NATIONAL STYLE 191 



The Vulgate the word of God divulged, translated from 

 its Hebrew and its Greek into Latin for the common people 

 of the Western world what a success this book of Jerome's 

 had, and how it modified and moulded all the silent centuries 

 that made us what we are ! No other vidgarisateur has done 

 a millionth part of what S. Jerome did. Luther, Tyndal, 

 Diodati, the innumerable scribes of the Bible Society, have 

 spread abroad the sacred writings of the Jewish and the 

 Christian Church. Into each nation where these versions 

 penetrate, they bring a great and powerful tradition. Many of 

 them, the earlier in each case, rank as monuments of style. 

 Eleven centuries after the death of Jerome, two youthful 

 nations, the English and the German, became vocal for the 

 first time in vernacular translations of the Bible, and based 

 the rules of written language on their precedents. But what 

 was this in comparison with Jerome's work? His Bible 

 scattered and displaced the classics, erased the memories of 

 Rome and insolent Greece, undid Olympus, brought the 

 wrecks of the old world and the nebulous elements of the 

 modern world, Celts, Teutons, Norsemen, Goths, and what 

 not, into relation with the penetrative secrets of the Oriental 

 mind, the potent metaphysic of the Greek. 



There is a book, steeped in the style of the Vulgate, which 

 possesses peculiar value as a link between the ancient and the 

 modern world. I mean the ' Confessions ' of S. Augustine. 

 Nothing like it had appeared before, so far as we have know- 

 ledge of antiquity. No self-revelation of a human soul had 

 hitherto been made with such free confidence. Nowhere else 

 could the same introspective analysis of doubts and motives 

 and desires be found. Subjectivity had never spoken out so 

 candidly, with less reserve, with less regard to artistic or 

 rhetorical effect. The distinguishing note of this book is 

 that the author of it has found his true self in God, and 

 pours his heart out to the God who understands him. In 

 this respect, S. Augustine anticipates the movement of the 

 modern world, and inaugurates a literature which only started 

 into plenitude of being nine centuries after his death in the 

 body. So tardy is the evolution of the human mind. 



