us bokes, contrary and agynst the faythe catholyke, shall
immediatly be put in effectuall and due execution over and besyde this
present proclamation.

And god save the kynge.

* * * * *

THO. BERTHELETUS, Regius impressor excusit.
Cum privilegio.

* * * * *

LATIN--LATINER.

It is interesting to note the great variety of significations in which the
word Latin has been used. Sometimes it means Italian, sometimes Spanish,
sometimes the Romance language. Again, it has been used as synonymous with
language, learning, discourse; or to express that a matter is plain and
intelligible. {424}

Muratori, in describing the "Cangiamento dell' Lingua Latina nella volgare
Italiana," observes,--

"Cosi a poco a poco il volgo di questa bella Provincia [Italia], oltre
adottare moltissimi vocaboli forestieri, ando ancora alterando i
proprj, cioe i Latini, cambiando le terminazioni delle parole,
accorciandole, allungandole, e corrompendole. In somma se ne formo un
nuovo Linguaggio, che _Volgare_ si appellava, perche usato dal _Volgo
d'Italia._"--Muratori, _Della Perfetta Poesia Italiana_, tomo i. p. 6.,
ed. Venez., 1730.

So Boccaccio, giving an account of the intention of his poem, the
"Teseide," writes,--

"Ma tu, o libro, primo al lor cantare
Di Marte fai gli affanni sostenuti,
Nel _vulgar latino_ mai non veduti,"

where, as in the letter to La Fiammetta, prefixed to this poem, _vulgar
latino_ is evidently Italian ("Trovata una antichissima storia ... in
_latino volgare_ ... ho ridotta"), and not the Provencal tongue, as Mr.
Craik suggests in his _Literature and Learning in England_, vol. ii. p.
48., where he supposes Boccaccio to have translated _from_, and not, as is
clear, _into_, _latino volgare_.

Dante repeatedly uses Latino for Italiano, as in _Purgatorio_, xi. 58.:

"Io fui Latino, e nato d'un gran Tosco."

And in _Inf._ xxii. 65.:

"Conosci tu alcun, che sia Latino."

In _Paradiso_, iii. 63.,

"Si che il raffigurar m' e piu _latino_,"

_latino_ evidently means easy, clear, plain. "Forse contrario di barbaro,
strano," says Volpi, "noi Lombardi in questo significato diciamo _ladin_."
The "discreto latino" of Thomas Aquinas, elsewhere in _Paradiso_ (xii.
144.), must mean "sage discourse." Chaucer, when he invokes the muse, in
the proeme to the second book of "Troilus and Creseide," only a