Part 9

In and before the age of Chaucer the poems of Ovid upon love and its cure were much drawn upon by writers of romances and allegories. They were the direct inspiration of much of the troubadour poetry of Provence and thence of the mediaeval lyric verse of Europe in general. Ovidian borrowings are manifest in the _Romance of the Rose_. Chaucer himself was a student of Ovid, Lucan, Virgil, “Stace,” and also Livy. From Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ and love-elegies in particular he took much matter. His _Knight’s Tale_ is ultimately from the _Thebaid_ of Statius. The reading of his contemporary Gower, and of his successor Lydgate, was even more deep in the same authors. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Gawin Douglas translated the _Aeneid_, and soon afterwards Wyatt and Surrey show themselves steeped in Seneca and the epigrams of Martial; Surrey also translated portions of the _Aeneid_. Before Marlowe and Shakespeare the more scholarly pioneers of drama, such as Sackville, sought for tragic models in Seneca and for comic models in Plautus. Elizabethan readers ransacked all available Latin books. Spenser’s _Eclogues_ follow Virgil’s, and his _Faerie Queene_ is full of borrowings from the _Aeneid_ and from Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_. The effect of Ovid on Shakespeare himself is manifest in his _Venus and Adonis_. Bacon who, like all the great prose-writers of his time, could use both English and Latin, shows in especial the influence of Seneca. Ben Jonson, who translated portions of Horace and Martial, is an imitator of Horace in the way of poetical epistles and short lyrics, and of Martial in epigram. In the school of the “Sons of Ben” and the “Cavalier poets,” we meet with very distinct manifestations of the combined influence of the lyrists Horace and Catullus and the epigrammatist Martial. We know these to have been favourite poetic reading of the period. Simultaneously the general style of prose-writing, whether as in Milton or as in Jeremy Taylor, was imagined to be based upon the rounded periodic style of Cicero, and the language itself is deliberately Latinized to a remarkable degree. Milton, who wrote Latin poems as well as English, is greatly and openly indebted in his epics to both the matter and the manner of Virgil. The post-Restoration comedy derives itself through a French medium from that of Plautus and Terence. At the same time the second-hand critical principles of Rome begin to prevail in England. Roscommon translates the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace; Dryden translates the _Aeneid_ and passages of Ovid; he also writes powerful satire in direct imitation of Juvenal. Addison produced his _Campaign_ under the influence of Lucan, and his _Cato_ under the influence of Seneca. Pope begins with pastorals after the manner of Virgil and Theocritus, composes _Imitations of Horace_, and copies the _Ars Poetica_ and Epistles and Satires in his own poetical essays on criticism and morals. His _Messiah_ is a recasting of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and his _Eloisa to Abelard_ is based on Ovid’s _Heroides_. Samuel Johnson’s _London_ and _Vanity of Human Wishes_ are similar copies of Juvenal, while his prose seeks to model itself upon the Ciceronian. The great preachers and orators of the eighteenth century are Latinists in their rhetorical principles. During the same age the didactic poems, such as Dyer’s _Fleece_ or Akenside’s _Pleasures of the Imagination_, are the outcome of the study of Lucretius and the _Georgics_ of Virgil. The letters of Pope or Walpole no less distinctly take their hint from Cicero and Pliny.

It is unnecessary to elaborate further a bare catalogue of such obligations. It is, perhaps, more useful to emphasize one consideration which should bring home the vast, if undefinable, influence necessarily exercised by Latin thoughts and Latin expression upon English writers. Before the days of Alfred and the days of Chaucer the chief writers of prose in England composed in some sort of Latin. They knew Latin, and read such Latin books as they could get. From the Revival of Learning Latin came more and more to be studied as modern languages are studied now, for the sake of actual speech, correspondence, or controversy. The pens of Englishmen like Sir Thomas More, Bacon, and Milton, were fluent in Latin. Ben Jonson, Cowley, Addison, and Samuel Johnson were great Latinists among a society in which Latin knowledge was general. Landor and De Quincey were no less great. There are few writers in the English language who have not received at least some tinge of Latin education. Familiar as all these generations have been with Latin books, practised in the imitation of Latin diction, filling the language with Latin terms, it is quite impossible to determine how deeply we are steeped in the influence which has passed through them. During the last century it is true that education has not cultivated that fluency in spoken Latin which marked the two or three centuries preceding. Latin is no longer necessary as a medium for the interchange of thought, and the increasing number of arts and sciences restricts the prominence of any one study. On the other hand it is no less true that almost every considerable writer and speaker of the century had received that more recent form of Latin education which consists in an accurate and tasteful study of the words, styles and thoughts of the best, or most classic, of the Roman writers—Catullus, Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid—rather than Lucan or Statius. The influence of Roman literature during that period has been more wholesome than during the later period of the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century, an epoch in which English writers delivered themselves over to almost as servile a subjection to Latin (or rather Latin-French) patterns as the Romans had once, with more reason, assumed towards the Greeks. That era, the era of Dryden, Pope, Addison, Johnson, is in this sense the most Roman period of our literary history. To it, unfortunately, we owe all that personification of abstract qualities by the simple device of a capital letter; all that use of “nymph” for “woman” and “fire” for “love”; all that stereotyped phraseology, such as “reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire” for the “sun is rising,” from which we were delivered by Burns and Wordsworth. To the Romans themselves these terms were artificial enough, to the English they were doubly artificial.

