[B-Greek] A 17th-century assessment ...

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Mar 8 07:14:04 EDT 2009


of ancient Greek and the utility thereof -- is offered in his  
yesterday's blog-entry by the old curmudgeon Michael Gilleland, the  
self-styled Laudator Temporis Acti, in his citation of a note by the  
17th-century poet Samuel Butler (http://tinyurl.com/d6mo3e), to wit:
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Samuel Butler, Characters and Passages from Note-Books, ed. A.R.  
Waller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), p. 286:

     The Greek Tongue is of little use in our times, unless to serve  
Pedants and mountebanks to smatter withall; to coyne foolish Titles  
for Medcines and Bookes of all Languages, and furnish Preachers with  
Sentences to astonish the Ignorant, and loose time withall in  
translating it over again into the vulgar and Nonsense. It is in  
itself a very untoward Language that abounds in a Multitude of  
Impertinent Declinations Conjugations Numbers, Times, Anomulas and  
formings of verbes, but has little or no Construction. And though no  
language is so Curious in the Contrivance of long and short vowels,  
yet they are so confounded by the Accent, that they are render'd of no  
use at all, And in verse, the Accent is again so confounded by the  
quantity of the Syllable, that the Language becomes another thing.
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Apart from the spelling, the sentiment seems pretty "modern" to me.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)




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