it does not offend my eye. You surely
would not have me collect a lot of old-fashioned furniture and pile it
up in my rooms, Turkey carpets and Japaneseries of all sorts; a room
such as Sir Fred. Leighton would declare was intended to be merely
beautiful."

Striving vainly to understand, Mr Hare drank his brandy and soda in
silence. Presently he walked over to the bookcases. There were two: one
was filled with learned-looking volumes bearing the names of Latin
authors; and the parson, who prided himself on his Latinity, was
surprised, and a little nettled, to find so much ignorance proved upon
him. With Tertullian, St Jerome, and St Augustine he was of course
acquainted, but of Lactantius, Prudentius, Sedulius, St Fortunatus, Duns
Scotus, Hibernicus exul, Angilbert, Milo, &c., he was obliged to admit
he knew nothing--even the names were unknown to him.

In the bookcase on the opposite side of the room there were complete
editions of Landor and Swift, then came two large volumes on Leonardo da
Vinci. Raising his eyes, the parson read through the titles of Mr
Browning's work. Tennyson was in a cheap seven-and-six edition; then
came Swinburne, Pater, Rossetti, Morris, two novels by Rhoda Broughton,
Dickens, Thackeray, Fielding, and Smollett; the complete works of
Balzac, Gautier's Emaux et Camees, Salammbo, L'Assommoir; add to this
Carlyle, Byron, Shelley, Keats, &c.

At the end of a long silence, Mr Hare said, glancing once again at the
Latin authors, and walking towards the fire:

"Tell me, John, are those the books you are writing about? Supposing you
explain to me in a few words the line you are taking. Your mother tells
me that you intend to call your book the History of Christian Latin."

"Yes, I had thought of using that title, but I am afraid it is a little
too ambitious. To write the history of a literature extending over at
least eight centuries would entail an appalling amount of reading; and
besides only a few, say a couple of dozen writers out of some hundreds,
are of the slightest literary interest, and very few indeed of any real
aesthetic value. I have been hard at work lately, and I think I know
enough of the literature of the Middle Ages to enable me to make a
selection that will comprise everything of interest to ordinary
scholarship, and enough to form a sound basis to rest my own literary
theories upon. I begin by stating that there existed in the Middle Ages
a universal language such as Goethe pr