by Job, Patience retires triumphant.  But at that moment, mounted on a wild and unbridled steed, and covered with a lionskin, Pride (Superbia), her hair built up like a tower, menaces Humility (Mens humilis).  Under the banner of Humility are ranged Justice, Frugality, Modesty, pale of face, and likewise Simplicity.  Pride mocks at this miserable army, and would crush it under the feet of her steed.  But she falls in a ditch dug by Fraud.  Humility hesitates to take advantage of her victory; but Hope draws her sword, cuts off the head of the enemy, and flies away on golden wings to Heaven.

“Then Lust (Luxuria), the new enemy, appears.  She comes from the extreme East, this wild dancer, with odorous hair, provocative glance and effeminate voice; she stands in a magnificent chariot drawn by four horses; she scatters violet and rose leaves; they are her weapons; their insidious perfumes destroy courage and will, and the army, headed by the virtues, speaks of surrender.  But suddenly Sobriety (Sobrietas) lifts the standard of the Cross towards the sky.  Lust falls from her chariot, and Sobriety fells her with a stone.  Then all her saturnalian army is scattered.  Love casts away his quiver.  Pomp strips herself of her garments, and Voluptuousness (Voluptas) fears not to tread upon thorns, &c.  But Avarice disguises herself in the mask of Economy, and succeeds in deceiving all hearts until she is overthrown finally by Mercy (Operatica).  All sorts of things happen, but eventually the poem winds up with a prayer to Christ, in which we learn that the soul shall fall again and again in the battle, and that this shall continue until the coming of Christ.”

“’Tis very curious, very curious indeed.  I know nothing of this literature.”

“Very few do.”

“And you have, I suppose, translated some of these poems?”

“I give a complete translation of the second hymn, the story of St Laurence, and I give long extracts from the poem we have been speaking about, and likewise from ‘Hamartigenia,’ which, by the way, some consider as his greatest work.  And I show more completely, I think, than any other commentator, the analogy between it and the ‘Divine Comedy,’ and how much Dante owed to it....  Then the ‘terza rima’ was undoubtedly borrowed from the fourth hymn of the ‘Cathemerinon.’"...

“You said, I think, that Prudentius was a contemporary of Claudian.  Which do you think the greater poet?”

“Prudentius by far.  Claudian’s Latin was no doubt purer and his verse was better, that is to say, from the classical standpoint it was more correct.”

“Is there any other standpoint?”

“Of course.  There is pagan Latin and Christian Latin:  Burns’ poems are beautiful, and they are not written in Southern English; Chaucer’s verse is exquisitely melodious, although it will not scan to modern pronunciation.  In the earliest Christian poetry there is a tendency to write by accent rather than by quantity, but that does not say that the hymns have not a quaint Gothic music of their own.  This is very noticeable in Sedulius, a poet of the fifth century.  His hymn to Christ is not only full of assonance, but of all kinds of rhyme and even double rhymes.  We find the same thing in Sedonius, and likewise in Fortunatus—­a gay prelate, the morality of whose life is, I am afraid, open to doubt...