PREFACE. THE original essay, of which these pages are a development, won the Hulsean Prize at Cambridge in December 1888. My excuse for their appearing so long after the event, must be the rare leisure of a schoolmaster's life; my excuse for their appearing at all, lies in the conditions of the founder's will. The trustees of Dr Hulse's benefaction generously granted me, more than two years ago, permission to expand and improve my manuscript; but an essay of this kind can never be more than prodromic and tentative, and the subject is too wide to be adequately treated in a single volume of reasonable dimensions. Some of the chapters, notably those which deal with the influence of Boethius on medieval thought and literature, would furnish material each for a separate treatise. With regard to the present work, I ought perhaps |