the material of which it is woven. So fair and white and shining is it, that the beholder's sight is blinded.

The and the 0, together with the ladder of lines connecting them, which are mentioned as adorning the lower and the upper border of Philosophy's robe, but about which no explanation is vouchsafed by Boethius, have their signification fully set forth here, and an elaborate allegory is evolved out of them.

The designates the earthly life, the .heavenly law, "de cél la dreita léi.”

the

Thousands of

birds are climbing1 the steps of the ladder-steps

1 The fact that the birds are made to use their feet rather than their wings for mounting to the upper letter called forth an ingenious suggestion from the late Herr C. Hofmann, who supposed that the translator read avibus instead of quibus (Sitzungsberichte of the Munich Academy, 1870, July 2). The passage in Cons. i., pr. 1, runs thus: "Atque in utrasque litteras in scalarum modum gradus quidam insigniti videbantur quibus ab inferiore ad superius elementum esset ascensus." But without attempting to explain the method of locomotion, I may remind the reader that the bird constantly appears in medieval art as a symbol of the soul, especially at the moment of death. At the miracle-plays it was a custom to let a bird fly when a person died—a crow for the impenitent thief and a white dove for the penitent one.

In Herrad von Landsberg's Hortus Deliciarum, a beautiful illuminated MS. of the twelfth century, evil spirits are represented by birds. And in the same work there is a Jacob's ladder whose rungs are the seven virtues by which man mounts to heaven. At the foot of the ladder is the dragon of the pit, ready to catch those who fall or descend. (See C. M. Engelhardt's edition of the Hortus. Stuttgart-Tübingen, 1818. Plates VIII. and IX.)

not made of gold, but of some substance as good as gold,—“ d'aur no sun gés mas mallor no son.”

Many of these birds turn back again; but some of them reach the 0, at once assume another colour, and are received with great love by the lady.

Then follows the explanation of the allegory. The steps of the ladder are made of the different virtues-Almsgiving, Faith, Love, Loyalty, Generosity, Happiness, Truth, Chastity, Humility: together with each of these is mentioned the opposing vices against which they are intended to serve as safeguards. Every good man makes his own step—

The

The birds which arrive at the are the righteous who have expiated their sins, who trust in the Holy Trinity, and set no store on earthly honours. birds which come down from the ladder are those mortals who have been good in their young days and known wisdom, but with age have grown wicked and perjured themselves. The devil of the pit has them by the heel!

The poet, after remarking that the lady is of great stature for all that she remains seated, goes on to tell how she has in her right hand a book burning with fire, in her left hand a royal sceptre. The fiery book is the justice of God, wherewith unrepented

sins are burnt away (a man would do well to make friends early with her-she will prove a good mistress); the sceptre is the symbol of corporal justice. With these words

the fragment breaks off abruptly. It seems useless to conjecture whether there was much more to follow, or if in the Orléans MS. we possess the major part of the poem. It is, indeed, hardly conceivable that the writer would have been able to turn to account the metaphysics of the later books of the Consolation.' However this may be, if the object set forth in the first words of the fragment was all the teacher aimed at, he has sufficiently realised it in the course of these two hundred odd lines.

Before dismissing 'Boëce,' perhaps a word should be said on its metrical construction. For all that it is of Southern workmanship, it displays the salient characteristics of the Northern French epic.

The line consists of ten syllables, bearing the principal accent on the fourth: a cæsura follows immediately on this accent, dividing the whole into two distinct members-e.g.:

"de gran follia || per folledat 1 parllam."

1 Or "per foll edat " (propter stultam ætatem).

SECTION IV.-NOTKER.

Authorities. Die älteste deutsche Litteratur,' Piper (being the first volume of Kürschner's 'Deutsche National-Litteratur'). Berlin and Stuttgart. The same writer's edition of Notker's works, Bd. viii. of the Germanischer Bücherschatz. Freiburg and Tübingen, 1889.

The

Of equal importance, from a philological standpoint, is the old High-German version from the pen of Notker of St Gall. Here again we see the place that Boethius holds in the dawning literature of medieval Europe-a place which no other secular writer of antiquity can dispute with him. reader of the foregoing pages will know something of the help given by the Consolation' in shaping the infant utterance of a great Romance language. Its influence on the grammar and phonetics of the lingua theotisca is no less remarkable. But this influence, interesting though it be, stands outside the scheme of the present chapter, and I cannot devote more than a few passing words to it, or treat it otherwise than as subservient to the general literary interest of the work before us.

And first with regard to the translator himself. He may be distinguished from his homonyms in the great Swiss monastery in any one of three ways:

by order of succession (he is Notker III., Notkers I. and II. being respectively the sequence-writer, and the doctor and hymnologist); by the personal defect which earned him the sobriquet of Labeo, "thick lips" (they were nicknamed, the one Balbubus, "the stammerer," the other Piperis gramma,

Peppercorn," from his fiery temper); or lastly— and this is the title by which we would rather know him by the epithet Teutonicus, " the German," given him in virtue of his efforts on behalf of his mother-tongue, and of his position as the initiator of a great school of German translation.

He was born about 950, and died in 1022 of the plague which Henry II.'s army brought back with it from Italy after the campaign against the Greeks of the South. Introduced into the monastery by his uncle, the learned Ekkehart I., he presently rose to be director of the school there one of the largest and most important in all Europe, which had been in existence long before the revival of letters under Charles the Great. He seems to have been a man of considerable personal charm: his pupil, Ekkehart IV., speaks of him with the warmest love and admiration; and his intellectual range and power may be gathered from the account of the writings, chiefly commentaries and transla