Marcus Perurelition of the Cdly this muster Marcus Aurelius, is decidedly his masterpiece. His subtle insight into classical antiquity is also shown by his lectures on Plato and Platonism (1893) and by his posthumous volume of Greek Studies (1895). All his work derives a special charm from his magnificent highly finished prose-style.

The fantastical colleague of the philosophic emperor Marcus Aurelius, returning in triumph from the East, had brought in his train, among the 5 enemies of Rome, one by no means a captive. People actually sickened at a sudden touch of the unsuspected foe, as they watched in dense crowds the pathetic or grotesque imagery of 10 failure or success in the triumphal procession. And, as usual, the plague brought with it a power to develop all pre-existent germs of superstition. It was by dishonour done to Apollo 15 himself, said popular rumour - to Apollo, the old titular divinity of pestilence, that the poisonous thing had come abroad. Pent up in a golden coffer consecrated to the god, 20 it had escaped in the sacrilegious plundering of his temple at Seleucia by the soldiers of Lucius Verus, after a traitorous surprise of that town and a cruel massacre. Certainly 25 there was something which baffled all imaginable precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness with which the disease broke out simultaneously, here and there, among 30 both soldiers and citizens, even in places far remote from the main line of its march in the rear of the victorious army. It seemed to have invaded the whole empire, and some 36 have even thought that, in a mitigated form, it permanently remained there. In Rome itself many thou

sands perished; and old authorities tell of farmsteads, whole towns, and even entire neighbourhoods, which 40 from that time continued without inhabitants and lapsed into wildness or ruin.

Flavian lay at the open window of his lodging, with a fiery pang in 45 the brain, fancying no covering thin or light enough to be applied to his body. His head being relieved after a while, there was distress at the chest. It was but the fatal course 50 of the strange new sickness, under many disguises; travelling from the brain to the feet, like a material resident, weakening one after another of the organic centres; often, 55 when it did not kill, depositing various degrees of lifelong infirmity in this member or that; and after such descent, returning upwards again, now as a mortal coldness, leaving the 60 entrenchments of the fortress of life overturned, one by one, behind it.

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Flavian lay there, with the enemy at his breast now in a painful cough, but relieved from that burning fever 65 in the head, amid the rich-scented flowers rare Pæstum roses, and the like procured by Marius for his solace, in a fancied convalescence; and would, at intervals, return to 70 labour at his verses, with a great eagerness to complete and transcribe the work, while Marius sat and wrote at his dictation, one of the latest

75 but not the poorest specimens of genuine Latin poetry.

It was in fact a kind of nuptial hymn, which, taking its start from the thought of nature as the universal 80 mother, celebrated the preliminary pairing and mating together of all fresh things, in the hot and genial spring-time the immemorial nupthe immemorial nuptials of the soul of spring itself and 85 the brown earth; and was full of a delighted, mystic sense of what passed between them in that fantastic marriage. That mystic burden was relieved, at intervals, by the familiar 90 playfulness of the Latin verse-writer in dealing with mythology, which, though coming at so late a day, had still a wonderful freshness in its old

age. 'Amor has put his weapons 95 by and will keep holiday. He was bidden go without apparel, that none might be wounded by his bow and arrows. But take care! In truth he is none the less armed than 100 usual, though he be all unclad.'

In the expression of all this Flavian seemed, while making it his chief aim to retain the opulent, many-syllabled vocabulary of the 105 Latin genius, at some points even to have advanced beyond it, in anticipation of wholly new laws of taste as regards sound, a new range of sound itself. The peculiar resultant note, 110 associating itself with certain other experiences of his, was to Marius like the foretaste of an entirely novel world of poetic beauty to come. Flavian had caught, indeed, some116 thing of the rhyming cadence, the sonorous organ-music of the medieval Latin, and therewithal something of its unction and mysticity of spirit. There was in his work, along with 120 the last splendour of the classical language, a touch, almost prophetic, of that transformed life it was to have in the rhyming middle age,

125

just about to dawn. The impression
thus forced upon Marius connected
itself with a feeling, the exact in-
verse of that, known to every one,
which seems to say, You have been
just here, just thus, before! - a
feeling, in his case, not reminiscent 130
but prescient of the future, which
passed over him afterwards many
times, as he came across certain
places and people. It was as if he
detected there the process of actual 135
change to a wholly undreamed-of
and renewed condition of human
body and soul: as if he saw the
heavy yet decrepit old Roman archi-
tecture about him, rebuilding on an 140
intrinsically better pattern. Could
it have been actually on a new
musical instrument that Flavian had
first heard the novel accents of his
verse? And still Marius noticed 145
there, amid all its richness of ex-
pression and imagery, that firmness
of outline he had always relished so
much in the composition of Flavian.
Yes! a firmness like that of some 150
master of noble metal-work, manipul-
ating tenacious bronze or gold. Even
now that haunting refrain, with its
impromptu variations, from the throats
of those strong young men, came 155
floating through the window.

Cras amet, qui nunquam amavit,
Quique amavit, cras amet!

repeated Flavian, tremulously, dictating yet one stanza more.

160

What he was losing, his freehold of a soul and body so fortunately endowed, the mere liberty of life above-ground, those sunny mornings in the cornfields by the sea,' as he 165 recollected them one day, when the window was thrown open upon the early freshness his sense of all this, was from the first singularly near and distinct, yet rather as of 170 something he was but debarred the