ceased to be true that he who best loves the Classics, and most deeply
feels and glories in their unique excellence as literature, is he who
still draws life from them, and discipline and knowledge. Their true
lovers, like the true lovers of all noble literature, are always in a
state of pupilage to the poems and the histories they love.
Obviously then no final word lies in the statement that through the Middle
Ages men turned to the Classics for instruction. They did indeed turn to
them for all kinds of knowledge, and for discipline. Often they looked for
instruction from Ovid or Virgil in a way to make us smile. Often they
were like schoolboys, dully conning words which they did not feel and so
did not understand. But in the tenth century, and in the twelfth, some men
admired and loved the Latin Classics, and drew from them, as we may,
lessons which are learned only by those who love aright.
It would be hard to say what the men of the Middle Ages did not thus gain.
The pagan classical literature was one of humanity in its full range of
interests. This was true of the Greek; and from the Greek, the universal
human passed to the Latin, which the Middle Ages were to know. In both
literatures, man was a denizen of earth. The laws of mortality and fate
were held before his eyes; and the action of the higher powers bore upon
mortal happiness, rather than upon any life to come. When reflecting upon
the use and influence of the Classics through the Middle Ages, it is
always to be kept in mind that the antique literature was the literature
of this life and of this world; that it was universal in its humanity, and
still in the Middle Ages might touch every human love and human interest
not directly connected with the hopes and terrors of the Judgment Day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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