es so delighted to indulge in. The young philosopher, hearing at his
father-in-law's table the discussions between Chalcedonian and
Monophysite with which all Rome resounded, on account of the prolonged
strife with the Church of Constantinople, set himself down to discuss
the same topics which they were wrangling over by the light--to him so
clear and precious--of the Greek philosophy. There was perhaps in this
employment neither reverence nor irreverence. He had not St.
Augustine's intense and almost passionate conviction of the truth of
Christianity; but he was quite willing to accept it and to discourse
upon it, as he discoursed on Arithmetic, Music, and Geometry.

But when premature old age, solitude, and the loss of liberty befell
him, it was not to the highly elaborated Christian theology of the
Sixth Century that he turned for support and consolation. Probably
enough the very fact that he knew some of the pitfalls in the way
deterred him from that dangerous journey, where the slightest
deviation on either side landed him in some detested heresy, the
heresy of Nestorius or of Eutyches. 'On revient toujours a ses
premiers amours;' and even so Boethius, though undoubtedly professing
himself a Christian, and about to die in full communion with the
Catholic Church, turned for comfort in his dungeon to the
philosophical studies of his youth, especially to the ethical writings
of Plato and Aristotle.

After all, the title of the treatise is '_Philosophiae_ Consolatio;'
and however vigorous a literature of philosophy may in the course of
centuries have grown up in the Christian domain, in the sixth century
the remembrance of the old opposition between Christianity and
Philosophy was perhaps still too strong for a writer to do anything
more than stand neutral as to the distinctive claims of Christianity,
when he had for the time donned the cloak of the philosopher.

[Sidenote: The Bucolic Poem of Boethius.]

We learn from the fragment before us that Boethius also wrote a
'Bucolic Poem.' This is an interesting fact, and helps to explain the
facility with which he breaks into song in the midst of the
'Consolation.' It may have been to this effort of the imagination that
he alluded when he said at the beginning of that work--

'Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi
Flebilis, heu, moestos cogor inire modos.'

We would gladly know something more of this 'Bucolic Poem' indited by
the universal genius, Boethi