Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/252

 234 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap, vin Latin — an evolution unretarded by the classical liter- ary tradition. These vulgar Romance tongues and the barbaric Teutonic languages, which attained their growth under the auspices of the Christian religion, were to develop the capacity of expressing Christian thoughts and voicing Christian feeling. A like though narrower capacity was reached by mediaeval Latin prose from which all vestiges of classical style were gone.^ But a deeper volume of Christian feeling rolled through the Latin hymns, which of all mediaeval Latin compo- sitions departed farthest from every classic prototype and advanced farthest in the creation of an original style and form of verse. These currents of life in mediaeval Latin were finally extinguished through the attempt of the humanists — Petrarch first and above all — to reawaken and restore classical Latin. 1 E.g. the De Imitatione Christi.