It is largely to the humanists that we owe the curious conception of the ‘classical’ period in a language, the correct or normative period before which all was immature or archaic and after which all was decadent….When once this superstition was established it led naturally to the belief that good writing in the fifteenth or sixteenth century meant writing which aped as closely as possible that of the chosen period of the past. All real development of Latin to meet the changing needs of new talent and new subject-matter was thus precluded; with one blow of ‘his Mace petrific’ the classical spirit ended the history of the Latin tongue. This was not what the humanists had intended.

Posted via We Need More Bags on November 14, 2009