entertained the poets of the Augustan Age in a house which stood upon the Esquiline Hill, where the Baths of Titus were afterwards placed, Mr. Forbes adding the interesting fact that the amiable and harmonic Nero saw the burning of Rome to the slow music of his own violin from a tower of this villa.

From "Literary Landmarks of Rome," by Lau

rence Hutton.

From The Bookman.

THE NATURALIZATION OF WORDS. Every one who loves good English cannot but have a healthy hatred for the style of a writer who bespatters his

now

pages with alien words and foreign phrases; and yet we are more tolerant, I think, toward a term taken from one of the dead languages than toward one derived from any of the living tongues. Probably the bishop who liked and then to cite a Hebrew sentence was oversanguine in his explanation that "everybody knows a little Hebrew." I am afraid that Hebrew is "all Greek" to most of those who listen to discourses by bishops. It is said that even a Latin quotation is now no longer certain to be recognized in the

British House of Commons; and yet it was an English statesman who declared that, although there was no necessity for a gentleman to know Latin he ought at least to have forgotten it. For a bishop to quote Hebrew is now pedantic, no doubt, and even for the inferior clergy to quote Latin. It is pedantic, but it is not indecorous, whereas a French quotation in the pulpit, or even the use of a single French word, like "savant," for example, would seem to most of us almost a breach of the proprieties. It would strike us, I think, not merely as a social solecism, but somehow as morally reprehensible. A preacher who habitually cited French phrases would be in danger of the council. To picture Jonathan Edwards as using the language of Voltaire is impossible. That a French quotation should seem more incongruous in the course of a religious argument than a Latin, a Greek, or a Hebrew quotation, is perhaps to be ascribed to the fact that the most of us hold the Parisians to be a more frivolous people than the Romans, the Athenians, or the Israelites.

It is perhaps rather a question whether or not "savant" is now an English noun. There are many French words knocking at the door of the English language and asking for admission. Is "littoral" for "shore" now an English noun? Is "blond" an English adjective, meaning "lighthaired" and opposed to "brunette?" Is "brunette" itself really anglicized? (I ask this in spite of the fact that a friend of mine once read in a country newspaper a description of a "brunette" horse.) Has "inedited" for “unpublished" won its way into our language finally? Lowell gave it his warrant, at least by using it in his "Letters;" but I confess that it has always struck me as liable to confusion with "unedited."

Foreign words must always be allowed to land on our coasts without a passport, yet if any of them linger long

enough to warrant a belief that they may take out their papers sooner or later, we must decide at last whether or not they are likely to be desirable residents of our dictionary; and if we determine to naturalize them, we may fairly enough insist on their renouncing their foreign allegiance. They must cast in their lot with us absolutely and be bound by our laws only. The French "chaperon," for example, has asked for admission to our vocabulary, and the application has been granted, so that we have now no hesitation in recording that Daisy Miller was chaperoned by Becky Sharp at the last ball given by the Marquis of Steyne. So "technique" has changed its name to "technic," and is made welcome. So "employé" is accepted in the properly anglicized form of "employee."

So the useful "clôture" undergoes a seachange and becomes the English "closure."

So "toilette" has been abbreviated to "toilet;" at least, I should have said so without any hesitation if I had not recently seen the foreign spelling reappearing repeatedly in the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Amateur Emigrant"-and this in the complete Edinburgh edition prepared by Mr. Sidney Colvin. To find a Gallic spelling in the British prose of Stevenson is a surprise, especially since the author of the "Dynamiter" is on record a contemner of another ortho

as

graphic Gallicism. In a foot-note to "More New Arabian Nights" Stevenson declares that "any writard who writes 'dynamitard' shall find in me a never-resting fightard."

I should like to think that the naturalized "literator" was supplanting the alien "littérateur," but I cannot claim "Literconfidence as to the result. ator" is a good English word; I have found it in the careful pages of Lockhart's "Life of Scott;" and I make no doubt that it can prove a much older pedigree than that. It seems to me a better word by far than "literarian," which Mr. Fitzedward Hall manufac

he has defended against a British critic who denounced it as "atrocious." Mr. Hall, praising the word of his own making, declared that "to literatus' or 'literator,' for 'literary person,' or a longer phrase of equivalent import, there are obvious objections." Nobody, to the best of my belief, ever attempted to use in English the Latin "literatus," although its plural Poe made us familiar with by his series of papers on "The Literati of America." Since Poe's death the word has ceased to be current, even if it were accepted from him and from a few of his predeces

tured for his own use "some time in thereafter absolutely as an English the fifties," and which word, and giving it the regular English plural. If the word you use is so foreign that you would print it in italics, then of course the plural should be formed according to the rules of the foreign language from which it has been borrowed; but if it has become so acclimated in our tongue that you would not think of underlining it, then surely it is English enough to take an English plural. If "cherub" is now English, its plural is the English "cherubs," and not the Hebrew "cherubim." If "phenomenon" is now Enits plural the glish, plural is English "phenomenons," and not the Greek "phenomena." If "formula" is now English, its plural is the English "formulas," and not the Latin "formulæ." If "bureau" is now English, its plural is the English "bureaus," and not the French "bureaux.”

sors.

Perhaps one of the obvious objections to "literatus" is that if it be treated as an English word the plural it forms is not pleasant to the ear"literatuses." Here, indeed, is a moot point: How does a foreign word make its plural in English? Not long ago Mr. C. F. 1nwing, writing in Harper's Bazar

book

on the college education of young women, spoke of "foci." Mr. Churton Collins, preparing a about the study of English literature in the British universities, expressed his desire "to raise Greek, now gradually falling out of our 'curricula' and degenerating into the cachet and shibboleth of cliques of pedants, to its proper place in education." Here we see Mr. Thwing and Mr. Collins treating "focus" and "curriculum" words not yet assimilated by our language, and therefore to Latin plural.

as

the

It is true also that when we take over a term from another language we ought to be sure that it really exists in the other language. For lack of observance of this caution we find ourselves now in possession of phrases like "double entendre" and "nom de plume" and "déshabille," which the French never heard. And even when

we have assured ourselves of the exist

ence of the word in the foreign language, it behooves us then to assure ourselves also of its exact meaning before we take it for our own. In his interesting and instructive book about "English Prose," Professor Earle reminds us that the French of assume Stratford-atte-Bowe is not yet an extinct species; and he adds in a note that the word 'levée' seems to be another genuine instance of the same insular dialect," since it is not French of any date, but an English improvement upon the verb (or substantive "lever," "getting up in the morning."

If

Does not this prove a lack of taste writers? on the part of these "focus" and "curriculum" are not good English words, what need is there to employ them when you are using the English language to convey your thoughts? There are occasions, of course, where the employment of a foreign term is justifiable, but they must always be very rare. The imported word which we really require, we had best take to ourselves, incorporating it in the language, treating it

An example, even more extraordinary than any of these, I think, will occur to those of us who are in the habit of glancing through the theatriof the American cal announcements newspapers. This is the taking of the

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