This section is very short because since we are dealing with literary classics, not masterpieces of theological learning, it has to tell only of two books in a space of a thousand years, from the second century to the twelfth. These two books are St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ and _City of God_. You will not find translations of any others in any modern collection of literary masterpieces. Even Clement of Alexandria, the most accomplished of the great fathers of the Church, is read only by theologians. St. Jerome, in my opinion, writes the best Latin, but his writings have a purely religious interest. Augustine (354-430) was certainly the most learned, and probably the ablest, man of his age. His early philosophical essays are not now read, and the voluminous writings or dictated works--shorthand was common in his time--of his later years interest only theologians. But the small volume in which after his conversion to Christianity he describes and bemoans his earlier years, his _Confessions_, is a classical autobiography. He had really very little to “confess” beyond the fact that for a time he had a lady-companion (which was not then considered immoral), and the fierce light of his new asceticism causes him to write with a singular art and feeling about his youth. In later years Augustine despised style, as most of the Christian leaders did, out of religious feeling, but he once more exerted all his art of learning in writing _The City of God_. The Roman Empire was in ruins and Augustine set out to prove that it mattered relatively little what became of the City of Man: that the essential thing was to be a citizen of the City of God. This idea he expands into a vast plan which includes a wonderful mass of mythology, history, and philosophy. The Latin language was already degenerate in Augustine’s time, the schools were being closed everywhere, zeal for letters and science grew rarer and rarer. The few Christian laymen who wrote prose or verse are not mentioned even in larger sketches than this of the history of literature, and in a few centuries most of the chronicles and treatises written were of a shocking literary quality, though everybody still wrote in a sort of Latin. The only noticeable work--by no means a masterpiece--is _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ by Boethius, a sixth-century Italian statesman who was put in prison and recommends all sufferers to find consolation, as he did, in Aristotle. CHAPTER II CLASSICS OF THE MIDDLE AGES