CONSPECTUS OF LATIN LITERATURE

DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES. LATIN NAME. | ENGLISH NAME. DATE. CHIEF WORKS. THEIR RELATION TO GREEK LITERATURE. SOME INFLUENCES ON FOREIGN TRIBUTARIES TO ENGLISH LITERATURE. SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH WRITERS. Tragic Drama Gnaeus NAEVIUS | NAEVIUS fl. 230 B.C. Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS fl. 200 B.C. TRAGEDIES (only fragments extant). Crudely translated from the Greek, chiefly Euripides. Lucius Annaeus SENECA | SENECA ob. A.D. 65 TRAGEDIES, e.g., _Medea_, _Hippolytus_, etc. Imitating Greek subjects, metres, and treatment (chorus, etc.); but more rhetorical, epigrammatic, and moralizing. Served as type for Italian Renaissance drama and for the French declamatory tragedy of Corneille, Racine, etc. Little effect on English drama. Addison’s _Cato_ the best instance of attempt at the Roman “classical.” Comic Drama Titus Maccius PLAUTUS | PLAUTUS fl. 210 B.C. COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Aulularia_, _Menaechmi_ (20 extant). From Middle and New comedy, chiefly Menander; almost mere adaptations, but broader and rougher. The scene is always in Greek cities. Type for Italian comedy of Renaissance. Great influence on Molière, whose _L’Avare_ is from the _Aulularia_, and his _Amphitryon_ from _Amphitruo_. Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_ is from Plautus’s _Menaechmi_. Dryden’s _Amphitryon_ through Molière from Plautus. So Fielding’s _The Miser_ = _L’Avare_ from _Aulularia_. French comedy of intrigue (from Plautus and Terence) reproduced in Congreve, Farquhar, etc. Publius TERENTIUS AFER | TERENCE fl. 160 B.C. COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Phormio_, _Adelphi_, etc. (6 extant). As with Plautus, but less boisterous. As with Plautus. Molière’s _École des Maris_ is from the _Adelphi_, and _Les Fourberies de Scapin_ from the _Phormio_. English comedy of intrigue, after the Restoration. Epic Verse Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS fl. 200 B.C. EPIC (on Roman history and legend) called _Annales_. Copies the Homeric hexameter and borrows the Olympic deities. Called the “Roman Homer,” but crude and inartistic. Publius VERGILIUS MARO | VIRGIL lived 70-19 B.C. _AENEID_ (epic of Aeneas, legendary founder of Roman people). Copies _Odyssey_ in first six books (wanderings), and _Iliad_ in last six (battles); borrows images and incidents from all Greek writers. But more descriptive, philosophical, and fastidious of expression. The basis for subsequent epics. Utilized by Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, etc., in Italy. Model for the French epic, _e.g._, Voltaire’s _Henriade_. Translated by Gawain Douglas (1513), Dryden, etc. Very important for Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_, and to all modern poets of classical training. See Tennyson’s poem, “To Virgil.” Marcus Annaeus LUCANUS | LUCAN lived A.D. 39-65 _Pharsalia_ (epic of civil wars between Caesar and Pompey). Departing further from Greek directness. Cleverness in rhetoric, epigram, description, satire, etc., aimed at. Fondness for details of horror. Publius Papinius STATIUS | STATIUS (“Stace” in Chaucer) fl. A.D. 70 _Thebaid_ (epic of Thebes and its heroes). Clever and facile verse: elegant simile, etc., of more importance than the matter. Two favourite writers in the early middle ages. Statius affected by Dante and Boccaccio (who founds his _Teseide_ upon him). Lucan and “Stace” were among the chief Latin reading of Chaucer’s day. [_The Knight’s Tale_ (of Palamon and Arcite, modernized by Dryden) is from the _Thebaid_.] Comparatively little read in modern times. Addison’s _Campaign_ has clear traces of Lucan; so has Drayton’s _Barons’ Wars_. Lyric Verse Gaius Valerius CATULLUS | CATULLUS lived 84-54 B.C. POEMS (odes, epigrams, and occasional pieces—especially love-poems to “Lesbia”). Imitates metre and style of Greek lyrists (Sappho, etc.) and Alexandrian elegists (Callimachus, etc.). Most Greek of all Romans in his simplicity and spontaneity. His works lost during Middle Ages, and always less read than Horace. Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE lived 65-8 B.C. _ODES AND EPODES_ (love, politics, _vers de société_, moralizings). Avowed imitation of Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon. Adapts Greek lyrical metres. Deft but unimpassioned. The model for lyrists and writers of social verse in France and Italy. These combined are the type for all such English odes and short pieces as are addressed to “Lesbia,” “Delia,” “Celia,” etc. (Ben Jonson). Horace in particular was imitated by the seventeenth-century “cavalier” poets (Suckling, Herrick, etc.), and (unconsciously) guides later writers of _pièces de circonstance_. Elegiac Verse Albius TIBULLUS | TIBULLUS Sextus Aurelius PROPERTIUS | PROPERTIUS fl. 20 B.C. ELEGIES (of affection and sentiment). Direct imitations of Alexandrian Greek elegists. Exerted an influence similar to that of Ovid, but in a less degree. Publius OVIDIUS Naso | OVID fl. 43 B.C.