LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 109
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Facts You Should Know
About the Classics
Joseph McCabe
HALDEMAN-JULIUS PUBLICATIONS
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1927,
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. Classics of the Ancient World 7
1. Greek Literature 9
2. Roman Works 18
3. Early Christian Classics 25
II. Classics of the Middle Ages 27
1. Arab and Persian Writers 27
2. Dante and the Middle Ages 28
3. Heralds of the Renaissance 30
4. The New Age in Italy and France 32
5. Cervantes and the New Spain 36
6. Shakespeare and the English Re-birth 38
III. Classics of the Modern Period 44
1. Voltaire and French Classics 45
2. Germany, Russia and Scandinavia 49
3. Modern English Writers 53
4. American Classics 59
PREFACE
This Little Blue Book is not for students of literature, but just for
folks who have not time or opportunity to read the works of the great
writers of earlier days. Every thoughtful man or woman would like to
know a little about them. Almost every day you read or hear an allusion
to Homer or Plato, Vergil or Horace, Chaucer or Dante, and so on. You
would like, if it is possible to tell you in a few simple pages, to
know who these men were, in what circumstances and on what themes they
wrote, what special interest or distinction the most famous plays or
poems or books of each of them possesses.
By the classics we mean in literature, not merely the old Greek or
Roman works, but the literary masterpieces of every age which live
forever on account of their supreme art or interest. It is not good to
be entirely ignorant about them: it is easy and pleasant to have a few
intelligent ideas about them. About a hundred writers of the last three
thousand years have earned this kind of immortality, and we will take
them in order. Hence, although this small book cannot be a history of
literature--I may provide one later--it will give a kind of sketch of
that history and the place in it of each of the great writers who is
described.
FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE CLASSICS
CHAPTER I
CLASSICS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
Men learned the art of writing, or began to express their ideas to
each other by (at first) drawing little pictures of objects, about six
thousand years ago, but none of the works which we call “classics” goes
back to more than three thousand years ago. We should not expect to
find many writings surviving from a date earlier than that, and as a
matter of fact, except for business purposes writing was chiefly left
to the priests. From ancient Egypt alone we have a few specimens of
small books written by laymen; especially the _Maxims of Ptah-Hotep_,
a very interesting series of counsels and reflections on conduct by a
middle-class Egyptian of four thousand or more years ago.
This, however, is not great literature. For the older civilizations
we have to consider only their religious literature, as certain
collections of ritual and other sacred writings which, on the analogy
of the Hebrew collection, we may call their “bibles.” The oldest is
what we call _The Book of the Dead_ of the Egyptians, parts of which
go back thousands of years before Christ. It is not what we should
describe as fine literature, and, as it is mainly concerned with the
passage of the dead to another world, which to the Egyptians meant a
tiresome story of devils and spells and magic, only scholars or special
students read it today.
There is nothing corresponding to this in Babylonia, where men did
not take an acute religious interest in death, but amongst the mass
of writings (or inscribed clay tablets) that we have found we have
fragments of a remarkable semi-sacred romance, now called _The Story_
(or _Epic_) _of Gilgamesch_, into which are woven the early religious
traditions of a creation, deluge, garden of bliss, etc. In substance
the story goes back five or six thousand years.
The remaining “bibles” were all written after 1000 B. C., and at
least in some of their pages they are really fine literature. The
_Old Testament_, which is certainly a literary classic in its English
translation, and has some notable poetry in the Hebrew, was written, as
we have it, in the fifth century before Christ, but the pieces of which
it was then composed spread over several centuries before that date.
The Persian sacred book, _The Avesta_, is a similar compilation of
religious traditions and writings, covering much the same period. But
it had not, like the _Old Testament_, the advantage of being translated
in an age when men still wrote poetical English, and it is only of
historical and religious interest, as an account of the high ideals and
remarkable beliefs of the ancient Persians.
The oldest Hindu writings, _The Vedas_, mainly a collection of hymns,
belong to the same period; the oldest parts (especially of the _Rig
Veda_) may go back to 1000 B. C. There is some fine poetic writing in
the earlier parts, but in the later this is succeeded by very abstract
and subtle speculation which few would care to read.
The Chinese collection is called the _King_ (which means “books” or
“bible”), and it includes what are known as the Chinese classics. These
are five books written by Kung-fu-tse (Confucius) and his disciples in
the sixth century B. C. They are included, with the Persian and Hindu
books, in the collection of translations known as _The Sacred Books of
the East_. A good deal of early Buddhist literature also is included.
