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SACKED LATIN POETRY.

SACRED LATIN POETRY,

CHIEFLY LYRICAL,

SELECTED AND ARRANGED FOR USE;

titlj |lofcs unb Introiradioii:

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.

ARCHBISHOP OP DXJELTN

AXD CHANCELLOR OP THE ORDER OF ST. PATRICK.

SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND IMPROVED.

I^oubon aub Ciunlnibgc : MACMILLAN AND CO.

18G4.

LOXDOS

PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODT: AXD CO.

SEW-STEEET SQUARE

PREFACE

TO

THE FIEST EDITION.

rrilE AIM of the present volume Is to offer to members of our English Church a collection of the best sacred Latin poetry, such as they shall be able entirely and heartily to accept and approve — a collection, that is, in which they shall not be ever- more liable to be offended, and to have the current of their sympathies checked, by coming upon that, Avhich, however beautiful as poetry, out of higher respects they must reject and condemn — in which, too, they shall not fear that snares are being laid for them, to entangle them unawares in admiration for ought which is inconsistent with their faith and fealty to their own spii'itual mother. Such being the idea of the volume, it is needless to say that all hymns which in any way imply the Eomish doctrine of transubstantiation are excluded. In like manner all are excluded, which involve any creature-worship, or which speak of the Mother of our Lord in any other language than that which Scripture has sanctioned, and our Church adopted.

vi PEEFACE.

So too all asking of the suffrages of the saints, all addresses to the Cross calculated to encourage super- stition, that is, in which any value is attributed to the material wood, in which it is used otherwise than in the Epistles of St Paul, namely, as a figure of speech by Avhich we ever and only u.nderstand Him that hung upon it ; all these have been equally refused a place.

Nor is it only poems containing positive error which I have counted inadmissible ; but I have not v/illingly given room to any which breathe a spirit foreign to that tone of piety which the English Church desires to cherish in her children ; for I have always felt that compositions of this character may be far more hiu'tful, may do far more to rob her of the affections, and iilti- mately of the allegiance, of her children, than those in which error and opposition to her teaching take a more definite and tangible shape. Nor surely can there be a more serious mistake, than to suppose that we have really "adapted" such works to the use of her members, when we have lopped off here and there a few offensive excrescences, while that far more potent, because far subtler and more impalpable, element of a life which is not her Hfe remains interfused through the whole.

Having thus in a manner become responsible for all which appears in this volume, I may be permitted to

PREFACE. vii

observe, that I do not thereby imply that there may not be in it, here and there, though very rarely indeed, a phrase which will claim the interpretation of charity. The reader will in such a case remember how unfair it is to try the theological language of the middle ages by the greater strictness and accuracy which the struggles of the Reformation rendered necessary. Thus, for us at this day to talk of any " merits " save those of Christ, after all that the Eeformation has Avon for us, would involve a conscious and a deliberate falling away from a sole and exclusive reliance upon his work. But it was a diiferent thing once, and such language might quite be used by one who had implicithj an entire affiance on the Av^ork of Christ for him as the ultimate ground of his hope ; and who only waited to have the truth, Avhich with some confusion he held and lived by, put before him in accurate form, to embrace it hence- forth and for ever, not only with heart, as he had done already, but with the understanding as Avell.

Nor yet do I mean to affirm that there may not have found admission here one or two poems which some, Avhom I should greatly have desired altogether to have carried with me in my selection, may not wish had been away. It is indeed one of the mischiefs which Rome has entailed upon the Avhole Western Church, even upon those portions of it now delivered

viii PBEFACE.

from her tyranny, that she has rendered suspicious so much, which, but for her, none could have thought other than profitable and edifying. She has compelled those, Avho before everything else would be true to God's word, oftentimes to act in the spirit of Heze- kiah, when he said " Nehushtan " to the very " sign of salvation" * — to the brazen serpent itself. Yet grant- ing that the superstitious, and therefore profane, hands which she has laid on so much, must oftentimes make it our wisdom, and indeed our duty, that we abridge ourselves of our rightful liberty in many things which otherwise and but for her Ave might have freely and profitably used, there is still a limit to these self-denials : and unless Ave are determined to set such a limit, there is no point of bareness and nakedness in all of imagina- tive and symbolic in Avorship and service, Avhich Ave might not reach ; even as some Reformed Churches, Avhich have not shewn the mingled moderation and firmness, that have in these matters so wonderftiUy characterized our OAvn, have undoubtedly made them- selves much poorer than Avas need.

Of course, those Avho consider that the Avhole medi- eval theology is to be ignored and placed under ban — that nothing is to be learned from it, or nothing but harm — those I must expect to disapprove, not merely

* 2vixfiu\ov (TWTTjpias, AVisd. xy'i.

PBEFACE. ix

of a small matter or two in the volimie, but of it altogether ; for the very idea of the book rests on the assumption that it is worth our while to know what the feelings of these ages were — what the Church was doing during a thousand years of her existence ; — on the assumption also that the voices in which men uttered then the deepest things of their hearts, will be voices in which we may also utter and embody the deepest things of our own. For myself, I cannot but feel that we are untrue to our position as a Church, that is, as an historic body, and above all to our position as members of a Protestant Church, when we thus wish to dissever, as far as v/e may, the links of oiu- historic connexion with the past. "We should better realize that position; if we looked at those Middle Ages with the expectation (which the facts would abundantly justify), of finding the two Churches, which at the Eeformation disengaged themselves from one another, in the bosom of the Chixrch which was then — if we looked at those ages, not seeking (as sometimes is done, I cannot but feel most unfairly, in regard to earlier times) to claim them as Protestant, but as little conceding that they were Eomanist. It were truer to say that in Romanism we have the residuum of the middle age Chiurch and theologj', the lees, after all, or well nigh all, the wine was drained away. But in the medieval Chiu-ch we

X PBEFACE.

have tlie wine and the lees together — the truth and the error — the false observance, and yet at the same time the divine truth which should one day be fatal to it, side by side. Good Avere it for us to look at those ages, tracing gladly, as Luther so loved to do, the footsteps of the Eeformers before the Eeformation ; and feeling that it is our duty, that it is the duty of each successive age of the Church, as not to accept the past in the gross, so neither in the gross to reject it ; since rather by our position as the present representatives of that eternal body, we are bound to recognize ourselves as the rightful inheritors of all Avhich is good and true that ever has been done or said Avithin it. Nor is this all : but if oiir position mean anything, Ave are bound also to believe that to us, having the "Word and the Spirit, the poAver has been given to distinguish things which differ, — that the sharp SAVord of judgment has been placed in our hands, AAdiereby to simder betAveen the holy and profane, — that such a breath of the Almighty is now and evermore breathing over his Church, as shall enable it, boldly and Avith entire trust that He Avill AvinnoAV for it, to exclaim, " What is the chaff to the Avheat ? " Surely it is our duty to beheve that to us, that to each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks, Avill be given that enlightening Spirit, by A\diose aid it shall be enabled to read aright the past

PREFACE. xi

realizations of God's divine idea in the visible and his- toric Church of successive ages, and to distinguish the human .imperfections, blemishes, and errors, from the divine truth which they obscured and overlaid, but which they could not destroy, being one day rather to be destroyed by it ; and, distinguishing these, as in part to take warning from and to shun, so also in part to live upon and to love, that which in word and deed the Cliurch of the past has bequeathed us.

In this sense, — namely, that there is here that which we may live on and love, as well as that which we must shun and leave, I have brought together the poems of this present volume, gathering out the tares, which yet I could recognize but as the accident of this goodly field, and seeking to present to my brethren that only which I had confidence would prove whole- some nutriment for souls. Undoubtedly there are tares enough in the field out of which these sheaves have been gathered, if a man will seek them, if he should believe that it is his occupation to do so ; which yet I have not believed to be mine. And I have published this volume, because, granting a collection made upon these principles to be desirable, it appears to me that it has not yet been made ; that those which we possess still leave room for such a one as the present. "What need is there, for example, that the Vcni, Bedemjytor

xii PEEFACE.

Gentmm, or the Dies Irm, or any other of these im- mortal heritages of the universal Church, should be presented to us as part or parcel of the Eoman or any other breviary ? They were not written for these ; their finding a place in these is their accident, and not their essence. Why then should they be offered, as coming through channels, and with associations linked to them, which can scarcely fail to make them distaste- ful to many ? Not to say that, while pieces of sacred Latin verse drawn from such obvious sources have been published again and again — and not only the good, but very often with it much also of very slightest worth, — other noblest compositions, whether contemplated as works of art, or from a more solemn point of view, have been left unregarded and apparently unknown. If I may conclude, in regard of others, irom a few friends to whom I have submitted portions of this volume, as it was gotten together, most of my readers will acknow- ledge that they here have met something which was new to them, yet with which they were glad to be made acquainted.

And even were this not the case, the poems here offered in a collected form, are many of them only to be found, as a reader familiar with the subject will perfectly knoAV, one here, one there, in costly editions of the Fathers or medieval writers, or in collections of

PREFACE. xiii

very rarest occurrence. The extreme difficulty I have myself experienced in obtaining several of the books which I desired to use, and the necessity under which I have remained of altogether foregoing the iise of many that I would most gladly have consulted, has sufficiently shewn me how little obvious they can be to most readers. Often too the poems one would care to possess are lost amid a quantity of verse of little or no value ; or mixed up with much which, at least for purposes such as those which the present volume is intended to serve, the reader would much prefer to have aAvay. They are to be met too, for the most part, without those helps for their profitable study which they so greatly require — with no attempt to bring them into relation with the theology of their own or of an earlier day, which at once they illustrate, and from which alone many of their allusions can be explained.

In respect of the notes with which I have sought to supply this last deficiency, I will say at once that had I followed my own inclinations, I should much have preferred to give merely the text, without adding any of these. At the same time, the longer I was engaged with these poems, the more I was struck Avith the extent to which they swarmed with Scriptural and patristic allusions, yet such as oftentimes one might miss at a first or second perusal, or, unless they were

siv FEEFACE.

pointed out, miglit overlook altogether. I felt how many passages there were, which, without some such helps, would remain obscure to many readers ; or at any rate would fail to yield up to them all the riches of meaning which they contained ; and that an Editor had no right to presume that particular kind of know- ledge upon their parts, Avhich should render the explana- tion of these superfluous. Thus none, I trust, will take ill the space bestowed on the elucidation of these typical allusions with which many of these poems so much abound nor count that I have at too great a length explained these. "Whatever the absolute worth of the medieval typology may be, its relative worth is con- siderable, giving us such insight as it does into the habits of men's thoughts in those ages, and the aspect under which they were Avont to contemplate the Holy Scriptures and the facts of which Holy Scripture is the record. Nor may Ave forget that, however the Old Testament typology is now little better than a wreck, considered as a branch of scientific theology, — the capricious and oftentimes childish abuse Avhich has been made of it having caused many to regard the Avhole matter with averseness and distaste, yet has it, as Ave are sure, a deep ground of truth ; one unaffected by the fact that Ave have been at so little pains accu- rately to determine its limits, or the laAvs Avhich are to

FBEFACE. XV

guide its application, and have thus left it open to such infinite abuse.

And yet, with the fullest sense of the necessity of giving some notes, I cannot hope that this volume has escaped that -which, with only the difference of more or less, must be the lot of all annotated books. Doubtless it has often a note where none was needed, and none where the reader might justly have looked for one. As in part an excuse for their inadequacy and imperfec- tions, I must plead the very little that had hitherto been done in this regard ; so that, although assistances from those who have gone before "are not altogether wanting, yet these are only few and insufficient. Had my own notes been exclusively, or even mainly, criti- cal, I should have felt myself bound to compose them in Latin, which has been so happily called " the alge- braic notation of criticism ; " but being in the main theological, there woiild have been much loss with no compensating gain, in putting myself under the restraints of a language in which I certainly should not have moved as easily as in my own. At the same time I have endeavoured to avoid that which I have ob- served as the common evil of notes in English, namely, the " small talk " into which they are apt to degene- rate.

In the arrangement of the different pieces which this

xvi PREFACE.

Tokime contains, two "ways seemed open to me. I might either follow the chronological order, which would have had a most real value of its own ; or else dispose, as I have done, the several poems according to an inner scheme, and thus combine them, as it were, anew into one great poem. To the choice of this last plan I was directed by the idea on which this volume is constructed. Had I desired first and mainly to illus- trate the theology of successive epochs by the aid of their hymns, or to trace the rise and growth of Latin ecclesiastical poetry, the other or chronological would have been plainly the method to have adopted ; in the same way as, had I presented these poems as documents, I should not have felt myself at liberty to make the omissions which I have occasionally made in some, with no loss I believe to the reader, and without which their length, or even a more serious flaw, might have ex- cluded them from the volume. But the personal and the devotional being my primary objects, and all else merely secondary, it was plain that the order to be followed was that Avhich should best assist and further the end I had specially in view.

That occasional liberty of omission which I have used — by which I mean, not so much presenting the fragments of a poem, as thinning it — is not, let me

PREFACE. xvii

observe, so perilous an interference with the unity, and thvis the life, of medieval, as it would be of many other, compositions. Forvi these writers thought of but little ; and were little careful to satisfy its requirements. Oftentimes indeed the instincts of Art effectually wrought in them, and what they gave forth is as perfect in form as it is in spirit. But oftentimes also the stanzas, or other component parts of some long poem, jostle, and impair the effect of, one another. It is evi- dent that the -writer had not learned the painful duty of sacrificing parts to the interests of the whole ; perhaps it had never dawned on him that, in all higher art, there is such a duty, and one needing continually to be exercised. And when this is done for him, which he would not do for himself, the effect is like that of thin- ning some crowded and overgrown forest. There is gain in every respect ; gain in what is taken away, gain for what remains : so at least it has seemed to me, Avhen on more than one occasion I have used the knife, or even the axe, of excision.

Great as is the length to which these prefatory words have run, I cannot conclude them without giving utterance to this as my earnest desire and prayer, — that there may be nothing found in these pages to minister to error, or with which wise and understanding children

PREFACE.

of our own spiritual motlier miglit be justly displeased. If I have attained this, I shall abundantly be rewarded for some anxious and laborious hours, which the pre- paration of this volume has cost me.

Itchexstoke: Jan. 1849.

PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

rriHlS VOLUME has been for several years out of -*■ print. Since the former edition was published, now some fifteen years ago, several collections of Sacred Latin Poetry have appeared. The most important of these are as follows: — Mone, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, 1853 ; in the second and third volumes, 1854, 1855, the title is changed to Hymni Latini Medii uEvi. Daniel has added two supplementary volumes (a fourth and fifth) to his Thesminis Hymno- logicus, 1855, 1856. Dr. Neale has followed up his Sequentice, 1852, with a series of articles in the Eccle- siologist ; while M. Gautier has given to the world Les CEuvi-es Poetiques d'Adam de S. Victor, 1858, 1859. Mone's is on the whole a disappointing work. The notes seem at first sight full of promise ; but on closer inspection they prove rather appendages to the text, than elucidations of it ; still, his illustrations of the Latin hymns from the Greek liturgies are often novel and interesting. Daniel by his later volumes has in- creased the obligation under which all lovers of the old

XX PBEFACE.

hymnology already lay to him ; and for myself I must praise liis magnanimity, that in reprinting a consider- able body of my notes and prefaces, he has not excluded some in which I had spoken severely of certain small inaccuracies and errors in his earher volumes. I rejoice to hear that a new edition of his Thesaurus, such as, it may be hoped, will fuse his five volumes into a harmonious whole, is preparing. Later in this volume I take occasion to speak of the happy discovery, by Gautier, of a large number of Adam of St Victor's hitherto unpublished hymns. The edition of Adam's poetical works, which in consequence of this discovery he has given to the world, is Avanting in accurate scholarship, but has, notwithstanding, been grateftdly welcomed by aU to whom this poet is dear. The too Ikvourable manner in which Dr. Neale has expressed himself in regard of any contributions of mine to the knowledge of the Latin hymnology makes it difiicult for me to say merely the truth about his own. I will only, therefore, mention that by patient researches in almost all European lands, he has brought to light a multitude of hymns unknown before ; in a treatise on Sequences, properly so called, has for the first time explained their essential character ; while to him the English reader owes versions of some of the best hymns, such as often successfully overcome the almost insuperable difficulties which many among them present to the translator.

Maelay: Aiicf. S, 1864.

CONTENTS.

PAG.

Introduction 1

HO.

POEMS.

I. . . Jucundare, plebs fidelis II. . . Psallat chorus corde mundo

III. . . Verbi vere substantiAT

IV. . . Verbum Dei, Deo natura

V. . . Stringere pauca libet bona camiinis

et ipsum ....

VI. . . Veni, Eedemptor gentium . VII. . . Prsecursoris et Baptistae VIII. . . Puer natus in Bethlehem . IX. . . Coelum gaude, terra plaude

hujus

X. . . Hie est qui, carnis intrans ergastula nostrje 104

XI. . . Nectareum rorem tcrris instUlat Olympus . 109

XII. . . Potestate, non natura . . . .111

XIII. . . Heu ! quid jaces stabulo . . . .114

XIV. . . 0 ter fcecundas, o ter jucundas . . .116 XV. . . Majestati sacrosanctae . . . .117

XVI. . , Salvete, flores martyrum . . . .121

XVII. . . Tria dona reges ferunt . . . .123

XVIII. . . Tribus signis, Deo dignis .... 127

XIX. . . Crux benedicta nitet, Dominus qu4 cjirne

pependit . ...... 130

XX. . . Quisquis ades, mediique subis in limin;

templi 132

62 63 71 75

80 87 92 97 100

xxii	CONTENTS.
KO. XXI..	. Desere jam, anima, lectiJum soporis .
XXII. .	. Salve, rnundi salutare . . . .
XXIII. .	. Quam despectus, quam dejectus .
XXIV..	. Quantum hamum caritas tibi praesentavit .
XXV. .	. Si vis vere gloriari . . . . .
XXVI. .	. Ecquis binas columbinas . . . .
XXVII. .	. Salve, festa dies, toto venerabilis sevo
XXVIII. .	. Mundi renovatio
XXIX. .	. Ha;c est dies triumphalis .
XXX..	. Mortis portis fractis, fortis .
XXXI..	. Pone luctum, Magdalena .
XXXII. .	. Ecce dies Celebris
XXXIII. .	. Zyma vetus expurgetur
XXXIV. .	. Portas vestras seternales
XXXV..	, Veni, Creator Spiritus
XXXVI. .	. Simplex in essentia
XXXVII. .	. Spiritus Sancte, Pie Paraclite
XXXVIII. .	. Veni, Creator Spiritus
XXXIX. .	. Qui procedis ab utroque
XL..	. Lux jucunda, lux insignis .
XLI. .	. Veni, Sancte Spiritus .
XLIL .	. Est locus ex omni medium quen orbe ....	a credimus
XLIII. .	. Stola regni laureatus .
XLIV. .	. Tuba Domini, Paule, maxima
XLV. .	. Sterna Clu-isti munera
XLVI. .	. Heri mundus exultavit
XLVII. ,	. Salve, tropseum glorise
XLVIII. .	. Sieut chorda musicorum
XLIX. .	. Nocte quadam, via fessus .
L. .	. Quam dilecta tabernacula .
LI..	. Eheu ! eheu ! mundi vita .
LII. .	. Ut jucundas cervus undas .
LIII. .	. Cum me tenent fallacia
LIV. .	. Sit ignis atque lux mihi
LV. .	. iEterne renim Conditor
LVI.	. Jesu dulcis memoria .
LVII.	. Taudem audite me

CONTENTS.

KO. PAG.

