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LINDSAY, W.M., Early Latin Verse. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2000. (Photomechanical reprint ed.1922 - Sandpiper ed.) XI,362p. Original blue cloth with dust wrps. Spine gilt titled. Nice copy. ‘A big book by Professor Lindsay on the scansion of the extant verse of the early period of Latin literature (not much about Saturnians) is an event of great importance to all editors of texts and advanced students generally. They will have to study every word in it, and take their bearings to the author’s doctrine on a multitude of complicated questions of prosody, phonetics, and textual criticism. But this book makes a wider appeal. It claims to have disclosed for the first time the intonation of Latin speech as heard in the days of Plautus and Terence, and by inference in those of Cicero - ‘the tone of utterance that breathes life into the dry bones of language’ (Preface, p.vii) (…). It is a pity that Professor Lindsay has not presented any conspectus of his views on this matter, they have to be gathered by the reader from a multitude of passages scattered throughout the book (…) One finds little or nothing about ‘intonation’ in the strict sense of the term, but a great deal about pronunciation, and in particular about a habit of ‘slurred pronunciation’(pp.257-259), due to the hurry of utterance’, and involving syncope. No phonetic account of the process of slurring is attempted (…). What is the evidence on which Professor Lindsay relies for his slurring? It is drawn entirely from certain features of Old Latin verse structure. The verse of comedy in particular is treated as reflecting accurately the pronunciations of everyday speech; and to the proper way of scanning the verse of comedy Professor Lindsay devotes the bulk of his book. (…) Whether it is legitimate to infer from the practice of verse-writers to the pronunciations of daily speech is a matter on which opinions may differ.’ (E.A. SONNENSCHEIN in The Classical Review, 1923, pp.183-185). € 25.00 (Antiquarian) ISBN: 9780198143482