To litel Latin
Tom Shippey, 11 October 1990
Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age
by J.W. Binns.
Francis Cairns Press, 761 pp., £75, July 1990,0 905205 73 1 Show More
by J.W. Binns.
Francis Cairns Press, 761 pp., £75, July 1990,
“... Thow doted daffe, dulle are thi wittes,’ says Holy Church to the Dreamer in Piers Plowman: ‘To litel latin thou lernedest in thi youthe!’ The Dreamer doesn’t argue with her; in fact, he agrees, saying sadly: Heu michi quia sterilem duxi vitam iuvenilem. But her view is one of the great, long-lasting English fallacies, a fine example of post hoc propter hoc ... ”