hesitating steps.  Those are the treasures, the golden vases and so forth, that the saint has catalogued and is going to exhibit to the prefect, who is waiting in the sanctuary.  The prefect is dumb with rage; the saint observes that gold is found in dross; that the disease of the body is to be less feared than that of the soul; and he developes this idea with a good deal of wit.  The boasters suffer from dropsy, the miser from cramp in the wrist, the ambitious from febrile heat, the gossipers, who delight in tale-bearing, from the itch; but you, he says, addressing the prefect, you who govern Rome,[1] suffer from the morbus regius (you see the pun).  In revenge for thus slighting his dignity, the prefect condemns St Laurence to be roasted on a slow fire, adding, ’and deny there, if you will, the existence of my Vulcan.’  Even on the gridiron Laurence does not lose his good humour, and he gets himself turned as a cook would a chop.

“Now, do you not understand what I mean when I say that the hymns of Prudentius are an anticipation of the form of the English ballad?...  And in the fifth hymn the story of St Vincent is given with that peculiar dramatic terseness that you find nowhere except in the English ballad.  But the most beautiful poem of all is certainly the fourteenth and last hymn.  In a hundred and thirty-three hendecasyllabic verses the story of a young virgin condemned to a house of ill-fame is sung with exquisite sense of grace and melody.  She is exposed naked at the corner of a street.  The crowd piously turns away; only one young man looks upon her with lust in his heart.  He is instantly struck blind by lightning, but at the request of the virgin his sight is restored to him.  Then follows the account of how she suffered martyrdom by the sword—­a martyrdom which the girl salutes with a transport of joy.  The poet describes her ascending to Heaven, and casting one last look upon this miserable earth, whose miseries seem without end, and whose joys are of such short duration.

“Then his great poem ‘Psychomachia’ is the first example in mediaeval literature of allegorical poetry, the most Christian of all forms of art.

“Faith, her shoulders bare, her hair free, advances, eager for the fight.  The ‘cult of the ancient gods,’ with forehead chapleted after the fashion of the pagan priests, dares to attack her, and is overthrown.  The legion of martyrs that Faith has called together cry in triumphant unison....  Modesty (Pudicitia), a young virgin with brilliant arms, is attacked by ‘the most horrible of the Furies’ (Sodomita Libido), who, with a torch burning with pitch and sulphur, seeks to strike her eyes, but Modesty disarms him and pierces him with her sword.  ’Since the Virgin without stain gave birth to the Man-God, Lust is without rights in the world.’  Patience watches the fight; she is presently attacked by Anger, first with violent words, and then with darts, which fall harmlessly from her armour.  Accompanied