LVIII. . . Ornarunt terram germina . . . .251

LIX. . . Arx firma Deus noster est .... 253

LX. . . Cum sit omnis homo foenum . . . 255

LXI. . . Omnis mundi creatura .... 257

LXII. . . Nuper eram locuples, multisque beatus

amicis 260

LXIII. . . Cur mundus militat sub vana glorid . . 264

LXIV. . . Eheu ! quid homines sumus , . . 270

LXV. . . Deus homo, Rex coelorum .... 275

LXVI. . . Gravi me terrore pulsas, yitse dies ultima . 278

LXVII. . . Jam moesta quiesce querela . . . 281

LXVIII. . . Credere quid dubitem fieri quod posse pro-

batur 284

LXIX. . . Cum revolvo toto corde .... 286

LXX. . . Apparebit repentina dies magna Domini . 290

LXXI. . . Dies irae, dies ilia 296

LXXII. . . Crux ave benedieta 302

LXXIII. . . Hie breve vivitur, hie breve plangitur, hie

breve fletur 304

LXXIV. . . Urbs beata Hirusalem . . . .311

LXXV. . . Ad perennis vitse fontem mens sitivit avida 315

LXXVI. . . Astant angelorum chori .... 321

LXXVII. . . Alpha et n, magne Deus . . . .323

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

PAGE

Adam of St Victor 53

St Ambrose 84

Pistor 91

Peter the Venerable 99

Alanus 102

Hildebert 106

Maubum 114

Prudentius 119

Fortunatus 129

St Bernard • . . 136

BonaTentura ......... 142

Eobert the Second, King of France 195

Bede 217

Alard . . . 240

Abelard 206

Buttmann 253

Jacobus de Benedictis ....... 262

Balde 267

Marbod 275

Damiani .......... 277

Thomas of Celano 293

Bernard of Clugny 304

Thomas of Kempen 321

INTEODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE SUBSTITUTION OF ACCENT FOR QUANTITY IN LATIN VERSE.

THE Latin poetry of the Christian Church presents a subject which might well deserve a treatise of its own ; offering, as it does, so many sides upon which it is most worthy of regard. It is not, however, my intention to consider it except upon one side, or to pre- fix to this volume more than some necessary remarks on the relation in Avhich the J'or7ns of that poetry stand to the forms of the classic poetry of Rome ; tracing, if I may, the most characteristic differences between those of the earlier and heathen, and the later and Christian, Art. Yet shall I not herein be dealing so merely with externals, as might at first sight appear. For since the form of ought which has any real sig- nificance is indeed the manifestation and utterance of its innermost life — is the making visible, so far as that is possible, of its most essential spirit — I shall, if I rightly seize and explain the difference of the forms, be implicitly saying something, indeed much, concerning the differences between the spirit of this poetry, and that of the elder or classical poetry of Rome. A few considerations on this matter may help to

B

a INTBODUCTION.

remove oifences whicli otherwise the reader, nourished exclusively upon classical lore, might easily take at many things which in this volume he will find ; and may otherwise assist to put him in a fairer position for appreciating the compositions which it contains.

When, then, we attempt to trace the rise and growth of the Latin poetry of the Christian Church, and the manner in which, making use, in part and for a season, of what it foimd ready to its hand, it did yet detach itself more and more from the classical poetry of Eome, we take note of the going forward at the same time of two distinct processes. But these, distinct as they are, we observe also combining for the formation of the new, together giving to it its peculiar character, and constituting it something more than such a continuation of the old classical poetry, as should only differ from it in the subjects which supplied to it its theme, while in all things else it remained unchanged. These processes, as I have said, are entirely distinct from one another, have no absolutely necessaiy connexion, closely related as undoubtedly they were ; the first being the disin- tegration of the old prosodical system of Latin verse, under the gradual substitution of accent for quantity ; and the second, the employment of rhyme, within, or at the close of, the verse, as a means for marking rhythm, and a resom-ce for the producing of melody. They have no absolutely necessary connexion. There might have been the first without the second — accent without rhyme — as in our own blank heroic verse, and occasional blank lyrics ; nor are there wanting various and successful examples, in this very later Latin poetry, of the same kind. There was the second, rhyme with-

INTRODUCTION. 3

out the displacing of qiiantity by accent, in the rhymed hexameters, pentameters, and sapphics wherein the monkish poets of the middle ages indulged, still pre- serving as far as they knew, and often altogether, the laws of metrical quantity, but adding rhyme as a further ornament to the verse.

Thus the results of the two processes, namely, an accentuated, and a rhymed, poetry, might have existed separately, as indeed occasionally they do ; and grow- ing up independently of one another, they ought to be traced independently also. Yet still, since only in the union of the two could results have been produced so satisfying, so perfect in their kind, as those which the Latin sacred poetry offers to us ; since they did in fact essentially promote and sustain one another; the manner ill which they mutually re-acted one on the other, in which the one change rendered almost imperative the other, the common spirit out of which both the trans- formations proceeded, should not be allowed to pass unobserved — being rather a principal matter to which he who would explain and trace the change should direct his own and his reader's attention.

I propose to say something first on the substitution of accent for quantity, an accented for a prosodic verse ; which, however, is a subject that will demand one or two preliminary remarks.

There is one very noticeable difference between the Christian literature of the Greek and Roman world on the one side, and all other and later Christian litera- tures on the other — namely, that those Greek and Latin are, so to speak, a new budding and blossoming out of b2

4 JNTEOBUCTION.

an old stock ; and this a stock which, when the Church was founded, had already put forth, or was in the act of putting forth, all that in the natural order of things, and but for the quickening breath of a new and un- expected life, it could ever have unfolded. They are as a second and a later spring, coming in the rear of the timelier and the first. For that task which the word of the Gospel had to accomplish in all other regions of man's life, it had also to accomplish in this. It was not granted to it at first entirely to make or mould a society of its own. A harder task was assigned it — being, as it was, superinduced on a society that had come into existence, and had gradually assumed the shape which now it wore, under very different con- ditions, and in obedience to very different influences from its own. Of this it had to make the best which it could ; only to reject and to put under ban that which was absolutely incurable therein, and directly contra- dicted its own fimdamental idea ; but of the rest to assimilate to itself what was capable of assimilation ; to transmute what was willing to be transmuted ; to consecrate what was prepared to receive fi-om it a higher consecration ; and altogether to adjust, not always with perfect success, but as best it might, and often at the cost of much forbearance and self-sacrifice, its relations to the old, that had grown ujj under heathen auspices, and was therefore very different from what it would have been, had the leaven of the word of life mingled with and wrought in it from the first, instead of coming in, a later addition to it, at the end of time. Thus was it in almost every sphere of man's life and of his moral and intellectual activity ; yet we have

INTRODUCTION. 5

here to speak only of one — that, namely, of literature and language. All the modern literatures and languages of Europe Christianity has mainly made Avhat they are ; to it they owe all that characterizes them the most strongly. For although, as it needs not to say, the languages themselves reach back in their elemental rudiments to a time far anterior to the earliest in which the Gospel came, or could have come, in contact with them, or indeed had been proclaimed at all ; yet it did thus mingle with them early enough to find them still in that wondrous and mysterious process of their first evolution. They were yet plastic and fluent, as all languages are at a certain period of their existence, though a period generally just out of the ken of the history. And the languages rose to a level with the claims which the new religion of the Spirit made upon them. Formed and fashioned under its influence, they dilated till they were equal to its needs, and adequate exponents, as far as language ever can become so, of the deepest things which it possessed.*

But it was otherwise in regard of the Latin language. That, when the Church arose, requiring of it to be the organ of her Divine Word, to tell out aU the new, and as yet undreamt of, which was stirring in her bosom ; demanding of it that it should reach her needs, needs which had hardly or not at all existed, while the lan- guage was in process of formation — that was ah-eady full formed ; it had reached its climacteric, and was

* See some beautiful remarks on the Christianizing of the German language in the Thedl. Stud, und Krit., vol. xxii. p. 308, sqq. ; and again in Rudolf von Raumer's Einwirkung d. Chris- tenthums aufdie Althochdeutsche Sprache, p. 168, sqq.

6 INTEOBUCTIOK

indeed verging, though as yet imperceptibly, toward decay, with all the stiffness of commencing age already upon it. Such the Church found it — something to which a new life might perhaps be imparted, biit the first life of which it was well nigh overlived. She found it a garment narrower than she could wrap her- self withal, and yet the only one within reach. But she did not forego the expectation of one day obtaining all which she wanted, nor even for the present did she sit down entirely contented with the inadequate and insufficient. Herself young and having the sijirit of life, she knew that the future was her own — that she was set in the world for this very piurpose of making all things new — that what she needed and did not find, there must lie in her the power of educing from herself — that, though it might not be all at once, yet little by little, she could weave whatever vestments were required by her for comeliness and beauty. And we do observe the language under the new influence, as at the breath of a second spring, putting itself forth anew, budding and blossoming afresh, the meaning of words enlarging and dilating, old words coming to be used in new and higher significations, obsolete words reviving, new Avords being coined* — with much in all this to offend the classical taste, which yet, being inevitable, ought not to offend, and of which the gains far more than compensated the losses. There was a new thing, and that being so, it Avas of necessity that there should be a new utterance as well. To be offended with this is, in

* See Funccius, De Vegctd Latinm LingucB Scneciute, p. 1139, seq.

INTRODUCTION. 7

truth, to be offended with Christianity, which made this to be inevitable.

We may make application of all which has been just said to the metrical forms of the classical poetry of Rome. These the Church found ready made to her hand, and in their kind having reached a very high perfection. A true instinct must have told her at once, or after a very few trials, that these were not the metrical forms which she required. Yet it was not to l^e supposed that she should have the courage imme- diately to cast them aside, and to begin the world, as it were, afresh ; or that she should have been enabled at once to foresee the more adequate forms to be one day developed out of her own bosom. But these which she thus inherited, while she was content of necessity to use, yet could not satisfy her.* The Gospel had brought

* Dans le monde grec d'abord, puis, dans le monde romain, les Chretiens eprouverent le besoin de se serv^ir des formes de la po^sie antique et de les appliquer aux idees nouvelles. Les IV« et V® eiecles virent naitre un assez grand nombre d' efforts en ce genre, surtout en Italic et en Espagne. Evidemment, ces tenta- tives souvent renouvelees etaient sans portee, sans avenir; les sentiments Chretiens les traditions ehretiennes ne pouvaient s'accommoder des formes crepes pour un autre emploi, vieillies au service d"une autre Muse ; evidemment, la litterature chretienne devait produire sa propre forme, et c'est ce qu'elle a fait plus tari Ce n'est pas quand elle a cherche a traduire ses inspira- tions dans le langage de Virgile, qu'eUe a enfante des ou\Tages de quelque valeur ; c'est quand elle a invente son epopee, avec Dante et Milton, et son drame dans les mjsteres du moyen age, ou les actes sacramentaux de Calderon, qui ne sont qu'ime resur- rection et un raffinement des mysteres ; c'est quand elle a in- spire ces beaux cliants qui, depuis Luther, n'ont cesse de retentir sous les Youtes des eglises d'Allemagne. Alors la poesie chre- (tienne a fait son ceuvre ; jusque la elle n'ctait qu'un caique pale

8 INTBOJDUCTION.

into men's hearts longings after the infinite and the eternal, which were strange to it, at least in their pre- sent intensity, until now. Beaiity of outline, beauty of form — and what a flood of light does that one word forma, as equivalent to beauty, pour on the difference between the heathen and the Christian ideal of beauty ! — this was all which the old poetry yearned after and strove to embody ; this was all which its metrical frameworks were perfectly fitted for embodying.

But now heaven had been opened, and henceforward the mystical element of modern poetry demanded its rights; vaguer but vaster thoughts were craving to find the harmonies to which they might be married for ever. The boundless could not be content to find its organ in that, of which the very perfection lay in its limitations and its bounds. The Christian poets were in holy earnest ; a versification therefore could no longer be endured, attached, as in their case at least it was, by no living bonds to the thoughts, in Avhich sense and sound had no real correspondence with one another. The versification henceforth must have an intellectual value, which should associate it with the onward move- ment of the thoughts and feelings, whereof it professed to be, and thus indeed should be, the expression. A struggle therefore commenced from the first, between

et Tin ^cho affaibli de la poesie paienne (Ampere, Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. ii. p. 196). And again : II faut qiie le chant Chre- tien depouille entierement ees lambeaux de m^trique ancienne, qu'il se fasse completement moderne par la rime comme par l*- sentiment ; alors, on aura cette prose rimee empreinte d'une sombre harmonic, qui par la tristesse des sons et des images et le retour mena9ant de la terminaison lugubre fait pressentir Its Dante, on aura le Dies Ivce (vol. ii. p. 412).

INTRODUCTION. 9

the form and spirit, between the old heathen form and the new Christian spirit — the latter seeking to release itself from the shackles and restraints which the former imposed upon it ; and which Avere to it, not a help and a support, as the form should be, but a hindrance and a Aveakness — not liberty, but now rather a most galling bondage.* The new wine went on fermenting in the

* We see already in Prudentius the process of emancipation effectually at work, the disintegration of the old prosodic system already beginning. He still affects to \rrite, and in the main does write, prosodically ; yet with largest licences. Ko one will suppose him more ignorant than most schoolboys of fourteen would be now, of the quantitative value which the old classical poets of Italy, with whose writings he was evidently familiar, had attributed to words ; yet we continually find him attributing another value, postponing quantity to accent, or rather allowing accent to determine quantity, as in cyaneus, Sardinia, enigma. As his latest editor has observed : Metrum baud raro negligitur, quia poeta in arsi w. majorem vim accentui quam quantitati tri- buit {Obbarii Prudentius, p. 19). The whole scheme of Latin prosody must have greatly loosened its hold, before he could have used the freedom which he does use, in the shifting and altering the value of syllables. We mark in him especially a determina- tion not to be deprived altogether of serviceable words through a metrical notation excluding them in toto from a place in the hexameter. Thus he writes temulentus, delibutus, idololatrix, calceamentum, margaritum ; though as regards this last word, in an iambic verse, where there was no motive, but the contrary', for producing the antepenultima, he restores to that syllable its true quantity, and Avrites margarita. In the same way not ignorance nor caprice, but the feeling that they mnst have the word ecclesia at command, while j-et, if they left it with the antepenultima long, it could never find place in the pentameter, and only in one of its cases in the hexameter, induced the almost universal shortening of that syllable among the metrical writers of the Church. Amid the many motives which prompted the

lo INTRODUCTION.

old bottles, till it burst tliem asunder, tliougli not itself to be spilt and lost in the process, but so to be gathered into nobler chalices, vessels more fitted to contain it —

Christian poets to strive after emancipation from the classical rules of quantity, first to slight, and then to cast them off, this had its weight : true, the opposition to the metrical scheme lay deeper than this, -which was but one moment of it : yet the fact, that the chief metres excluded a vast number of the noblest and even most necessary words, and though not absolutely excluding, rendered many more inadmissible in most of their inflexions, — this must have been peculiarly intolerable to them. Craving the whole domain of words for their own, finding it only too narrow for the uttering of all they were struggling to express, desiring, too, as must all whose thoughts and feelings are real, that their words should fit close to their sense, they could ill endure to be shut out from that which often was the best and fittest, by arbitrary, artificial, and to them unmeaning restrictions. Thus Augustine distinctly tells us that he composed his curious Psalmvs contra fartem Bonati in the rhythm which he did, that so he might not be hampered or confined in his choice of words by the necessities of metre: Ideo autem non aliquo carminis genere id fieri volui, ne me necessitas metrica ad aliqua verba quae vulgo minus sunt usitata compeUeret. Carmen signifies here a poem composed after the old classical models ; his own, as being popularly and not metrically written, he counts only a canticum. The distinctive and statelier diction of the carmen is indicated by Terentianus Maurus, 298 :

Verba si non obvia Carminis servant honorem, non jacentis canlici.

One has but to turn to the lyrical poems of Horace, to be- come at once aware of the wealth of words, which for the writer of the hexameter and pentameter may be said not to exist. What a world, for example, of noble epithets — tumultuosus, luetuosus, formidolosus, fraudulentus, contumax, pervicax, in- solens, intaminatus, fastidiosus, periculosus — with many more among the most poetical words in the language, are under the ban of a perpetual exclusion.

nJTEODUCTIOK ii

new, even as that ■which was poured into them was new.

We can trace step by step the struggle between the two principles of heathen and Christian life, Avhich were here opposed to one another. As the classical or old Roman element grew daily weaker in the new Christian world which noAV had been founded ; as the novel element of Christian life strengthened and gained ground ; as poetry became popular again, not the cul- tivated entertainment of the polite and lettered few, a graceful amusement of the scholar and the gentleman, but that in which all men desired to express, or to find expressed for them, their hopes and fears, their joys and their soiTows, and all the immortal longings of their common humanity; — a confinement became less and less endurable within the old and stereotyped forms, which, having had for their own ends their fitness and ])eauty, were yet constituted for the expressing of far other thoughts, sentiments, and hopes than those which now stirred at far deeper depths the spirits and the hearts of men. The whole scheme on which the Latin prosodical poetry was formed, was felt to be capricious, imposed from Avithout ; and the poetry which now arose demanded — not, indeed, to be without law ; for, demanding this, it would have demanded its own de- struction, and not to be poetry at all ; but it demanded that its laws and restraints should be such as its own necessities, and not those of quite a different condition, required.*

* The Instructiones of Commodianus, a poem quite valueless in a literary point of view, is yet curious in this respect; and the more curious now that it is placed by scholars iu the latter

12 I^'TEODUCTION.

It is something more than mere association, more than the fact that these metres, in all of most illustrious

half of the third centurj- rather than in the fourth, where it used to be set. Very singular is it to find, more than a hundred years before the last notes of the classical muse had expired in Claudian, a poem of considerable length composed on the system of a total abandonment of quantity, and substitution of accent in its room — maintaining the apparent framework of the old clas- sical hexameter, but filling it up on a principle entirely new. Nor can we suppose that a poem so long, and in its fashion so elaborate, is the first specimen of its kind, however it is the first which has come down to our days. It is of so little value as to be in few hands ; three or four lines may therefore be quoted as a specimen. These are part of a remonstrance against the pomp of female dress, § 60 :

Obniitis collum monilibus, gemmis, et auro, Kecnon et inaiires gravissimo pondere pendent : Quid memorem vestes et totam Zabuli pompam ? Eespuitis legem, ciim vultis mundo placere.

Utterly prosaic if regarded as poetry, this work still bears the marks of a strong moral earnestness, is the utterance of one who had something to say to his brethren, and was longing to say it : and no doubt here lay that which tempted the writer to forsake a system of versification which had become intolerably artificial in his time and for him ; and to develop for himself, or finding developed to use, one in which he should in great part be released from its arbitrary obligations. In the following lines, forming part of a hymn first published by Niebuhr {Ehein. Museum, 1829, p. 7), lines plainly intended to consist of four dactyles each, dactyles, that is, in soimd, which with a little favouring of one or two syllables, they may be made to appear, there is the same intention of satisfjang the ear with accentuated and not prosodic feet. The lines relate to St Paul, and ai'e themselves worthy to be quoted :

Factus oeconomus in domo regiS,

Divini munoris appone fercula;

tJt qu!e repleverit te sapientia.

Ipsa nos repleat tua per dogmata.

This hymn also, though considerably later than the poem of

rSTEODUCTION. 13

and most memorable "which had been composed in them, had been either servants of the heathen worship, or at least appropriated to heathen themes, which in- duced the Church little by little to forsake them : Avhich even at this day causes them at once to translate us into, and to make us feel that we are moving in, the element of heathen life. The bond is not thus merely historic and external, but spiritual and inward. And yet, at the same time, the influence of these associations must not be overlooked, when we are estimating the causes which wrought together to alienate the poets and hymnologists of the Christian Church ever more and more from the classical, and especially from the lyrical, metres of antiquity, and which urged them to seek more appropriate forms of their own. In those the heathen gods had been celebrated and sung, the whole impure mythology had been arrayed and tricked out. Were they not profaned for ever by these unholy uses to which they had been first turned ? How could the praises of the true and living God be fitly sung in the same ? A like feeling to that which induced the abandonment of the heathen temples, and the seeking rather to develop the existing basilicas into Christian churches, or where new churches were built, to build them after the fashion of the civil, and not the religious, edifices already existing, must have been here also at work. The faithful would have often shrunk from the involuntary associations which these metres suggested, as we should shrink from hearing a psalm or spiritual

Commodianus, is certainly of a very early date. Niebuhr thinks lie finds evidence in the MS. from which it is taken, that it cannot be later than the seventh century.

