set in place in order to reach any height or to support any weight.' 10 The great scholars of the Middle Ages were amongst the most exact thinkers who have ever lived; and the ordinary person possessed to a degree that is almost inconceivable in an age, like our own, of loose thinking and slapdash philosophy, the power of following his convictions to their logical conclusions. Once you had convinced a man, for instance, of the inherent evil of matter, you would find him prepared to go to any lengths in manifesting his hatred and contempt for it. Some of the earliest followers of St. Francis, in their enthusiasm for a life of poverty and a community of goods, rushed to the extreme of denouncing the whole idea of property. But the Church has never had any great affection for extremes; even logical extremes are often dangerous things. Hers was the difficult task of condemning the heresy with all her power whilst seeking to control men's fury against the heretic.

To speak thus vaguely of 'the Church' is often misleading. Thus we are often invited to picture the Middle Ages as ages of cringing superstition and religious terrorism, to conjure up a vision of an entire civilisation held down and enslaved by a vague and elusive 'chimera' known as 'the Church '-a fact which no institution in recorded history has ever achieved or could ever achieve. We have, for instance, the resounding indictment of Lecky 11:

The agonies of hell seemed then the central fact of religion and the perpetual subject of the thoughts of men. The whole intellect of Europe was employed in illustrating them. There was no respite, no allevia

tion, no hope. The tortures were ever varied in their character; ceaseless shriek of anguish attested the agonies that were below.

a

We may estimate the untiring assiduity with which the Catholic priests sought, in the worst acts of human tyranny and in the dark recesses of their own imaginations, new forms of torture, to ascribe them to the Creator. We can never conceive the intense vividness with which these conceptions were realised, or the madness and misery they produced. The sense of Divine goodness being destroyed, the whole fabric of natural religion crumbled in the dust.... It centred entirely upon the priests, who supported it mainly by intimidation.

Now this lurid picture of mediæval times, as the long tyranny of a horde of ambitious priests over a simple and credulous civilisation, simply does not bear examination. It is, of course, true that many of the greatest men of these times were priests. Still we note the presence of such terror-stricken rabbits as Simon de Montfort, St. Louis IX., Philip Augustus, Dante, Giotto, Cimabue, Gaddi, Queen Blanche of Castile, Eleanor of Guienne, Henry II. of England, William of Lorris, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Bertram de Born, to mention but a very few. We seem to detect in some of these nineteenth century historians a certain lack of what may be termed the historian's sense of humour. And by the historian's sense of humour I mean, not the power of being able to laugh at the men of the past, but the power of recognising that if the men of the past had a chance they would probably laugh at us. The mediævals were cheerfully unimpressed by the horrors of physical suffering; and to regard the Divine Comedy as an instrument of religious terrorism is frankly ridiculous. Satan was frequently introduced into the pageants and miracle plays, and his appearance on the stage was always greeted with roars of laughter.

Again, in such an environment as that described by Lecky the Inquisition could not have existed for ten minutes. The inquisitors took their instructions from the superiors of their respective orders, and from no others. It was one of the chief purposes of the institution that its officials should be men who were entirely removed from local prejudices and waves of popular feeling in the districts in which they worked. Their precise relation to the local bishops and secular priesthood was thus an exceedingly delicate question. If there had been the smallest desire on the part of the civil authorities to hinder the Inquisition, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to play one off against the other and to create an atmosphere in which the position of the inquisitor would have been altogether impossible. Nothing of the kind occurred. Once or twice we hear of riots and the murder of an inquisitor; but in general such potential difficulties vanished into thin air. The Holy Office operated with the fullest approval of the mass of the people. It was far too dependent on that approval for its continued existence to be regarded as an engine of religious oppression launched upon a hostile and rebellious world.

We recall the cheerful profanity of Aucassin 12:

Profanity, it may be remarked, is only funny or amusing to a believer. It is only in ages when faith is weakened and undermined that profanity ceases to be an amusement and enters the realm of the higher thought. Nowadays, when a critic questions the Ascension as involving an infringement of the law of gravitation, nobody laughs. In the Middle Ages such a suggestion would have provoked shouts of honest merriment.

(To be continued.)