But the chief interest of all these works is historical and religious,
not literary, and we must pass on to Greece for the earliest works
which live because of their splendid literary qualities.
§1. GREEK LITERATURE
The works of ancient Greece which we have are only a tithe of the works
written even by the greater Greek writers, yet almost every surviving
play or poem is treasured as a classic. If you draw up a list of the
fifty greatest writers from the dawn of civilization to the nineteenth
century, you will find that at least ten of them are Greeks. However,
it was only certain parts of Greece which produced these wonderful
artists, and these regions, taken together, never had a population as
large as that of Chicago.
But we cannot here go into the historical reasons for their brilliance.
It is enough for my purpose to say that the _earliest_ Greeks were
semi-barbarians who filtered down into what we call Greece from the
north between 2000 and 1000 B. C. When they reached the Mediterranean
they came into touch with the old civilizations and were refined.
Large numbers of them crossed to Asia Minor, where they mingled with
the polished Cretans and Persians, and it is here that the first great
Greek poets and thinkers wrote.
Homer, their first poet, was regarded by the Greeks themselves in their
most learned days as their greatest poet, a unique classic; and he is
still one of the greatest poets of all time. Whether there ever was
an individual named Homer is disputed. Most modern scholars have held
for a long time that the poems to which his name is attached were slow
growths contributed to by different poets of the tenth century B. C.
But this is not at all settled, and many again think that Homer was
an individual Greek of wonderful poetical power in or about the tenth
century B. C.
His immortal works are the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. These are two
long “epic” poems; that is to say long poems to be recited, not sung
to music, telling of glorious deeds and romantic adventures. The first
deals with the closing days of the ten-year siege of the city of Troy
(or Ilium) in Asia Minor by the early Greeks. The hero is Achilles, the
Greek prince, who sulks in his tent after a quarrel about a beautiful
girl-captive, and is at last stung into action by the reverses of the
Greeks and leads them on to the final destruction of Troy. Another of
the chief Greek princes was Ulysses, and the _Odyssey_ describes his
wanderings over the ancient world after the fall of Troy.
Exploration in Asia Minor has discovered the remains of the city of
Troy, and there is now no doubt that early Greek princes did bring
their men overseas and destroy it. In the south of Greece we have found
the palaces and graves of these princes, their inlaid bronze swords and
golden death-masks, and we recognize the vivid realism of Homer. This
great victory of the early Greeks would be the chief theme of the bards
at every princes’ court, and all sorts of picturesque legends would be
added to the truth. Homer weaves all these together in two great epics
with masterly skill. You can _see_ the heroes, sharply and vividly
sketched, fighting their great duels, the scenes in camp and court, the
dawn or the blaze of the sun on the blue Mediterranean. Much of this
powerful and beautiful description is lost in translation, though the
old translations by poets like Pope, Cowper and Bryant, are very fine,
and the current translations, chiefly by Andrew Lang and collaborators,
are excellent. Homer is next to Shakespeare, who surpasses him and all
others in beautiful imagery and allegory.
The epic poem remained for two or three centuries the chief writing
of the Greeks. They were then royalists with numbers of small courts
of chiefs or princes where these story-poems were recited. As the
race advanced in civilization, “lyric” poetry (short poems sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre) developed. The most interesting writer of
these is the female poet Sappho, who lived in the island of Lesbos in
the seventh century. Between Sappho and Homer was the great poet Hesiod
(9th century), whose chief poem, _Works and Days_, is full of moral and
religious feeling; and in the sixth and fifth centuries Pindar won a
high position in Greece and wrote great numbers of songs, hymns, odes,
etc. Aesop’s famous _Fables_ also appeared in the sixth century, though
many doubt if there was such a person as Aesop.
But we must confine ourselves here to the greatest names, or this book
would not get beyond Greece. Two other kinds of writers arose as Greek
civilization moved on toward its most brilliant days. On the one hand
was a series of scientists and philosophers, but we have none of the
works of these. On the other hand tragedy was born, and Greece had, in
a very short period, the three greatest tragedians the world has ever
known: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
Tragedy, like the epic before it, and the comedy which followed it,
reflects the age in which it was born: just as we get snowdrops in the
spring, roses in the summer, and berries in the autumn. King’s courts
were by this time abolished and the crowd of citizens had to have their
entertainments. At the same time a deeper religious mood passed over
Greece, and in Aeschylus (born 523 B. C.) this came to inspire tragic
poetry which is artistically magnificent. There was an old custom of
having, on the festival of Dionysos, the god of dance and wine, a group
of men quaintly dressed who danced round his altar chanting old verses.
