" "It is impossible to read the great
ancients, without losing something of our caprice and eccentricity. I know
not how it is, but their commerce with the ancients appears to me to
produce, in those who constantly practise it, a steadying and composing
effect upon the judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and
events in general. They are like persons who have had a very weighty and
impressive experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of
facts, and more independent of the language current among those with whom
they live."
It has been told of Cardinal Newman, that he never liked to pass a single
day, without rendering an English sentence into Latin. To converse with
the Roman authors, to handle their precise and sparing language, is, I can
well believe it, a most wholesome discipline; and the most efficient
remedy against those faults of diffuseness, of obscurity, and of excess,
which are only too common among the writers of our day. It may have been
to this practice, that Cardinal Newman owed something of his clearness,
and of his exquisite simplicity: and for his style, he should be idolised
by every one who has a taste for literature.
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