14 INTRODUCTION.

song fitted to some tune wliicli had been desecrated to lewd or otherwise profane abuse. And truly there is, and we find it even now, a clinging atmosphere of heathen life shed round many of these metres, which it is almost impossible to dissipate ; so that, reading some sacred thoughts which have arrayed themselves in sapphics,* or alcaics, or hendecasyllables, we are more or less conscious of a certain contradiction between the form and the subject, as though they were awk- wardly and unfitly matched, and one or other ought to have been different from what it is.

The wonderful and abiding success of the hymns of St Ambrose, and of those so-called Ambrosian which were formed upon the model of his, lay doubtless in great part in the wise instinct of choice, which led him to select a metre by far the least markedly metrical, and the most nearly rhythmical, of all the ancient metres out of which it was free to him to choose ; — I mean the iambic dimeter. The time was not yet come Avhen it was possible altogether to substitute rhythm for metre : the old had stiU too much vitality to be cast aside, the new had not yet clearly shaped itself forth ; but choosing thus, he escaped (as far as it was possible, using these forms at all, to escape,) the dis- turbing reminiscences and associations of heathen art.f While in a later day hardly anything so strongly

* Take, for instance, this from a sapphic ode in honour of the

Baptist :

Oh nimis felix, meritiqiie celsi, Nescius labem nivei puiloris, Pra?potens martpr, eremique cultor Maxime vatum.

t See Bahr, Die Christl. Dichter Boms, p. 7.

INTEOBUCTION. 15

revealed the extent to Avhich Roman Catholic Italy had fallen back under pagan influences, -was penetrated through and through at the revival of learning with the spirit of heathen, and not of Christian, life, as the offence which Avas then everywhere taken by Italian chui'chmen, Leo the Tenth at their head, at the un- metrical hymns of the Chiu'ch, and the determination manifested to reduce them by force, and at the cost of any wrong to their beauty and perfection, to metre ; — their very exemption from which was their glory, and that which made them to be Christian hymns in the highest sense.*

This movement, then, which began early to manifest itself, for an enfranchisement fi-om the old classical forms, this impatience of their restraints, was essen- tially a Christian one. Still we cannot doubt that it was

* The history of the successive revisions which the non- metrical hymns sustained, is given by Arevalus, an enthusiastic admirer of the process, in his Hymnodia Uispanica, Eoms", 1786, pp. 121 — 144, with this ominous heading : Eomauorum Pontificum in reformanda Hymnodia Diligentia. Daniel ( Thc- saurus Hymnologicus, Halis, 1841 ; Lipsise, 1844 — 6) has fre- quently given in parallel columns the hymn as it existed in earlier times, probably as it came from the author, and as it was recast in the Roman breviary. The comparison is very in- structive, as shewing how well-nigh the whole grace and beauty, and even vigour, of the composition had disappeared in the process. With Scripture upon our side, it would not much trouble us, if Rome had for the present that sesthetical supe- riority, that keener sense of artistic beauty, which she claims : this would not trouble us, since, ultimately, where truth is, there highest beauty must be as well. But such facts as these, or as the hideous Italian Churches of the last three himdred years, need to be explained and accounted for, before she can make good her claim.

i6 ' INTRODUCTION.

assisted and made easier by the fact that the metrical system, against Avhich the Church protested, and from . which it sought to be delivered, had been itself brought in from without. Itself of foreign growth, it could oppose no such stubborn resistance as it would have done, had it been native to the soil, had its roots been entwined strongly Avith the deepest foundations of the Latin tongue. But this they were not. It is abun- dantly known to all who take any interest in the early poetry of Eome, that it was composed on prin- ciples of versification altogether different from those which were introduced with the introduction of the Greek models in the sixth century of the City — that Latin hexameters, or ' long ' verses, were in aU proba- bility first composed by Ennius*, while the chief lyric metres belong to a much later day, having been intro- duced, some of the simpler kinds, as the sapphic by Catullus, and the more elaborate not till the time, and only through the successful example, of Horace.f It is known too that while the hexameter took comparatively a firm root in the soil, and on the whole could not be said to be alien to the genius of the Latin tongue, the lyric metres remained exotics to the end, were never truly acclimated, — nothing worth reading or being pre- served having been produced in them, except by those who first transplanted them from Greek to Italian ground.| It was not that the Latin language should

* Cicero, Be Legg. ii. 27. .

t Horace, Epistt. i. 19, 21—34.

\ Quintilian's judgment of his countrymen's achievements in lyric poetry is familiar to most {Instit. Orat. x. 1, 96) : Lyrico- rum Horatius fere solus legi dignus.

INTB OD UCTIOy. 1 7

be without its great lyric utterances, and sucli as shoiild be truly its own ; but it was first to find these in the Christian hymns of the middle ages.

The poetry of home growth, — the old Italian poetry which was thrust out by this new, — was composed, as we learn from the fragments which survive, and from notices lying up and down, on altogether a diiFerent basis of versification. There is no reason to believe that quantity, except as represented by and identical with accent, was recognized in it at all. For Avhile accent belongs to every language and to every age of the language, — that is, in pronouncing any Avord longer than a monosyllable, an ictus or stress must fall on one syllable more than on others, — quantity is an invention more or less arbitrary. At how late a period, and how arbitrarily, and as from without, it was imposed on the Latin, the innumerable anomalies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the prosodical system of the language sufficiently testify.

. I know, indeed, that some have denied the early Latin verse to have rested on a merely accentual foundation. I certainly Avould not have gone out of my way to meddle with a controversy upon which such high names are ranged upon either side. But lying as it does so directly in my path as not to be avoided, I cannot forbear saying, that, having read and sought to make myself master of what has come within my reach upon the ques- tion, and judging by the analogy of all other popular poetry, I am convinced that Ferdinand Wolf*, Bahr f,

* Ucbcr die Lais, p. 159.

t Gcsch. d. Romischer Litieratur, vol. i. p. 89; Edelestand du Meril, Puesics j)oj>ulaircs Latines, Paris, lSi3, p. 45. C

1 8 ZATT? OD UCTIOK

and those others are in the right, who, admitting indeed the existence of Saturnian, that is old Italian, verses, deny that there was properly any such thing as a Satur- nian metre — that is, any fixed scheme or frame-work of long and short feet, after the Greek fashion, according to which these verses were composed ; these consisting rather, as all ballad-poetry does, of a loosely defined number of syllables, not metrically disposed, but with places sufficiently marked, upon which a stress of the voice fell, to vindicate for them the character of verse.* Into Avhat these numbers would have unfolded themselves, as the nation advanced in culture, and as the ear, gradually growing nicer and more exacting iu its requirements, claimed a finer melody, it is not easy to say ; but Latin poetry at all events, as it would have had a character, so would it have rested on a basis of versification, which was its own. And knowing this, we can scarcely sympathize without reserve in the satis- faction which Hoi-ace expresses at the change Avhich presently came over it ; however we may admit that, with the exception of his one greater predecessor, he accomplished more than any other, to excuse and justify, and even to reconcile us to, the change. That change came, as is familiar to all, when, instead of being allowed such a process of natural developement from

* It is characteristic of this, that numeri should be the proper Latin word for verses rather than any word which should cor- respond to the Greek metre. The Romans, in fact, counted their syllables and did not measiu'e them, a certain number of these constituting a rhythm. 2sumeri is only abusively applied to verses which rest on music and time, and not on the number of the eylliibles (Niebuhr, Lectures on Early Bojnan History, p. 11).

INTRODUCTION. 19

"witliin, it was drawn out of its own orbit by the too prevailing attractions of the Greek literature, within the sphere and full influence of which the conqi;ests of the sixth century brought it, — though indeed, that in- fluence had commenced nearly a century before.*

It is, indeed, a perilous moment for a youthful litera- ture,— so youthful as not yet to have acquired confidence in itself, — and, though full of latent possibilities of great- ness, having hitherto actually accomplished little, — to be brought within the sphere of an elder, which is now ending a glorious course, and Avhich offers to the younger for its imitation finished forms of highest beauty and perfection. Most perilous of all is it, if these forms are not so strange, but that with some little skill they may be transplanted to the fresher soil, with a fair promise of growing and flourishing there. For the younger to adhere to its own forms and fashions, rude and rugged, and as yet only most imperfectly worked out — to believe that in them, and in cleaving to them, its true future is laid up, and not in appropri- ating the more elaborate models which are now offered ready to its hands — for it thus to refuse to be dazzled by the prospect of immediate results, and of overleaping a stage or two of slow and painful progress, this is in- deed most hard ; the temptation has proved oftentimes too strong to be resisted.

It was so in the case which we are considering now. The Itoman spirit could not, of course, utterly disap- pear, or be entirely supprest. Quite sufficient of that

* See the limitations upon Horace's well-known words, Grrecia capta ferum victorem eepit (Epp. ii. 1, 156), which Orelli (in loc.) puts, and in like manner Niebuhr. c 2

20 INTBODUCTION.

spirit has remained to vindicate for Roman literature an independent character, and to free it fr'om the charge of being merely the echo and imitation of something else ; but the Eoman forms did nearly altogether disap- pear, and even the Eoman spirit was very considerably depressed and affected by the alien influence to which it was submitted.

The process, in truth, was wonderfully like that "which found place, when, in the first half of the six- teenth century, the national poetry of Spain yielded to the influence of Italian models, and Castillejo was obliged to give place to Boscan and Garcilasso. The points of resemblance in these parallel cases are many. Thus in either case, the conquered, and at tliat time, morally, and so far as strength went, intellectually, far inferior people, — the people, therefore, with much less of latent productivity for the future, whatever may have been the marvels it had accomplished in the past, — imposed its literary yoke on the conquering and the nobler nation ; caused it in a measure to be ashamed of that which hitherto it had effected, or of all which, continuing in its own line, it was likely to bring to pass. Nor was this the only point in which the processes were similar. There were other points of resemblance — as this, that it is impossible to deny but that here, as there, poetry of a very high order was composed upon the new models. Great results came of the change, and of the new direction in which the national taste was turned. Every thing, in short, came of it but the one thing, for the absence of which all else is but an insufficient com- pensation ; namely, a thoroughly popular literature, which should truly smack of the soil from which it

INTROBUCTIOX. 21

sprung, Avhicli should be the utterance of a nation's own life; and not merely accents, "which, however sweet or musical, were yet caught from the lips of another, and only artificially fitted to its own.

But with the fading and growing Aveak of every thing else in the classical literature of Kome, this foreign usui'pation faded and grew weak also. It is more than possible, for indeed Ave have satisfactory evidence to the fact, that traditions of the old rhythms were preserved in the popular poetry throughout the whole period during which the metrical forms borroAved from the Greek were alone in \'ogue at the capital, and among those Avho laid claim to a learned education, that Saturnian or old Italian A^erses lived upon the lips of the people during all this interval.* We have continual allusion to such rustic melodies : and even Avere Ave

* Miiratori {Anflqq. Ital. Diss. 40) : Itaque duplex Poeseos genus olim exsurrexit, alterum antiquius, sed ignobile ac ple- beium ; alterum nobile et a doctis tantummodo viris excultum. lUud rhythmkiim, illud nutricum appellatuni est. Sed quod po- tissimum est animadvertendum, quamquain Metrica Poesis primas arripuerit, omniumque meliorum suifragio et usu probata lau- dibus ubique ornaretur : attamen Rhythniica Poesis non prop- terea defecit apud Graecos atque Latinos. Quum enim vulgus in- doctum et rustiea gens Poetam interdum agere vellet, nee legibus metri addiscendis par erat ; quales poterat, versus elFormare per- rexit: hoc est, Ehythmo coutenta, Metrum coutemsit: Metrum, in- quani, hoc est, rigidas prosodise leges, quas perfecta Poesis sequitur. So Santen, iu his Notes on Terentlanus Maurus, p. 177 : Nee tamen post Gneciae numeros, ab Andronico agresti Latio introdue- tos, vetus Saturniorum modorum rustieitas cessavit, immo vero non solum ejus vestigia, sed ipsa etiam res in omne Eevum superstes man.sit. Yet he has certainly committed an OA-ersight in adducing among his jjroofs the well-known lines of Ilorace, Ejjj). ii. 1. loG —

22 INTR OB UCTION.

without any such, we might confidently affirm that a people could never have been without a poetry, which existed under circumstances so favourable for its pro- duction as the Italian peasantry ; and, if possessing a poetry, that it would be such as should find its expression in the old Italian numbers, and not in the Greek exotic metres. It is true that verses composed in these old and native numbers, on rhythmic, and not on metrical, principles, do not openly re-appear, that is, with any claims to be considered as literature, until the foreign domination began to relax its hold ; but that no sooner was this the case, than at once they witness for tlieir presence, putting themselves forth anew.*

160, in which, having spoken of the ruder vei'ses of an earlier day- he goes on to say :

. . . sed in longum tamen sevum Mariserunt, hodieque manent vestigia niris.

All that he is here affirming is, that there M-ere yet marks of rusti- city (vestigia ruris) which had not been quite got rid of, cleaving to the cultivated poetry of his country, to that which in the main ■was formed upon Greek models. Muratori falls into the same error, who explains the words of Horace in this way : Hoc est, quamvis a Grsecis didicerimus metri regulas, et pro rudibus rus- ticorum rhythmis castigatos nunc politosque versus confieiamus, attamen rhythmica poesis perduravit semper et adhuc apud vul- gus viget.

* There is much instructive on this subject in a little article by Niebuhr, in the Ehein. Museum, 1829, p. 1 — 8. On the re- appearance of the supprest popular poetiy of Italy, he says : Es ist auch wohl sehr begreiflich wie damals, als das eigentliche Latein, und die Formen der Litteratur nur miihselig durch die Schulen erhalten wurden, manches, volksmiissige sich freymachte, wieder empor kam, und einen Platz unter dem einnahm, was die verblodete Schule seit Jahrhunderten geweiht hatte. Der neu- griechische politische Vers, welch er dem Tact des Tanzes ent-

INTRODUCTION. 23

As sometliing of an analogous case, we know that many words which Attius and Ngevius used, and which during the Augustan period seemed to have been entirely lost, do begin to emerge and present themselves afresh in Appuleius, Prudentius, and TertulHan. The number of words which are thus not Augustan, and yet are at once ante- and /)06-i- Augustan, must have struck every attentive observer of the growth and progress of the Latin tongue. The reappearance of these in writers of the silver age, is often explained as an affected seek- ing of archaisms on their parts ; yet much more probably, the words were under literary ban for a time, but had lived on in popular speech, and when that ban was removed, or Avas unable any more to give effect to its decrees, shewed themselves anew in books, as they had always continued alive in the common language of the people.

By thus going back toward the origins of the Latin literature, we can better understand how it came to pass, that when there arose up in the Christian Church a desire to escape from the confinement of the classical metres, and to exchange metrical for rhythmical laws, the genius of the language lent, instead of opposing, itself to the change. It was instinctively conscious, that this new Avhich Avas aimed at was also the old, indeed, the oldest of all ; the recovering of a natural position from an unnatural and strained one: — to which there- fore it reverted the more easily.

spricht, ist ja der namliche wonach Konig Philippus siegstrunken taiizte:

Ari)J.o<TdiVT\s Ar)fxo(j&4vovs Ylaiavniis rdo' elire —

nur dass Accent, nicht Sylbenmaass, dabey beachtet ■w'ird.

24 INTB OB UCTION.

And other motives, — having their origin no le&s in the same fact, that quantity was not indigenous to the Latin soil, and therefore had struck no deep root, and obtained no wide recognition, in the iiniversal sense of the people, — were not wanting to induce the poet of these later times to abandon the ancient metres, and expatiate in the freer region of accented verse. Such a consummation was helped on and hastened by that gradual ignorance of the quantity of words, which, with the waning and fading away of classical learning under the barbarian invasions, became every day Avider spread. Even where the poet himself was sufficiently acquainted with the quantitative value of words, the number of readers or hearers who still kept this knowledge was every day growing less in the Eoman world ; the majority being incapable of appreciating his skiU, or finding any satisfying melody in his versification, the principles of which they did not imderstand ; while the accentual value of words, as something self-evident, Avould be recognized by every ear.

And this fact that it was so, wrought effectually in another way. For perhaps the most important step of all, for the freeing of verse from the fetters of prosody, and that which Avas most fatal to the maintenance of the old metrical system, was the introduction of liturgic chanting into the services of the Church — although this indeed was only the working out, in a particular direction, of that new spirit which was animating it in every part. The Christian hymns were composed to be sung, and to be sung at first by the whole congregation of the faithful, Avho were only little by little thrust out from their share in tliis part of the service. But the

INTROBUCTION. 25

classiccal or prosodical valuation of words would have been clearly inappreciable by the greater number of those whom it was desired thus to draw in to take part in the worship. If the voices of the assembled multi- tudes were indeed claimed for this, it could only be upon some scheme which shoiild commend itself to all by its simplicity — which should appeal to some principle intelligible to every man, Avhether he had received an education of the schools, or not. Quantity, with its values so often merely fictitious, and so often inconsistent one with another, could no longer be main- tained as the basis of harmony. The Church naturally fell back on accent, which is essentially popular, ap- pealing to the common sense of every ear, and in its broader features, in its simple rise and fall, appre- ciable by all ; — which had also in its union Avith music this advantage, that it allowed to those, who were much more concerned about what they said, than how they said it, and could ill brook to be crossed and tm-ned out of their way by rules and restraints, the necessity ot which they did not acknowledge, far greater liberty than quantity would have allowed them ; inasmuch as the music, in its choral harmonies, was ever ready to throAV its broad mantle over the verse, to conceal its weakness, and, where needful, to cover its multitude of sins.*

* See F. Wolf, Ucbcr die Lais, p. 82—84.

a6 INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER II.

ON RHYME IN LATIN VERSE.

rppIIS much on the substitution of accent for quantity. J- But hand in hand with the process of exchanging metre for a merely accentuated rhythm went another movement, I mean the tendency to rhyme. Of this it might doubtless be affirmed no less than of the other, that it was only a recovery of the lost ; having its fii'st origin, or at all events its very clear anticipation, in the early national poetry of Rome. This too, except for that event which gave to the Latin language a second lease of life, and evoked from it capacities which had been dormant in it hitherto, might not and probably would not now have ever unfolded itself there, the fii'st and apparently more natural opportunity having long since past away. Such an opportunity it had once enjoyed. There is quite enough in the remains of early Latin poetry which we possess, to shew that rhyme was not a new element, altogether alien to the language, which was forced upon it by the Christian poets in the days of its decline. There were early preludings of that which should indeed only fully and systematically unfold itself at the last. The tendencies of the Saturnian, and of such other fragments of ancient Latin verse as have reached us, to terminations of a like sound, have been often noticed*, as this from the Andromache of Ennius :

* Lange however goes much too far, when he aflBrms (see Jahn, Jalirhiich dcr Philologic, 1830, p. 256) that it systoma-

INTEODUCTION. 27

Hsec omnia vldi inflammari, Priamo vi vitam evitari, JoTis aram sanguine turpari.

The following, of more uncertain authorship, is quoted by Cicero {Tusc. 1, 28):

Ccehmi nitescere, arbores frondescere, Yites Ifetifipse pampinis pubescere, Kami bacarum ubertate incurvescere.

tjf that poetry rhyme may be considered a legiti- mate ornament. And even after a system had been introduced resting on altogether different principles of versification, that, I mean, of the Greek metres, yet was it so inborn in the langiiage and inherent to it, that it continually made its appearance ; being no doubt only with difficulty avoided by those writers, whose stricter sense of beauty taught them not to catch at ornaments which were not properly theirs ; and easily attained by those, who with a more questionable taste were Avell pleased to sew it as a purple patch on a garment of altogether a different material.* Thus we cannot doubt

tically found place in the old popular poetry of Rome ; which was Casaubon's opinion as well {ad Pcrs. Sat. i. 93, 94). Nake [Ekein. Museum, 1829, p. 388-392) takes a more reasonable view.

