CHAP. as the Hebraized Latinity of the Vulgate; we recognize easily a Jewish author in one, and the closeness of a literal translation in the other. But, in the present case, we know little or nothing of the ordinary dialects of Africa, and when its writers come before us, and we detect in their works any novelties or singularities of expression, our only ground for concluding them to be Africanisms, must be either scholastic tradition, or the fact that we cannot account for them in any other way; and if in their several remains any analogy be discoverable between such singularities, this conclusion is of course strengthened. But there are peculiarities of style, as well as of idiom, and these are not only more readily detected and compared, but more generally traceable to their causes. As early as the time of Juvenal, Africa was celebrated for its schools of rhetoric, and though they were probably not distinguished for their purity or elegance, yet it was a matter of notoriety, that the study and practice of eloquence met with greater encouragement in this province than at Rome.' Nor does it appear at all to have declined during the second or third centuries, for most of the ecclesiastical writers of these times, who were not Christians born, seem to have been members of this profession. Tertullian had most obviously more than an ordinary knowledge of its technicalities, Cyprian devoted his youth and much of his manhood to it; Arnobius and Lactantius taught rhetoric for their living. We can conjecture pretty accurately what would be the result of such a state of 1 Juv. VII. 147. accipiat te Gallia, vel potius nutricula causidicorum 2 See Mr. Evans in his life of Cyprian, Theol. Lib. xv. p. 141. things as this, when, with a declining language and a corrupt age, the ordinary years of study were monopolized by the exercises of the schools. An overwhelming importance would be attached to such proprieties or beauties of speech as the fashion of the day had sanctioned, to the comparative exclusion of thought, or even truth, as objects of consideration. Apuleius says in one of his speeches, that he knows his audience will not pardon him a single mistake, or excuse a single solecism, or overlook a single mispronunciation,3 and he exhibits in his own productions a most remarkable portrait of the character formed under this system, and a most complete picture of what was demanded by an African audience. His celebrated apology, the masterpiece of the day, the admiration of even Christian writers, is a deliberate display of all the arts, powers, and subtleties of rhetoric; truth, though repeatedly appealed to, is virtually put out of the question; the orator plays with the charges against him like a master of fence with a couple of raw antagonists; after rebutting an accusation he offers to acknowledge it, and clear himself on another ground; his opponents may take as many points as they like to make the game even; he has no objection to plead guilty, or not guilty, his final exculpation of himself will be just as successful in either case. We can be at no loss, after reading the apology of Apuleius, to understand the meaning of Tertullian, when he says, Quis nos revincere audebit, non arte verborum, sed eadem forma qua probationem constituimus de veritate? It is not the least singular point "Quis enim vestrum unum mihi solæcismum ignoverit? quis vel unam syllabam barbare pronuntiatam donaverit? quis incondita et vitiosa verba temere, quasi delirantibus oborientia, permiserit S. Augustine, Ep. v. ad Marcell. and elsewhere. CHAP. II. CHAP. about this extraordinary speech, that one of the charges against the speaker was his eloquence. It is clear that the Christian writers, as a body, notwithstanding their original education, fell short of the standard which the polished taste of the provincial public had fixed upon, nay, it appears from Arnobius, that a crime no less heinous than that of using false concords had been laid at their doors, and so completely does this writer forget the grammarian in the apologist, that he does not hesitate to urge the revolutionary argument that all tenses and cases are equal, that genders are but conventionally, and not essentially, different, and that hæc paries and hic sella may be written with as much moral accuracy as hæc sella and hic paries.1 He opens his own treatise with the preface, that he has come to the determination of defending his cause pro captu ac mediocritate sermonis, and Lactantius, as will be observed in another place (c. III.), remarks specially of Tertullian, and generally of all the apologists, that they failed in the elegance of speech requisite to recommend their works. Yet they have undoubtedly one or two features common to the more successful candidates for popular admiration among their countrymen, and which are owing to the same influence of fashion on both. When a language, already advanced in its decline, is made the subject of fastidious study for the purposes which have been spoken of, its early monuments will be naturally resorted to as models, by men who are quite able to 1 "Quid enim officit, o! quæso ....aut qui minus id quod dicitur verum est, si in numero peccatur, aut casu, præpositione, participio, conjunctione ?" I. 34. "Quanquam (si verum spectes) nullus sermo natura est integer, vitiosus similiter nullus. Quænam est enim ratio naturalis, aut in mundi constitutionibus lex scripta, ut hic paries dicatur," &c. ib. 35. II. detect the faults of a later age; but other examples CHAP. besides the present, shew us that this practice is likely both to be pursued in a wrong spirit and carried too far. It is pursued in a wrong spirit when men, instead of imitating chasteness of description, or vigour of thought, or severity of style, from the early writers, content themselves with borrowing isolated words, often without preserving even the regimen; and it is carried too far when antiquity alone is made a sufficient recommendation, for a language may be as barbarous in its origin as in its decline. Both the passion and its excesses are fully exemplified in the writers before us; almost every page of them will supply specimens of archaisms of the most extraordinary nature, which the reader at first imagines must necessarily be the coinage of the writer, but which he perhaps will be able to trace clearly beyond the age of Ennius. This character runs through all the African writers, and is remarkably stamped on Apuleius, where its artificial nature may be readily seen. The celebrated novel of this author is composed in a most singular dialect: if it were not that it goes on so smoothly and equably from beginning to end, it would seem to be in a forced or feigned hand; it is not like any other prose, and yet it is not verse, on in a kind of chant, like that said to but runs This has more than once been the subject of remark. Bishop Kaye says, "When I have myself been obliged to consult the dictionaries for the meaning of some strange and portentous word which crossed me in my perusal of Tertullian's works, I have occasionally found that it had been used by Plautus." Eccl. Hist. p. 68. Gilbert Wakefield, in his edition of Lucretius, after II. 2 CHAP. be used by eastern story-tellers; almost every noun has an epithet, and frequently both are diminutives ;' the galliambics of Catullus, if printed in the shape of prose, would give no bad idea of the rythm of several passages in Apuleius. The same remarks apply, in rather a less degree, to his philosophical works, and in all these the most obsolete archaisms meet us at every step; but in the apology, and (of course) the Florida, it is evident that he has considered it necessary to discard this fashion in a measure, and to use more the language of every-day life. But even here obsolete words are very numerous. I have observed that this is a character which is common to all the writers in question, but it is not peculiar to them; it appears as strongly in Aulus Gellius (who certainly had the excuse of his subject) as in any of them; it seems the character not of the school or the country, but of the age. Another very striking feature in the African writers is their bombastic style, which has even been distinguished by the title of tumor Africanus, and unquestionably it prevails to a greater or less degree,-least in Lactantius, greatest in Arnobius-throughout them all. But, like the archaisms, it is no peculiar note of an African; Ammianus exceeds all of them in luxuriance of style or inflated language. The difference between The constant use of these forms (v. Heusing. ad Cic. Off. I. 13. 3.) might perhaps seem peculiar to African Latin, but, though Tertullian employs them a good deal (see p. 158), yet Arnobius but seldom uses them. 2 The Florida are a collection of striking passages from speeches of Apuleius, a kind of Elegant Extracts, probably compiled by 3 some admirer of the author, and now all that we possess of the original compositions. I would not omit to mention the great familiarity which all these writers display with the Roman poets, and I allude less to the copious quotations of Lactantius than to the almost insensible allusions of the others, which intimate not only their own perfect |
