was changed
into French and Italian. Add however, the preface to Tiraboschi's third
volume and the thirty-second dissertation of Muratori.

[489] See Lanzi, Saggio della Lingua Etrusca, t. i. c. 431; Mem. de
l'Acad. des Inscrip. t. xxiv. p. 632.

[490] No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary
performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which
really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:--

Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat,
Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta,
AEternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda.
Ego similiter erravi tempore multo,
Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis.
Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege.
Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turba
Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quaerere vanos.
Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.

Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some
of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary
rules of Procrustes; as for instance:--

Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere praecepta; or, Capillos inficitis,
oculos fuligine relinitis.

It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not
despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his
fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters.
Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly
ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the
populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus
is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some
specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.

[491] Archaeologia, vol. xiv. p. 188. The following are the first
lines:--

Abundantia peccatorum solet fratres conturbare;
Propter hoc Dominus noster voluit nos praemonere,
Comparans regnum coelorum reticulo misso in mare,
Congreganti multos pisces, omne genus hinc et inde,
Quos cum traxissent ad littus, tunc coeperunt separare,
Bonos in vasa miserunt, reliquos malos in mare.

This trash is much below the level of Augustin; but it could not have
been later than his age.

[492] Recueil des Historiens, t. i. p. 814; it begins in the following
manner:--

Praecelso expectabili bis Arbogasto comiti
Auspicius, qui diligo, salutem dico plurimam.
Magnas coelesti Domino rependo corde gratia