Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/317

q] transition to medleval poetry 299 Saxon versification. Also the many Latin aenigmata composed by Anglo-Saxons reflect their taste for riddles so pronounced in their vernacular literature. Apparently this kind of writing was not original with them ; for a book of aenigmcUa existed, ascribed to one Symposius, of whom nothing is known except that he lived before the seventh century and was not an Anglo-Saxon. But Anglo-Saxons cultivated these riddles in Latin ; Tatwine, Aldhelm, Winf ried-Boni- fatius, wrote many of them. The Anglo-Saxon way of enduing inanimate objects with life and feeling strikingly appears in Aldhelm's aenigmata. He bor- rowed a little from Symposius, but not this habit; and his aenigma/a form a link between the earlier writer and the riddles of Cynewulf. That portion of the Teutonic race which afterward became German and dwelt in German territory ac- quired Latin culture as brought to it by Anglo-Saxons (Boniface) and their scholars (Luidger), or by Gallo- Franks. But as the Germans begin to write in Latin German feeling shows itself; as, for example, in the elegiac Dialogua Agiif written by the noble Saxon monk Agius (cir. 875) to commemorate the virtues of his sister Hathumod.* A brother's heartfelt love finds voice in this poem, which also echoes the dear memo- ries of a loved home. Again, rude German banter and rough-handed valor appear in the famous Walt?iarius. Not that German sentiments and feeling were to find as clear expression in these poems as in the mother tongue. In the German translations or adaptations of Scripture the German spirit rings as true as the Anglo- 1 Traube, Poet. Lat., etc., in, pp. 369-388.