-A.D. 17. VARIOUS POEMS, _e.g._, _Heroides_ (in the form of letters). _Tristia_, _Amores_, etc. The Greek models are less epigrammatic. Ovid affects pointed couplets (compare Pope). Ovid was a favourite author even in the early Middle Ages. His love-elegies were particularly affected (as in the _Romance of the Rose_), and are best represented (in a shorter form) by the sonnet of the Italians and of the sixteenth-century English. The Italian painters and poets of the Renaissance made great use of him, and Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope are much indebted to him. The favourite work, however, was his _Metamorphoses_, which is not in elegiac, but in heroic verse, being narrative. Satiric Verse Gaius LUCILIUS | Lucilius fl. 120 B.C. SATIRES on politics, literature (fragments), etc. Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE 65-8 B.C. _SATIRES AND EPISTLES_ (genial). Aulus PERSIUS Flaccus | Persius fl. A.D. 60 SATIRES (crabbed style) Decimus Junius JUVENALIS | JUVENAL fl. A.D. 120 _SATIRES_ (polished, terse, trenchant). A native Latin growth (Greek satire takes a different form and medium). Models for much Italian satire (Aretino, etc.), and French (Regnier, _Satyre Ménippée_, Boileau, etc.). In English the best examples out of many are the _Moral Essays_ and _Imitations of Horace_ by Pope, his _Dunciad_, and the satires of Dryden (_MacFlecknoe_, etc.). Compare Byron’s _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Johnson copies Juvenal in _London_ and _Vanity of Human Wishes_. Didactic (and “philosophical”) Verse Titus LUCRETIUS CARUS | LUCRETIUS fl. 60 B.C. _DE RERUM NATURA_ (“the Constitution of Nature”). In form follows old Greek philosophical poets, and in matter expounds the philosophy of Epicurus. Seen directly in the philosophical verse-essay (Pope’s _Essay on Man_, Akenside’s _Pleasures of the Imagination_, etc.): but Lucretius has also been the favourite reading of many poets, _e.g._, Shelley. Compare Tennyson’s Poem on “Lucretius,” Wordsworth’s _Excursion_. Publius VERGILIUS MARO | VIRGIL lived 70-19 B.C. _GEORGICS_ (poems on husbandry). The idea taken from Hesiod. [See HESIOD in the Greek Table.] Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE lived 65-8 B.C. _ARS POETICA_ (an essay in literary criticism). An ill-digested _rechauffé_ of Aristotle and later Greek critics. The source of the shallow criticism of Boileau and his school. And of Pope and his school. Pastoral Verse VIRGIL _BUCOLICS_ (or _ECLOGUES_). From Theocritus, but moralized and sometimes artificial. Imitated by Mantuan and Sannazaro in Italy, and Marot in France. Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_ etc. [_See_ Greek Table: PASTORAL.] Epigram Marcus Valerius MARTIALIS | MARTIAL fl. A.D. 90. _EPIGRAMS_ (various subjects). The conception of Greek epigram is polish and delicacy. Of Latin it is chiefly point and sting. The modern conception of epigram is entirely taken from the Latin form. Martial is the one model. History Gaius Julius CAESAR | CAESAR lived 100-44 B.C. _COMMENTARIES_ (on the Gallic and the Civil Wars; simple, straightforward narrative). Gaius SALLUSTIUS Crispus | SALLUST fl. 45 B.C. _Catilina_ and _Jugurtha_ Attempts to imitate Thucydides. A commonplace moralizer. Titus LIVIUS Patavinus | LIVY Ob. A.D. 17 _HISTORY_ (of Rome); (rich style, ample, pathetic). Adopts the Greek custom of putting _verbatim_ speeches into the mouths of his characters. Gaius Cornelius TACITUS | TACITUS fl. A.D. 100 _HISTORIES_ and _ANNALS_ (of Emperors); (epigrammatic, terse, satirical). Aims at the condensation of Thucydides. It is impossible to estimate the great influence of these writers on later historians. Livy (with Cicero) is the model (in point of style) followed by Gibbon. [Compare remark in Greek Table: HISTORY.] Oratory Marcus TULLIUS CICERO | CICERO (and “Tully.”) lived 106-43 B.C. SPEECHES (59 extant, _e.g._, _Philippics_, _Against Verres_, etc.). Follower of Demosthenes, but in a more rotund and loaded style. The model of most French oratory and preaching (Bossuet, etc.) (Otherwise Seneca is followed). The model of speakers and preachers of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Jeremy Taylor, etc., to Burke, etc.). The “Johnsonian” style is based on Cicero. Marcus Fabius Quintilianus | Quintilian fl. A.D. 100 _The Training of the Orator._ Letter-Writing CICERO 106-43 B.C. LETTERS (“To Atticus,” “To Friends”). Gaius PLINIUS Secundus | PLINY (the Younger.) fl. A.D. 100 LETTERS (to friends, to Trajan, etc.). A specially Roman department of literature. Type followed in France (Madame de Sévigné, etc.). The model for published letters like those of Horace Walpole and Pope. Philosophy CICERO _Academica_, _De Officiis_, etc. A reproducer of Greek systems in popular expositions. SENECA A brilliantly epigrammatic moralizer on old lines of thought. Seneca was favourite reading of moralizers of all European countries after the Renaissance. Fable Phaedrus | PHAEDRUS fl. A.D. 15 FABLES Reproducer of Aesop _See_ “Aesop” in Greek Conspectus. Encyclopaedic Gaius Plinius Secundus | PLINY (the Elder.) fl. A.D. 70 _Natural History_ Storehouse of mediaeval science.

