The Classical Review http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR Additional services for The Classical Review: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Walker's Sequence of Tenses The Sequence of Tenses in Latin, a Study based on Caesar's Gallic War. By A. T. Walker, Professor of Latin in the University of Kansas. 8vo. pp. iv, and 52. Lawrence, Kansas, 1899. R. S. Conway The Classical Review / Volume 15 / Issue 01 / February 1901, pp 66 - 69 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00029565, Published online: 27 October 2009 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00029565 How to cite this article: R. S. Conway (1901). The Classical Review, 15, pp 66-69 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00029565 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 61.129.42.15 on 07 May 2015 66 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. AN OLD FRENCH TRANSLATION OF CICERO'S RHETORICA. Notice sur la Bhetorique de Ciceron. Tra- ing, among other things, how ' sermocinat duit par Maitre JEAN D'ANTIOCHE, MS. science ' is divided into grammar, logic and 590 du Musee Conde1, par M. Leopold rhetoric. ' Gramaire f ut amendee et perfaite Delish (Tir6 des Notices et Extraits des par Precien. Aristot fist logique. Et Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale Marc Tulles Cyceron fut especial auctour et autres Bibliotheques). Paris: Im- de rethorique . cette art de rethorique primerie Nationale. avoit este trouve"e par les Grifons,' &c, &c. In the epilogue the translator explains the THE well-known librarian of the Bibliotheque principles which had guided him: Quar Nationale has^unearthed in the Mus^e Conde" chascune lengue si a ses proprietez et sa at Chantilly a very interesting early French maniere de parler, et par ce nul translateur o translation of Cicero's ' Rhetorica,' of which interpreteur neporroit jamais bientranslater he has published an account, accompanied d'une lengue a autre, s'il ne s'enformait a la by two facsimile plates, and copious extracts. maniere et as proprietez de cele lengue en The translation was made at Acre for qui il translate; por laquel chose il covint Guillaume de Saint-Etienne, a knight of St. au translateur de ceste science de translator John of Jerusalem, by John of Antioch, aucune fois parole por parole, et aucune fois ' also called de Harens,' in the year 1282. et plus sovent sentence por sentence, et (It is curious that the date is on f ol. 1 given aucune fois por la grant oscurte de la sentence as MCCC.LXXxii, on fol. 12 asM.cc.LXxn, while li covint il sozjoindre et acreiste.' A second the true date MCC.LXXXII is only given on section is devoted to a sketch of logic, and fol. 13). The Chantilly MS. is probably an to showing how reasoning, and especially the original copy, and the translation has been ' entimeme' differs from rhetoric, in order carefully corrected, and other renderings that ' Brother Guillaume' may be more in some places substituted. The translator subtle in all questions. has thrown the two books de Inventions and This translation does not contribute much the four ad Herennium into one series, to the criticism of the text, but it is of some divided into 206 chapters. Two preliminary interest as a specimen of style and diction. sections are prefixed, dealing with the A. S. W. various divisions of knowledge, and explain- WALKER'S SEQUENCE OF TENSES. The Sequence of Tenses in Latin, a Study enquiry itself with the industry, the based on Caesar's Gallic War. By A. T. thoroughness and the syntactical discrimina- WALKER, Professor of Latin in the Uni- tion which we expect from one of Professor versity of Kansas. 8vo. pp. iv, and 52. Hale's pupils. His conclusions are interest- Lawrence, Kansas, 1899. ing and attractive, a priori, since they seem to offer a rationalised version of the old rule THE most acute and elaborate research may of Sequence. But the author's object was to be entirely thrown away if its results are set establish them by direct evidence; and in down in a form which no one can under- this, so far as his readers are concerned, stand. To apply such a truism to a particular he must be said to have failed. A little case is a rather thankless task, and if Pro- more patience in recording the results of his fessor Walker's Dissertation contained no enquiry, a little sober criticism of obscure more serious matter than is commonly and faulty wording, and a day spent in found in other Degree-Theses, its weaknesses making an Index Locorum might have made might be ignored. But he has undertaken this dissertation a contribution to Grammar to deal with a question which is of first- of permanent value. But as it is now rate importance to all students of Latin; presented the body of the paper is a wilder- and it is clear that he has conducted the ness of bare references, separated into blocks THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. 