A. L. MAYCOCK.

OLD POPULAR HORACE

At the beginning of this century I was urged by a friend, whose judgment I trusted, to read Miranda of the Balcony. 'It is,' he said, 'a really good story, but there is in particular one chapter of the book which reveals genius.' I read the book and have found that chapter unforgettable. The framework of the chapter is this: Wilbraham, once an honourable public school boy, and afterwards a rapidly rising member of the Diplomatic Service, has fallen, partly through sheer bad luck and partly through inborn weakness of character, so low that he stoops to blackmail Miranda -for a purpose. What that purpose is can best be made clear in the author's own words :

'What is it you want to do?' she asked, and Wilbraham confided in her. The position was strange no doubt. Here was a woman whom he had bullied, whom he meant to rob, and on whom he meant to live until he died, and he was confiding in her. But the words tumbled from his lips, and he did not think of the relationship in which he stood to her.... 'Do you know,' said he, 'the Odes of Horace have never been well translated into English verse by anyone? Some people have done an ode or two very well, perhaps as well as it could be done. Hood for instance tried his hand at it. But no one has done them all with any approach to success. And yet they ought to be capable of translation. Perhaps they aren't-I don't know-perhaps they are too wonderfully perfect. Probably I should make an awful hash of the job; but I think I should like to have a shot.'

It would not be fair to quote more: anyone can read the sequel in Mr. Mason's delightfully imaginative book. I feel very confident that my readers will agree with me that the passage which I have quoted is not only brilliantly original, but also absolutely true to life. Probably there are now living many grave men of business, many orators in Parliament, and not a few judges and bishops, who have shared Wilbraham's ambition to translate the Odes of Horace, and some who have actually ventured to make the attempt. It is not, however, probable that Horace will ever again become as popular in England as he was a hundred years ago, when most public school boys and almost all Etonians knew their Horace, even if they knew nothing else. My own greatgrandfather never, I believe, went fishing without a Horace in his pocket, thereby making certain of not missing one of two good

things, for either the fish would be rising, and both hands and
brain would be kept busy, or if nothing stirred in the river, he
could fall back upon a satire, with some bite in it, or an epistle
full of play, and probably discover some new treasure there.
About the middle of the nineteenth century a public school boy
of intelligence was not unlikely to know almost all the Odes by
heart. Perhaps I may be allowed to give one illustration of this
fact from my own personal experience. In the beginning of this
century, if ever I spent the holidays at Costebelle I used to call
not unfrequently on General de Horsey, who left Eton at the age
of fifteen in 1842. When I knew him he was almost blind, and
had few occupations: he used to welcome visitors, and he was
never happier than when talking of Eton. 'Do the boys still
know their Horace ? ' he said to me one day, adding thoughtfully,
'I used to be very fond of him: indeed I remember much of him
now; if you like I will translate one of his odes from memory, and
you shall hear it next Sunday. Which shall it be?' I suggested,
I think, the Cleopatra ode, the last ode but one in the first book.
'I am not sure,' he said, ' if I shall be able to remember it, but
I will try.' When I returned next Sunday, 'I could not manage
it,' he said, 'but I remembered the next ode, which is very short,
the last in the book, and this is my version of it.' He then said
to me the following lines, which I have treasured ever since, and
which I never failed to quote to my division when we reached that
ode. On the first occasion when I quoted it, I wrote to tell him
that I had done so, adding how much the division had appreciated
it. He dictated a most charming message to my division in
return, and some of them wrote him letters afterwards. This was
his version:

Persian decorations, boy, I hate,
Linden crowns seem inappropriate :
Seek not out the spot where hidden grows
Solitary summer's latest rose.

To the simple myrtle naught else add,
Myrtle to your ministering, dear lad,
Not unseemly, well becometh me
Drinking underneath this trellised tree.

I said to him with conviction that very few boys at Eton could render the ode so well to-day. 'But you see,' he said, quite rightly and convincingly, by way of explanation, 'we did very little else but classics, in my time, and very specially Horace. Verses were the greatest thing of all with us.' Quite apart from his loyalty to his old school, General de Horsey was one of the most lovable of men; he had been, I believe, a dashing officer of the Grenadier Guards, had lived in a fast set, and had known all the capitals of Europe; but though he was a citizen of Vanity Fair, and had