fine, the Middle Ages had become themselves and had evolved a genius that could create,—then and from that time appears the adaptability and power of mediaeval Latin to serve the ends of intellectual effort and the expression of emotion.
To estimate the literary qualities of classical Latin is a simpler task than to judge the Latinity and style of the Latin literature of the Middle Ages. Classic Latin prose has a common likeness. In general one feels that what Cicero and Caesar would have rejected, Tacitus and Quintilian would not have admitted. The syntax of these writers shows still greater uniformity. No such common likeness, or avoidance of stylistic aberration and grammatical solecism, obtains in mediaeval prose or verse. The one and the other include many kinds of Latin, and vary from century to century, diversified in idiom and deflected from linguistic uniformity by influences of race and native speech, of ignorance and knowledge. He who would appreciate mediaeval Latin will be diffident of academic standards, and mistrust his classical predilections lest he see aberration and barbarism where he might discover the evolution of new constructions and novel styles; lest he bestow encomium upon clever imitations of classical models, and withhold it from more living creations of the mediaeval spirit. He will realize that to appreciate mediaeval Latin literature, he must shelve his Virgil and his Cicero.[1]
The following pages do not offer themselves even as a slight sketch of mediaeval Latin literature. Their purpose is to indicate the stages of development of the prose and the phases of evolution of the verse; and to illustrate the way in which antique themes and antique knowledge passed into vernacular poetry. Classical standards will supply us less with a point of view than with a point of departure.
- ↑ A palpable difficulty in judging mediaeval Latin literature is its bulk. The extant Latin classics could be tucked away in a small corner of it. Every well-equipped student of the Classics has probably read them all. One mortal life would hardly suffice to read a moderate part of mediaeval Latin. And, finally, while there are histories of the classic literature in every modern tongue, there exists no general work upon mediaeval Latin writings regarded as literature. Ebert's indispensable Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters ends with the tenth century. The author died. Within the scope of its purpose Dr. Sandys' History of Classical Scholarship is compact and good.
