It is striking how many of Ausonius’s poems have to do with the dead[1383] or the unreal.[1384] Even his letters are full of artificialities. In the same way Sidonius and Avitus of Vienne are always writing epitaphs. Their interest is with the past, of which they are the conscious imitators;[1385] and if Ausonius was genuinely interested in the living present when he wrote the _Mosella_, that is his one poem which has commended itself to readers of every age. In general, we may say that the ‘litterati’ of this time imitated the past in style and language to a degree that destroyed individuality. Though Sidonius criticizes Titianus for copying people not of his age,[1386] his own writings abound in archaisms.[1387] He praises Claudianus Mamertus[1388] and Leo, the minister of Euric,[1389] for their imitation of antiquity. Claudianus Mamertus recommends as models of style Naevius, Plautus, Cato, Varro, Gracchus, and ‘Chryssiphus’, Fronto and Cicero, adding that even the modern writers of note did not read the moderns: attention must therefore be concentrated on the ancients, for they are the source of modern merit.[1390] Nor was this merely theoretical advice. How extensive the worship of the ancients was, from the scrupulous imitation of Cicero in Eumenius and the panegyrists[1391] to the plagiarism of Vergil by everybody, has been fully demonstrated by the various editors.[1392] All this meant a turning away from the living language, the creation of a scholastic tongue, the intellectualization of education. So, when Greek literature lost its vitality, we find a rigid and senseless Atticism appearing in Dionysius of Halicarnassus during the first century B.C.; the dual was brought up from the underworld; and language, instead of developing its resources, was stretched on the Procrustes-bed of a standard that had ceased to be natural.[1393] So, too, when the living genius of Petrarch and Dante arose, it broke away from the half-dead Latin and turned to Italian. The problem here involved arises to-day in many countries. In Holland the growing Flemish Movement headed by Stijn Streuvels and others has compelled recognition; in Norway there is a similar movement; and in South Africa the Education Department is increasingly recognizing the use of Afrikaans in the schools. For the more education disregards the form of the language that lives in the hearts of the people, the less will it understand and be able to teach them effectively. In other words, an undue archaism means artificiality, means a wandering from the truth.