WRITERS ON CHRISTIANITY.--Christianity was at an adult age. There were writers of importance and some who were really great; the energetic and violent Tertullian, beloved by Bossuet; Saint Cyprian, full of unction, gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher, ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardent polemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene, very well read, very "Roman," who may be styled the Cicero of Christianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing lively sensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who--excluding all idea of scandal--suggests what is purest and most beautiful in Jean Jacques Rousseau; finally, that great doctor and noble philosopher of the Church, Saint Augustine. SAINT AUGUSTINE.--Saint Augustine is pre-eminently a philosopher, a man who analysed ideas and saw all that they contained, their first principle and their trend as well as their ultimate consequences. He was in addition a great orator; he was also a historian, or at least a philosopher of history, in his _City of God_; finally, he was a poet at heart and imbued with the most exquisite sensibility in his immortal _Confessions_. Probably he was the most extraordinary man of the world of antiquity. CHRISTIAN POETS.--Christianity even had its poets: Commodian, Juvencus, the impassioned and skilful Prudentius, St. Paulinus of Nola. None were very prominent, all possessed lively sentiment, such as Chateaubriand evinced, for what is profoundly poetic in Christianity. SECULAR POETS.--The last mundane poets were more brilliant than those of Christianity. Avienus possessed charming elegance and rather effeminate grace. It should be noted that he (with Prudentius) was the sole lyric poet after Horace. Ausonius had sensibility and remarkable descriptive talent; Claudian, rhetorician in verse, rose sometimes to veritable eloquence and maintained a continual brilliance which is fatiguing because it is continual, but does not fail to be a marvellous fault. Finally must be cited Rutilius, first because he had talent, then because even amid the invasions of the barbarians he made an impassioned eulogy of Rome which is, involuntarily, a funeral oration; finally, because, despite being a bitter foe to Christianity, he once more involuntarily defined the great and noble change from paganism to Christianity: _Tunc mutabantur corpora, nunc animi_ ("Formerly bodies were metamorphosed, now souls"). CHAPTER V THE MIDDLE AGES: FRANCE _Chansons de Geste: Song of Roland_ and Lyric Poetry. Popular Epopee: _Romances of Renard_. Popular Short Stories: Fables. Historians. The Allegorical Poem: _Romance of the Rose_. Drama.