“Vinum bonum et suave, Bonis bonum, pravis prave, Cunctis dulcis sapor, ave, Mundana laetitia!” But the eight-syllable lines may be kept throughout, as in the following lament over life’s lovely, pernicious charm, so touching in its expression of the mortal heartbreak of mediaeval monasticism: “Heu! Heu! mundi vita, Quare me delectas ita? Cum non possis mecum stare, Quid me cogis te amare? * * * * Vita mundi, res morbosa, Magis fragilis quam rosa, Cum sis tota lacrymosa, Cur es mihi graciosa?”[328] IV Our consideration of the different styles of mediaeval Latin prose and the many novel forms of mediaeval Latin verse has shown how radical was the departure of the one and the other from Cicero and Virgil. Through such changes Latin continued to prove itself a living language. Yet its vitality was doomed to wane before the rivalry of the vernacular tongues. The _vivida vis_, the capability of growth, had well-nigh passed from Latin when Petrarch was born. In endeavouring to maintain its supremacy as a literary vehicle he was to hold a losing brief, nor did he strengthen his cause by attempting to resuscitate a classic style of prose and metre. The victory of the vernacular was announced in Dante’s _De vulgari eloquentia_ and demonstrated beyond dispute in his _Divina Commedia_. A long and for the most part peaceful and unconscious conflict had led up to the victory of what might have been deemed the baser side. For Latin was the sole mediaeval literature that was born in the purple, with its stately lineage of the patristic and the classical back of it. Latin was the language of the Roman world and the vehicle of Latin Christianity. It was the language of the Church and its clergy, and the language of all educated people. Naturally the entire contents of existing and progressive Christian and antique culture were contained in the mediaeval Latin literature, the literature of religion and of law and government, of education and of all serious knowledge. It was to be the primary literature of mediaeval thought; from which passed over the chief part of whatever thought and knowledge the vernacular literatures were to receive. For scholars who follow, as we have tried to, the intellectual and the deeper emotional life of the Middle Ages, the Latin literature yields the incomparably greater part of the material of our study. It has been our home country, from which we have made casual excursions into the vernacular literatures.