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THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE

AND THE

RISE OF ALLEGORY.

CHAPTER I.

THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.

REASONS FOR NOT NOTICING THE BULK OF MEDIEVAL LATIN LITERATURE -EXCEPTED DIVISIONS-COMIC LATIN LITERATURE--EXAMPLES OF ITS VERBAL INFLUENCE-THE VALUE OF BURLESQUE-HYMNS-THE "DIES IRE

OF THE

"

-THE RHYTHM OF BERNARD-LITERARY PERFECTION HYMNS SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY ITS INFLUENCE ON

PHRASE AND METHOD-THE GREAT SCHOLASTICS.

Reasons for not noticing the bulk of

THIS series is intended to survey and illustrate the development of the vernacular literatures of medieval and modern Europe; and for that purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with medieval Latin more than a part of the Latin writing literature. which, in a steadily decreasing but-until the end of the last century-an always considerable proportion, served as the vehicle of literary expression.

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But with a part of it we are as necessarily concerned as we are necessarily compelled to decline the whole. For not only was Latin for centuries the universal means of communication between educated men of different languages, the medium through which such men received their education, the court-language, so r to speak, of religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of knowledge which did not directly stoop to the comprehension of the unlearned; but it was indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as well as consciously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it, if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were more or less spontaneous.

But, even if we had room, it would profit us little to busy ourselves with the Latin of diplomacy or the Latin of chronicles, with the Latin of such scientific treatises as were written or with the Latin of theology. All these except, for obvious reasons, the first, tended away from Latin into the vernaculars as time went on, and were but of lesser literary moment, even while they continued to be written in Latin. Nor in belles lettres proper were such serious performances as continued to be written well into our period of capital

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