67 by lines of definition, always curt, often per- the study was to test the truth of a. dictum of plexing, and sometimes quite unintelligible.1 Professor Hale's which amounted to a denial A line of numbers is no better evidence of the existence of any law of Sequence, by than ' what the soldier said.' Seeing that a minute scrutiny of the meaning of every the whole argument turns on the precise dependent Tense-form, Indicative or Sub- significance of single forms, it is surely not junctive, in Caesar's Gallic War. The too much to ask, first, that the one word or author starts by analysing the meanings of the two words for which each passage is the Indicative Tenses into their elements, cited should be added to the figures; and' Time-sphere' and ' Stage of Action (com- secondly and chiefly, that at least two or pleted, in process, or imminent,)' noting that three cogent examples of every general aoristic Tenses denote only the Time-sphere statement should be printed at length—a without indicating the Stage of Action. dozen where the point is novel or difficult. Besides the aorisfcic uses of Present, Perfect In pp. 12-25, where comparatively simple and Future, he would recognise, and justly, cases are dealt with, the author does give an aoristic Pluperfect and Future Perfect;, one example of each rule before plunging which simply state that an event occurred into figures; but at this point he relaxes or will have occurred before some other past even his own standard, and in pp. 33-46, or future event, but in no way describe which contain all the hard cases, he prints it; since it precedes another, it must no examples at all, save for a few of be, of course, completed, but the speaker is the subdivisions on pp. 38-40. Nor is it not concerned with this aspect of it.3 In merely the reader who suffers. Such a ' he arrived after you had gone' the Plu- misprint or miswriting as ' conclusions' perfect is aoristic; whereas in ' after he had (p. 37 1. 2), for (I suppose) ' comparisons' made a fortune he cut all his old friends,' could hardly have passed uncorrected if the the speaker directs attention to the result author had written out the solitary example of a process; the Stage of the action is which he has to cite (alio tempore atque emphasised and the Tense may be fairly oportuerit) instead of blinding his own eyes called 'Descriptive.'* For the Subjunctive by giving only the reference. This kind of Tenses a double use is laid down, one cor- accident awakens uncomfortable doubts as responding to the same Tenses of the to the worth of the references generally. Indicative, the other containing a reference In short, the reader will be able to judge to some future time, measured from a whether the evidence supports or throws present or a past standpoint. Thus the doubt on the author's conclusions, when, Present Subjunctive serves both as Present and only when, he has spent at least as and Future; the Imperfect, as Imperfect much time in completing the work as the 2 and Future to the Past, and so forth. (A author has spent in beginning it. more minute analysis is attempted in c.V, But enough has been said to show that the which appears in some respects doubtful, dissertation needs to be re-written; it is a and in any case irrelevant to questions of much pleasanter task to urge that it is ex- Sequence). tremely well worth re-writing. The object of The author next proceeds (p. 8) to give an admirable definition of Sequence, which 1 In some passages the author has stated (or whether it be original or not—and it seems pinted) precisely what he does not mean. For to be given as such—will, I feel sure, be instance on 'p. 40 we read as the title of a Class: ' The present of a general truth following a past in gratefully accepted by other students of indirect question.* But if the reader verifies the Grammar. The description of the Perf. reference he finds that it is not the Fast that is in Subj. in e.g., rogo quid fecerit as aorist, is the Indirect Question, but the Present. A not seems new to me but, I think, quite convincing, to be omitted on p. 8, 1. 20, and p. 30, footnote. in view of the fact that a following Subjunc- 5 Compared to this radical defect mere faults of style, such as the absence of capital letters (so that, e.g., 'the present' denotes both a Tense and a time), 3 The haphazard examples which follow are not are venial enough.