186 NOTES ON STYLE 



Greeks did ; and the language used by Virgil passed into the 

 mother speech of modern nations, and controlled their style 

 in its formation. 



Latin had the defects of its qualities, and these were very 

 different from those of Greek literature in the decadence. 

 It remained rigid, unpliable, stubbornly representative of a 

 warlike and administrative race, in spite of the polish added 

 by its Hellenistic artists. The chief difficulty with which this 

 language had to contend was its intellectual inflexibility, its 

 impermeability, its resistance to ideas. The Greek vocabu- 

 lary proved itself adequate to every step in speculative 

 thought. It clothed the figments of metaphysic, as it had 

 clothed the fancies of mythology, with specious forms, all 

 plastic and all beautiful. We have therefore perhaps to be 

 thankful that the books of the New Testament and the 

 theology of the first Christian centuries were entrusted to 

 the waning genius of Hellas. Catholic dogma might have 

 been more jejune and sterile than it is, had it been first 

 handled by Romans instead of Hellenists. As it was, the 

 ruthlessness of Latin exposed the plausibility of Greek, when- 

 ever the two languages were brought into close contact. But 

 Christianity became the Empire's creed. The Roman genius, 

 born to rule and bent on ruling, adopted and gave world- 

 currency to metaphysical ideas which were but inadequately 

 represented in the Latin speech. 



IV 



What the Latin Church had undertaken, and what the 

 Latin tongue was destined to perform during the years which 

 preceded and the centuries which followed the dissolution of 

 the Empire, can only be understood by tracing the develop- 

 ment of the language under these altered conditions. 



The date 895 A.D. marks one of the most important epochs 

 in world-history. In this year the Emperor Theodosius died, 

 and the Roman realm was finally divided into Eastern and 

 Western. After the lapse of less than a century, the share 

 which fell to his second son Honorius, Cassar of the West, 



