Neo-Latin literature, which was still being practiced in the 19th century, was nonetheless suffering a crisis of legitimacy. One of the reasons for this loss of interest was the emergence of a new conception of language as inseparable from the people who speak it. Jean Dominique Fuss, a late Latin poet, fought to defend his chosen language of written expression. Among his targets, Nicolas Boileau and Voltaire. These authors place the neo-Latin writer in an uncomfortable dilemma : either cobbling a new text together out of old Latin texts, or giving up on writing anything resembling literature at all. In order to revalorise neo-Latin production, Fuss endeavoured to show that, on the one hand, all literary languages are “dead” languages, and, on the other, that the imitation of the Ancients does not in the least hinder originality.