378 CLASSICAL LITERATURE 



Boethius the consoler; it is the dream of Scipio with allegorical exe- 

 gesis, the Platonic Book of Genesis in a maimed Latin version; it is 

 the Tale of Troy and the Legend of Alexander, looming monstrous 

 through the mists of tradition, or fantastically distorted in the 

 mirror of chivalrous fancy. The Roman de la Rose itself, the quint- 

 essence of medievalism, is in its way as much indebted to classic 

 motifs and copied from classic models as a poem of the Renaissance. 

 The very epochs and revolutions of medieval thought are determined 

 by the stages of its acquaintance with Aristotle, from the commentaries 

 of Boethius and Porphyry, through Latin versions of Hebrew ren- 

 derings of Arabic and Syrian translations to the recovery of the 

 complete Aristotelian corpus. Its revivals of culture and reforms of 

 education are pathetic preludes of the Renaissance, the establish- 

 ment here and there of a cloister school in which the Greek alphabet is 

 learned and a few additional Latin poets are read. Its greatest thinkers 

 and scholars are precisely those who avail themselves best of such 

 opportunities for a wider classical culture a "Venerable" Bede, 

 a Scotus Erigena, a Gerbert, a Rabanus Maurus, a John of Salisbury, 

 a Roger Bacon. Nothing could be less Hellenic than the distinctive 

 quality of medieval thought and feeling. Yet it is no accident or 

 paradox that an old-fashioned classicist like Victor Leclerc, trans- 

 ferred to this new field at the age of fifty, proved the best editor of 

 the Histoire Litteraire de la France of the Middle Age. For the 

 discipline of classical philology and the exact knowledge of the 

 classical heritage of the Middle Ages are the indispensable equipment 

 of the medievalist, in default of which the columns of Migne and the 

 tomes of the Schoolmen remain a labyrinth without a clue. 



To the Renaissance, again, the vision of antiquity is the disper- 

 sion of a long night, the rolling away of a great mist. It is the restor- 

 ation of the title-deeds of humanity, the liberation of the human 

 spirit from creeds that refuse and restrain, the discovery of man. 

 nature, and art, of personality, eloquence, and fame. It is philosophy 

 transfused with poetry. It is the religion of Beauty and the cult of 

 Pleasure. It is Platonic Idealism and Platonic Love. It is incondite 

 erudition, omnivorous reading, omniscient scholarship. It is Homer, 

 .Eschylus, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Cicero. Tacitus, Plutarch, pour- 

 ing at once into the wide hollows of the brain, knowledge enor- 

 mous, making man as God. 



To Humanism it is the diction of Cicero and Virgil. To the Reform 

 it is the text of Scripture and the faith of the fathers. 



To the classicism of the seventeenth and eighteenth century it is 

 nature conceived as right reason, it is art controlled by common 

 sense and submissive to a tradition of sustained dignity and nobility, 

 it is humanity generalized and rationalized. It is law, order, measure, 

 propriety. It is Aristotle. Horace, and Quintilian. It is correct tragedy, 



