NATIONAL STYLE 193 



It would be delightful to linger in quotations over the 

 plangent melody of S. Augustine's prose,, so resonant with the 

 modern cry of emotion : 



Quo vobis adhuc et adhuc ambulare vias difficiles et laboriosas ? 

 Non est requies, ubi quseritis earn. Quaerite quod quseritis ; sed ibi 

 non est, ubi quaeritis. Beatam vitam quasritis in regione mortis : non 

 est illic. 



But enough has been cited to indicate the style of the 

 'Confessions.' This style fell, like every form of culture, 

 into decay during the Middle Ages. But when the Revival 

 of Learning began, it was not so much from Cicero as from 

 Augustine that the founder of humanism drew inspiration and 

 borrowed his manner. Petrarch adored Cicero, but he loved 

 and felt at home with Augustine. To Augustine, as to a 

 bosom friend, he confided the troubles of his own heart in the 

 dialogues entitled ' Secretum.' The ' Confessions ' were for 

 him scaturientes lachrymis Confessionum libri pages running 

 over with the fount of tears. When he climbed the Mont 

 Ventoux with his brother Gherardo in 1336, this book was in 

 his pocket. Lying there, with the Alps outstretched before 

 him and the Rhone majestically sweeping toward the sea, he 

 drew it forth, and by an accident similar to that which 

 happened to Augustine with Alypius in their garden at Milan, 

 his eyes chanced to fall upon tHis suggestive passage : 



Et eunt homines admirari alta montium et ingentes fluctus maris, et 

 latissimos lapsus fluminum, et oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum, et 

 relinquunt se ipsos. 



And men go abroad to gaze with wonder at the heights of mountains 

 and the mighty billows of the deep, and the lordly width of rivers flowing 

 down, and the circuit of ocean, and the revolutions of the stars, and leave 

 themselves unheeded. 



Few things are more touching in the history of literature 

 than this spiritual comradeship Petrarch clasping hands with 

 Augustine across the Lethe of nine mediaeval centuries ; the 

 last man of the classic age and the first man of the modern 

 mingling their souls in sympathy of sentiment. 



