Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/251

viu] MEDLEVALIZINQ OF PROSE 233 tempt for forin.^ All of this prevented mediaeval lit- erature from deriving any sense of form from the classics ; and, however else a classic pagan work might be valued in the Middle Ages, the beauty of its form was not thought of. It may also be said, with refer- ence to the mediaeval lack of form, that mediaeval writers were not anxious to have a subject clear-cut and limited ; but preferred one which was univer- sal or which wandered far and wide — a preference marking the difference between the romantic and the classical. Through the Middle Ages, however, there were al- ways men who tried to imitate the diction of classic writers, although they did not think to imitate them in the form and structure of their works. This was especially the case in the Carolingian period, when conscious imitation of the Roman past prevailed. Eg- inhard in his Vita Caroli imitates the classical style. Traces of the same tendency appear with his contem- poraries, Paulus Diaconus and Servatus Lupus, and afterward with Lambert von Hersfeld.^ Such life as there was in mediaeval Latin literature was not in this imitation of classic style, but in the disintegration, the barbarization, of Latin diction, to wit, in the tendencies of the written Latin to follow, though at an ever increasing distance, the lines of evolution of the Romance languages from the vulgar 1 Ah in the oft-cited words of Gregory the Great, — " quia indig- num vehementer existimo, ut verba coelestis oracali restringam sab regulis Donati," EpiBtola opening the Aforalium libri; Migne, Patr. Lat., 75, col. 516. «Cf. Norden, Antike Kunstproaa, pp. 748-753, and pp. 680 et leq. Lambert's works are in Migne, Patr. Lat., 146.