Out of this the poets created the play, and Athens built the first
great theater.
Aeschylus used ancient legends of tragic happenings that seemed to have
a profound and somber moral significance. Only seven of his seventy
tragedies have been preserved, and as Sir Gilbert Murray has in recent
years superbly translated three of the best of these (_Agamemnon_,
_Cheophori_, _Eumenides_) an English reader can get a very good idea
of his tragic grandeur. These three plays form a trilogy, or connected
series, founded on the terrible legend of the curse on the house of
King Agamemnon. Behind it all Aeschylus sees the action of a great
mysterious principle, Fate, greater than the gods, which brings
the punishment of crime. “Eumenides” means the “Avenging Fates.”
_Prometheus Bound_, from which Shelley took the title of his great
“lyrical drama,” _Prometheus Unbound_, is another masterpiece of this
“father of tragedy.”
His rival and successor Sophocles (495-405) is considered even greater:
indeed, the greatest tragic poet of all time. In fact there are
experts who regard some of the masterpieces of Sophocles, such as the
_Antigone_ (which ought to be read in one of the current translations),
_Oedipus the King_, and _Electra_, as the finest works that were ever
written. The theme of them is, as in Aeschylus, that a semi-divine
Fate rules gods and men and avenges crime. Both tragedians take crime
on the grand scale--murder, rape, incest, etc., in the legends of the
old royal families--and the characters they create will live forever.
Sophocles, of whose one hundred and thirteen plays we have only seven,
is a little less somber, more humane, more polished than Aeschylus. He
creates tragic grandeur out of the moral and religious feelings of the
time.
The contrast of the third and latest of the trio, Euripides (480-406),
is interesting. He was a cultivated man and clearly did not believe
the old legends in their religious side. Skepticism was growing in
Greece. But the mass of the people were religious, and Euripides was
not generally popular, though eighteen of his seventy-five plays have
survived. Technically he improves on his predecessors but he has not
the same glow of inspiration. He took similar themes to those of his
predecessors--crimes and tragedies on the royal scale--but he was a
more self-conscious artist and an intellectual. If you want to see how
he wrote Greek tragedy, read a translation of the _Medea_, which is
based upon the appalling crimes and tragic adventures of that legendary
queen; and, incidentally, it is one of the first pleas for a more just
treatment of women. _Alcestis_, _Iphigenia_, _Orestes_, etc., are other
masterpieces of Euripides.
Comedy was the next form invented by the Greek poets, and Aristophanes
(450-380), the greatest of the comedians, was a contemporary and
(being very conservative) a bitter enemy of Euripides and all
innovators. He satirized the growing woman-movement mercilessly in his
_Lysistrate_ and _Ecclesiazusae_, the philosophers in his _Clouds_, the
democrats in his _Knights_, the democratic judges in his _Wasps_, and
so on. But his wit was irresistible, and the stubborn old conservative
was an idol of the Athenian people for forty years. Of his fifty plays,
of which eleven survive, the _Clouds_ (against the intellectuals and
skeptics) is perhaps the best, though most mischievous. Translations
of all these ancient classics can be got in the Bohn, “Everyman,” and
other collections of great books.
Aristophanes was as free of speech in regard to sex as he was zealous
for old creeds. A refinement of comedy came after his time, and the
ablest representative of this “New Comedy,” reflecting the real
domestic life of the Greeks, was “the gentle Menander.” But we have
only fragments of his comedies. Aristophanes, the loosest, is the only
comedian of whom entire plays have been preserved, and we must now take
their tone as typically Greek. The austere moralists Sophocles and
Euripides, remember, lived at the same time and were played before the
same audiences.
History was a third line of development at the time, and two of the
Greek historians, Herodotus (“the Father of History,” 484-425) and
Thucydides (471-400) are classics. The former, who had traveled all
over the civilized world, wrote mainly on the clash of the Greeks
and the Persians, but he brings in the whole world which he has seen.
The plan is imposing, but he is not critical, and not always reliable
even about countries which he visited. Thucydides chiefly describes
the Peloponnesian War (with Sparta) and is terser and more faithful to
facts. His work is history in the modern sense and finely written.
A classic of a different kind is the orator Demosthenes (385-322),
whose _Philippics_ (or orations against King Philip of Macedon) are
perhaps his best written speeches, and are models of oratory for
all time. Philip was insidiously preparing to take over Greece, and
Demosthenes fierily denounced him to the apathetic people. He does not
use florid rhetoric, but a terse, strong, direct, and simple speech.