* See Bahr, Gcsch. d. Bom. Litcratur, vol. ii. p. 681. It is evident that the Latin prose ■writers, even the best, and the comic writers whose verse was so like to prose, were quite willing some- times to avail themselves of the satisfaction which the neai* recurrence of words of a similar sound affords to the ear. Thus Cieerohimself (7?ri<^. 87) : Volvcndi sunt libri Catonis : intelliges nihil illius lineamentis, nisi eorum pigmentorum, quae invents! nondum erant, Jlorcm et colorem defiiisse. So Pliny the younger: Illam vcram et meram Grseciam. And Plautus {Cistdl. i. I, 70): Amor et mdle ct fdlc est fecundissimus. And Caracalla of tho

28 /ATi? OD UCTION.

that these coincidences of sound were sedulously avoided by so great a master of the proprieties as Virgil — in whose works therefore rhyming verses rarely appear : while it is difficult not to suspect that they were some- times sought, or, if not sought, yet not diligently shunned, but rather welcomed when they offered them- selves, by Ovid, in whom they occur far more fre- quently, and whose less severe taste might not have been unwilling to appropriate this as well as the more legitimate adornments which belonged to the verse that he was using.

They occur indeed, verses with middle and with final rhymes, in every one of the Latin poets. Thus, as examples of the middle rhyme, we have in Ennius : Non eauponantes belluin, sed belligerautes ;

and in Virgil :

Limus ut hie durescit, et hsec ut cera liquescit ; so too in Ovid :

Quem mare carpentem, substrictaque crura gerentem ;

brother whom he murdered : Sit licet dims, dummodo non ■vivus. In the Christian prose-writers they are more frequent still, especially in Augustine. All readers of his will remember how often such chimes as this (having reference to Steplien's sharp chiding of the Jews) recur: Lingua clamat, cor ainat ; or this, on the two Testaments : In Novo patent, quae in Yetere latent ; or, on the Christian's ' hope of glory' : Prrecedat spes, ut sequatur res ; or, on faith : Quid est enim fides, nisi credere quod non vides ? or, interpreting John xxi. 9 : Piscis etssus, Christus est passtis ; or, on obedience and reward : Hoc agamus h"ne, ut illud habeamus p/ene; or, once more, of the Heavenly City : Ibi nuUus oritur, quia nullus tnoritur. Nake {Rhein. Museum, 1829, pp. 392-401) has accumulated examples in like kind from almost all the Latin prose writers.

INTBOBUCTIOy. 29

and again :

Quot ccelum Stellas, tot habet tua Eoma puellas ; and in a pentameter :

Quperebaut flaTOS per nemus omne faros ; and in Martial :

Sic leve flavorum valeat genus Usipionim ;

thus also in Claudiau :

Flava cruentariim prcetenditur umbra jubarum.

These examples might easily be multiplied. As we descend lower, leonine verses become still more fre- quent. They abound in the Mosella of Ausonius.

Nor less have we final rhymes even in Virgil, as the following :

Nee non Tarquinium ejectum Porsena jiibebat Accipere, ingentique urbera obsidione premebat.

and again :

omnis campis diffugit arator, Omnis et agricola, et tuta latet area yiator.*

and in Horace, as in his well-known precept :

Non satis est pulcra esse poemata ; dulcia sunto, Et quocumque volent, animum auditoris agimto.

once more :

Multa recedentes adimunt. Ne forte seniles Mandentur juveni partes, pueroque viriles.

As we reach the silver age^ they are more frequent : they abound in Lucan, though one example may suffice :

Crimen erit Superis et me fecisse nocentem, Sidera quis mundumque velit spectare cadentem ? f

* Other examples of this in Virgil, Mn. i. 319, 320; iii. 656, 657 ; iv. 256, 257 (where see Forbiger) ; v. 385, 386 ; viii. 620, 621.

t I have not seen any collection of o/xoioreAeuro ouc of Greek

30 INTRODUCTION.

When therefore at a later day rhyme began to enter as a permanent element into poetical composition, and to be accounted almost its necessary condition, this was not the coming in of something wholly strange or new. Rhyme, though new to Latin verse in the extent to which it was now adopted, yet had already made itself an occasional place even in the later or prosodic poetry of Rome ; as no doubt it Avas, and Avould have continued to be, of far more frequent recurrence in that earlier national poetry, which, as we have seen, was supprest without having ever reached its full and natu- ral development.

This much may be said in proof that the germs, so to speak, of rhyme were laid in the versification already existing, that it had that ' early anticipation ' which one has urged as among the sure marks of a true develop- ment. Here indeed it would be a serious mistake, and one which all the documents that have reached us would refute, to regard the hexameter or pentameter as the earliest sphere in which rhyme disj^layed itself, the attempt having been first made to reconcile the old and the new, and to preserve the advantages of both ; while

poetry, in which, indeed, they would be scarcely of so frequent occurrence as in I/atin. The author of the treatise Be Vita et Poesi Homer i, sometimes ascribed to Plutarch, adduces (c. 35) the SfioioTeKevTov as one among the crx^i/itaTo of the Homeric poetry, and very distinctly recognizes the charm which rhyme has for the oar ; for, having instanced as an example,

he goes on to say : Ta Se elprjatva Kol TO, roiavra /xaXiffTa

rSTEOBUCTIOX. 31

only at a later day it was discovered that the two were incompatible, and that nothing of abiding value could result from this attempt to superinduce rhyme upon a system of versification resting wholly on a different basis, and to which it served but as a new patch iipon an old garment. The regular addition of rhyme to the old Greek and Latin metres, with all the artificial and laborious refinements into which this ran, Avas of much later date than the birth of rhyme itself in the Latin poetry of the Church, the first leonine verses, or hexa- meters with internal rhyme, not certainly dating higher than the sixth, and any large employment of them than the eighth or ninth, centuries ; other more elaborate arrangements of rhyme being later still. Ehyme itself, on the contrary, belongs to the third and fourth cen- turies : and that poetry in which it first appears was far too genial and true a birth of something altogether different from literary idleness, to have fallen into any tricks or merely artificial devices, such as were after- wards abundantly born of the combined indolence and ingenuity of the cloister.* Rather it displayed itself first in lines, which, having a little relaxed the strict-

* See the wonderfully curious and complex rules about rhyme, and directions for an infinite variety of its possible arrangements, in Eberhard's Lahyrinthus, a sort of Ars Poctica of the middle ages, published in Leyser's Hist. Poett. Mid. Mvi, p. 832-837. Something may be fitly said here on the leonine, and other kinds of Terses, more or less nearly related to the leonine, which figure so prominently in the literary productions of those ages. The name leonine, which is sometimes, although wrongly, extended to lines with final as well as with sectional or internal rhymes, has been variously derived from various persons of the name of

32 INTRODUCTION.

ness of metrical observance, sought to find a compensa- tion for this in similar closes to the verse — being at

Leo, who were presumed first to hare written them. Thus Eberhard :

Sunt inventoris de nomine dicta Leonis.

Oftener still they have been derived from one Leonius or Leo- ninus, a canon of Notre Dame and Latin versifier of the twelfth century. We have a curious example here of the manner in which literary opinions once started are repeated again and agam, no one taking the trouble to enquire into their truth. For, in the first place, it is certain that leonine verses existed long before his time. Muratori {Antt. Ital. Diss. 40) has abundantly proved this, adducing perfect leonine verses which belong to the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries ; as the follow- ing, which do not date later than the ninth :

Arbor sacra Crucis fit mundo semita lucis ; Quam qui portavit, nos Chiistus in astra levavit.

And thus too J. Grimm (Latciti. Ged. d. x. u. xr. JH. p. xxiv) : In Deutschland ersclieinen leoninische Verse gleich mit demBeginn der lateinischeu Dichtkunst, und sind die Lieblings- form der Mouehe vom neunten bis zum funfzehnten Jahrhundert. Some, still wishing to trace up the leonines to this Leonius, have urged, tliat though not the first to compose, he was the first to bring these verses to any perfection (Muratori, vol. iii. p. 687). But this is only propping up error with error; for Edelestand du Meril asserts (Poesies populaires Latines, p. 78) from actual inspection, that in his poetry, which is considerable in bulk, there does not occur a single leonine verse (except, I suppose, such accidental ones as will escape from almost every metrical writer in Latin). His chief poem, on the history of the Old Testament, is in the ordinary heroic metre. Tliere is indeed one epistle written with final or tail rhymes, but no other portion of his poetry with rhyme at aU. Du Meril himself falls in with the other derivation, namely, that this metre was so called, because as the lion is king of beasts, so is this the king of metres ; or "as one has said : Leonini dicuntur a leone, quia sicut leo inter alias feras majus habet dominium, ita ha;c species

INTEODUCTIOK 33

this time very far from that elaborate and perfect instiniment which it afterwards became. "We may trace

versuum. Slow as one may be to admit this kingly superiority of the leonine verse, it must be acknowledged that some- times it is no infelicitous form for an epigram or a maxim, uttering it both with point and conciseness. We may take the following in proof:

Permutant mores homines, cum dantur honores :

Corde stat inflato pauper honors dato.

Or this, expressing an important truth in the spiritual life :

Cum bene pugnabis, cum cuncta subacta putabis, Quse mox iniestat, vincenda superbia restat.

or this, on the different ways in which wise and foolish accept

reproof :

Argue consnltum, te diliget ; argue stultmn, Avertet vultum, nee te dimittet inultum.

or on hid talents :

In mundo duo sunt, quse nil, abscondita, prosunt ; Fossus humi census, latitans in pectore sensus.

or this, on the permanence of early impressions :

QusB nova testa capit, inveterata sapit. or this, on the venality of Rome :

Curia Romana non quserit ovem sine lana ;

Dantes exaudit, non dantibus ostia claudit.

or once more, on the need of elementary teacliing :

Pam's Imljutii?;, tentabis grandia tutus. Not a few proverbs clothe themselves in this form ; as the following :

Est avis ii; dextra melior quam quattuor extra.

Kon habet anguillam, per caudam qui tenet illam.

Sepes calcatur qua pronior esse putatur.

Amphora sub veste raro portatur honeste.

Quo miiiime reris de gurgite pisce frueris.

And here is a brief epigi-am in praise of Clairvaux Clara vale Valiis, plus Claris clara metallis ; Tu, nisi me laiUs, es rectus ad Eethera caUis.

They were sometimes used in more festive verse, which also they did not misbecome :

CervisiK spemo potum, prEeseute Falemo, Sed tiuucn banc qmuro, deficiente mere. D

3+ INTRODUCTION.

it step by step from its rude, timid, and uncertain beginnings, till, in the later hymnologists of the twelfth

Est pluris bellus sonipes quam parvus asellus, Hoc equitabo pecus, si mihi desit equus.

Aud here is a bitter epigram on the villein of the middle ages, one of the many sayings which bridge over the space between the word's oi-iginal and present meaning:

Quando miilcetur viUanus, pejor habetur : L'ngentem pungit, pimgentem rusticus ungit.

And the writer of this one expresses without reserve his opinion of lawyers :

Dirue Jm-istas, Deus, ut Satanne citharistas ;

O Deus, extingues hos pingues atque bilingues.

So too the story of Boniface the Eighth's pontificate is summed up in another couplet :

Tulpes intravit, tanquam leo pontificavit ; Exiit utque canis, de divite factus inanis.

Easily recollected, they were much in use to assist keeping in remembrance the arrangement of the Church Calendar, and the order of the Festivals. Durandus in his Rationale often quotes them. Jacob Grimm observes well: In ihnen ergeht sich die Kloster-poesie am behagliehsten, und ihre Feierlichheit fordert sie : daher Inscriften fiir Graber und Glocken, kleinere Spriiche und Memorabilien fast nur in ihnen verfasst wurden : sie tonen auch nicht selten klangvoll und prachtig. Thus on the fillet of a church-bell it was common to have these lines :

Festa soiians mando, cum fimere prselia pando ; Meque fugit quando resono cum fulmine grando.

The Frankish monarchs, as claiming to be Eoman emperors, had

a leonine verse on their seals :

Roma caput mundi regit orbis froena rotuudi.

In most of these lines there is a certain strength and energj-.

Here is a somewhat longer specimen, drawn from a poem by

Keginald, an English Benedictine monk, cotemporary and friend

of Anselm and Hildebert :

Sape jacet ventus, "iormit sopita juventus : Aura vebit lenis, natat iindis cymba serenis ;

INTROBUCTIOy. 35

and thirteenth century, an Aquinas, or an Adam of St Victor, it displayed all its latent capabilities, and

JEquore sed multo Nereus, custode sepulto, Torquet et invertit navem diim navita stertit : Mergitiir et naris, quamvis vehat aura suavis : Res tandem blandae sunt mortis causa nefaudEe.

A brief analysis of this poem, and further quotations not without an elegance of their own, may be found in Sir A. Ci-ooke's Essay on the History of Rhyming Latin Verse, pp. 63-75. These too of Hddebert on the Crucifixion are good :

Vita snbit letnm, dulcedo potat acetum :

Non homo sed vermis, armatum vincit inennis,

Agnus praedonem, vitulus moriendo leonem.

It is curious to observe how, during the middle ages, rhyme sought to penetrate and make a place for itself everywhere. Thus we have leonine sapphics as well as leonine hexameters and pentameters. The following may belong to the twelfth or thir- teenth century (Hommey, Svpplementum Tatrum,-^. 179), and, like the poem of Commodianus, see p. 11, must be scanned by accent only, and not by prosody :

Virtiitum chori, summo qui Rectori Semper astatis atque juliilatis, Otis remot<B memores estote,

Nosque juvate. Felices estis, patriae ccelestis Gives, cunctorum nescii malormn, Quae nos infestant, miseramque prsestant

XJndique vitam.

Hexameters and pentameters with final rhymes, and these following close upon one another, as in our heroic verse, not artificially interlaced {interlaqucati), as in our sonnet or Spen- serian stanza, were called caudati, as having tails (caudas). They were not, I think, quite as much cultivated as the leonine, although of them also immense numbers were written ; nor do they very often reach the strength and precision which the leonine sometimes attain ; yet they too are capable of a certain terseness and even elegance, of the same character as we have seen the leonine verses to display. Thus Hildebert describes D 2

36 INTRODUCTION.

attained its final glory and perfection, satiating the ear with a richness of melody scarcely anywhere to be sur-

how the legal shadows are outlines of the truth, which as such disappear and flee away, Christ the substance being come :

Agnus enim legis camales diluit actus, Agnum prKsignans, qui nos larat hostia factus : Quis locus auroras, postquam sol venit ad ortum ? Quisve locus votis, teneat quum navita portum ?

He sums up in two lines the moral of Luke xiv. 16-24 :

Villa, boves, uxor, ccEnam clausere vocatis : Mundus, cura, cai'O, coelum clausere renatis.

A passing and repassing from one of these arrangements of rhyme to the other is not uncommon. Thus to quote Hildebert again {Opp. p. 1260), and here, as everywhere, I seek to make citations which, besides illustrating the matter directly in hand, have more or less an independent merit of their own :

Crux non clara parum spoliis spoliavit avarmn ;

Crux Ifetffi sortis victi tenet atria fortis ;

CriLx indulcavit laticem, potumque paravit ;

Crux silicem fregit, et aquas exire coegit.

Crux per serpentem Crucifixi signa gerentem

Lebsos sanavit. laedentes mortificavit ;

Crux crucis opprobrium. Crux ligni crimen ademit ;

Crux de peccato, Crux nos de morteredemit ;

Crux miseros homines in coelica jura reduxit ;

Omne bonum nobis cum sanguine de Cruce fluxit.

Or take another example from the Carmen Paraneticum ascribed tojSt Bernard (Ojjp., vol. ii. p. 909):

Amplius in rebus noli sperare caducis, Sed tua mens cupiat setem» gaudia lucis : Pallitur iusipiens vitse prajsentis amore, Sed sapiens noscit quanto sit plena dolore. Quidquid foiTnosum mundus gent et pretiosum Floris habet morem, cui dat natura colorejn Mox ut siccatur, totus color anniliilatur ; Postea nee florem monstrat, nee spirat odorem.

He presently passes back from the leonine to the tail rhymes, intermingling besides with these a third form, springing from a combination of the two. The cmidati tripertitt are divided, as their name indicates, into tliree sections, each containing two

INTR OB UCTIOK. 3 7

passed. At first the rhymes were often merely vowel or assonant ones, the consonants not being required to agree ; or the rhyme was adhered to, when this was convenient, but disregarded, when the needful word Avas not readily at hand ; or the stress of the rhyme was suffered to fall on an unaccented syllable, thus scarcely striking the ear ; or it was limited to the similar ter- mination of a single letter; while sometimes, on the strength of this like ending, as sufficiently sustaining the melody, the whole other construction of the verse, and arrangement of the syllables, was neglected.*

feet ; the first and second sections in every line rhyme with one another, and so far thej' resemble the leonine ; but they are also tailed, in that the close of one line rhymes with the close of the succeeding. I know none of this kind which are not almost too bad to quote. Here however is a specimen :

Est data sasvam causa per Evam perditionis, Dum meliores sperat honores voce draconis.

They are curious, however, inasmuch as in these triparted distichs we trace the rudiments, as F. Wolf has clearly shown ( Ueher die Lais, p. 200), of that much employed six-line strophe of om- modem poetry, in which the rhymes are disposed thus, a a h c c b, the stanza which has attained its final glory in Wordsworth's Euth ; each of the Latin lines falling into three sections, and thus the couplet expanding into the strophe of six lines. Besides Wolfs admirable treatise just referred to, there are two treatises on the rhymed poetry of the middle ages in Gebaveri Anthologia Bissertationum, Lips., 1733 ; one, p. 265, Pro Ehythmis, seu Omoioteleiitis Poeticis ; another by Elias Major, p. 299, Be Versihus Leoninis. Sir A. Crooke, in his Essay on Rhyming Latin Verse, has drawn freely on these, but has also information of his own.

* It may be that they who first used it, were oftentimes scarcely or not at all consciouii of what they were doing. Thus

38 INTBOBUCTION.

The first in wliose liymns there are distinct traces of the adoption of rhyme is Hilary, who died bishop of Poitiers in 368. His hymn on the Epiphany,

Jesus refulsit omnium Pius redemptor gentium,

consists of eight quatrains, the four lines composing each of which have a like termination, while otherwise they observe the ordinary laws of the iambic dimeter. In the hymn of Pope Damasus (who died a very few years later) on St Agatha, the four lines of the quatrain do not rhyme all together, but two and two ; and the verses consist, or are intended to consist, of three dactyls with a terminal rhyming syllable, as thus :

Stirpe decens, elegans specie, "*

Sed magis actibus atque fide, Terrea prospera nil reputans, Jussa Dei sibi corde ligans.

It is true that earlier than either of these is the poem of Comniodianus, referred to already, and that in one section all the words end in o. This could not be accidental ; yet at the same time, as nothing similar occurs in other parts of the poem, it must be counted,

Ampere says very beautifully upon the Iiymns of St Ambrose, in which he traces such unconscious jireludings to the later rhymed poetry of Christendom : Ces hymnes sont versifies d'apres la regie de la metrique aneienne, mais il est curieux de voir une tendance a la rime se produire evidemment dans ces strophes analogues a celles d'Horace. Ce qui sera le fondement de la prosodie des temps modernes, la rime, n'est pas encore une loi de la versification, et deja un besoin mysterieux de I'oreille rintroduit dans les vers pour ainsi dire a I'insu de I'oreille elle meme {Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. i. p. 411).

INTRODUCTION. 39

where it does appear, rather as an arbitraiy ornament than an essential element, of the rhythm.

Seeing, then, that it thns lies in our poAver to trace distinctly, and as it were step by step, the rise and growth of the Latin rhymed poetry, to preside at its very birth and cradle, — one cannot but wonder at a very common assertion, namely, that it boirowed rhyme from languages, which assuredly do not now preserve any examples in this kind that are not of far later origin than much which we possess in the Latin tongue. " I know of no poem," says Dr. Guest,* " written in a Gothic dialect Avith final rhyme, before Otfrid's Evangely. This was written in Frankish, about the year 870." He, it is true, supposes the Latin rhymers to have gotten rhyme from the Celtic races, — among some of whom undoubtedly it existed very early, as among the Welch in the sixth century — and then in their turn to have imparted it to the Gothic nations. But a necessity for this unlikely hypothesis rests only on the assumption, that " the Romans were confessedly ignorant of rhyme." Certainly, if we found it in the Latin poetry suddenly starting up in its final perfection, complete and lacking- nothing, — as we do find some of the Greek lyric metres, the complex alcaic, for example, in the pages of Horace, — we could then hardly come to any other conclusion, 1 lut that it had been imported ah extra, even though we might not be able to say with certainty from what quarter it had been obtained. But everything about its introduction serves rather to mark it as autochthonic.f

* History of English lihythms, vol. i. p. 119. t Ampere has expressed the same conviction. Of the Latin poetry of the eleventh century he says: La tendance a la rime,

40 MTBOBUCTION.

We see it in its Aveak and indistinct beginnings, not yet knowing itself or its own importance ; we mark its irregular application at first ; the lack of skill in its use, the poor assonances instead of the full consonances ; with an only gradual discovery of all which it would effect ; — the chimes having been at first, probably, but happy chances, found, like the pointed arch, without having been sought ; but Avhich yet, being once lighted on, the instinct of genius did not let go, but adopted and improved, as that very thing which it needed, and unconsciously had been feeling after ; and now at length had attained.

But when we thus refuse to admit that the Latin rhyming poetry borrowed its rhyme from the Romance or Gothic languages, we are not therefore obliged to accept the converse, and with Tyrwhitt* and others to assume that the?/ obtained it from the Latin, however that might be of the two the more tolerable supposition. For, after the investigations of later years, no one ought any longer to aflSrm rhyme to have been the exclusive invention of any one people, and from them to have past over into other languages and literatures ; which Warton and Sismondi have done, who derive it origi- nally from the Arabs. Ehyme can as little be considered the exclusive discovery of any one people as of any

qui nous avait deja frappes chez Saint Ambroise, a toujours ete. de siecle en siecle, s'accusant plus nettement. Au temps ou nous sommes parvenus, elle a fini par triompher. Ce qui n'etait d'abord qu'une fantaisie de I'oreille a fini par devenir un besoin imperieux et par se transformer en loi. II n'est done pas neeessaire de chereber d' autre origine a la rime ; elle est nee du sein de la poesie latine deg^neree.

* Esscii/ on the Language and Versification of Chaucer, p. 51.

INTRODUCTION. 41

single age. It is rather, like poetry, like mnsic, like dramatic representation, the natural result of a deep craving of the human mind ; as it is the "well-nigh inevitable adjunct of a poetry not quantitative, being almost certain to make a home for itself therein. This last point has been well expressed, and the causes of it rightly stated by a writer already quoted, and whose words must always carry weight:* "When the same modification of sound recurs at definite intervals, the coincidence very readily strikes the ear, and when it is found in accented syllables, such syllables fix the attention more strongly than if they merely received the accent. Hence we niay perceive the importance of rhj'me in accentual verse. It is not, as it is sometimes asserted, a mere ornament : it marks and defines the accent, and thereby strengthens and supports the rhythm. Its advantages have been felt so strongly, that no people have ever adopted an accentual rhythm, without also adopting rhyme."

In this the universality of rhyme, as in the further fact that it is peculiar neither to the rudeness of an early and barbarous age, nor to the over-refined in- genuity of a late and artificial one, but runs throiigh whole literatures from their beginning to their end, we find its best defence; — or, more accurately, that which exempts it from needing any defence against charges like that brought by JMilton against it "j" ; for there is

* Guest, History of English Rhythms, vol. i. p. 116.

t It will be remembered what he calls it in the few words which he has prefixed to Paradise Lost — "the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre ; . . . a thing of itself to all judicious ears trivial and of no true musical delight" — with much more in the same strain.

42 IXTE OB JJCTWN.

here the evidence that it lies deep in our human nature, and satisfies an universal need, since otherwise so many people Avould not have lighted upon it, or having lighted, so inflexibly maintained it. For "\ve do encoun- ter it everywhere — in the extreme "West, in the earliest Celtic poems, "Welsh and Irish — in the further East, among the Chinese, in the Sanscrit, — and no less in the Persian and Arabic poetry, — in the Gothic and Scandi- navian ; — no formal discovery, as no borrowed skill, in any case ; but in all the well-nigh instinctive result of that craving after periodic recurrence, proportion, limitation, — of that sense out of which all rhythm and all metre springs, namely, that the streams of passion nuist liave banks Avithin Avhich to flow, if they are not to waste and lose themselves altogether, — with the de- sire to mark and to make distinctly noticeable to the ear these limits and restraints, which the verse, for its own ultimate good, imposes upon itself* "We may

Over against this we might set ■\s-hat I Biuch esteem the wiser words of Daniel in his Dcfiiice of Rhyme, or indeed more honour- ably confute him out of his own mouth, and by the fact that the noblest lyrics which English literature possesses, being his own, are rhymed.

* Ewald iOn the Poetic Books of the Old Testament, vol. i. p. 57) has expressed himself very profoundly on this matter: " A stream of words and images, an overflowing and impetuous diction, a movement which in its first violence seems to know no bounds nor control — such is the earliest manifestation of poetic diction ! But a diction which should only continue in this its earliest movement, and hurry onward, without bounds and with- out measure, would soon destroy its own beauty, even its very life. Yea rather, the more living and overflowing this onward movement is, by so much the more needful the restraint and the limitation, the cotmtcraction and trauquillization, of this becomes.

INTRODUCTION. 43

observe tliat the prosodic poetry of Greece and Eonie was equally obliged to mark this, though it did it in another way. Thus, had dactyles and spondees been allowed to be promiscuously used throughout the hexameter line, no satisfying token would have reached the ear to indicate the close of the verse ; and if the hearer had once missed the termination of the line, it would have been almost impossible for him to recover it. But the fixed dactyle and spondee at the end of the line answer the same purpose of strongly marking the close, as does the rhyme in the accentua- ted verse : and in other metres, in like manner, licenses permitted in the beginning of the line are excluded at its close, the motives for this greater strictness being the same.

The non-recognition of this, man's craving after, and deep delight in, the rhythmic and periodic — a craving which nature everywhere meets and gratifies, and which all truest art seeks to gratify as well, — a seeing nothing in all this but a trick and artifice apj^lied fii-om without, — lies at the root of that singular theory concerning the unfitness of poetry to be the vehicle for oiu* highest addresses to God and most reverent utterances about Him, which the accomplished author of the Day in the Sanctuanj has put forth in the preface to that volume. Any one who, Avith at all the skill in versification and command over language which he himself has manifested elsewhere, undertakes to comply with the requirements

This mighty inspiration and exspinition ; this rise with its com- mensurate fall ; this advance in symmetrical diction, which shall combine rest and motion with one another, and mutually reconcile them ; this is rhythm, or regiUated beautiful movcmeut."

44 INTRODUCTION.

which verse imposes, knows that the obligations which he thus assumes are very far from being felt as a bondage, but rather that here, as everywhere else, to move according to law is felt to be the freest movement of all.* Every one, too, who without this peculiar experience has watched the effect on his own mind of the orderly marching of a regiment, or of the successive breaking of waves upon the shore, or of ought else which is thus rhythmic and periodic., knows that in this, inspiring as it does the sense of order, and proportion, and purpose, there is ever an elevating and solemnizing power — a truth to which language, the best, because the most unconscious, witness, sets its seal, having in the Latin but one and the same word, for the solemn and the recurring.

I have said above, that we are not bound to assume that the poetries of modern Europe derived rhyme from the Latin ; because Ave reject the converse proposition, that the Latin derived it from them. At the same time the medieval Latin poetry, without standing in so close a technical relation as this to the modern poetry of Europe, without having been thus the source from which the latter obtained its most characteristic orna- ment, does yet stand in most true and living relation to it ; has exerted upon it an influence which probably

* G-oethe's noble words, uttered with a larger intention, liave yet their application here :

Vergebens werden ungebundne G-eister Nach der VoUendung reiner Hijhe streben : In der Beschrdnkimg zeigt sick ei'st de?' Meister, Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.

INTBODUCTIOK 4.5

has been scarcely estimated as highly as it deserves. To how gi-eat an extent must it have acted as a con- ductor of the thoughts and images of the old world to the new, making the stores of that old world to be again the heritage of the popular mind — stores which would else have been locked up till the more formal revival of learning, then perhaps to become not the possession of the many, but only of the few. How important was the part which it played, filling up spaces that were in a great measure unoccupied by any other works of imagination at all ; lending to men an organ and instru- ment by which to utter their thoughts, when as yet the modem languages of Eiu-ope were in the first process of their formation, and quite unfit to be the adequate clothing for these.

Thus the earliest form in which the ReineJce Fuchs, the great fable-epic of the middle ages, appeared, — the significance of which in European literature, no one capable of forming a judgment on the matter will lightly esteem, — is now acknowledged to have been Latin. A poem in four books, in elegiac metre, whose author is unknown, supplied mediately or immediately the ground-plan to all the subsequent dispositions of the matter. Of course it is not meant hereby to deny the essentially popular character of the poem, or to affirm that the Latin poet invented that, which, no doubt, already lived upon the lips of the people ; but only that in this Latin the fable-lore of the German world first took shape, and found a distinct utterance for itself*

* The existence of such an original was long unsuspected, even after an earnest interest had been awakened in the lieinc/ce

46 rSTRODUCTION.

And thus, too, out of that dreariest tenth century, that wastest place, as it is rightly esteemed, of European literature and of the human mind, James Grimm has published a brief Latin epic of very high merit;* while Fxilbert, bishop of Chartres, who died early in the eleventh (1027), could celebrate the song of the nightin- gale in strains such as these :

Cum telliirig, vere novo, producimtur germinu, Is emorosa eircumcirca frondescunt et brachia ; Fragrat odor cum suavis florida per gramina, Hilarescit Philomela, dulcis sonus f conscia, Et exteudens modulando gutturis spiramina, Eeddit veris et sestivi temporis prseconia. Instat noeti et diei voce sub diileisoua, Soporatis dans quietem cantus per discrimina, Necnon pulera viatori laboris solatia. Vocis ejus pulcritudo clarior quam cithara ; Vincitur omnis cantando voluerum catervula ; Implet sylvas atque cuncta modulis arbustula, Gloriosa valde facta veris prse Ifetitia. Yolitando scandit alta arborum cacumina, Ac festiva satis gliscit sibilare carmina. Cedit auceps ad frondosa resonans umbracula, Cedit olor et suavis ipsius melodia ; Cedit tibi tympanistra et sonora tibia ; Quamvis euim videaris corpore permodica, Tamen cuncti capiuiitur hac tua melodia :

Fvchs itself. It was first published by Mone, ReinJiardus Vulpes, Stuttgart, 1832.

* Waltharhis, It had been published indeed before ; and has since been so by Du Meril, Poisics popid. Lat. 1843, p. 313- 377.

t Sonns re-appears here as of the fourth declension (see Freund's Lat. Jf orterbuch, s. v. ).

INTEOBUCTION. 47

Nemo declit Toci tuse hsee dulcia carmina, Nisi solus Kex coelestis qui gubernat omnia.*

Surely with all its rudeness and deficiencies this poem has the true passion of nature, and contains in it the prophecy and pledge of much more than it actually accomplishes. In that

Gloriosa valde facta veris prse Isetitia, we have no weak prelude of that rapturous enthusiasm and inspiration, which at a later day have given us such immortal hymns as the Ode to the Skylark^ by Shelle)'. Or consider these lines of Marbod, bishop of Rheims in the twelfth century ; which, stifily and awkwardly versified as they may be, have yet a deep interest, as touching on those healing influences of nature, the sense of which is almost, if not entirely, confined to modern, that is to Christian, art. They belong to a poem on the coming of the spring ; and, as the reader will observe, are in leonine hexameters :

Moribus esse feris prohibet me gratia veris, Et formam mentis mihi mutuor ex elementis.

* D. Fulberii Opera Varia, Paris, 1608, p. 181. I believe wo owe to Dr. Neale the following very graceful translation : " When the earth, with spring returning, vests herself in fresher sheen, And the glades and leafy thickets are arrayed in living green ; When a sweeter fragrance breatheth flowery fields and vales along. Then, triumphant in her gladness, Philomel begins her song : And with thick delicious warble far and wide her notes she flings, Telling of the happy spring tide and the joys that summer brings. In the pauses of men's slumber deep and full she pours her voice, In the labour of his travel bids the wayfarer rejoice. Night and day, from bush and greenwood, sweeter than an earthly lyro. She, unwearied songstress, carols, distancing the feathered choir. Fills the hillside, fills the valley, bids the groves and thickets ring, Made indeed exceeding glorious through the joyousness of spring. None could teach such heavenly music, none implant such tuneful skill. Save the King of realms celestial, who doth all things as He will."

48 rSTR OB UCTIOK

Ipsi nahiTfe eongratulor, ut puto, jure : Distinguiint flores diversi mille colores, Gramineum vellus superinduxit sibi tellus. Froude virere nemus et fructificare videmiis : Egrediente rosa viridaria sunt speciosa. Qui tot pidcra videt, nisi flectitur et nisi ridet, lutractabilis est, et in ejus pectore lis est ; Qui speciem terrae non vult cum laude referre, Invidet Auctori, cujus subservit honori Bruma rigens, sestas, auctumnus, Tcris honestas.*

May we not say that the old monkish poet is antici- pating here — and however faintly, yet distinctly — such strains as the great poets of nature in our own day have made to be heard — the conversion of the witch Mai- muna in Thalaba, Peter Bell, or those loveliest lines in Coleridge's Remorse ?

With other ministrations thou, 0 Nature,

Healest thy wandering and distemjjered child ;

Thou pourest on him thy soft influences.

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweet-s,

Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters !

Till he relent, and can no more endure

To be a jarring and a dissonant thing

Amid this general dance and minstrelsy ;

But bursting into tears wins back his way,

His angry spirit healed and harmonized

By the benignant touch of love and beauty.

Hard measure is for the most part dealt to this poetry. "j"

* Hildeherti et Marbodi Opera, ed. Beaugendre, Paris, 170S, p. 1617.

t Few are so just to it as Bahr {Lie Christl. Dichtcr Eorns, p. 10) : Wenn wir daher auch nicht unbedingt die Ansicht derje- nigen theilen konnen, welche die Einfiihrung dieser Cliristliehen Dichter statt der heidnischen in Schulen zum Zwecke des Sprach- tmterrichts wie zur Bildmig eines acht christlichen Gemiiths Torschlagen, aus Griinden, die zu ofFen da Uegen, um weiterer

INTEODUCTION. 49

Men come to it with a taste formed on quite other models, trying it by laws which were not its laws, by the ap- proximation which it makes to a standard Avhich is so far from being its standard, that the nearer it reaches that, the further removed from any true value it is. They come trying the Gothic cathedral by the laws of the Greek temple, and because they do not find in it that which, in its very faithfuhiess to its own idea, it cannot have, they treat it as worthy only of scorn and contempt. Nor less have they forgotten, in estimating the worth of this poetry, that much which appears trite and commonplace to us was yet very far from being so at its first utterance.* When the Gothic nations which divided the Koman empire began to crave intellectual and spiritual food, in the healtliy hunger of their youth there lay the capacity of deriving truest nourishment from that which to us, partly from our far wider range

Ausfiihrung zu bediirfen, die auch iiie, selbst in Mittelalter, ver- kannt worden sind, so glaubeu wir doch dass es zrweckmassig und Ton wesentlichem Nutzen seyn diirfte den Erzeugnissen christli- cher Poesie auch auf unseren hoheren Bildungsanstalten eine grossere Aufmerksamheit zuzuwenden, als diess bisher der Fall war, die Jugend demnach in den obern Classen der Gymnasien und Lyceen mit den vorziiglicheren Erscheinungen dieser Poesie, die ihnen jetzt so ganz fremd ist und bleibt, bekannt zu machen, ja selbst einzelne Stiicke solcher Diehtungen in die. Chrestoma- thien Lateiniseher Dicliter, in denen sie wahrlich, auch von ande- ren Standpunkten aus betrachtet, eine Stelle neben nianchen Productionen der heidnisehen Zeit verdienen, aufzunehmen, iim so zugleich den lebendigen Gegensatz der heidnisehen und christli- chen Welt und Poesie erkennen zu lassen, und jugendlichen Gemii- thern friihe einzupragen.

* Ampere (vol. iii. p. 213) says with truth, and on this very matter: Ce qui est peu important pour I'histoire de I'art pent I'etre beaueoup pour Thistoire de I'esprit humain.

E

so IKTBODUCTION.

of choice, and partly also from a satiated appetite, seems little calculated to yield it.*

But considerations of this kind Avould lead me too far, and lie too Avide of the immediate scope of this

* Ferdinand Wolf, in his instructive work, Ueber die Lais, p. 281, and James Grimm, have both observed, that a history of this medieval Latin poetry is a book still waiting to be ■vmtten, and which, when it is written will fill up a huge gap in the literary history of Europe. We have nothing in the kind but Leyser's compendium, Historia Po'dtarum ct Poematum Medii Mvi, Halse, 1721, which would have its use for the future labourer in this field, and which he would find especially serviceable in its copious literary notices ; but for a book making, as by its title it does, some claim to completeness, absm-dly fragmentary and imperfect — and this, even when is added to it another essaj', which Leyser published two years earlier, Diss, de ficta Medii ^i'i Barbaric, imprimis circa Poesin Latinam, Helmstadt, 1719. Less complete than even in his own day he might have made it. it is far more deficient now, when so much bearing on the subject has been brought to light, which was then unknown. The volume, too, is as much at fault in what it has, as what it has not — including as it does vast poems of very slightest merits; and from which an extract or two would have suflBced. Edele- stand du Meril's two volumes, Poesies popidaircs Latines ante- rieures au douxieme Siicle, Paris, 1843, and Poesies popidaires Latines du Moyen Age, Paris, 1847, contain many valuable notices, and poems which had not previously, or had only par- tially or incorrectly, been printed. But, as the titles indicate, they have only to do with the popular Latin poetry of the middle ages. — Whoever undertakes such a work, must be on^* who esteems as the glory of this poetry, and not the shame, that it seeks to emancipate itself, if not always from the forms, yet always from the spirit, of the classical poetry of the old world — desires to stand on its own ground, to grow out of its own root. Indeed no one else woidd have suiUcient love to the subject to induce him to face the labours and wearinesses which it would involve. The later Latin poetry, that which has flourished since

INTRODUCTION. 51

volume, to allow me to follow them further. Already what I thoiight to put into a few paragi-aphs has in- sensibly gi'own almost into an essay, having from its length some of the pretensions of an essay, with at the same time little that should justify those pretensions. I may not fui-ther encroach upon the room which I would reserve for other men's words, rather than pre-

the revival of learning, and which has drawn its inspiration not from the Cliurch, but from ancient classical literature, has found a very careful and enthusiastic historian ; but one who, according to my convictions, has begun his work just where all or nearly aU of any true value has ended, leaving untouched the whole period which really oiFers much of any deep or abiding interest. I mean Budik, in his work, Leben und Wirkcn der vorzuglichsUn Latcin. Dichter des XF. — XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1828. Such, however, was not Ms mind, who could express himself aboiit the Christian middle ages with a fanaticism of contempt, possible some thirty years ago, but hardly so now, when we are in danger rather of exaggerations in the other extreme. He says : '' Since the ages of Pericles and Augustus, the perfect creations of which enjoy an everlasting youth, until the middle of the fifteenth century, one sees nothing but a waste, whose dreary and barren uniformity is only broken by some scattered brushwood, and whose most vigorous productions awaken rather astonishment than admiration." For myself, I never so felt the inanity of modern Latin poetry as, when looking over the entire tlrree volumes of Budik (and I have repeated the experiment with much larger collections), I could find no single poem or fragment of a poem which I cared to use, save, indeed, a few lines from Casimir, which I already possessed. It was from no affected preference of the old that my extracts from modern Latin poetiy are so few ; but three or four is all. If Vida, or Sannazar, or Buchanan, or any other of the modems, would have offered anything of value, I would gladly have adopted it ; but repeatedly seeking for something, I always sought in vain.

e2

5 a INTRODUCTION.

occupy witli my own : and whatever else might have been said lapon the subject,

spatiis exclusus iniqxiis Prsetereo.

Nor do I unwillingly conclude with a word from him, the chiefest in Latin art, for whom our admiration need not in the least be diminished by our ability to admire Latin verse, composed on very different principles from his ; and, if possessing, yet needing also, large compensations, for all which it has not, but which he ■\vith his illustrious fellows has ; and which must leave, in so many aspects, the great masterpieces of Greece and Rome for ever without competitor or peer.

POEMS.

ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

F the life of Adam of St Victor, the most fertile, and, as I am inclined to believe, the greatest of the Latin hymnologists of the middle ages, very little is known. He was probably a native of Brittany, although the terms breton, brito, which in the early writers indi- cate his country, leave in some doubt w^hether England might not have had the honour of giving him birth. The authors of the Histoire Litteraire de la France^ vol. XV. p. 40 — 45, account this not altogether un- likely ; and it is certain that this illustrious foundation drew together its scholars from all parts of Europe ; thus, of its other two chiefest ornaments, Hugh was a Saxon, and Richard a Scot. Yet the fact that France was the great seat of Latin poetry in the twelfth century, and that all the chief composers in this kind, as Hilde- bert, the two Bernards, Abelard, Marbod, Peter the Venerable, were Frenchmen, leaves it more likely that he, the chiefest of all, was such as well. At all events he made his studies at Paris, where he entered the religious foundation of St Victor, then in the suburbs, but at a later day included within the walls, of Paris,

54 ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

in Avliich he ccntinued to his death. The year of his death is unknown ; the Gallia Christiana places it somewhere between 1172 and 1192. Gautier, of whose edition of Adam's hj'mns I shall have presently to speak, thinks the latter year to be itself the most probable date (vol. i. p. Ixxxviii). His epitaph, graven on a plate cf copper in the cloister of St Victor, near the door of the choir, remained till the general destruction of the first Revolution. The ten first verses of it, as Gautier has shown, are his own, and constituted an independent poem, which, with the title De Miseria Hominis, is still to be found among his works. The four last were added by a later hand, so to fit them for an epitaph ou their author. His own lines possess a grand moral flow, and are very well worthy to be quoted.

Haeres peccati, natiu-a filius irae,

Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo. Uude superbit homo, cujus coneeptio culpa,

Nasci poena, hibor vita, necesse mori ? Vana salus hominis, vanus decor, omnia vana ;

Inter vana nihil vanius est homine. Dum magis alludit prfesentis gloria vitse,

Prfeterit, immo fugit ; non fugit, immo perit. Post hominem vermis, post vermem fit cinis, heu, heu !

Sic redit ad cinerem gloria nostra simul.

Hie ego qui jaceo miser et miserabilis Adam, Unam pro summo munere posco preeem :

Peccavi, fateor, veniam peto, parce fatenti, Parce pater, fratres parcite, parce Deus.

We may certainly conclude that Adam of St Victor shared to the full in the theological ciilture of the school to which he belonged. This, indeed, is evident from his hymns, which, like the poetry of Dante, have often-

ADAM OF ST VICTOE. 55

times as great a theological, as poetical or even devo- tional interest, the first indeed sometimes jiredominating to the injmy of the last. The aim of that illustrious school of theology, especially in its two foremost repre- sentatives, Hugh, and his scholar Eichard, of St Victoi', the first called in his own day Lingua Augustini, Alter Augustimis, and both of them cotemporaries of Adam, though Hugh belonged to an elder generation, was to unite and harmoniously to reconcile the scholastic and mystic tendencies, the light and the warmth, Avhich had appeared more in opposition in Abelard and Bernard : and to this its noble purpose and aim it long i-emained true : nor would it be easy to exaggerate the influence for good which went forth from tliis institution during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries upon the whole Church. (See Liebner, Hugo von St Victor, p. 9 — 16.) It long remained faithful to the cultiva- tion of sacred song : for, in later times, Santeuil, a poet, it is true, of a very different rank indeed from him with whom we now have to do, was a Yictorine as well.

Very different estimates have been formed of the merits of Adam of St Victor's hymns. His most zealous admu-ers will hardly deny that he pushes too far, and plays overmuch with, his skill in the typical application of the Old Testament.* So too they must own that sometimes he is unable to fu^se with a perfect success his manifold learned allusion into the passion of

* Calderon is often, consciously or unconsciously, an imitator of Adam of St Victor's maunei* — knitting together, as he does, a succession of allusions to Old Testament types, and weanng them

56 ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

his poetry. How full of this learned allusion they are, I have had evidence while preparing this volume, in the amount of explanatory notes which they required, — so far larger than almost any other eqiial qiiantity of verse which it contains. Nor less must it be allowed that he is sometimes guilty of concetti., of plays upon words, not altogether Avorthy of the solemnity of his theme. Thus of one martyr he says :

Sub seciiri stat securus ;

of another, St LaAvrence namely :

Dum toiretiir, non terretur;

AV'ith more or less success into the •woof of a single poem. Thi.s hymn, draAvu from an Auto of his, on the Holy Eucharist, Avill illustrate A^hat I mean :

Honey in the lion's mouth. Emblem mystical, divine. How the sweet and strong combine ; Cloven rock for Israel's drouth ; Treasure-house of golden grain, By our Joseph laid in store, In his brethren's famine sore Freely to dispense again ; Dew on Gideon's snowy fleece ; AVeU from bitter changed to sweet ; Shew-bread laid in order meet, Bread whose cost doth ne'er increase Though no rain in April fall ; Horeb's manna, freely given, Showered in white dew from heaven. Marvellous, angelical ; Weightiest bunch of Canaan's vine ; Cake to strengthen and sustain Through long days of desert pain ; Salem's monarch's bread and wine ; — Thou the antidote shalt be Of my sickness and my sin, Consolation, medicine, Life and Sacrament to me.

ADAM OF ST VICTOB. 57

of tlie blessed Virgin, (for he did not escape, as it was not to be expected that he should, the exaggerations of his time) :

0 dulcis vena Teniae ;

of heaven :

0 quam beata curia, Quae curm prorsus nescia.

Sometimes too he is overfond of displaying feats of skill in versification, of prodigally accumulating, or curiously interlacing, his rhymes, that he may shew his perfect mastery of the forms which he is using, and how little he is confined or trammelled by them.*

These faults it will be seen are indeed most of them but merits pushed into excess. And even accepting them as defects, his profound acquaintance Avith the Avhole circle of the theology of his time, and eminently with its exposition of Scripture, — the abundant and admirable use, with indeed the drawback already men- tioned, which he makes of it, delivering as he thus does his poems from the merely subjective cast of those, beautiful as they are, of St. Bernard — the exquisite art and variety with which for the most part his verse is managed and his rhymes disposed — their rich melody 7iiultiplying and ever deepening at the close — the strength which often he concentrates into a single linef

* Augustine had already shewn him the way to this play of words. Addressing the sinner as the barren fig-tree of Luke xiii. 9, he says: " Dilata est securis, noli esse secura;" and again : " Distulit securim, non dedit seeuritatem."

t Thus of a Koman governor, who, alternating flatteries with threats, is seeking to bribe one of the early martyrs from her

58

AD^Uf OF ST riCTOPu

— ^his skill in conducting a story* — and most of all, the evident neai-ness of the things Avhich he celebrates to his own heart of hearts — all these, and other excellen- cies, render him, as far as my judgment goes, the fore- most among the sacred Latin poets of the middle ages. He may not have any single poem to vie with the austere grandeur of the Dies Ira', nor yet Avith the tearful passion of the Stahat Mater, although concerning the last point there might well be a question ; but then it must not be forgotten that these stand wellnigh alone, in the names of their respective authors, while from his ample treasure-house I shall enrich this volume with a multitude of hymns, all of them of considerable, some of the very highest, merit. Indeed were I disposed to name any one who might dispute the palm of sacred

allegiance to Christ, by the offer of -n-orldly diguities and ho- nours:

Offert multa, spondet plura,

Peritiirus peritura.

* Thus with what graceful ease his In-mu on the martyrdom of St Catharine commences :

Vox sonora nostri chori Nostro souet Conditori, Qui disponit omnia ; Per quern dimicat imbellis, Per quern datiir et puellis De vii-is victoria :

Per quern plebs Alexandrina FceminEe non f oeminina Stupuit ingenia ; Cum beata Catharina Doctos vinceret doctrina, Ferrum patientia.

Plorem teneri decoris Lectionis et laboris Attrivere studia :

Nam perlegit disciplinas SKCulares et divinas In adolescentia.

Tas electum, vas virtutum, Reputavit sicut lutum Bona transitoria : Et reduxit in contemptimi Patris opes, et parentum Larga patrimonia.

Vasis oleum includens, Virgo sapiens et prudens, Sponso pergit obvia ; L't adventfls ejus liora Prieparata sine mora Intret ad convivia.

ADAM OF ST VICTOR. 59

Latin poetry with him it Avould not be one of these, but rather Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours.

There are readers Avho may possibly consider that I have set the merits of Adam of St Victor too high ; yet fresh from the perusal of his hymn on St Stephen, or his longer one on the Resurrection, or those on Pentecost, they will certainly wonder at the taste and judgment of his countrymen, who could apportion him no higher praise than the following : A I'egard du inerite de ses pieces, ce serait outrer I'admiration que d'adopter sans reserve les eloges qu'on leur a donnes, EUes etaient bonnes pour le temps, et meme les meil- leurs qu'on eut vues jusqu'alors. Mais il a paru depuis des modeles en ce genre, qui les ont fait totalement oublier, et avec lesquelles elles ne peuvent reellement entrer en comparaison. (Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. XV. p. 41.) OA'er against this I Avill set another and a fairer estimate of the merit of his hymns, the writer, jirobably John of Toidouse, (he died in 1659, and was himself Prior of St Victor,) seizing, as it seems to me, very happily the character at once learned and ornate, the " decorated " style, which is so characteristic of many of them : Valde multas prosas fecit . . . quaj suc- cinate et clausulatim progredientes, venusto verborum matrimonio subtiliter decoratas, sententiarum flosculis mirabiliter picturataj, schemate congruentissimo com- ponuntur, in qiiibus et cum interserat prophetias et liguras, quas in sensu quern pra3tendunt videantur obscurissimaj, tamen sic eas adaptat ad suum proposi- tum manifeste, ut magis videantur historiam texere (juam figuram (Martene, Thes. Anecdot. yo\. vi. p. 222). Pambach calls him, I know not whether very felici-

6o ADA3f OF ST VICTOR.

tously, " the Schiller of the middle ages," Dom Gue- ranger, le plus grand poete du moyen age.

Several of the hymns of Adam of St Victor had got abroad, and were in use at a very early date, probably during the author's life : but till very lately we were mainly indebted to the care of Clichtoveus, a theologian of the first half of the sixteenth century for what larger acquaintance with them Ave could obtain. Among numerous other works which he composed was the Elucidatorium Ecclesiasticwn, Paris, 1515; Basle, 1517, 1519; Paris, 1540, 1556 (the best edition); Cologne, 1732, and in an abridged form, Venice, 1555: written for the instruction of the parochial clergy in the mean- ing of the various offices of the Church. The book, which is rather scarce, was till very lately of absolute necessity for the student of the Christian hymnology, above all for the student of Adam of St Victor's hymns. Besides containing grains of gold to be washed irom the sands of a diffuse exposition, it was long a principal source of the text, and had highest authority therein ; Clichtoveus having drawn it, as he himself assures us, from copies of the hymns preserved in the archives of St Victor itself. Recent discoveries, however, have much diminished the importance of this work. Almost until the other day it had been taken for granted that Clichtoveus had published all the hymns of Adam which were in existence in his time, all therefore which could be in existence in ours. No one thought it worth while to call in question his statement to this effect ; nor, though it was well known that such of the manu- script treasures of the Abbey of St Victor as had escaped the Eevolution were deposited in the Imperial

BE SS. EVANGELISTIS. 6i

Library in Paris, to make researches there, and prove whether this was indeed the case. At length, however, the siispicions of the M. Gautier were aroused, mainly by observing that while we possessed hymns of his in honour of some of the obscurest saints, some of the mightiest events of the Christian Year, Christmas for example, were altogether uncelebrated in them ; and he resolved to prove whether other hymns, which he was sure must once have existed, might not still be discovered. The search which he instituted was abundantly rewarded ; and he has been able to publish an edition of the poetical works of Adam of St Victor {G^uvres Poetiques cTAclam de S. Victor-, V avis, 1858, 1859), containing one hinidred and six hymns, or sixty- nine more than were hitherto ascribed to him. It is true indeed that all of these were not unknown before ; some were going about the world, but without attribution to their author. Far the larger portion, however, were thus for the first time drawn from their hiding-place of centuries, and not a few of these worthy to take rank with the noblest compositions of Adam himself, or any other among the foremost hymnologists of the mediceval Church. I have enriched this second edition of my book with several of these, the beauty and grandeur of which will, I feel sure, be acknowledged by all com- petent j udges.

62 ABMf OF ST VICTOI?.

I. DE SS. EVANGELISTIS.

JUCUNDARE, pTebs fidelis, Cujus Pater est iu coelis, Eecolens Ezechielis Prophetae praeconia :

Est Joannes testis ipsi, 5

Dicens in Apocalypsi, Vere vidi, vera scripsi Vera testimonia.

Circa thronum majestatis,

Cum spii'itibus beatis, 10

Quatuor diversitatis

Astant animalia.

Formam primum aquilinani,

Et secundum leoninani,

Sed humanam et bovinam 15

Duo fjerunt alia.

I. (Jlichto\eus, Elucidat. Ecclcs. \o]. ii. p. 218; Sequcntics dc Tempore, Argentinte, 1516, p. 21 ; Corner, Promptuariujn Be- votionis, Vienna, 1672, p. 346; Daniel, This. Hymnol. vol. ii. p. 84 ; Gautier, Adam dc S. Victor, vol. ii. p. 425.

5. testis ipsi'\ Cf. Eev. iv. 6 — 8 with Ezek. i. 4—28; s. 9— 22.

6—8. Cf. Eev. xxi. 5 ; xxii. 6.

12. animalia] The fcDa of Eev. iv. 6, &c., are in our Version " beasts ;" — " living creatures " it should have been, as animalia in the Vulgate ; and " beast " should have been reserved for the dripiov of the 1 3th and later chapters. The distribution made in

BE SS. EVANGELISTIS. 63

Format formant figiirariim

Formas Evangelistaram,

Quorum imber doctrinarum

Stillat in Ecclesia : 20

Hi sunt Marcus et Mattliasus,

Lucas, et quern Zebeda^us

Pater tibi misit, Deus,

Dum laxaret retia.

this hjTnn of these four to the foxir Evangelists is St Jerome's, (Comm. in Esek c. 1 ; Prol in Matt. ; Ep. 50), is that of St Ambrose {Prol. in Luc), of Gregory the Great [Horn. 4 in Ezek.; Mor. xxxi. 47), and tlirough his influence became the prevail- ing though not the exclusive one (for Bede has another), during the middle ages. In earlier times there was much fluctuation in the application of the four to the four; and, strangely enough, even the eagle was not by universal consent attributed to St John: Irenseus, the first -who makes the application at all, giving the Hon to him, and the eagle to St Mark {Con. Hter. iii. 2. 8) ; his other two are as in this hymn ; and so Juvencus. Athanasius (Op/), vol. ii. p. loo), shifts them in another fashion. Leaving St Matthew untouched, he gives the calf to St Mark, the lion to St Luke, and the eagle to St John. Augustine {Be Cons. Evana. 1. 7), whom Eede follows, makes yet another transposition. With him the lion belongs to St Matthew, the man to St Mark, the calf and eagle respectively to St Luke and St John. One might be tempted by these variations to dismiss the whole matter as an idle play of the fancy ; and yet there was more than this, and indeed a deep insight into the nature of the Gospels, in the desire which thus manifested itself of claiming for them to be at once four and one, an ihayyiXiov TeTpdu.op<pou (Irenseus), T(Tpayci>vov (Origen), setting forth, in four cardinal aspects, the inexhaustible fulness of the life of Christ. The subject in its artistic aspect is fully treated by Mrs. Jameson, Poetry of Sacnd and Legendary Art, vol. i. pp. 98 — 110.

64 AI)A^f OF ST VICTOR

Formam viri dant Matthseo, 25

Quia scripsit sic de Deo,

Sicut desceudit ab eo,

Quern plasmavit, homine.

Lucas bos est in figura,

Ut prtemonstrat in Scriptura, 30

Hostiarum tangens jura

Legis sub velamine.

Marcus, leo per desertum

Clamans, rugit in apertum,

Iter fiat Deo certum, 35

Mundum cor a crimine.

Sed Joannes, ala bina

Caritatis, aquilina

Forma fertur in divina

Puriori lumine. 40

Quatuor describunt isti

Quadriforraes actus Christi,

Et figurant, ut audisti,

Quisque stia formula.

Natus bomo declaratur, 45

Vitulus sacrificatur.

25—28. Mat. i. 1—16.

29 — 32. For explanation of these lines see ver. 37 — 42 in the next hymn.

37. (lid bind] The love of God, and of our neighbour. Thus H. de S. Victore {Scrm. 97): Columba sancta Eeclesia est: quae duas alas habet per dilectionem Dei et proximi, a dextris dilec- tionem Dei. a sinistris dilectionem proximi.

41, 42. Cliehtoveus : Scilicet Matthaeus Nativitatem, Lucas Passionem, Marcus Resurrectiouem, et Johannes Ascensionem Christi.

BE SS. EVANGELISTIS. 65

Leo mortem deprsdatur, Et ascendit aquila.

Ecce forma bestialis,

Quam scriptura proplietalis ^Q

Notat ; sed materialis

Hfec est impositio.

Currunt rotis, volant alls ;

Inest sensus spiritalis ;

Eota gressus est aqualis, 55

Ala contem]Dlatio.

Paradisus his rigatur,

Viret, floret, foecimdatiir,

His abimdat, his Igetatur

Quatuor fluminibus : €0

Fons est Christus, hi sunt rivi,

Fons est altus, hi proclivi,

Ut saporem fontis vivi

Ministrent fidehbus.

53 — 56. currunt... volanf] Wheels run on earth, wings soar to heaven. In these symbolic representations of the Evangelists we hear of both ; for they now tell of the earthly life of the Saviour {currunt rotis) ; they now ascend to the contemplation of the heavenly world {volant alls). The ffressiis eeqiialis is the mutual consent of the four ; they keep step. But the allusions to the medieval typologj' in this and the next following hj-mns are so infinite and complex, that I should exhaust my room long before I had exhausted them. I must be content but to touch on a few, only observing that the key to a multitude of them lies in Gregory the Great's homilies on Ezekiel {Ojjp. vol. i. p. 1183, sqq. Bened. ed.).

,57 — 64. Irenseus, in his famous passage (iii. 11. 8), the foun- dation of so miich which has followed in the same line, does not refer to the four streams of Paradise, as prefiguring the four F

66 ADJJf OF ST VICTOB.

Horum rivo debriatis 65

Sitis crescat caritatis,

Ut de fonte pietatis

Satiemur plenius.

Horum trahat nos doctrina

Vitiorum de sentina, 70

Sicque ducat ad divina

Ab imo superius.

Evangelists, near as such an application lay to him, and likening as he does the four to the four principal -winds, -rravTaxoOev TTvfovras TTjv afdapcriav, Kol ava^wwvpovvTas rous avOpunovs. Nor does St. Ambrose {De Paradiso, c. 3), though finding a mystical meaning in the four streams, find this one. We meet it in Jerome {Ep. ad Eusch.): Quemadmodum unus fluvius erat Paradisi, qui in quatuor capita dividitur ; ita unica Christi evan- gelica doctrina per quatuor ministros ad irrigandum et foecun- dandum ecelesiae hortum est distributa ; of. Prol. in Matt. ; Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xiii. 21, and Durandus, Eational. -sdi. 46. The image has passed into the region of Christian Art (Aringhi, vol. i. pp. 181, 183, 195), where we often find in the early mosaics a hill surmounted by a cross, or by a lamb holding a cross, and four streams flowing out in several ways from its sides ; in the words of Paulinus of Nola :

Petram superstat Ipse, petra ecclesise, De qu^ sonori quatuor fontes meant, Evangelistfe, viva Cliristi flumina : or, as we may express the thought in an English quatrain : As those four streams that had in Eden birth. And did the whole world water, four ways going, — With spiritual freshness fill our thirsty earth Four streams of grace from one cleft mountain flowing.

