Et in Arcadia Ego

'Let me give you a parallel case: writing poetry in Latin, in England, in the eighteenth century. Now, why would anyone do that. The mistake the modern interpreter is almost certain to make lies in assuming that the eighteenth-century literati must have done “X” for the same reasons we would do “X” now.'

In the first third of the 19th Century, Sidney Smith remarked that English gentlemen spent the best years of their lives in making Latin verses. For the gentlemen not yet of an age to leave school, the master's stick was a considerable incentive.

Latin pastoral is not the only endangered form. This essay is a perfect example of its own, certain to be resented by impatient readers here.