compositions, all of them possessing certain qualities which are associated with classical writing. These may be difficult to formulate, but they become clear enough in contrast with the qualities of mediaeval Latin literature. The mediaeval man did not feel and reason like a contemporary of Virgil or Cicero; he had not the same training in Greek literature; he did not have the same definitude of conception, did not care so much that a composition should have limit and the unity springing from adherence to a single topic; he did not, in fine, stand on the same level of attainment and faculty and taste with men of the Augustan time. He had his own heights and depths, his own temperament and predilections, his own capacities. Reading the Classics had not transformed him into Cicero or Seneca, or set his feet in the Roman Forum. His feet wandered in the ways of the Middle Ages, and whatever he wrote in prose or verse, in Latin or in his own vernacular, was himself and of himself, and but indirectly due to the antecedent influences which had been transmuted even in entering his nature and becoming part of his temper and faculty.
Any consideration of the knowledge and appreciation of the Classics in the Middle Ages would be followed naturally by a consideration of their effect upon mediaeval composition; which in turn forms part of any discussion of the literary qualities of mediaeval Latin literature. But inasmuch as mediaeval form and diction tend to remove further and further from classical standards, the whole discussion may seem a lucus a non lucendo for all the light it throws upon the effect of the Classics on mediaeval literature. Our best plan will be to note the beginnings of mediaeval Latinity in that post-Augustan and largely patristic diction which had been enriched and reinvigorated with many phrases from daily speech; and then to follow the living if sluggish river as it moves on, receiving increment along its course, its currents mottled with the silt of mediaeval Italy, France, Germany. We shall suppose this flood to divide in rivers of Latin prose and verse; and we may follow them, and see where they overflow their channels, carrying antique flotsam into the ample marshes of vernacular poetry.