Sometimes, as in the magnificent mosaic filling the cupola of St. Mark's, at Venice, the Evangelists appear as four aged men, each with his urn, from which a stream of water fiows.

65. debriatis] In some editions ebrietatis ; but thus, plainly in ignorance of there being such a word as debrio. It is a medieval form oiinebrio (see Du Cange, 3. v.) ; I find it as early as Gregory the Great (Horn. 6. in EzeA:).

BE SS. EVANGELISTIS. 67

ADAM OF ST VICTOE.

II. DE SS. EVANGELISTIS.

PSALLAT chorus corde mundo, Hos attollat, per quos miiiido Sonant Evangelia ; Voce quorvim salus fluxit, Nox recessit, et illuxit ."j

Sol illustrans omnia.

Curam agens sui gregis

Pastor bonus, auctor legis,

Quatuor instituit,

Quadri orbis ad medelam ; 1 0

Formam juris et cautelam

Per quos scribi voluit.

II. Cliehtoveus, Elucidat Eccles. vol. ii. p. 221 ; Daniel, Thes. Hymnol. vol. ii. p. 88 ; Mone, Hymn, Led. Med. JEvi, vol. iii. p. 130 ; Gautier, Adam de S. Victor, vol. ii. p. 417.

I. This first line Gautier reads :

Plausu chorus laatabundo. 9, 10. Augustine {Be Cons. Evang. i. 2) : Quatuor Evange- .listse,...ob hoc fortasse quatuor, quoniam quatuor sunt partes orbis terrse, per cujus universitatem Christi Ecelesiam dilatari ipso sui numeri sacramento quodammodo declararunt.

II. cautelani] A juristic word. Ducango explains it per- fectly: CautdcB sunt instrumenta et chartse, quibus privilegia, jura, possessiones, etc.. asseruntur ; hinc cautelcs dicta, quod sint veluti cautio {affcpdAifffia) res illas ita se habere.

f2

6? ADAM OF ST VICT OB.

Circa thema generale

Habet quisque speciale

Stili privilegium ; 1 o

Quod prjesignat in prophetu

Forma pictus sub discretii

Vxiltus animalium.

Supra coelos dum conscendit,

Summi Patris compreliendit 2(i

Natum ante seciila ;

Pellens nubem nostrge molis,

Intuetur jubar solis

Joannes in aquila.

Est leonis rugientis 25

Marco vultus. resurgentis

Quo claret potentia :

Voce Patris excitatus

Surgit Christus, laureatus

Immortali gloria. SO

Os liumanuni est Mattliaji,

Tn ll^^mana forma Dei

Dictantis prosapiam :

Cujus geni;s sic contexit,

Quod a stirpe David exit 35

Per carnis materiam.

25. ntgientis] The legend, frequent in the middle ages, and indeed already alluded to by Origen {Horn. xvii. in Gen. xlix. 9). that the lion's whelps were born dead, and first roused to life on the third day by the roar of their sire, was often contemplated as a natural type of the resurrection : so is it here. The subject will recur in a note on Adam of St Victor's Kesurrection hymn, Zi/ma vetus expiirgetiir, later in this volume.

DE SS. EVASGELISTIS. 69

Ritus bovis Lucfe clatiu',

In qua forma figuratur

Nova Christus liostia :

Ara crucis mansuetus 40

Hie mactatui", sicque vetus

Transit observantia.

Paradisi liac fluenta

Nova pluunt sacramenta,

Quaj descendant coelitus. 45

His quadrigis deportatiu*

37. Bitus'] So Clichtoveus, and this reading has manuscript authority (see Moue); but Daniel, Mone, and Gautierreadnc^ws; in favour of vhicli may be urged that it is the rarer word, less likely therefore to find its way into a text to which it did not belong : yet ritus seems preferable after all.

40. Ard crucis] Elsewhere he has a beautiful stanza on the cross «5 the altar on which Christ was offered :

Oh, quam felix, quam pr^clara Agni sine maculd,

Fuit h£ec salutis ara, Qui mundaTit seecula

Rubens Agni sanguine, Ab antique crimine !

46. His quadrigis'] Clichtoveus sees here, but wrongly, an allusion to Zech. vi. : Zacharias vidisse ipse dicit in spiritu quatuor quadrigas egredientes de medio duorum montium, et equos in eis varios, quibus jussum est ut totam terram perambu- larent : Hse autem quadrigae figura sunt SS. quatuor Evangelis- tarimi, quibus Dei cognitio per universum orbem defertur et promulgatur. The traces are very slight among the Fathers of any such application of Zechariah's vision of the four chariots : St Jerome (in loc.) giving a whole series of mystical interpreta- tions of these, does not give this ; while elsevphere he makes abundantly plain that the poet is still drawing his imagery from that grand vision of Ezekiel {Ep. 50): Mattheeus, Marcus, Lucas, et Johannes, quadriga Domini et verum Cherubim, per totum corpus oculati sunt, scintillse emicant, discurrunt fulgura, pedes habent rectos et in sublime tendentes, terga pennata et ubique

70 ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

Mundo Deus, siiblimatur Istis area vectibus.

Non est domus ruitura

Hac suhnixa quadratura, 50

Haec est domus Domini :

Gloriemur in hac dome,

Qua beate vivit homo

Deo junctus Homini.

volitantia. Tenent se mutuo, sibique perplexi sunt, et quasi rota in rota Tolvuntur, et pergunt quoquumque eos flatus S. Spiritus perduxerit. Cf. Augustine, Be Cons. Evang. i. 7 ; and Durandus, Rationale, vii. 46, who indeed suggests quite another allusion, namely to Cant, v. 11.

48. vcctibics] Cf. Exod. xxv. 13 — 15. The vectes, of shittim- wood overlaid with gold, were the staves which lifted the ark from the gi'ound. They passed through the four golden rings at the four corners of the ark ; and, though being only in fact two, had four extremities. Sometimes these, but oftener the four golden rings through which they pass, are made symbolic of the four Evangelists. Thus Hugh of St Victor : Quatuor annuli, qui arcffi inhserent, quatuor sunt Evangeliorum libri. Clichtoveus unites both : Per hos autem quatuor circulos et vectes illis in- sertos, quibus deferebatur area, intelliguntur Evangelist», quorum narratione Christus, area mystica et spiritualis, in omnem mundi partem, quantum ad sui notitiam, est delatus.

50. quadratura\ The allusion is to Eev. xxi. 16. The house stands firm which stands on a foursquare foundation: in this shape is the greatest strength and stability of all. See the sym- bolic use of the Xidos TfTpdyuvos in the Tabu/a of Cebes, c. 18. Even so the fourfold history of the Lord's life, tlie €110776X101/ Tirpayoivov, is the strong foimdation on which the faith of the Church reposes. Thus Durandus {Rational, vii. 46) : Sicut enim inter cajteras formas quadratum, sic inter cseteras doctrinas Evan- gelium solidius et stabilius perseverat ; nam illud undique Stat, et ideo legitur (Apocal. c. 21) quod ci vitas in quadro posita est.

BE 8. JOANNE EVANGELISTA. 71

ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

in. DE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA.

VERBI vere substantivi, Caro cum sit in declivi Temporis angustia, In seternis verbum annis Permanere nos Johannis 5

Docet tiieologia.

Dum Magistri super pectus

Fontem liaurit intellectus,

Et doctrinse flumina,

Fiunt, ipso situ loci, • 10

III. Gautier, Ar7a7n de S. Victor, vol. i. p. 241. This grand poem, a noble addition to our Latin hymnal, wa.s by him pub- lished for the first time.

1 — 6. I cannot but think that Dr Neale, to whom we are in- debted for a translation of this hymn (Mediceval Hymns, 1863, p. 125), has failed to seize the true meaning of this first stanza. He renders it thus :

That substantive Word, united To the flesh, and therein plighted To a life of misery sore. Him to be the Co-etemaJ, Jolm's theology supernal Testifieth evermore.

By caro he understands that flesh which the Word assumed at the Incarnation, and the contrast which the poet, so understood, would find taught in the theology of St John is that between

72 ADJJf OF ST VICTOR.

Verbo fides, aui'is voci, Mens Deo conterinina.

Unde mentis per excessus, Carnis, sensus super gressus, Errorumque nnbila, 15

Contra veri solis lumen Visum cordis et acumen Figit velut aquila.

Verhum quod nou potest dici,

Quod virtute creatrici 20

Cuncta fecit valde bona,

Iste dicit ab Eeterni

Patris nexu non secerni

Nisi tantum in persona.

Quem MattlijBus de intactse 25

Matris alit casto lacte

Christ's human nature and his divine. But what then is made of the verbum Verbi of the original, not to speak of other objections ? I take the passage altogether differently, and find a key to its meaning at 1 John ii. 16, 17 ; John xii. 48 ; cf 1 Pet. i. 24, 25 ; understanding the poet to say as follows : The theo- logy of John teaches us that while the flesh (that is, aU which is in the world and of the world), declines, wastes, and decays, the word of the "Word {verbum Verbi), all which Christ utters, en- dures for eTerlasting years, shall never pass away.

12. Mentis per excessus]. Cf. Rev. i. 10, 19 — 48. The poet urges that the theology, properly so called, belongs to St John. The other Evangelists set forth Christ's earthly ministry of labour and toil and passion ; St John rather the relation of Him, the creative Word, to the Father (John i. 3 ; Gen. i. 1), and his return, at the end of time, ciim ultrici framed (ver. 48) — these last words containing an allusion to that sublimest of all visions, Eev. xix. 11—16.

BE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA. 73

Cum labore et terumna,

Quern exaltat super cruce

Cornu bovis, penna Lucaj,

Ut serpentem in columna ; 30

Quern de mortis mausoleo

Vitse reddit Marci leo,

Scissis petris, terra mota,

Hunc de Deo Deum verum,

Alpha et ii, patrem rerum 35

Solers scribit idiota.

Cujus lumen visuale

Vultus anceps, leves alse,

Eota3 stantes in quadriga,

Sunt in coelo visa^, prius 40

Quam tic asset vel illius

Forma capax, vel auriga.

36. idiota]. A reference to Acts iv. 15, where Peter and John are described as homines sine litteris et idiotes (Vidg.).

37 — 42. A difficult stanza. Gautier, who is prodigal of un- needed help, gives not a word of assistance here. The first three lines contain no serious difficulty, or at any rate none which au acciu'ate study of Ezekiel, chap. i. and x. will not remove. Thus we can explain lumen visuale by aid of Ezek. i. 18 ; x. 12 (Macarius calling the living creatures of the prophet 6Xo<pddAfj.a f*a) ; the vultus anceps by Ezek. i. 6, 10 ; the leves cdce by i. 6, 9 : and the rota stantes by i. 21. But what is exactly the force of the last tliree lines is harder to say. I take however Adam to mean that St John's eagle glance (lumen visuale), with all else ascribed to him here, was seen in heaven, anticipated in Ezekiel's vision, before John himself, or his Lord, the charioteer (auriga) of that wondrous chariot which John, with the other " living creatures," upbore, took form and shape on earth.

74 ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

Illi scribimt Christum pati

Dolum, inde vim Pilati,

Cum corona spinea. 45

llic sublimis tractu pennae

Tractat Christi jus perenne

Cum ultrici framea.

Pennis liujus idiotse

Elevantur regis rotas, 50

Secus animalia ;

Et coelestes citharoedi

Se prosternunt Patris sedi

Canentes, Alleluia.

49, 50. Cf. Ezek. i. 19 : Cumque ambularent animalia, ambulabant pariter et rotee jiixta ea, et cum elevarentur ani- malia de terra, elevabantur simul et rotae (Vulg.).

BE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA.

lY. DE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA.

T7ERBUM Dei, Deo natum,

T Quod nee factum, nee creatum, Venit de coelestibus, Hoc vidit, hoc attrectavit, Hoc de ccelo reseravit 5

Joannes hominibus.

Inter illos primitivos Veros veri fontis rivos

IV. Sequentim de Tempore, Argentinsp, 1516, p. 2 ; Clich- toveus, Ehccidat. Eccles. Paris, loo6, p. 213 (not in the earlier editions) ; Rambach, Anthol. Christl. Gesdnge, Altona u. Leip- zig, 1817, p. 340; Daniel, Thes. Hymn. vol. ii. p. 166; Mone, Hymni Lat. Med. Mvi, vol. iii. p. 118. — This sublime hymn, though not Adam of St Victor's, proceeds from one formed in his school, and on his model, and is altogether worthy of him. It is, indeed, to my mind grander than his own, which has just preceded it. Daniel ascribes it to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but has nothing certain to say about its authorship.

4—6. Cf. 1 Joh. i. 1.

6. It is seldom that we meet in Christian sapphics so fine a stanza as this, which occurs in a hjnnn of Damiani's to St John : and which may here be brought into comparison :

Fonte pronimpens fluvius perenni Curris, arentis satiator orbis ; Hausit ex pleno modo quod propinat Pectore pectus.

7—9. See note on no. I. 57 — 64.

/6 ADAM OF ST VICTOR.

Joannes exsiliit;

Toti mundo propinare 10

Nectar illud salutare,

Quod de throuo prodiit.

Coelum transit, veri rotam

Solis vidit, ibi totani

Mentis figens aciem ; 1 5

Speculator spiritalis

Quasi Seraphim sub alis

Dei vidit faciem.

12. de ihrono] Cf. Rev. xxii. 1.

13. Calum transit^ Ambrose {Prol. in Exp. in Luc. c. 3): Nemo enim, audeo dieere, tanta sublimitate sapientife majestatem Dei vidit, et nobis proprio sermone reseravit. Transcendit nubes, transcendit virtutes ccelorum, trauscendit argelos, et Vcrhum in pjTncipio reperit, et Verbum apud Deum vidit.

15. figens aciem] Augustine (In Joh., Tract. 36) : Aquila ipse est Johannes, sublimium prsedieator, et lucis intern» atque aeternse fixis oeulis eontemplator. Dicuntur enim et pulli aqui- larum a parentibus sic probari, patris scilicet uugue suspendi, et radiis solis opponl ; qui firme contemplatus fuerit, Alius agno- seitur; si acie palpitaverit, tanquam adulterinus ab ungue di- mittitur.

17, 18. These verses can only be fully understood by reference to Isai. vi. 2 (Vulg.), where ""with twain he covered his face," i. e. the seraphim with two wings covered their (own) face, (faciem suam, as it should have been), is given : Duabus velabant faciem ejus, i.e. Domini. This was referred to the obscure vision of God vouchsafed under the Old Covenant, so that even prophets saw but St' i(r6itTpov, iv cuviyfiari : the wings of the seraphim being as a veil between God and them. Thus H. de S. Victore (De Area Mor. i. 3) : Quod autera in Esaia scriptum est, Vela- bant faciem ejus, eo miodo intelligi debet, qiio dictum est ad Moysem: Non poteris videre faciem meam : non enim videbit me homo, et vivet. But St John, the poet would say, looking

DE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA. 77

Audiit in gyro sedis

Quid psallant cum citliara3dis 20

Quater seni proceres :

De sigillo Trinitatis

Nostrge nummo civitatis

Impressit characteres.

Volat avis sine meta 25

Quo nee vates nee propheta

Evolavit altius :

Tarn implenda, quam impleta,

Nunquam vidit tot secreta

Purus homo purius. 30

Sponsus rubra veste tectus, Visus, sed non intellectus,

beneath these covering wings {seraphim sub alis) saw the un- veiled glory of God. A passage in St Bernard {0pp. 1, 955. Bened. ed.) shews that even in the middle ages they were aware suam woiild have been a more accurate translation.

19—21. Cf. Kev. iv. 4; xiv. 2.-22—24. I said in the first edition, that by the "money of our city" we must understand the mind of man. This, as I am now convinced, was a mistake. Language is the money by aid of which the moral and intellec- tual business of the world is carried on between man and man. On this St John set his stamp. Thus the Greek Logos, our English " Word," since they have past under his hands, mean sometliing quite else, and something far higher and deeper, than they ever did, before he put a heavenly stamp, the sigillun,, Trinitatis, upon them.

25 — 30. Volat avis'\ Olshauson has taken this stanza, than which sacred Latin poetry does not possess a grander, as the motto of his Commentary on St John. The implenda are the Apocalypse, the impleta the Gospel.

31. Cf Isai. Ixiii. 1—3; Eev. xix. 11.

32. non mtcllectus'] Cf. Isai. liii. 2—4.

78 ADA3I OF ST VICTOR.

Eedit ad palatium :

Aquilam Ezecliielis

Sponsae misit, qu£e de coelis 35

Eeferret mysterium.

Die, dilecte, de Dilecto, Qualis adsit, et de lecto Sponsi sponsas nimcia : . Die quis eibus angeloruin, 40

34. Aquilam EzecMelis] Of. Ezek. i. 10 ; Rev. ir. 7. 38, 39. So CKchtoveus ; but Daniel and Mone :

Qualis sit, et ex dilecto

Sponsus sjionsae nuncia :

But, not to say that, so read, the lines yield no tolerable sense, the reading violates the laws of rhyme which the Latin medieval poets observe. They allow themselves, it is true, greater freedom than we do : with us a syllable may not rhyme with itself, even when in the second line it belongs to an entirely different word from that to which it belonged in the first. Thus vine and divine are faulty as rhymes, though many — Spenser in particular — frequently admit them. But the medieval Latin poets, permitting rhymes such as these, so that a word may even rhjine with itself, if different senses be attached to it, as mundus the world, with mundus clean ; yet would not rhyme mundus to itself, the word in both places signifying the world. And rightly : such rhymes contradicting the fundamental idea of rhyme, which is that of likeness with difference — difference, if possible, in the sound, since that is the region in which rhyme moves ; but if not there, at least in the sense. Moreover the mystics had much to say of the lectus Domini, the deep rest and joy of perfected souls in innermost communion with their Lord ; deriving, as is needless to observe, the image from the Canticles.

40. dhus angehrum] Allusion to the Incarnation was often found ia the words of the Psalmist (Lsxviii. 25), "Man did eat angels' food." The Eternal Word, from the beginning the food of angels, in the Incarnation became also the food of men. Thus Augustine {InEp. Juh. Tract. 1): Erat enim [Vita] ab initio;

DE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA. 79

Quae sint festa superorum De Sponsi prEesentia.

Veri panem intellectus,

Coenam Christi super pectus

Christi sumptam resera : 45

Ut cantemus de Patrono,

Coram Agno, coram tlirono,

Laudes super «thera.

sed non erat manifestata hominibus ; mauifestata autem eral: angeKs videntibus, et tanquam pane suo cibantibus. Sed quid ait Scriptura? Panem angelorum manducavit homo. Ergo mani- festata est ipsa Vita in came. So too Hildebert:

Quam felix Panis, caro felis, hostia dives, In terris homines, qui pascit in sethere cives.

And Damiani yields a fine stanza here :

En ilia felix aquila Queb coeli cives vegetat,

Ad escam volat avida, Et nos in via, recreat.

44, 45. That he who was named iiriar-fidios, di-ew, from his greater nearness to that bosom (John xiii. 23), the deeper depths of his wisdom, has been often urged. Thus, to rescue the best lines from a poem otherwise of no eminent merit :

Hie, cujus al!E virtutum scalas, Prasminens scientia;,

Hora ccen» hausit plane Figens visum non elisum

Mese fontem gratiae ; In me, Solem glorias.

Ales alis spiritaUs

46. Patrono'] Led away by this word, Clichtoveus •will have it, that the end to which the enraptured poet aspires is, that he may sing the praises of St John before the throne and the Lamb ! A reference to Kev. v. 9 should have taught him better. That Fatronus may be used of a divine Person the following quotation makes abundantly plain {Hymn, de Temp. Argent, p. 25):

PriEsta, Pater et Patrone,

Prfesta Pili, Pastor bone,

Prffista, Spiritus amborum,

iledicinam peccatonmi.

go ABAM OF ST VICTOE.

