First Meeting

Abstract

Dr. KENNEDY read a paper on the Use of ne in Horace, in reference to one by Mr. Cooke printed in the Society's Proceedings for Lent Term, 1882, from, which his own opinion dissented on some points. He did not think the style and idioms of Plautus, a comic poet writing in an early stage of Latin literature, were just criteria for those of Horace, who should be judged by the internal evidence of his own works and by comparison with contemporary poets. He went on to say : Ne has four (or five) uses, all, of course, being negative. I. Prohibitive, with verb in 2nd person. (1) With imperative. Only once in Horace: ne parce 0. i. 28. 23. (2) "With conjunctive pert. 2nd person, four times : ne quaesieris 0. i. 11. 1 : ne biberis S. n. 2. 16 : ne dixeris, do. 3. 220 : ne fueris Epist. i. 6. 40. He believed that Horace showed no instance of ne directly prohibitive with pres. conj. 2nd person. Of this afterwards. II. Ne negativing (independently) a wish in any person of the verb, or a command in any but the 2nd person. Horace has but few instances of this use. See O. I. 2. 47, m. 2. 9. A group occurs 0. i. 36. 10—15, Cressa ne careat pulchra dies nota, etc. III . Ne forming a negative substantival clause (indirect Willspeech) in compound construction, with subjunctive verb dependent on various verbs or verbal nouns (of entreaty, command, exhortation, prohibition, etc., desire, care, precaution, striving, effecting, etc., fearing, alarming, etc.). Of this use Horace has more than forty examples. IV. Ne, final conjunction, lest, that-not, forming an adverbial clause in compound construction, with subjunctive verb dependent