* * Dr. Eleanor Duckett, formerly Fellow of Girton and
now Professor of Latin in Smith College, has produced a charming book on the Latin .Writers of the Fifth Century (New York : Henry Holt). That century, which saw the collapse of the Western Empire and the sack of Rome, was a period of gloom and distress. But it produced a few pagan and numerous Christian authors who closed not unworthily the long line of Latin writers before the old civilization was . extinguished by Northern barbarism. Dr. Duckett describes their works and gives plentiful samples in her own translation : some of her readers would have been. glad to see the _Latta quoted, though her versions read well. St. Jerome and St. Augustine are; of course, the great figures of the period. The lesser men, like Claudian who celebrated the greatness of Rome, or Rutilius, who described a coasting voyage or the joys of country life, or Sedulius who versified the -Gospel
- story, are those of whom Dr. Duckett has more that is fresh to say. She has read the astonishing " Nuptials of MereurY and Philology " by Martianus Capella, a learned old la Myer of Carthage, which delighted the early Middle Ages and inspired many commentators, though it seems to us a queer medley of learning, nonsense and mild humour. Dr: Duckett points out that mediaeval readers derived most of their . Icnowledge. from these fifth-century authors ; until the Renaissance the earlier and greater Latin writers were but little known.
(Continued on page 292.)
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