I have always admired Lucretius’ stern and rational epicureanism, so different from the orthodox classical belief. (And Emanuele’s Cicero passage needs a counterblast!) Terry Walsh Illud in his […]
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Running a Fever (Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864)
A neglected literary giant whose works have fallen into near-oblivion, Landor was also one of the 19th century’s most quixotic figures – a genius to some, eccentric madman to others. […]
Epitaph for a beloved cat (John Jortin, 1698-1770) (contributed by Mark Walker)
John Jortin was one of a circle of poets at Cambridge who were actively producing Latin verses at the same time as Antony Alsop and his Oxford contemporaries. In contrast […]
To Joseph Taylor (Anthony Alsop, 1670-1726) (contributed by Mark Walker)
Dubbed ‘the English Horace’ by David Money in his book of that title, Alsop was ‘looked upon to be the best Writer of Lyric Verses in the World’ according to […]
Epitaphium in Canem (Vincent Bourne, 1694-1747) (contributed by Mark Walker)
The critic Charles Lamb described Vincent Bourne as ‘the most classical, and at the same time, most English, of the Latinists’, and he described Bourne’s Epitaphium in Canem as ‘the […]
Canis et Echo (Vincent Bourne, 1694-1747) (contributed by Mark Walker)
Little is known of the life of Vincent Bourne, perhaps the most accessible of all the Anglo-Latin poets. He was educated at Westminster School, England’s nursery for 18th-century Latinists, and […]
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) fabula canis et umbrae (contributed by Mark Walker)
Like any educated man of his age, Swift was perfectly capable of writing Latin verse when the mood took him – whether in humorous verse epistles to his friend Joseph […]
The Madness of Merlin – Extract from the Vita Merlini (contributed by Mark Walker)
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s extraordinary epic poem Vita Merlini (“The Life of Merlin”, written in Classical hexameters) is a fascinating work set in a semi-mythological era of kings, prophets and madmen. […]
O quanta, qualia (Peter Abelard, 1079-1142) (contributed by Mark Walker)
This hymn employs an iambic rhythm in lines of twelve syllables (or half-lines of six syllables each if you prefer). Abelard was not only a brilliant scholar, he was also […]
Stabat Mater dolorosa (contributed by Mark Walker)
‘A supreme achievement of the Franciscan, and, indeed, of the religious verse of the Middle Ages,’ (according to F.J.E. Raby in his History of Christian Latin Poetry) the Stabat Mater […]