nother thing when
it becomes the formal creed of a nation. The Christians themselves knew
that to cut themselves off from the country of their birth would have
been a fatal choice, so far as this world is concerned. Their ultimate
decision was to accept Roman civilization and Roman culture, and to add
Christianity to it.

Then followed an age-long attempt to Christianize Latin literature, to
supply believers with a new poetry, written in polished and accomplished
verse, and inspired by Christian doctrine. Of those who attempted this
task, Prudentius is perhaps the greatest name. The attempt could never
have been very successful; those who write in Latin verse must submit to
be judged, not by the truth of their teaching, but by the formal beauties
of their prosody, and the wealth of their allusive learning. Even
Milton, zealot though he be, is esteemed for his manner rather than for
his matter. But the experiment was cut short by the barbarian invasions.
When the Empire was invaded, St. Jerome and St. Augustine, Prudentius and
Symmachus, Claudian and Paulinus of Nola, were all alive. These men, in
varying degrees, had compounded and blended the two elements, the pagan
and the Christian. The two have been compounded ever since. The famous
sevententh century controversy concerning the fitness of sacred subjects
for poetic treatment is but a repetition and an echo of that older and
more vital difference. The two strains could never be perfectly
reconciled, so that a certain impurity and confusion was bequeathed to
modern European literature, not least to English literature. Ours is a
great and various literature, but its rarest virtue is simplicity. Our
best ballads and lyrics are filled with the matter of faith, but as often
as we try the larger kinds of poetry, we inevitably pass over into
reminiscence, learning, criticism,--in a word, culture.

The barbarians seized, or were granted, land; and settled down under
their chiefs. They accepted Christianity, and made it into a warlike
religion. They learned and "corrupted" the Latin language. In their
dialects they had access neither to the literature of ancient Rome, nor
to the imitative scholarly Christian literature, poetry and homily, which
competed with it. Latin continued to be the language of religion and
law. It was full of terms and allusions which meant nothing to them.
They knew something of government,--not of the old republic, but of their
own m