(Voluptas) fears not to tread upon thorns,
&c. But Avarice disguises herself in the mask of Economy, and succeeds
in deceiving all hearts until she is overthrown finally by Mercy
(Operatica). All sorts of things happen, but eventually the poem winds
up with a prayer to Christ, in which we learn that the soul shall fall
again and again in the battle, and that this shall continue until the
coming of Christ."

"'Tis very curious, very curious indeed. I know nothing of this
literature."

"Very few do."

"And you have, I suppose, translated some of these poems?"

"I give a complete translation of the second hymn, the story of St
Laurence, and I give long extracts from the poem we have been speaking
about, and likewise from 'Hamartigenia,' which, by the way, some
consider as his greatest work. And I show more completely, I think, than
any other commentator, the analogy between it and the 'Divine Comedy,'
and how much Dante owed to it.... Then the 'terza rima' was undoubtedly
borrowed from the fourth hymn of the 'Cathemerinon.'"...

"You said, I think, that Prudentius was a contemporary of Claudian.
Which do you think the greater poet?"

"Prudentius by far. Claudian's Latin was no doubt purer and his verse
was better, that is to say, from the classical standpoint it was more
correct."

"Is there any other standpoint?"

"Of course. There is pagan Latin and Christian Latin: Burns' poems are
beautiful, and they are not written in Southern English; Chaucer's
verse is exquisitely melodious, although it will not scan to modern
pronunciation. In the earliest Christian poetry there is a tendency to
write by accent rather than by quantity, but that does not say that
the hymns have not a quaint Gothic music of their own. This is very
noticeable in Sedulius, a poet of the fifth century. His hymn to Christ
is not only full of assonance, but of all kinds of rhyme and even
double rhymes. We find the same thing in Sedonius, and likewise in
Fortunatus--a gay prelate, the morality of whose life is, I am afraid,
open to doubt...

"He had all the qualities of a great poet, but he wasted his genius
writing love verses to Radegonde. The story is a curious one. Radegonde
was the daughter of the King of Thuringia; she was made prisoner by
Clotaire I., son of Clovis, who forced her to become his wife. On the
murder of her father by her husband, she fled and founded a convent at
Poictiers. There she met Fortunatus, who, it appears, loved h