Again, our style need not always dwell on the heights: at times it is desirable that it should sink. For there are occasions when the very meanness of the words employed adds force to what we say. When Cicero, in his denunciation of Piso, Fr. 100. says, When your whole family rolls up in a dray, do you think that his use of the word dray was accidental, and was not designedly used to increase his audience's contempt for the man he wished to bring to ruin? The same is true when he says elsewhere, You put down your head and butt him.

This device may also serve to carry off a jest, as in the passage of Cicero where he talks of the little sprat of a boy who slept with his elder sister, pro. Cael. xv. 36. or where he speaks of Flavius, who put out the eyes of crows, pro Mil. xi. 25. Our equivalent is catch a weasel asleep. or, again, in the pro Milone, pro Mil. xxii. 60. Rufio, a slave name = red head. cries, Hi, there! Rufio! and talks of Erucius Antoniaster. From the lost pro Vareno. Erucius, Antonius' ape. On the other hand, this practice becomes more obtrusive when employed in the schools, like the phrase that was so much praised in my boyhood, Give your father bread, or in the same declamation, You feed even your dog. A declamation turning on the law that sons must support their parents. But such tricks do not always come off,

especially in the schools, and often turn the laugh against the speaker, particularly in the present day, when declamation has become so far removed from reality and labours under such an extravagant fastidiousness in the choice of words that it has excluded a good half of the language from its vocabulary.

Words are proper, newly-coined or metaphorical. In the case of proper words there is a special dignity conferred by antiquity, since old words, which not everyone would think of using, give our style a venerable and majestic air: this is a form of ornament of which Virgil, with his perfect taste, has made unique use.

For his employment of words such as olli, Archaic for illi. quianam, Because. moerus, Archaic for murus (Aen. x. 24.). pone Behind. and pellacia Deceitfulness ( Aen. ii. 90). gives his work that impressive air of antiquity which is so attractive in pictures, but which no art of man can counterfeit. But we must not overdo it, and such words must not be dragged out from the deepest darkness of the past. Quaeso is old enough: what need for us to say quaiso? quaeso = pray, oppido quite, exactly. Oppido was still used by my older contemporaries, but I fear that no one would tolerate it now. At any rate, antegerio, Quite, very. which means the same, would certainly never be used by anyone who was not possessed with a passion for notoriety.

What need have we of acrumnosum? Wretched. It is surely enough to call a thing horridum. Reor may be tolerated, autumo Assert. smacks of tragedy, proles Offspring. has become a rarity, while prosapia Stock, family. stamps the man who uses it as lacking taste. Need I say more Almost the whole language has changed.

But there are still some old words that are endeared to us by their antique sheen, while there are others that we cannot avoid using occasionally, such, for example, as nuncupare and fari: Name, speak. there are yet others which it requires some daring to use, but which may still be employed so long as we avoid all appearance of that affectation which Virgil Catal. ii. has derided so cleverly: Britain's Thucydides, whose mad Attic brain Loved word-amalgams like Corinthian bronze,First made a horrid blend of words from Gaul,Tau, al, min, sil and God knows how much else,Then mixed them in a potion for his brother! This was a certain Cimber who killed his brother,

a fact which Cicero recorded in the words, Cimber has killed his brother German. Phil. XI. vi. 14. A pun on the two meanings of gemanus, brother and German. The epigram against Sallust is scarcely less well known: Crispus, you, too, Jugurtha's fall who told,And filched such store of words from Cato old.

It is a tiresome kind of affectation; any one can practise it, and it is made all the worse by the fact that the man who catches the infection will not choose his words to suit his facts, but will drag in irrelevant facts to provide an opportunity for the use of such words. The coining of new words is, as I stated in the first book, I. v. 70 more permissible in Greek, for the Greeks did not hesitate to coin nouns to represent certain sounds and emotions, and in truth they were taking no greater liberty than was taken by the first men when they gave names to things.

Our own writers have ventured on a few attempts at composition and derivation, but have not met with much success. I remember in my young days there was a dispute between Pomponius and Seneca which even found its way into the prefaces of their works, as to whether gradus eliminate Sc. moves his steps beyond the threshold. was a phrase which ought to have been allowed in tragedy. But the ancients had no hesitation about using even expectorate banishes from his heart. and, after all, it presents exactly the same formation as exanimat.

Of the coining of words by expansion and inflexion we have examples, such as the Ciceronian De Nat. D. I. xxxiv. 95. beatitas and beatitudo, forms which he feels to be somewhat harsh, though he thinks they may be softened by use. Derivatives may even be fashioned from proper names, quite apart from ordinary words, witness Sullaturit a Att. IX. x. 6. Desires to be a second Sulla. in Cicero and Fimbriatus and Figulatus Metamorphosed into Figulus. Presumably refers to Clusinius Figulus, see VII. ii. 26. in Asinius.

Many new words have been coined in imitation of the Greeks, See II. xiv. 2. more especially by Verginius Flavus, some of which, such as queens and essentia, are regarded as unduly harsh. But I see no reason why we should treat them with such contempt, except, perhaps, that we are highly self-critical and suffer in consequence from the poverty of our language. Some new formations do, however, succeed in establishing themselves.

For words which now are old, once were new, and there are some words in use which are of quite recent origin, such as reatus, The condition of an accused person. invented by Messala, and munerarius, The giver of a gladiatorial show. invented by Augustus. So, too, my own teachers still persisted in banning the use of words, such as piratica, musica and fabrica, while Cicero regards favor and urbanus as but newly introduced into the language. For in a letter to Brutus he says, eum amorer et eum, ut hoc verbo utar, favored in consilium advocabo, This letter is lost: I will call that love and that favour, if I may use the word, to be my counsellors.