Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/250

232 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. a recasting which was always attended by an infusion of barbaric and extraneous elements. A vigorous barbaric mind may express fittingly simple subjects of its own devising; but less simple subjects taken by semi-barbaric or partly barbarized writers from works of men their superiors in intellect and culture, will not be adequately treated, and the structure of the composition will be bad. The writer cannot present what he does not understand; and, not per- ceiving the proper nature and the scope of the sub- ject, he is apt to wander from it. The misappreciation and mishandling of borrowed subjects are one cause of the formlessness of mediaeval literature ; the effect may appear in the chaotic representation of misappre- ciated topics from pagan literature, as well as in the distorted treatment of matter taken from the Christian prose writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. Moreover, the boundless reach of Christian thought, the limitlessness of Christian emotion, and the unfath- omable mysteries of the Faith could not be adjusted to those literary forms which suited the clear finitude of classic themes. All attempts thus to adjust Chris- tian topics failed, whether in prose ^ or metre. At the very first, Christian prose writing had only such excel- lence of form as comes with the sincere and ardent expression of a deeply felt subject ; no conscious at- tention was paid to style or structure. Afterward, when Christians used the resources of pagan literary education, the Christian spirit still had its own con- 1 Whenever a Christian wrote in classic form, his work was apt to be more pagan than Christian, in tone and feeling, if not in thought. E.g., the Octavius of Minucius Felix or the De Officiis Ministrorum of Ambrose.