and the mounting of hippogriffs. Perhaps we shall develop a form, or a formlessness, after the fashion of Petronius' escapades. Indeed, our kinship with late Latin is continually becoming more evident. We are squarely in one of the Dark Ages, a period of transition and uncertainty, or perhaps better, a period of marked transition, since Goethe says we are always in transition: der Uebergang, der Uebergang zum Uebergang, des Uebergangs Uebergang zum Uebergang, und des Uebergangs Uebergang zu des Uebergangs Uebergang. We, like them, are essentially Orphic rather than Olympic. Without their Christianity, we have their Christian retreatism. We have their love of the catalogue, their joy in vituperation, their interest in broad, ugly words. Some of the most notable writers of the last decades have drawn from late Latin. Of all these, perhaps the most representative is Léon Bloy, with his polysyllabic spew, his tetanic disgust, and his crushing in of the heads of the bourgeois.
Practically all of these men, of course, are French. This is to be expected, for although we northern barbarians have been assuming for three hundred years that we are quite in the flow of things, the fact is that Rome has only now reached as far as Paris. In all probability this Romanization will continue; let us trust that Latin is still more permanent than correspondence courses. And in the meantime, if a Russian temperament chooses to write under English influences, we can expect interesting books, intelligently and honestly written, with perhaps such pearls of style as this:
"And, having caught with all this a sense of inevitable fatality which attends upon those born to incur the steady displeasure of the gods, he felt that now he could go on with the tragi-comic play with keen interest, even amusement, that indeed, to some degree he could assist, if need be supplant, the demoniac prompter."
