n, as his 'fluentisonus'? Virgil's vitisator (_Aen._ 7, 179)
is not his own, but derived from one of the earlier poets. Nay,
the language did not even retain those compound epithets which
it once had formed, but was content to let numbers of them drop:
'parcipromus'; 'turpilucricupidus', and many more, do not extend
beyond Plautus. On this matter Quintilian observes (i. 5, 70):
Res tota magis Graecos decet, nobis minus succedit; nec id fieri
natura puto, sed alienis favemus; ideoque cum {Greek: kyrtauchena}
mirati sumus, _incurvicervicum_ vix a risu defendimus. Elsewhere
he complains, though not with reference to compound epithets, of
the little _generative_ power which existed in the Latin language,
that its continual losses were compensated by no equivalent gains
(viii. 6, 32): Deinde, tanquum consummata sint omnia, nihil
generare audemus ipsi, quum multa quotidie ab antiquis ficta
moriantur. Notwithstanding this complaint, it must be owned that
the silver age of the language, which sought to recover, and did
recover to some extent the abdicated energies of its earlier times,
reasserted among other powers that of combining words with a
certain measure of success.

{78} [For Shakespearian compounds see Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_,
pp. 317-20.]

{79} [Writing in the year 1780 Bentham says: "The word it must be
acknowledged is a new one".]

{80} _Collection of Scarce Tracts_, edited by Sir W. Scott, vol. vii, p.
91.

{81} [Hardly a novelty, as the word occurs in J. Gaule, {Greek:
Pys-mantia}, 1652, p. 30. See F. Hall, _Mod. English_, p. 131.]

{82} [First used apparently by Grote, 1847, and Mrs. Gaskell, 1857,
N.E.D.]

{83} See _Letters of Horace Walpole and Mann_, vol. ii. p. 396, quoted
in _Notes and Queries_, No. 225; and another proof of the novelty
of the word in Pegge's _Anecdotes of the English Language_, 1814,
p. 38.

{84} Postscript to his _Translation of the Aeneid_.

{85} Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere.

_De A. P._ 46-72; cf. _Ep._ 2, 2, 115.

{86} _Etymologicon vocum omnium antiquarum quae usque a Wilhelmo Victore
invaluerunt, et jam ante parentum aetatem in usu esse desierunt._

{87} [As a matter of fact the N.E.D. fails to give any quotation for
this word in the period named.]

{88} [The verb 'to advocate' had long bef