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ing of Figures, with a rather inordinate relish for the technical terms: thus Aldhelm, in quoting a verse, must stop to remark "brachycatalectic," and plays the terms penthemimeris and hephthemimeris apparently for their pure ornamental value as "beautiful words." One most interesting effect of the rhetorical studies of the Dark Ages was the attention paid to literary decoration of all kinds in original composition, frequently with great profusion of all the available resources in different inflammatory ways, but not always without sobriety. The extravagances of style in the Dark Ages might in most cases refer to some ancient if not reputable author for their precedents. Their florid exercises are derived from models of the classical period; ultimately, as has been shown with great learning in a recent German treatise,1 from Gorgias himself. Gorgias is responsible for a good deal of Aldhelm, as well as for Euphues: the old joke of Plato's Symposium, "turned to stone by the head of Gorgias," might be taken all but literally of the whole mass of rhetorical decoration in the Middle Ages. Chiefly the medieval taste in Latin prose was derived from Apuleius and his school, Martianus Capella having probably more effect in this way than any other writer. The Marriage of Mercury and Philology was a book that no library could be without, and it is not wonderful that the barbarians were attracted by the exorbitant riches of its language, nor that they should have gone much

1 Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa vom vi. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in die Zeit der Renaissance, 1898.

further than their masters in the use of emphasis and gaudy words. They tried everything. They "did somewhat affect the letter, for it argueth facility," and the alliterative amusements of Elizabethan Euphuism, the alliterative passages that so charmed Don Quixote in his favourite authors, are of the same school as Aldhelm. The extraordinary foreign vocabulary used in a certain order of medieval Latin prose and verse, in some of the old English charters, in Abbo's poem on the siege of Paris, was founded long ago in the experiments of Apuleius. There was a continuous process of development. The whole efflorescence of language in the Dark Ages, even the ineffable Hisperica Famina, is the com

1 The Hisperica Famina (ed. Stowasser, Vienna, 1887), as perhaps the most extreme thing in medieval Latin, ought to be described here, if description were possible. A short quotation will probably suffice to show the nature of the work: "Novello temporei globaminis cyclo hispericum arripere tonui sceptrum; ob hoc rudem stemico logum ac exiguus serpit per ora rivus. Quod si amplo temporalis ævi studio ausonica me alligasset catena sonoreus faminis per guttura popularet haustus ac immensus urbani tenoris manasset faucibus tollus," &c. It appears to be a student's exercise. There are extant pieces of three different versions where the same themes are treated apparently under the same rhetorical rules. Thus one asks, "Non ausonica me subligat catena?" and another affirms, "Nam strictus romani tenoris me septricat nexus," both in this strange way boasting that they have the Latin of Italy, which is what is meant by Hesperic and Ausonian. The several subjects treated are first the day of a student (lex diei), and then a number of common themes--Sea, fire, earth, wind, clothes, tavern, table, &c. The rules are, first, always to put a verb between adjective and noun; and secondly, to find for every simple idea a word from the "Hisperic" vocabulary, which is that of Apuleius, Florus, and Martianus Capella, exaggerated out of all measure. Dr Zimmer thinks that these essays possibly come from the school at

pletion of what had begun in the first conscious efforts. of Greek prose.

It is not wonderful that the vernacular languages, when they began to be used for literature, should have copied in their own way the prestige of the Latin eloquence, especially when, like the Teutonic and the Celtic languages, they were subject in their older native verse to the charm of alliteration. The poetical prose of Ælfric, which is English in its rhythm and founded upon the model of Teutonic verse, is also greatly under the influence of the ornamented and rhythmical Latin prose: without that example it might not have occurred to an Englishman to beautify his sermons in that particular manner.

The over-ornamented styles are of course far from universally prevalent or obligatory in the Middle Ages. Then, as at other times, though certain customs of expression may become traditionary, there are indefinite possibilities of variation, and style remains the character of the man himself, where a character can be discerned.

The educational work of the sixth or the ninth century is (with notable additions and improvements) Llantwit Major in Glamorgan, where Gildas and St David were educated. The manner of writing was certainly in favour in Britain, as is shown by the Latin of the Anglo-Saxon charters, and to a less degree by that of Gildas in one century and Asser in another. The whole subject is discussed by Dr Zimmer in Göttingische Nachrichten, 1895, and in Nennius Vindicatus, appendix. See also the Papers of Henry Bradshaw, the Crawford Collection of Early Charters, ed. Napier and Stevenson, and Journal of Philology, xxviii. 209, an article by Mr Robinson Ellis. A new edition of Hisperica Fumina is promised by Mr Jenkinson at the Cambridge Press.

largely the same as that of the thirteenth. Nor is it left in the later period entirely to humble men of industry; it is pursued with the diligence of a conscientious clerk by the men whose original genius and poetic inspiration might have been held to relieve them from duties towards philology and the other sciences. The Dark Ages reveal the prosaic ground of medieval romance. The foundations are laid by Orosius, Boethius, and Isidore, and not only that, but the builders of the crypts are recognised and honoured by the masters of the pinnacles; the poets in their greatest freedom of invention are loyal to the grammarians and moralists, the historians and lexicographers, upon whose work they build. They are also ready to take their turn at mason work in the lower regions of study, not only without grumbling, but apparently with zest. The classical encyclopedias of Boccaccio (De Genealogia Deorum, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, and the rest), the moral and scientific essays of Chaucer, are conducted with as light a heart as any of their poetical vanities. They are composed with the same motives and in the same spirit as the treatises which gave instruction to the Dark Ages, and those treatises must be understood if these later authors are to be rightly estimated The honour of Boethius and the other doctors is that they were not found antiquated at the Revival of Learning.

II.

The historical work of the Dark Ages was hindered by the difficulties of language, and scarcely found in any writer a proper and convenient style. The History. classical tradition, while it kept before the minds of historians a lofty pattern of eloquence, also tended to restrict their liveliness by the requirements of good grammar: while those who, like Gregory of Tours and others, were indifferent to grammar had no vernacular idiom to fall back upon. In England and in the English Chronicle a valiant attempt was made to use the native language for historical prose; but, noble as it is in many respects, the English Chronicle wants the magnitude and fulness required for efficient history. One great difference between the earlier and the later Middle Ages is that the earlier time has nothing like the free idiomatic narrative of Snorri or Sturla, of Villani or Froissart. The historical genius is muffled in Latin prose.

Even so, however, the historical genius asserts itself. History more than anything else in the Latin literature of the Dark Ages reveals the character of the individual writers: more distinctly than the literature of theology or philosophy, more than the poetical works of the time. In history, dealing as it largely does with contemporary subjects, the author is left to express his own opinion about his matter and to choose his own form: he is tested in a different way from the author who has to expound more abstract themes. The homilist, the moralist, was

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