So, under his ungainly monk's habit, he continues his profession of rhetorician. He has come to Thagaste with the intention of retiring from the world and living in God; and here he is disputing, lecturing, writing more than ever. The world pursues him and occupies him even in his retreat. He says to himself that down there at Rome, at Carthage, at Hippo, there are men speaking in the forums or in the basilicas, whispering in secret meetings, seducing poor souls defenceless against error. These impostors must be immediately unmasked, confounded, reduced to silence. With all his heart Augustin throws himself into this work at which he excels. Above all, he attacks his old friends the Manichees.... He wrote many tracts against them. From the animosity he put into these, may be judged to what extent Manicheeism filled his thoughts, and also the progress of the sect in Africa. This campaign was even the cause of a complete change in his way of writing. With the object of reaching the plainest sort of people, he began to employ the popular language, not recoiling before a solecism, when the solecism appeared to him indispensable to explain his thought. This must have been a cruel mortification for him. In his very latest writings he made a point of shewing that no elegance of language was unknown to him. But his real originality is not in that. When he writes the fine style, his period is heavy, entangled, often obscure. On the other hand, nothing is more lively, clear and coloured, and, as we say to-day, more direct, than the familiar language of his sermons and certain of his treatises. This language he has really created. He wanted to clarify, comment, give details, and he felt how awkward classical Latin is to decompose ideas and render shades. And so, in a popular Latin, already very close to the Romance languages, he has thrown out the plan of analytical prose, the instrument of thought of the modern West. Not only did he battle against the heretics, but his restless friendship continually scaled the walls of his cell to fly to the absent ones dear to his heart. He feels that he must expand to his friends, and make them sharers in his meditations: this nervous man, in poor health, spends a part of his nights meditating. The argument he has hit upon in last night's insomnia--his friends must be told that! He heaps his letters on them. He writes to Nebridius, to Romanianus, to Paulinus of Nola; to people unknown and celebrated, in Africa, Italy, Spain, and Palestine. A time will come when his letters will be real encyclicals, read throughout Christendom. He writes so much that he is often short of paper. He has not tablets enough to put down his notes. He asks Romanianus to give him some. His beautiful tablets, the ivory ones, are used up; he has used the last one for a ceremonial letter, and he asks his friend's pardon for writing to him on a wretched bit of vellum.