But there is a better reason why you should endeavour to understand the value of Latin in our literature; a filial reason.  Our fathers built their great English prose, as they built their oratory, upon the Latin model.  Donne used it to construct his mighty fugues:  Burke to discipline his luxuriance.  Says Cowper, it were

     Praise enough for any private man,
     That Chatham’s language was his mother tongue,
     And Wolfe’s great name compatriot with his own.

Well then, here is a specimen of Chatham’s language:  from his speech, Romanly severe, denouncing the Government of the day for employing Red Indians in the American War of Independence.  He is addressing the House of Lords: 

I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pastors of our Church—­I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God.  I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench to defend and support the justice of their country.  I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution.  I call upon the honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own.  I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character.  I invoke the genius of the Constitution.  From the tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this noble lord [Lord Suffolk] frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country.  In vain he led your victorious fleet:  against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion—­the Protestant religion—­of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose among us—­to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! to send forth the infidel savage—–­against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war!—­hell-hounds, I say, of savage war!  Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity....

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less.  I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal