there came in a taste for curious felicity suggested by the secondary
Greek literature. This adorned the poetry of Virgil; but when it began
to spread to the prose, though the æsthetic effect might be beautiful in
a masterpiece, it was apt to be embarrassing in weaker hands. Æsthetic
prose appears in its most intense and most perfect form in Tacitus, the
great historian of the Silver Age. As new tastes and fashions grew, the
oldest and purest models were neglected, and, however strange it may
sound, Cicero and Cæsar were antiquated long before the end of the first
century.

The extreme limit of the classical period of Latin literature is the
middle of the second century. The life was gone out of it before that
time, but it had still a zealous representative in Fronto, the worthy
and honoured preceptor of Marcus Aurelius. After this last of the Good
Emperors had passed away, the reign of barbarism began to manifest
itself in art and literature. The accession of Commodus was a tremendous
lapse.

The point here to be observed is that the classical Latin literature
was not a natural growth, but rather the product of an artificial
culture. It presents the most signal example of the great results that
may spring from the enthusiastic cultivation of a foreign and superior
literature. And it is of the greatest value to us as an example, because
it will enable us better to understand the growth and development of
Anglo-Saxon literature. For just as Latin classical literature was
stimulated by the Greek, so also was Anglo-Saxon literature assisted by
the influence of the Latin. And as the classical student seeks to
distinguish that which is native from that which is foreign in Latin
authors, so also is the same distinction of essential importance in the
study of Anglo-Saxon literature.