192 NOTES ON STYLE 



S. Augustine paints in his 'Confessions' the entire life 

 of his hybrid epoch : a pagan father and a Christian mother ; 

 the schools of African grammarians and Italian rhetoricians ; 

 the baths : the Carthaginian circus stained with blood, the 

 lawless lives of Roman cities; the church at Milan and its 

 perils, the origin of monastic societies and the first beginnings 

 of ecclesiastical music ; conversions to the Christian faith, 

 baptisms, pagan honours paid to tombs of martyrs ; Manichean, 

 Pelagian, Neoplatonic, Arian heresies. We are introduced to 

 men wavering between philosophy and faith, Athens and 

 Jerusalem, uncertain which path to follow. We watch Latin 

 Christianity in the making ; and the man who relates all this 

 is one who powerfully helped to fix its outlines. The ' Con- 

 fessions ' paint the second half of the fourth century in the 

 spirit and the manner of a modern artist. Their style possesses 

 corresponding interest, because, although Augustine was him- 

 self a celebrated professor of rhetoric, his diction is anything 

 but classical. We find no trace of that laborious attempt to 

 reproduce the phrases and recapture the rhythms of past 

 literature, which marks the poetry of Claudian and Ausonius. 

 Augustine speaks in the new language, the Latin which 

 was moulding itself on Christian lines of thought for modern 

 uses. 



The famous passage which describes Augustine's passion of 

 sorrow upon the death of a dearly beloved friend might be 

 chosen as an adequate example of this new style : 



Quo dolore contenebratum est cor meum ; et quicquid adspiciebain, 

 mors erat. Et erat mihi supplicium, et paterna domus mira infelicitas ; 

 et quidquid cum illo communicaveram, sine illo in cruciatum immanem 

 verterat. Expetebant eum undique oculi mei, et non dabatur mihi ; et 

 oderam omnia, quia non haberent eum ; nee mihi jam dicere poterant : 

 ecce veniet, sicut cum viveret, quando absens erat. Factus eram ipse 

 mihi magna qusestio, et interrogabam animam meam quare tristis esset, 

 et quare conturbaret me valde ; et nihil noverat respondere mihi. Et si 

 dicebam : spera in Deum, juste non obtemperabat ; quia verier erat et 

 melior homo, quern carissimum amiserat, quam phantasma, in quod 

 sperare jubebatur. Solus fletus erat dulcis mihi, et successerat amico 

 meo in deliciis animi mei. Et nunc, Domine, jam ilia transierunt, et 

 tempore lenitum est vulnus meum. 