III

LITERARY CURRENTS OF THE DARK AGES

Latin literature, despite its decline after the classical period, is marked by a number of names which merit eminence in their several domains. The era succeeding the silver age hardly deserves to be called leaden. Literature does, indeed, both descend from the Virgilian and Ciceronian style of language, and also adopt a less classic attitude in its themes and sentiment, but it is not without a life and value of its own. Some of the writers are pagan, some are Christian, but their religious professions are not to be determined by their dates. Apuleius, the African writer, a professional rhetorician and man of letters, who wrote his prose _Metamorphoses_ or _Golden Ass_ in the second century, is, of course, a pagan, and by no means a model one. The work just mentioned, probably based on current folk-tales, is entirely fiction, narrating the story of a man turned by sorcery into an ass, and describing his adventures, scandalous, distressful, or amusing, in the hands of robbers and other low types of a society which, we may trust, was not really so bad as it is here painted. Yet into this otherwise not very edifying work there comes the exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche, which has been so frequently translated or recast in literature—best of all by William Morris in the _Earthly Paradise_—and so frequently utilized as the subject of pictorial or plastic art.

From the beginning of the third century until the fifth, Christian views find their exponents in Tertullian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Prudentius, Jerome, and Augustine. To Jerome is due in particular that Latin version of the Bible of which the present _Vulgate_ represents successive partial revisions, to Augustine the _City of God_, to Ambrose the initiation of the Christian hymn, and to Prudentius its development. Christian also is the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius, of the later fourth century, but his verse is by no means dedicated to Christian teaching. In him appears what might seem to be a modern, if not fully “romantic,” partiality for affectionate observation of natural scenery, best illustrated by his well-known description of the stream and banks of the Moselle.

