Keil Keil (H.), _Grammatici latini_, Leipzig, 1870-1880, 7 vols. Mearns Mearns (J.), _Early Latin hymnaries_, an index of hymns in hymnaries before 1100, Cambridge (University Press), 1913. MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_ (cited by page of the appropriate volume). PL _Patrologia latina_, Migne (cited by volume and column). A. CLAUDIAN AND BOETHIUS Lack of literary vitality must show itself conspicuously in poetry. Claudian[1] at the end of the fourth century is typical of the fashionable versified rhetoric. Poet of those who taught and quoted Vergil, but liked Lucan and Statius, he is imitative fluently, prettily, and, except for a certain monotony, expertly. His _Raptus Proserpinæ_ had the longer life, doubtless, because the abundant allusions and decorative descriptions give literary atmosphere without taxing either memory or imagination, and because, though diffuse, it is briefer than much verse narrative current in its time. Most of Claudian’s other poems were occasional, and faded with the occasion. But the old modes, for all the trivial use of them, were not spent. Boethius[2] showed himself here too the last of the Romans. The man who interpreted to century after century the logic of Aristotle was a poet. Not only is the _Consolatio philosophiæ_ poetic in conception; its lyric interludes are so far above the facile expertness of the time as to suggest comparison with the best Latin achievement. Nothing less was the inspiration of their firm and various technic. Though he seems at first like his contemporaries in looking backward to what was going or gone, he knew better than they what to look for in the Roman tradition. He is never either archaist or sophist. Images of classical reminiscence are used with fresh realization of their source in the sounds and colors of sea and fields and clouds. They are not tags, nor merely allusions, nor decoration. So used, they have much the same freshness as of old, or as the poet’s own immediate observation. Visebat gelidæ sidera lunæ[3] is at once old and original; and the last line of this poem focuses the whole in a pregnant phrase: Cogitur, heu! stolidam cernere terram. Conceived by him habitually in cosmical aspects, nature none the less struck his senses in distinct detail. The philosopher was a poet. Boethius thus revived the old poetic terseness, as in Desuper in terram nox funditur,[4] not merely because he was too original and too serious to be deviated by the literary habit of dilation, but because he grasped constructively the economy set forth in the _De sublimitate_[5] as a poetic principle. Ah! how sheer is the deep flooding my spirit! Light of my own is lost; alien darkness Daunts and deludes my soul. Swollen by wind-storms Charged with vapors of earth, often returning, Care like a poison spreads infinite languor.[6]