the Emperor and not that of Christ, therefore obey the order of the
latter, and give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor.'

"To this speech, peppered with irony and sarcasm, St Laurence replies
that the church is very rich, even richer than the Emperor, and that he
will have much pleasure in offering its wealth to the prefect, and he
asks for three days to classify the treasures. Transported with joy, the
prefect grants the required delay. Laurence collects the infirm who have
been receiving charity from the church; and in picturesque grouping the
poet shows us the blind, the paralytic, the lame, the lepers, advancing
with trembling and hesitating steps. Those are the treasures, the
golden vases and so forth, that the saint has catalogued and is going to
exhibit to the prefect, who is waiting in the sanctuary. The prefect is
dumb with rage; the saint observes that gold is found in dross; that the
disease of the body is to be less feared than that of the soul; and he
developes this idea with a good deal of wit. The boasters suffer from
dropsy, the miser from cramp in the wrist, the ambitious from febrile
heat, the gossipers, who delight in tale-bearing, from the itch; but
you, he says, addressing the prefect, you who govern Rome,[1] suffer
from the _morbus regius_ (you see the pun). In revenge for thus
slighting his dignity, the prefect condemns St Laurence to be roasted on
a slow fire, adding, 'and deny there, if you will, the existence of my
Vulcan.' Even on the gridiron Laurence does not lose his good humour,
and he gets himself turned as a cook would a chop.

"Now, do you not understand what I mean when I say that the hymns of
Prudentius are an anticipation of the form of the English ballad?... And
in the fifth hymn the story of St Vincent is given with that peculiar
dramatic terseness that you find nowhere except in the English ballad.
But the most beautiful poem of all is certainly the fourteenth and last