Meanwhile among pagan writers must be reckoned Ammianus, a picturesque and interesting historian, who undertook to bring the work of Tacitus up to the year 378; Macrobius, whose _Saturnalia_ discourses in a desultory fashion on a variety of literary and social topics; and Claudian, the composer of polished poems on contemporary history, in which extremely skilful polish of verse is united to brilliant gifts of description. The religion of Boethius, the last man of letters who can be said to linger on the border of the classical world, but who in style and thought stands nearer to it than many an earlier writer, is doubtful. In all probability he was a pagan, but he concerned himself, not with religion, but with philosophy as reflected from Plato. His _De Consolatione_, or _Consolations of Philosophy_, is a prose work interspersed with verses, and in virtue of this production, which often rises to great excellence, Boethius stood to the Dark Ages for the exemplar of the philosopher. His place in mediaeval reading was a very high one, and may be gauged from the fact that in England Alfred the Great translated his _Consolations_ into Anglo-Saxon, though with insertions and comments of his own. To Chaucer, as to all the mediaeval world, “Boece” was part of the staple library.

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During the centuries from the decay of the literature of Rome till the emergence of the modern literatures of western Europe there occur the great migrations of conquering peoples and the forming of the new nations. The Gothic conquests of Italy and Spain, the movements of the Franks, Burgundians, and Lombards, the story of Alaric or Theodoric, of Pharamond or Clovis, belong to history, as do the settlement of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish tribes in Britain and the occupation of Normandy by the men from whom it is named. Against these Teutonic triumphs and their influence to the north must be set the Moslem triumphs and influence to the south. Not only did the Moors conquer and hold for centuries the greater part of the Spanish peninsula, but Sicily also passed for five generations into the hands of the Saracens. In England a national history commences with Alfred at the close of the ninth century, but its development, both from a literary and social point of view, was deeply modified at the Norman Conquest. In France and Germany the empire of Charlemagne, the great fact of the eighth century, had done much towards consolidating culture and reviving learning. At the end of the eleventh century began the Crusades, which helped to bring the western nations into closer touch with each other and also into contact with the Greek world and with legends of the east. Meanwhile, the Christians of north-west Spain were gradually winning back their country from the Moors, but, in the process, absorbing no little of their Arabic culture.

By the twelfth century the modern Romance tongues, Italian, French, Provençal, and Castilian, are sufficiently formed for literary purposes, and the speakers of those languages have attained to the position of steady and settled communities. Though the English language is temporarily in abeyance for literary uses, the English nation is free from further disturbance, while nevertheless it is now happily placed in direct communication with continental tendencies and ideas. In the meantime it must not be forgotten that Europe had now become Christian, and that in the west the teaching of one great Church was common to all the nations.

This long period of disintegration and reconstruction is for the most part so little studied, and is, in fact, comparatively so studiously ignored, that we are apt to forget how long it actually was. The literary productions of nearly seven hundred years are regarded as of so little moment that we forget there were any at all. Yet for a proper comprehension of the inter-relations of literature as affecting the development of our own, it is necessary to form some conception of the various literary currents of these “Dark Ages.”

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As might perhaps be anticipated after a survey of the historical movements and situations, we have to reckon with:

(1) Such Latin literature, of classical or later date, as survived after the wreck of the empire and still formed part of, at least, the higher reading.

(2) Such new productions in Latin as appeared before the new tongues were formed.

(3) The matter and influence of the literature of the Church, comprising the Hebrew Scriptures, chiefly in the shape of the Vulgate, commentaries, moral works, and also religious legends, lives of saints, and the like.

(4) The material and spirit brought in by the Teutons in the shape of their own old epics and sagas, with the myths which formed their basis.

(5) The Celtic feeling, traditions, and compositions which made their way into the _répertoire_ of such countries as contained a Celtic population.

(6) The learning, literary matter, and literary art of the Saracens, whether introduced by way of Spain or by that of Sicily, and whether derived from Oriental or from Greek sources.

(7) Literary influences from the Greek world, including remnants of classical and post-classical compositions, mediaeval productions of Byzantium, and tales of the East which had been rendered into a Greek form.

It is difficult to disentangle these various threads, which interlace each other in complex ways, but on the whole the most satisfactory procedure will be to make a note or two upon each. Such notes will necessarily be brief to the point of mere hinting.