The De derived from a careful textual comparison of the original MS. of the Imitation 1 with the accepted works of Thomas, is strongly in favour of Imitatione his claim.2 The text seems to have been Christi. finished about 1441, and to have obtained an immediate popularity. No less than eighty editions are known to have appeared before 1500; and of these many were translations in the vernaculars.3 The living quality of the Imitation comes from its universality, its irresistible appeal to the general conscience, and the directness and simplicity of its style. It is interesting to note that whereas Hallam in discussing the question of origin detected "numerous Gallicisms or Italicisms," one of the latest editors, M. Ruelens, at the same task, has discovered "frequent Germanisms." 4 There may be some truth in both statements, for the language of the Imitation, though 'low' and even barbarous, has a cosmopolitan appropriateness with the universal terms of its thesis. Considerations like these probably inspired a certain French theory, which was sufficiently plausible till more positive evidence was forthcoming, that the book 1 Reproduced, with an Introduction by M. Charles Ruelens, of the Royal Library, Brussels, Lond., 1879. 2 See F. R. Cruise's Thomas à Kempis (1887), and Malou's Recherches historiques et critiques sur le véritable auteur du livre, &c. Karl Hirsche in his Prolegomena zu einer neuen Ausgabe der I. C. (1873, 1883) states the fullest case for the rhythmical construction of the Imitation. The alternative title De Musica Ecclesiastica is found almost exclusively in the English MSS. 3 Ante, chap. x., pp. 324, 325. 4 See also Ingram (E. E.T.S.), pp. 285, 286. is the final expression, in collected form, of a number of pious sentiments and religious aphorisms which had filtered down from the early Middle Ages and from a variety of sources. The universal quality of the Imitation is exclusively mediæval; in its directness, and in what we may call the A contemporary intimacy of its expression, it owes nothing contrast. to the modern spirit. Its personality is but the personality of a great book, untouched by the egoism of the Renaissance. It represents the unalloyed beauty of what was best in the early Middle Ages, and it is a protest as much against the pedantries of a degenerate scholasticism as against the hypocritical piety, or even the general cynicism, of its age. In contrast with all the literary work of the Transition— with the respect for tattered tradition, the lack of enthusiasm, and the slow awakening to new artistic ideals-the Imitation turns back again to that conception of life and duty which had fascinated simpler and perhaps more pious generations. It is indifferent to all the domestic instincts, though the bourgeoisie is astir and setting its house in order; and it upholds a strenuous monasticism, when even the Church is already smitten with a pagan delight in everything human. Its pious enthusiasm and its plea for humility are of quite a different order from the methods of the religious literature which was attacking the coldness and selfishness of the times. It makes no compromise with the world as Menot or Geiler von Kaisersberg did by tickling the consciences of the frivolous; it does not anathematise as Maillard or Savonarola did; nor is it erotically rapturous like the Italian followers of Jacopone da Todi. There is nothing fantastic or violent in its argument or devotion. "Si non potes te talem facere qualem vis, quomodo poteris alium ad tuum habere beneplacitum ?" "Si vis utiliter scire aliquid et discere, ama nesciri et pro nihilo reputari." 1 This is not the language of the fifteenth-century moralists or religious enthusiasts. It is a voice apart, which, when it warns its hearers against setting store on physical beauty,2 has no special quarrel with the Greek gods of the Renaissance. When Thomas concludes with the Preacher "Vanitas ergo vanitatum, et omnia vanitas," he refers to the shortcomings of the inner religious life, not to the finery and banqueting of an erring laity. But when he speaks of the passing glory of the world, he strikes a chord which vibrates in the deeper soul of the century. "Dic mihi, ubi sunt modo omnes illi magistri quos novisti bene dum adhuc viverent et in studiis florerent? Iam eorum praebendas alii possident; et nescio utrum de eis recogitent. In vita sua videbantur aliquid, modo autem de illis tacetur." Yet Villon and the poets and Thomas à Kempis reach this truth from different sides; they through worldly experience, in the sober moments after ill-luck and unrest, he, like S. Bernard, with the complacent conviction of the ascetic. His attitude to woman has 1 Bk. I. chap. xvi., § 2, and chap. ii., § 3. nesciri' is taken from S. Bernard, Serm. 3, E.E.T.S. edit., p. 285.) 2 Ibid., chap. vii., § 2. The oft-quoted 'ama in Nativ. Dom. (See § 5. 3 Ibid., chap. iii., neither the bitterness of the distrest saints nor the cynical animosity which became the fashion, if not the mood, of European thought as monasticism grew corrupt and chivalric ideals fell away. "Non sis familiaris alicui mulieri, sed in communi omnes bonas mulieres Deo commenda." The appearance of the Imitation and its great popularity in the fifteenth century were symptomatic of no reactionary change in the public mood. The bell had "rong to evensonge," but its notes awoke in recollection in the watches of the restless night which followed. And even in the high noon of the Renaissance, in moments of lull, the solemn music breaks upon the inner ear, and is again lost-as has happened since, and will happen yet again. This is the perennial quality of the Middle Ages, from which there is no Transition. 409 CONCLUSION. A CONCLUSION is perhaps less appropriate or useful here than it is in the accounts of other centuries; for, where nothing is concluded, a sense of uncertainty in the mind of the reader has an æsthetic value, which may be lost in a more analytic interpretation, based on the knowledge of after-events. A summingup becomes, by reason of that later experience, a prophecy rather than a judgment. In the present case the temptation to such a pleasant speculation must be the more strenuously resisted, as the purpose of the succeeding volume is to focus and define some of the images which are suggested here in blurred outline. Nevertheless, we are not precluded from a moment's delay over two general considerations which must have forced themselves on the reader ere the close of this résumé. The first is of the nature of a caveat. The lesson of the restlessness, or what we may call the 'fluidity,' of the Middle Period is that there is no sudden break in the development of European literature. We have outlived the school-book fiction which dates the New |