The fourth, the fifth, and the sixth centuries--going, going, gone! 2.

AUSONIUS Going! This is the world of Ausonius, south-western France in the latter half of the fourth century, 'an Indian summer between ages of storm and wreckage'.

Ausonius himself is a scholar and a gentleman, the friend alike of the pagan Symmachus and of St Paulinus of Nela.

He is for thirty years professor of rhetoric in the university of Bordeaux, for some time tutor to a prince, praetorian prefect of Gaul, consul, and in his last years just an old man contentedly living on his estates.

His most famous poem is a description of the Moselle, which for all its literary affectations evokes most magically the smiling countryside which was the background of his life.