satisfaction.

More attractive are descriptions of the Rhine and Moselle, recalling
Ausonius, and due to love partly of Nature, partly of verbal
scene-painting. The best and most famous of these is on his journey
by the Moselle from Metz to Andernach on the Rhine. Here he shews a
keen eye and fine taste for wide views and high mountains, as well as
for the minutiæ of scenery, with artistic treatment. He also blends
his own thoughts and feelings with his impressions of Nature, making
it clear that he values her not merely for decoration, but for her
own sake.

He has been called the last Roman poet; in reality, he belonged not
only to the period which directly succeeded his own, when the Roman
world already lay in ruins, but to the fully-developed Middle
Ages--the time when Christianity and Germanism had mated with Roman
minds.

In his best pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the classic
tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the great of
bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really modern and
under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its
depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as it
were, a symbol of the blending of the two elements out of which the
modern sprang. It was the stimulating influence of the noble Germanic
princess, herself Christian in soul, which fanned the dying sparks of
classic poetry into a flame.

Fortunatus stood upon a borderland. Literature was retreating further
and further from the classic models, and culture was declining to its