at distance, the recognition that love is as far from being a necessary product of close association as it is from being destroyed by separation is not so commonplace.

In his reply, Augustine begins by saying he regrets that his answer has been delayed by circumstances which he will not enter into; Licentius must just take his word for it-the touch of authority to his old pupil is not out of place. Then he turns to the poem and remarks that Licentius would have been bitterly ashamed if there had been any disorder in his verses; is he not ashamed to exhibit disorder in his life? This strikes us, perhaps, as a rather artificial argument, but he goes on to use Licentius' affectionate words about himself as the basis of a really moving appeal. "Remember what you wrote, 'Speak and I follow; it needs only your command.' Well, my command is this: Give yourself to me, that is the one thing needful, or rather give yourself to my Lord, who is Lord of us all, and who gave you your abilities. For I, what am I but your servant through Him, and your fellowservant under Him? And does not He himself

command you? Hear the Gospel: 'Jesus stood and cried, saying, Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'

Then he urges the young man to go to visit the saintly Paulinus of Nola, whose acquaintance Augustine had himself lately made by an exchange of letters. And in his next letter to Paulinus he introduces Licentius to him. "The son of Romanianus," writes Augustine, "whom I count also my son-whose name you will find mentioned in some of my writings-I have decided, whether he visit you or no, to hand over to you by letter, that you may console, exhort, instruct him, not so much by the sound of your voice as by the example of your fortitude. I desire earnestly that while his life is still in the green blade he may turn the tares into fruit, and may believe those who have experienced that which he desires to endanger himself by experiencing. You will understand from his poem, and from my letter to him [Augustine encloses a copy], what I deplore in him, what I fear, and what I desire. And I have good hope that by the Lord's favour my anxieties about him may be set at rest through you." Paulinus accepted the charge, and wrote a friendly letter to the young man; but there our knowledge ceases.

By way of contrast with this intimately personal and warm-hearted letter, we have now to consider one in which Augustine deals with an unknown correspondent, a young man of a very different type (Ep. 118). This was a Greek

named Dioscorus who had studied both in Rome and Carthage, and who seems to have been a finely developed specimen of the genus bore. He is about to return to Greece, where he desires to pose as an authority on Latin literature and philosophy, and suddenly realising that there are a great many gaps in his knowledge, he writes off post haste to Augustine, whose reputation has reached him in Carthage, to ask for solutions of a whole catalogue of difficulties. With a naïveté which almost disarms criticism he frankly says that his object in wanting to know is that on his return he may, so to speak, astonish the natives. And, with a touch which borders on the farcical, he adds that he thinks there is nothing improper in his request, but even if there is, he begs Augustine to fulfil it, because of all reasons in the world-he is just on the point of sailing! Augustine was, as we gather from many indications, a good-natured man, but he was not without a sense of his own dignity, and a wholly justifiable estimate of the value of his own very fully occupied time. It is not surprising that he should have felt that this enterprising young man needed the application of something in the nature of an astringent to his inflated self-conceit.

He begins: "You seem to have intended to blockade me with an innumerable host of ques

tions, or, rather, completely to overwhelm me with them"; and he goes on to make play with the curious suggestion that the young man's impending sea-voyage gave him a peculiar claim upon Augustine's attention. The impropriety of this request," writes Augustine, you are yourself aware of, though in your absorption in your own interests you are unwilling to recognise it. For what else does it mean, when, after saying that you see nothing improper in it, you add, 'But be this as it may, I pray you to answer me, for I am on the point of sailing'? ... For the effect of this is, that while you yourself see no impropriety in the request, yet if there is anything improper in it you nevertheless implore me to grant it-because you are about to start on your voyage. Now what is the force of this plea, because I am about to start on my voyage'? You think, it would seem, that impropriety can be washed away by salt water! But even if it were so, my share in the fault would remain unexpiated, for I have no intention of making a voyage!" Then he applies to him. a trenchant comment from the young man's favourite poet, Persius:

Knowledge itself, it seems, is nought to you
Unless another knows you know it too.1

1 Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.

Sat. i. 27.

"O cause," says Augustine grimly, " well worthy to occupy the hours which bishops devote to study while other men sleep!"

But the curious and interesting thing is, that instead of dismissing the importunate inquirer with this rebuke, Augustine ends by writing him a long and learned letter, dealing with the history of philosophy and the relation of philosophy to religion. He intimates also that he has answered many of the detailed questions in the margin of his correspondent's manuscript. What led him to answer so fully? It was partly, no doubt, good-nature; partly zeal for his correspondent's welfare, for the answer is adapted to put the young man's whole conception of learning on a higher plane; and partly perhaps one is tempted to conjecture-that, living as he was, remote from his old interests [he tells us incidentally that there was not a copy of Cicero to be had in all Hippo], he may not have been altogether loath to have his thoughts directed to them again. But, it may be noted, he entirely declined to answer such of the questions as dealt with Cicero's treatise on rhetoric, the De Oratore. That art, which in his view lent itself so much to trifling, to flattery, to making the worse appear the better reason, he had renounced on becoming a Christian, and refused henceforth to have anything to do with-at