does not solve Fate and Free-will, he at any rate gives help for the reading of Dante, and his description of the relations between Providence and Fate is a fine example of solemn meditation. It is an expansion of the old passage from the Timæus, about the Divine and the Necessary; Fate is Providence looked at from below. Just as the understanding of man, creeping from point to point, breaks into a long analytical series the unity of Divine reason, so the timeless Providence when it is translated into Time becomes the succession of events that seem to be bound together by the necessity of Fate, though they are beheld otherwise when looked upon ex alta providentiæ specula: "Uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad æternitatem tempus, ad punctum medium circulus : ita est fati series mobilis ad providentiæ stabilem securitatem" (IV. c. 6). Time is the image of Eternity (V. c. 6), and the endless series of events in Time is a reduction of what is Absolute to a lower grade, an attempt to exhaust the infinite riches of a life for which no time is sufficient. With the expression of ideas like these it is possible to find fault. They are made too simple. But the task of Boethius here is philosophical consolation, not pure philosophy. Naturally the philosophers are unwilling to see these mysteries made over to the uses of the moral preacher. But the other side must always be kept in mind. The disciples of Boethius have justified him. In that age, and for ages after, the most important and essential thing was to get some simple comprehensive theory of the whole world, whether scientific or merely literary. There was no want of scientific elaboration later. The magnificent generalisations of Boethius, coming as most of them do from Plato, have in the confusion of the Middle Ages the effect of something still older than Plato: a revival of the great utterances of the early Greek philosophers, those who looked to the whole heaven, and were possessed with the Unity of it, and found that enough for a lifetime. In the decline of Greek speculation, almost at its last word, Boethius is often nearer to Parmenides or Empedocles, in his frame of mind if not in his doctrines, than to any of the later sects. The verse of the Consolation is that of a prosodistsomewhat too deliberate in the choice and combination of metres, not always quite successful, it may be thought. But the Middle Ages approved and imitated them, as they imitated also those of Martianus Capella; and the poems have excellences such as make the expulsion of the poetical Muses at the beginning appear not only cruel but ungrateful. Not infrequently the movement is like that of a sonnet, especially an Elizabethan sonnet made up of examples, and a concluding moral. Such is the poem of the second book, c. 3, written in a system of alternate sapphic and glyconean verses. "Cum polo Phœbus roseis quadrigis Pallet albentes hebetata vultus Flammis stella prementibus. Cum nemus flatu zephyri tepentis Vernis inrubuit rosis Spiret insanum nebulosus auster Immotis mare fluctibus Verso concitat æquore. Rara si constat sua forma mundo, Crede fortunis hominum caducis, Bonis crede fugacibus. Constat æterna positumque lege est, The poem on the Former Age (II. c. 5) is an example in verse of Boethius's skill in reviving commonplace themes; it is the original of Chaucer's poem on the same subject. Its conceit of pretiosa pericula for "gems" comes in with a very modern sort of grace. The famous phrase, Ubi nunc fidelis ossa Fabricii manent, turned so happily by King Alfred ("Where are the bones of Weland?"), is the source of many rhymes on the perished valour and vanished beauty, -an old burden. The solemn prayer of Book III. c. 9 is in hexameter verse, rightly chosen here, and chosen perhaps with a recollection of its use by Parmenides and Empedocles "Da pater augustam menti conscendere sedem There is no author in this period, and few in any part of history, with so many advocates, pupils, and imitators; the reason being that he somehow or other felt what was most wanted in the intellectual confusion in which he lived. He is still an auspicious name, not merely on account of the honour that has been paid him, but because of the sincere and quiet light that he gives, with his fidelity to Plato and his observance of an old Greek fashion of thought, in times when clearness and simplicity were more and more difficult every day. Cassiodorus. Cassiodorus (c. 480-575), who survived Boethius fifty years, is of no less importance as a teacher of the later ages, though in a wholly different way. Boethius may still be read, as Dante or Chaucer read him, for doctrine and counsel. Cassiodorus is a founder of educational methods, a purveyor of learning, a historian; but his present literary value consists in nothing more than the curiosity of his overladen style, which is equally inexhaustible and monotonous. As Quæstor under Theodoric he wrote official letters in the most pompous language to the king's correspondents; these were published by Cassiodorus under the title Varia1 some twelve years after Theodoric's death. His method may be exemplified from the letter in which Theodoric desires Boethius to find a harper for Luduin (that is, Clovis) king of the Franks. Page after page is filled with sentences on the music of the spheres, the moral efficacy of the different 1 Ed. Mommsen, in Mon. Germ. Hist., 1894. tones (perverted by the corruption of the world to dancing), the nature of diapason; Orpheus, Amphion, Museus; rhythm, metre, oratory; the different functions of heroic and iambic verse; the Sirens; David; the heavenly psaltery; the music of the blessed in heaven. Concluding with a return from this digression, the letter hopes that the harper when found and despatched to the Frankish king will contrive, like Orpheus, to tame the fierce hearts of the nations. Shortly before the taking of Ravenna by Belisarius, Cassiodorus retired to Squillace, his birthplace, where he founded a monastery and set an example of learned industry and care for books, the effect of which was incalculable. In his Institutions of Divine and Human Study he included all knowledge: the second part (the Humanities) established the Trivium and Quadrivium for all future schools. And there were many other works of different kinds besides. The Gothic History, abridged by Jordanes, was written before his retirement. He was a man of some character, a fit representative, in the sixth century, of the liberal arts, genuinely fond of knowledge, and of good writing, as he understood it. His historical importance has been well brought out by the historian of Italy and her Invaders.1 A sentence or two from the letter to Boethius will prove what has been said about his style. On the lute and its virtue : Nam licet hujus delectationis organa multa fuerint exquisita, nihil tamen efficacius inventum est ad permovendos animos 1 See especially Epistles of Cassiodorus, translated by T. Hodgkin. |