We cannot refrain from adding a variation that deprives an pied de la lettre even of its quaintness:
The tone of Russian official statements on the subject is not encouraging, but then, perhaps, they ought not to be taken at the letter.—Times.
4. Closely connected with this mistake of translating is the other of taking liberties with foreign phrases in their original form, dovetailing them into the construction of an English sentence when they do not lend themselves to it. In Latin words and phrases, other cases should always be changed to the nominative, whatever the government in the English sentence, unless the Latin word that accounted for the case is included in the quotation. It will be admitted that all the four passages below are ugly:
The whole party were engaged ohne Rast with a prodigious quantity of Hast in a continuous social effort.—E. F. Benson.
German, in which so few Englishmen are at their ease, is the last among the half-dozen best-known languages to play these tricks with. The facetiousness here is indescribably heavy.
The clergy in rochet, alb, and other best pontificalibus.—Carlyle.
The intention is again facetious; but the incongruity between a Latin inflected ablative and English uninflected objectives is a kind of piping to which no man can dance; that the English in and the Latin in happen to be spelt alike is no defence; it is clear that in is here English, not Latin; either in pontificalibus, or in other pontificalia.
The feeling that one is an antecedentem scelestum after whom a sure, though lame. Nemesis is hobbling....—Trollope.
Antecedens selestus is necessary.
..., which were so evident in the days of the early Church, are now non est.—Daily Telegraph.
All things considered, I wonder they were not non est long ago.—Times.
Such maltreatment of non est inventus, which seems to have amused some past generations, is surely now as stale and unprofitable as individual itself.
