Ubicunque pontus est ibi Britannia est.It was, it seems, a phrase often quoted by British writers in the second half of the 19th-century, to stress our imperial reach and manifest destiny (check it out; scroll down past the first hit, which is Landor's original). What's really interesting about this is that Landor is riffing (as it were) off another famous Republican poet and Latinist, John Milton. In a letter of 15 August 1666, to Peter Heimbach, Milton wrote: 'Ubicunque est bene, Patria est': 'wheresoever one is happy, that is one's homeland'. A rather different sentiment, I'd say!
Wheresoever is the sea, there is Britain.
Right: definitely enough Landorian Latin, now. Onwards!
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