like the _De Nugis Curialium_,[4] which is good
literature though bad Latin. But on the whole it is a fatal law of
such things that the better the Latin the worse must the literature
be.

[Footnote 2: Included with Dictys and Dares in a volume of Valpy's
Delphin Classics.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Warton, _History of English Poetry_. Ed. Hazlitt, i.
226-292.]

[Footnote 4: Gualteri Mapes, _De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones
Quinque_. Ed. T. Wright: Camden Society, 1850.]

[Sidenote: _Excepted divisions._]

We may, however, with advantage select three divisions of the Latin
literature of our section of the Middle Ages, which have in all cases
no small literary importance and interest, and in some not a little
literary achievement. And these are the comic and burlesque Latin
writings, especially in verse; the Hymns; and the great body of
philosophical writing which goes by the general title of Scholastic
Philosophy, and which was at its palmiest time in the later portion of
our own special period.

[Sidenote: _Comic Latin literature._]

It may not be absolutely obvious, but it does not require much thought
to discover, why the comic and burlesque Latin writing, especially in
verse, of the earlier Middle Ages holds such a position. But if we
compare such things as the _Carmina Burana_, or as the Goliardic poems
attributed to or connected with Walter Map,[5] with the early
_fabliaux_, we shall perceive that while the latter, excellently
written as they sometimes are, depend for their comedy chiefly on
matter and incident, not indulging much in play on words or subtle
adjustment of phrase and cadence, the reverse is the case with the
former. A language must have reached some considerable pitch of
development, must have been used for a great length of time seriously,
and on a large variety of serious subjects, before it is possible for
anything short of supreme genius to use it well for comic purposes.
Much indeed of this comic use turns on the existence and degradation
of recognised serious writing. There was little or no opportunity for
any such use or misuse in the infant vernaculars; there was abundant
opportunity in literary Latin. Accordingly we find, and should expect
to find, very early parodies of the offices and documents of the
Church,--things not unnaturally shocking to piety, but not perhaps to
be justly set down to any profane, much less to any specifically
blasphemous, intention. When the quarrel arose between