Word: moderns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1890-1899
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Latin measure and this makes it necessary for the speaker to follow that measure as it existed in Latin. And thus we may get approximately, at any rate, the effect of ancient classic verse. Thus the play becomes a study in ancient poetry as well. In the modern delivery of poetry the verse as a strain or melodic phrase is almost lost sight of. "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave. His soul is marching on," represents in a manner the modern delivery of poetry. In Latin it would be, "JohnBrown'sbody liesamoulderingin thegrave. Hissoulismarchingon." The attempt...
...true that all the modern nations have essentially pronounced Latin according to the sounds of their own language, but no one has departed so far from the original as the English. Others have changed a few consonantal sounds, in accordance with the usage even of the early centuries of our era, but the vowels have been preserved by them without significant change. In English, however, no sound is sufficiently preserved to be understood by an ancient Roman. It was this ultra perversion of the Roman sounds that led to the adoption of the present system. As a change was necessary...
...colored by that language, we shall find that the proportion of French words in it, though much greater than in Piers Ploughman, is relatively very small. But if we take a piece of Chaucer's prose-from the Parson's Tale, for example,- we are astonished to find how modern...
...books, and it was inevitable that they should show in their language the effect of the medium through which all their thinking passed. You will find that Charles Lamb, whose reading was chiefly of the writers of the sixteenth century, has the most Latin style of any of our modern authors...
...representative form of amusement in which the Romans took great delight, and which was associated with their great religious festivals, the play is worth attention. A play was originally a rite, a fact which accounts for the extremely conventional character and frequent unreality of the earliest Greek drama. Our modern dramatic realism is a thing of very late development and, though a Roman play was in one sense far from being religious, it retained many traces of its ancient origin. The religion of the Greeks and Romans was almost entirely free from introspection, self-abasement, and asceticism. Their attitude towards...