* * * * *
[Illustration: FRATERNISING AT THE FRONT.
_Nervous Tommy_ (_on outpost duty for the first time_). "'OO GOES
THERE?"
_Bosch Scout_. "FRIEND."
_Tommy_. "ADVANCE AN' BE RECONCILED."]
* * * * *
A NEW USE FOR LATIN.
BY OUR CLASSICAL EXPERT.
"Greek is in the last ditch," writes Sir HENRY NEWBOLT in his _New
Study of English Poetry_; "Latin is trembling at sight of the thin
edge of the wedge." Still a hope of saving Latin--within limits--yet
remains, if the appeal of "Kismet" in _The Spectator_ meets with a
sympathetic response. He asks the readers of that journal "to render
into Latin in two or three words the old cricket adjuration, 'Play the
game.'" He has already had some suggestions, including "_Lude ludum_,"
from "an eminent scholar," but, like the late Mr. TOOLE in one of his
most famous songs, still he is not happy.
In rendering colloquial phrases into the lapidary style of ancient
Rome, I confess it is often hard to improve on the brevity of the
vernacular, though the admonition "to keep your end up" can be
condensed from four words to two in "_sursum cauda_." Again the
familiar eulogy, "Stout fellow," can be rendered in a single word
by the Virgilian epithet "_bellipotens_." A distinguished Latinist
recalls in this context the sentiment of the writer, Pomponius
Caninus:--
_Rebus in adversis comitem sors prospera pinguem_
_Det mihi.
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