This and his other speeches are literary masterpieces and are, in their
plain, forcible style, considered “matchless eloquence.”
Before this a long series of philosophers had begun to use the now
perfected Greek language, and the works of some of these are classics.
Socrates wrote nothing--Plato gives us his ideas--and the books of the
great majority of them have not been preserved. Epicurus, who comes
nearest of them all to modern scientific thought, wrote three hundred
works, but not one of them has been preserved. We have, in fact, only
the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Plato (427-347), a pupil of the famous Socrates, mainly expressed
his ideas by means of dialogues between imaginary or real Athenian
characters. In the Greek some of these dialogues (the _Phaedo_,
_Phaedrus_, _Timaeus_, _Critias_, _Symposium_, etc.) are considered
to belong to the finest prose-literature of the world, and the famous
Greek scholar Dr. Jowett has given us a wonderful translation (in five
volumes) of them all. Plato usually writes about religion and morality,
but he was also the first social idealist, with very advanced views,
and in his _Republic_ he sketches an ideal commonwealth.
While Plato is the finest writer of all philosophers--and by far the
easiest to read--his successor Aristotle (384-322) was the most learned
man (in his time) of all writers and possibly the greatest thinker of
all time. These wonderful Greeks were pioneers in everything. While
some created the epic, the lyric, tragedy, comedy, history, etc.,
Aristotle created philosophy as a system of knowledge. The titles
of his greater works (_Physics_, _Metaphysics_, _Ethics_, _Logic_,
_Poetics_, etc.--he invented these divisions of knowledge) show the
vast range of his learning and thought, but his books are scarce and
are read only by students of philosophy.
After the days of the philosophers Greece degenerated. The only other
Greeks who could be deemed classics are the moralist and philosopher
Plutarch (died 106 A. D.) and the very unmoral and witty satirist
Lucian, whom we treat a little later. Plutarch’s _Lives_ (of famous
Greeks and Romans) are a biographical classic, but he was a very
religious priest of Apollo and wrote much also on morals, and
religion. After these the only great Greek writers were of Alexandria,
but these are better known in mathematics and philosophy than as
literary classics. Euclid’s _Geometry_, certainly a classic of its
kind, also belongs to Alexandria, but was written in the third century
before Christ.
§2. ROMAN LITERATURE
From what we have now seen the reader will understand, and may learn
with amazement, that one of the smallest nations which ever figured
prominently in history produced a remarkable proportion of the world’s
greatest literature, and indeed created nearly every branch of
literature. Remember, too, that the Greek classics which we have are
mere fragments of the whole. Literally thousands of important works of
poets, dramatists, and thinkers have perished. Let us hope that we have
the finest fragments. I have given as informing an account of these as
my space allows, and will only add that if any reader who has access
to a public library with collections of translations wishes to know a
little more, without an extensive course of study, I would advise him
to read a book of Homer’s _Iliad_, then the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus,
the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Medea_ of Euripides, the _Clouds_
of Aristophanes, a few chapters of Herodotus, one of the orations
of Demosthenes, and one (the _Timaeus_ or the _Phaedo_) of Plato’s
Dialogues.
The Roman literature is next in time to that of the Greeks and,
in spite of the common misstatement that the Romans were a wholly
practical and not an artistic people, it is next to it in importance.
The Romans learned the fine arts from the Greeks, and at first they
were content with translations of Greek works. Comedy especially
appealed to them, and the first classical Roman writers were the great
comedians Plautus (254-184 B. C.) and Terentius, or Terence (190-159).
Plautus, using Greek and other plots, composed a hundred and thirty
comedies, but only a score have survived the literary massacre of the
early Middle Ages. The type of comedy he wrote may be understood from
Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_, which is, like many plays of the
Renaissance writers, based upon the _Menaechmei_ (a story of twins)
of Plautus. Terentius, of whom we have six plays, writes purer Latin
than Plautus and has more technical skill, but he has a less rich vein
of comedy. He is the author of the much quoted line: “I am a man, and
nothing human is foreign to me.”
Apart from these there was no Roman writer who need be mentioned
here--I wish to restrict the list of names as much as possible--until
the first century before Christ, when what is called the Golden Age
of Roman literature began. The art, as usual, reflects the economic
conditions. Rome’s conquest of the world was almost over, and the
Eternal City was congested with wealth and athirst for every luxury and
refinement. Within two centuries there appeared the great poets Vergil,
Horace, Ovid, Catullus, the historians Caesar, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus,
the satirists Martial and Juvenal, the orator and thinker Cicero, and
the famous moralists Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. These are
all classics, but we must confine ourselves to the chief works of the
greater writers.
