Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/318

 300 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Saxon in Anglo-Saxon poetry. Otfried's Evangelien Buck and the Heliand unveil the tender loves of Ger- man home life and the race's love of fight; even as the pathetic elegiac Anglo-Saxon soul and its high devotions find clear expression in the Christ of Cyne- wulf. General traits of mediaeval humanity might show themselves in mediaeval Latin prose and verse. But the use of a single academic language could not but give a certain common tone to everything composed in it. Mediaeval Latin retained something of the genius of the Latin language. No man could altogether free himself from its influence when writing Latin, or free himself from his clerkly Latin education, which every- where consisted of the trivium and quadrivium, and in Italy, France, Spain, England, and Germany, made like use of classic or transitional Latin authors. More- over, the great majority of mediaeval Latin writers were monks or priests, and so had undergone the level- ling influence of ecclesiastic training. Hence through all mediaeval Latin literature a like course of study, and the common language with its still surviving, though barbarized and antiquated, genius, lessens and obscures distinctive racial or national traits. But in the vernacular literatures — so largely the creation of uneducated and unpriestly men — individual and race characteristics show themselves clearly and with power. Thus in the Byrthnoth and the Beowulf appears the stubborn Anglo-Saxon heroism ; in the Eddie poems and the Sagas appears the Norseman's love of fight — 80 different from Greek and Roman valor — and the tremendous energy of the Norse character ; in the Cid