I am thus compelled to dissent from the _cultus_ which has grown up about this brilliant, epigrammatic, and altogether admirable Adam. For he attracts by his obscurity and he surprises by his intricacy; and the interest excited is that of the scholar and of the translator, rather than that of the popular approval of the Christians of to-day. And I am glad to support this opinion, not merely by the rather caustic comment of Professor March, but by the word of Mrs. Charles, where she speaks of “his elaborate system of Scriptural types occasionally chilling the genuine fire of his verse into a catalogue of images.” And I must add, for my own justification, that this “fire” is the fire of the orator, and not altogether that of the poet. It is objective and not subjective; for though there be two kinds of poetry in the world, we cannot doubt which kind it is that “permanently pleases and takes commonly with all classes of men”—for this was Aristotle’s unequalled definition.
It is time that we should take a glance at this laureate of St. Victor, whose monumental plate of copper remained, down to the date of the first Revolution, near the door of the choir in that ancient cloister. The epitaph upon it was mainly drawn from his own work. It breathes the same contempt of earth and derision of its vanities, which we find so common in that age.
_“Vana salus hominis, vanus decor, omnia vana;_ _Inter vana nihil vanius est homine.”_
“Vain is the welfare of man and his fashion, for all things are vanity; And, in the midst of vanity, nothing is vainer than man.”
It was a later hand than his own which, after selecting those ten lines from Adam’s own writings, added four very inferior verses to complete the inscription. These state that:
“I who lie here, the unfortunate and wretched (_miser et miserabilis_) Adam, ask one prayer as my highest reward: I have sinned; I confess; I seek pardon; spare the contrite. Spare me, father; spare me, brethren; spare me, God.”
He was born in Brittany, to the best of our information. He studied in Paris, and finally entered the walls of St. Victor, never to leave it. It is a very brief record, but it illustrates the monotony and dead sameness of that mediaeval monastic life. The Dark Ages were mud-flats, from which the tide had gone out. And yet I think that Adam of St. Victor had another side to him, which Trench and Neale might well have developed—a power of livelier rhythm than is often suspected. The little stranded fish perchance gambolled a trifle in its small sea-water pool.