Vergil (70-19 B. C.) is one of the six greatest poets of all time.
His chief work is inspired by Homer. It is a long epic poem (a volume
in itself) describing the wanderings of Aeneas of Troy after the
destruction of that city, working up the legend that he eventually
reached Italy and founded Rome and the Romans. It is therefore known
as _The Aeneid_. Vergil was so polished and conscientious a scholar
that at his death he ordered the destruction of the manuscript of the
great poem, as he had wished to give three further years to perfecting
it before publication. The Emperor overruled his will and gave the
masterpiece to the world. Vergil wrote also two series of poems of
pastoral life, the _Eclogues_ and the _Georgics_. He has not the
greatness of Homer, but his work is so impressive that the Catholic
poet Dante, twelve centuries later, took Vergil as his guide through
the underworld.
The next greatest Latin poet, Horace (65-8 B. C.), is the most
difficult to translate, yet in his pure humanity and praise of the
common pleasures of life he comes nearest to modern sentiments. Apart
from a long poem _On the Art of the Poet_, which is now chiefly read
in Latin classes, he wrote a large number of satires, odes and letters
which are exquisite poetical appreciations of a life of refined
pleasure. It is generally said that he is Epicurean, but the phrase
is misleading. Vergil also was a follower of Epicurus--most Roman
gentlemen of that age were--yet he is sternly patriotic and speaks of
the old Roman gods as if he accepted them.
Somewhere about the same time--we are not sure of the date--there lived
a Latin poet of distinction named Lucretius who put into a poem called
_On the Nature of Things_ the serious philosophy of Epicurus about the
world and human life. It is not strictly a literary classic, though
a fine poem, but it is memorable as the only complete Epicurean work
which we have and the nearest to modern thought. Mr. W. H. Mallock some
years ago published a very free but admirable version of it in English
verse.
Returning to the greater poets of the Golden Age, we have still to
consider Catullus (87-54 B. C.) and Ovid (43 B. C.-18 A. D.). We have
116 exquisite lyrical poems of Catullus, a man of leisure and wealth
who largely wrote verse about love for his lady-friends. Catullus is
freer in his sentiments and expressions than Horace, but the fourth
great Latin poet, Ovid, was the most outspoken of them all. In the gay
society of Rome he published _Songs of Love_, _The Art of Love_, and
_Remedies of Love_. But these are so far from reflecting the whole life
of Rome that Ovid was exiled for his licentious poems--the real reason
is said to have been an entanglement with the Emperor’s daughter--and
in exile he wrote his more serious works. His masterpiece is the
_Metamorphoses_, a mixture of history, legend and mythology in rich
and very accomplished verse. Another distinguished poet of the first
century is Lucan, whose _Pharsalia_ (a poem on the civil war) has a
high place in literature.
Of the historians Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C.), a very cultivated
man as well as a great general, has left us _Commentaries_ on his
campaigns, especially in Gaul; plain, straightforward accounts of his
actions in one of the easiest of Latin styles. Sallust (86-34) is more
of a literary man as well as historian, but his chief work is lost
and his _Conspiracy of Catiline_ and _War Against Jugurtha_ are not
masterpieces.
The two most famous historians of Rome are Livy (59-17 B. C.) and
Tacitus (55-117 A. D.). Livy belongs to the older Roman world, and his
immense history of Rome in 142 books (only 35 of which have come down
to us) is more patriotic than critical. Tacitus, on the other hand,
falls in the period when the Stoic emperors raised the tone of the
declining Empire. His _History_ and _Annals_ (of later Roman times) are
both historical and literary classics: severe and very condensed (and
difficult to read) in style, austerely moral in sentiment, and based
on precise documents. In the _Annals_ there is a famous reference to
Christ and Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the genuineness of
which is disputed. It seems to me sound enough in style but too late in
date to be important.
Cicero, the greatest Roman orator, and a statesman and philosopher,
belongs to the earlier period (106-43 B. C.), the close of the
Republic. His style is a standard of Latin, yet it is comparatively
easy to read. His speeches (chiefly delivered in the law-court) are
models of oratory, avoiding florid rhetoric and relying, like those of
Demosthenes, on force of language and skill of construction. He has
left us also the best philosophical essays in the Latin language--the
books _On Duty_ are most interesting from the ethical point of
view--and his many letters are excellent literature and afford valuable
pictures of the time.
The moralist Seneca (4 B. C.-65 A. D.) is famous for the many long
essays or books which he wrote, from the severe Stoic point of view, on
every aspect of virtue and vice. He wrote in the time of Nero, and thus
he reminds us that the corruption of that Emperor and his circle did
not extend to all Rome. A little later was Epictetus, a Greek of the
Roman Empire, whose very austere Stoic sentiments were collected by his
pupils and published as his _Encheiridion_ or _Manual_. Marcus Aurelius
(121-180 A. D.), the most virtuous of the Stoic Emperors, compiled a
little volume of moral _Meditations_, very austere in sentiment, which
is still much read, though it was rather casually written. Another
famous Stoic of the time (died 117 A. D.) was the Greek orator Dion
Chrysostom (“Golden-mouthed”), whose eighty extant orations, mainly
delivered in Rome, are fine literary expressions of the highest ideals
of the time. There was a very considerable output of this severe moral
literature at Rome.
More brilliant from the literary point of view were the satirists
Juvenal (60-140 A. D.), and Martial (40-104). Juvenal’s _Satires_
(five books) are famous in literature, but as pictures of Roman morals
they are not now trusted. He wrote, not only as a poor man flaying the
rich, but he told of the wealthy Romans of the generation before his
own time. Martial has left us fourteen books of _Epigrams_: sprightly
verses, of two or three lines each, hitting off the characters and
manners of his age. He was a wealthy as well as a witty man, and his
mild satires are valuable.
Pliny is the name of two Roman writers who rank as classics. The older
Pliny (23 A. D.-79 A. D.) gives us a summary of the slender scientific
knowledge of the Romans in his _Natural History_. The younger Pliny,
his nephew, was the governor of a province, and his _Letters_ (ten
books) are good literature and valuable documents.
Lucian, of the second century, is rarely read today, but his witty and
pungent _Dialogues_ and his stories and essays put him in the rank of
great writers. Apuleius was another witty story-writer. His _Golden
Ass_ has always been deemed a classic, though modern authorities would
not permit a literal translation of it. The hero imagines himself
turned into an ass by the blunder of a sorcerer and having a series of
most picturesque adventures.
After the middle of the second century Rome was exhausted by war and
literature ceased. There were several writers of some distinction in
the fourth century, but their works are not classics. The great days
of pagan literature were over. The pen passed to the hands of the new
Christian writers.
§3. EARLY CHRISTIAN CLASSICS
This section is very short because since we are dealing with literary
classics, not masterpieces of theological learning, it has to tell only
of two books in a space of a thousand years, from the second century
to the twelfth. These two books are St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ and
_City of God_. You will not find translations of any others in any
modern collection of literary masterpieces. Even Clement of Alexandria,
the most accomplished of the great fathers of the Church, is read only
by theologians. St. Jerome, in my opinion, writes the best Latin, but
his writings have a purely religious interest.
Augustine (354-430) was certainly the most learned, and probably the
ablest, man of his age. His early philosophical essays are not now
read, and the voluminous writings or dictated works--shorthand was
common in his time--of his later years interest only theologians.
But the small volume in which after his conversion to Christianity
he describes and bemoans his earlier years, his _Confessions_, is a
classical autobiography. He had really very little to “confess” beyond
the fact that for a time he had a lady-companion (which was not then
considered immoral), and the fierce light of his new asceticism causes
him to write with a singular art and feeling about his youth.
In later years Augustine despised style, as most of the Christian
leaders did, out of religious feeling, but he once more exerted all his
art of learning in writing _The City of God_. The Roman Empire was in
ruins and Augustine set out to prove that it mattered relatively little
what became of the City of Man: that the essential thing was to be a
citizen of the City of God. This idea he expands into a vast plan which
includes a wonderful mass of mythology, history, and philosophy.
The Latin language was already degenerate in Augustine’s time, the
schools were being closed everywhere, zeal for letters and science grew
rarer and rarer. The few Christian laymen who wrote prose or verse
are not mentioned even in larger sketches than this of the history
of literature, and in a few centuries most of the chronicles and
treatises written were of a shocking literary quality, though everybody
still wrote in a sort of Latin. The only noticeable work--by no means
a masterpiece--is _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, a
sixth-century Italian statesman who was put in prison and recommends
all sufferers to find consolation, as he did, in Aristotle.