V. LAUS S. SCRIPTUR.E.

STEIN GERE pauca libet bona carminis Inijus, et ipsum

Laude rel exili magnificare libet. Hie ea triticea est pannisque allata farina

Hebraeo populo de Pharaonis liumo. Hie illud missum de ccelo manna saporum, 5

Omneni gustanti qui sapit ore cibum : Ut brevius cun-am per singula ; praeminet auro

In pretio ; soli luce ; sapore favo. Hie facit humano generi quod sol facit orbi ;

Sol terras lucet ; luce cor ipse replet. ] o

Fons est liortoruni, puteus vel abyssus aquarum,

Quarum potus alit peetora, corda rigat.

V. Leyser, Hist. Poett. Med. Moi, p. 748. — It is the Aurora, a rmtrical Tersion of the larger part of Holy Scripture, ■which, as Leyser informs us, the anonymous author of this poem has immediately in his eye. This is the explanation of the carminis in the first line, which would not otherwise be intelhgible. He passes, however, at once from it to the praise of Scripture itself.

3, 4. Cf Exod. xii. 34.

5, 6. The Jewish legend, that the manna tasted to every man like that which he liked the best, is well known (Wisd. xvi. 21). Even such heavenly manna, meeting every man's desires, is Scripture. Gregory the Great {Mor. xxxi. 15) : Manna quippe est verbum Dei, et quidquid bene voluntas suscipientis appetit, hoc profecto in ore comedentis sapit.

11. Fons . . . pictei'.s] The words of Cant. iv. 15 (Vidg.): Fons hortorum ; puteus aquarum viventium, quae fluunt impetu

LAU8 S. SCEIPTUB^. 8i

Pascua coelestls, cellaria regia, coelum

Tot signis fulgens quot sacramenta tegens.

Hie calamus Scriba; subito scribentis ; hie arcus, 15 Qui curative vulnere corda ferit.

Hie rota sive rotaj, quarum ut mare visio mira, In medioque rotte fertur inesse rota.

de Libano ; were applied to Scripture, a fountain for its abun- dance, a well for its depth. Thus a mystical expositor of the Canticles {Bernardi 0pp. vol. ii. p. 125): Aecipiamus in fonte sufficientiam doctrinse, in puteo secretum : in illo abundantiam, in isto alta mysteria.

13. cellaria regia'] Cf. Cant. i. 3 (Vulg.): Introduxit me rex in cellaria sua. For the sense in which Scripture is thus the king's cellar, see St Bernard, In Cant. Serm. 23.

15. The old exposition of Ps. xlv. 2, namely, that the Holy Spirit was " the ready writer," and that the Psalmist would say his tongue did but utter, and his hand set down, that which was suggested by that Spirit, must explain this line. The poet transfers to all Scripture what had been spoken of a single Psalm.

Ibid, arsis'] Gregory the Great, speaking of the different uses of the word "bow" in Scripture, observes (ilfon xix. 30): Aliquando autem per arcum etiara Sacra Seriptura signatur. Ipsa quippe arcus est Ecclesise, ipsa arcus est Domini, de qua ad corda hominum, sicut fcrientes sagitt«, sic terrentes sententipe reniunt.

17. Jlic rota sive rotes] Cf Ezek. i. 15, 16. At ver. 15, the prophet sees "ojze wheel;" apparuit rota una (Vulg.), whde immediately in the next verse it is said, Et aspectus rotarum quasi visio maris. The wheel or wheels is Holy Scripture ; and the wheel within wheel, of which the same verse presently speaks (qiiasi sit rota in medio rotge), is the New Testament ; which is contained and shut up in the Old. Gregory the Great {Horn. 6 in Ezek.) : Kota ergo in medio rotse est ; quia inest Testamento Veteri Testamentum Novum. Quod Testamentum Vetus promisit, hoc Novum exhibuit ; et quod G

82 LAUS S. SCBIPTUBM.

Quatuor his facies, species est una : levantur,

Stant, vel eunt, prout lias Spiritus intro regit. 20 Hie liber in dextra regnantis scriptus et intus

Et foris; intns habens mystica, plana foris. Hie Moysi facies, quae velo tecta, videri

Non valet ; at Christi luce retecta patet. Per Moysen typico, per Christum sanguine vero 25

Hie liber aspersus, remque typumque gerit. Lex nova, res ; antiqua, typus : diffusior ilia,

Hajc brevior : retegit ista, quod ilia tegit.

illud oeculte annunciat, hoe istud exhibitum aperte clamat. Prophetia ergo Testamenti Nori, Testamentiim Vetus est; et expositio Testamenti Veteris, Testamentum Novum. Cf. Anselm, Dial. Christ, et Jud. iii. p. 539. — Quarum ut mare visio mira] Et aspeetus rotarum et opus earum, quasi visio maris ; (Ezek. i. 16, Vulg.) on which Gregory the Great (ibid.): Kecte sacra eloquia visioni maris similia narrantur, quia in eis magna sunt volumina sententiarum, cumuli sensuum. These -words have nothing answering to them in our text, or in the Hebrew.

19. Quatitor . . . 7ma] Gregory the Great (ibid.) : Eota quatuor facies habere describitur [Ezek. i. 15], quia Scriptura Sacra per utraque Testamenta in quatuor partibus est distincta. Vetus enim Testamentum in Lege et Prophetis, Novum vero in Evangehis atque Apostolorum Actibus et Dictis. Una simihtudo ipsarum est quatuor (Ezek. i. 16), quia divina eloquia, etsi temporibus distincta, sunt tamen sensibus unita.

21, 22. intus etforis] Eichard of St Victor (In Apoc. v. 1) : Liber qui in dexteri Dei tenetur, est Sacra Scriptura. Intus scriptus est per spiritualem intelligentiam, foris per literam. Cf. Gregory the Great, Horn. 9 in Ezek. § 30.

23, 24. Cf. Exod. xxxiv. 33 ; 2 Cor. iii. 13-16.

25, 26. Cf. Exod. xxiv. 8 ; Heb. ix. 19. There is no mention, as is well known, in the former passage, of a sprinkling o/ the book with blood.

28. reteffit] The lengthening of the last syllable of retegit

LAUS S. SCRIPTUEM. 83

Dumque rei testis typus exstat, abyssus abyssum

Invocat. Utraque lex nomen abyssus habet. 30 Sic brevitate libri geminaj clauduntur abyssi ;

Utraque magna nimis, nullus utramque capit. Jugiter hie legem meditari, inquirere, nosse,

Quid nisi coelesti luce ciboque frui ? Nil homini melius, quam si divina legendo 35

Figat ibi vitam, quo sibi vita venit. Felix qui sitit hasc, et eodem fonte saporem

Attrahit, ut vitam condiat inde suam. Nam nisi sic sapiat, sapientem non puto, quando

Nil sibi, quod didicit codice, corde sapit. 40

Qui studet his, vel propter opes vel propter honores,

Non sapit ; it prorsus a sapiente procul. Non nisi propter se vult se Sapientia queeri ;

Qui colit banc, audi, quaa metit inde bona. Purior afFectus, sensus fit clarior, et mens 45

Liberior mundo, carneque pressa minus. Lectio jugis alit virtutes, lucida reddit

Intima, declinat noxia, vana fugat.

here, by tlie force of the arsis and on the strength of the two morce which must here be made, is not without its parallels among the best writers of elegiac verse. It was another sign of the way in which accent was penetrating into the domain of quantity, that the later Latin poets, most of all the medieval, assumed the entirest liberty of making short a long syllable — even a short vowel — at this place, whenever it was convenient to them. They used the same freedom with the hexameter, where, when the caesura occurred immediately after the arsis in the third foot, the syllable on which the pause thus fell, was always, and on this ground alone, considered long. The reader will find examples of both kinds in this volume, and should not regard them as neglects or ignorances, but as parts of a system. g2

84

ST a:mbkose.

ST AMBEOSE, born about 340, and probably at Treves, was intended by his father, who was pre- fect of Gaul, for a secular career. He practised as an. ad\'ocate at Milan ; and was already far advanced on the way to the highest honours and offices of the state, having been appointed about 370 Consular Prefect of Liguria, when it became plain that for him other and more lasting honours were in store. For, having won the affections alike of Catholics and Arians by the mild- ness and justice of his rule, on the death of Auxentius, bishop of Milan, a.d. 374, he was chosen as by a sudden inspiration, and under circumstances which are too well known to need being repeated, his successor, being as yet only a layman and unbaptized. He died in 397.

The hymns which are current under the name of Anibrosian are very numerous, yet are not all his ; the name having been fi-eely given to as many as were formed after the model and pattern of those which he composed, and to some in eveiy way imworthy of him. The Benedictine editors do not admit more than twelve as with any certainty of his composition : and even these some in later times have affirmed to be " ascribed to him upon doubtful authority ; " so the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography ; although no evidence

ST AMBROSE. 85

can well be stronger than that which in regard of some of them we possess.*

After being accustomed to the softer and richer strains of the later Christian poets, to the more orna- mented style of a Bernard or an Adam of St Victor — to the passionate sinking of himself in the great objects which he contemplates, that marks the fii-st of these great poets of the Cross — to the melodies long drawn out and the abundant theological lore of the second, — it is some little while before one returns with a hearty consent and liking to the almost austere simplicity which characterizes the hymns of St Ambrose. It is felt as though there were a certain coldness in them, an aloof- ness of the author from his subject, a refusal to blend and fuse himself with it. The absence too of rhyme, for which the almost uniform use of a metre, very far from the richest among the Latin lyric forms, and with singularly few resources for producing variety of pause or cadence, seems a very insufEcient compensation, adds to this feeling of disappointment. The ear and

* This evidence is well brought together by Cardinal Thoma- sius in a preliminary discourse, Ad Lcctorem (unpaged), prefixed to the Hynmarium, in the second volume of his Works {J. M. Thomasii, S. E. E., Cardinalis, Opera Omnia, Eomae, 1747, vol. ii. p. 351 — 434). This book, of rare occurrence in England, is important in fixing the text, especially of the earlier hymns. The Cardinal's position gave him access to the oldest Vatican and other Italian MSS., of all which he made diligent and care- ful use. Ex illo libro, says Daniel, tanquam fonte primario hauriendum est. For an estimate of St Ambrose's merits in promoting the new Christian psalmody, see Eambach, Anthol. Chrisil, Ges'dnge, vol. i. p. 58 — 60.

86 ST AMBROSE.

the heart seem alike to be without their due satis- faction.

Only after a while does one learn to feel the grandeur of this imadorned metre, and the profound, though it may have been more instinctive than conscious, wisdom of the poet in choosing it ; or to appreciate that confi- dence in the surpassing interest of his theme, which has rendered him indifferent to any but its simplest setting forth. It is as though, building an altar to the living God, he would observe the Levitical precept, and rear it of unhewn stones, upon which no tool had been lifted. The gi-eat objects of faith in their simplest expression are felt by him so sufficient to stir all the deepest affec- tions of the heart, that any attempt to dress them up, to array them in moving language, were merely super- fluous. The passion is there, but it is latent and represt, a fire burning inwardly, the glow of an austere enthusiasm, which reveals itself indeed, but not to every careless beholder. Nor. do we fail presently to observe how truly these poems belonged to their time and to the circumstances under which they were produced — how suitably the faith which was in actual conflict with, and was just triumphing over, the powers of this world, found its utterance in hymns such as these, wherein is no softness, perhaps little tenderness ; but in place of these a rock-like firmness, the old Roman stoicism transmuted and glorified into that nobler Chris- tian courage, which encountered and at length overcame the world.

DE ADVENTU DOMINI. 87

VI. DE ADVENTU DOMINI.

VENI, Eedemptor gentium, Ostende par turn Virginis ; Miretiir omne sseciilum : Talis decet partus Deum.

Non ex virUi semine, 5

Sed mystico spiramine, Verbum Dei factum est caro, Fructusque ventris floruit.

Alvus tumescit Virginis,

Claustrum pudoris permanet, 10

Vexilla virtutum micant,

Versatur in templo Deus.

VI. S. Ambrosii Opf. Paris, 1836, vol. iv. p. 201 ; Card. Thomasii 0pp. Eomse, 1747, vol. ii. p. 351 ; Moue, Hymn. Lat. Med. Moi, vol. i. p. 42. The German hymn-book is indebted to this immortal hymn of St Ambrose for one of its choicest treasures — I mean John Frank's Advent hymn, commencing:

Komm, HeidenheUand, Lbsegeld, Komm, schonste Sonne dieser Welt, Lass abwarts flammen deinen Schein, Denn so mil Gott geboren sein.

It is not a translation, but a free recomposition of the original, beside which it is wellnigh worthy to stand, even though we may not count it, as Bunsen does, noch tiefer und lieblicher als das Lateinische.

ST AMBBOSE.

Procedit e thalamo suo,

Pudoris aula regia,

Gemini Gigas substantise, 15

Alacris ut currat viam.

13. So Thomasius, on good MS. authority. The line is oftener read, Frocedens de thalamo suo, which is quite inadmissible, no single instance in the genuine hymns of St Ambrose occurring of a line beginning with two spondees ; inrai'lably the second foot is an iambic. Talis partus decet Beum, which Daniel prints as the fourth line of this present hymn, is a transposition of words of which the older MSS. know nothing.

15. Gigas'] The "giants" of Gen. vi. 4, were, according to the interpretation of the early Church, gonincB substantia ; the " sons of God " who begot them (rer. 2) being angels, who formed unions with the " daughters of men." This scripture, so understood, must be brought into connexion with Ps. xviii. 6, (Vulg.), xix. 0 (E. v.), before we can enter into the full meaning of this line. In the " double substance " of the giants, thus bom of heaven and of earth, Ambrose sees a resemblance .to Him who in like manner was of twofold nature, divine and hu- man. He might hardly have dared trace an analogy, but for the words of the Psalmist, referred to above, in which he saw an undoubted reference to the earthly course of the Lord. Else- where {Be Tiicarn. Bom. c. 5) he unfolds his meaning at full: Quem [Christum] quasi gigantem Sanctus David propheta de- scribit, eo quod biformis gemin?eque naturae unus sit consors divinitatis et corporis : qui tanquam sponsus proeedens de thalamo suo exsultavit tanquam gigas ad currendam viam. Sponsus animae secundum Verbum: gigas terrae, quia usus nostri officia percurrens, cum Deus semper esset aeternus, Incarnationis sacra- menta suseepit. Thus too in another hymn he sings : Processit anla Virgiiiis, Suae Gigas Ecclesice.

And Adam of St Victor, in a Christmas hymn :

Gigas velox, gigas fortis. Ad currendam venit viam,

Gigas nostrffi victor mortis, Complens in se proplietiam Accinctus potentia, Et legis mj'steria.

BE ABVENTU DOMINI. 89

Egressus ejus a Patre,

Eegressus ejus ad Patrem,

Excursus usque ad inferos,

Reciirsus ad sedem Dei. 20

^qualis ajtemo Patri, Carnis tropaso cingere, Infirina nostri corporis Virtute firmans perpeti.

17 — 20. He still draws his imagery from the 18th Psalm (19th, E. v.). It is written there of the sun : A sumnio eoelo egressio ejus : et occursxis ejus usque ad summum ejus (Vulg.). This he adapts to Him who said concerning Himself: Exivi & Patre, et veni in mundura : iterum relinquo mundum et rado ad Patrem (John xvi. 28 ) ; who was acquainted with the deepest depths of humiliation, and afterwards with the highest heights of glory. In one of Augustine's Sermons (372, 3) he quotes this stanza as having just been sung in the Church : Hunc nostri Gigantis exeursum brevissime ac pulcherrime cecinit beatus Ambrosius in hymno quem paulo ante cantastis.

22. tropcEo'] I preferred stropheo (strophium or stropheum = (XTp6<piov) in the first edition ; and defended the reading, though supported by inferior MS. authority, at some length ; but erro- neously, I am now con-snnced, and from insufficient acquaintance with the language of the Fathers. For them the risen flesh of Christ is constantly a tropcexmi which He erected in witness of his completed victory over death, and him that had the power of death ; a TpSiruLov Kara SaifjL6voiv, with reference to the heathen custom of claiming and celebrating a victory by the erection of a 7p6izaiov Kar' e'xfipwj/. Thus Clichtoveus : Christus per carnem assumptam debellato diabolo victor evasit, ipsamque glorificatam carnem tandem ccelo intulit.

Ibid, cingere] This is commonly read aecingcre ; but Mone, after Thomasius and the best MSS., as in the text. What, how- ever, Mone means, when he remarks here, Ambrosius braucht

90 ST AMBROSE.

Prassepe jam fulget tuum, 25

Lumenque nox spirat novum, Quod nulla nox interpolet, Fidecjue jugi luceat.

manchmal den Infinitiv mit dem Particip wie die Grieclien den Aorist, namlich als historischen Aorist, it is difficult to guess. He can hardly take cingere as the infinitive active. What I understand St Ambrose to say is this : " Equal to the Eternal Father, Thou clothest Thyself with the trophy of redeemed flesh, so strengthening with everlasting strength the infirmities of our body."

25. fulgef] Thus in the Evangel. Infant, eh. 3, some enter the cave where the new-born child is laid, — et ecce repleta erat ilia luminibus, lucernanim et candelarum fulgoribus exce- dentibus, et solari luce majoribus.

27. nox interpolet] Gregory the Great {Moral, iv. 6) : Anti- quus liostis dies est, per naturam bene conditus ; sed nox est, per meritum ad tenebras delapsus.

91

PISTOE.

THE only notice which I have of the probable author of the following hymn is drawn from Clichtoveiis, p. 198 : Auctor ejus fuisse traditur eximius pater Henricus Pistor, doctor theologus Parisiensis, et in religiosa dome Sti Victoris juxta Parisios monasticam vitam professus, qui etiam Concilio Constantinensi [1414 — 1418] inter- fuit, eaque tempestate, doctrina et virtute miiifice floruit. Referring to the histories of the Council of Constance, I can find no notice of his having taken any prominent share in its deliberations. Yet the internal evidence of the poem itself, as far as it reaches, is aU in favour of this statement. That the writer was an accomplished theologian is plain ; and no less so that he was trained in the school, and formed upon the model, of Adam of St Victor, as indeed we have just been told that he was himself a Victorine as well.

92 PISTOB.

VII. DE S. JOHANNE BAPTISTA.

PR^CURSORIS et Baptists Diem istum chorus iste Veneretiir laudibus. Vero die jam diescat,

Ut in nostris elucescat 5

Veriis dies mentibus.

Prfecursore nondum nato,

Nondum partu reserato,

Eeserantur mystica,

Nostro sole tunc exclusus, lO'

Verioris est perfiisus

Solis luce typica.

Prius novit diem verum,

Quam nostrorum sit dierum

Usus beneficio. 15

Hie renascens nondum natus

Nondum nascens est renatus

Coslesti mysterio.

Clausa pandit, ventre clausus ;

Gestu plaudens, fit applausus 20

Messise prsesentise.

VII. QlichioTQUs, Elucidat. Eccles. p. 198; Eambaeb, Anthol. Christl. Gcsange, p. 364 ; Daniel, Thes. HymnoL vol. ii. p. 169.

20, 21. Cf. Lukei. 41.

DE 8. JOHANlSlE BAPTIST A. 93

Lingua gestus obsequuntur ; Dum pro lingua sic loquuntur, Servirint infantia?.

Tori fructiis matri dantur, 25

Et jam matris excusantur

Sterilis opprobria.

Ortus tanti pr^cursoris

Multus terret, sed terroris

Comes est Isetitia. 30

Se a mundo servans mundum,

Munde vivit intra mimdum

In setate teneru.

Ne formentur a convictu

Mores, loco, veste, victu 35

Mundi fagit prospera.

Quern dum replet lux superna.

Verse lucis fit lucerna,

Veri solis lucifer ;

Novus prseco novae legis, 40

Immo novus novi regis

Pufrnaturi signifer.

27. Cf. Luke i. 25.

29. terret] Luke i, 69. Daniel has tenet ; one of the perious misprints with which his book, in many respects so carefully and conscientiously prepared, too much abounds.

36. Cf. Luke i. 60 ; Matt. iii. 4.

38. lucerna] In the words of the Psalmist, Paravi lucemam Christo meo (Ps. cxxxi. 7, Vulg.), it was very_ common to find an express prophecy of the Eaptist. The application was helped on by the reappearance of lucerna in the Lord's words about liim : nie erat lucerna ardens, et lucens (John v. 35, Vulg.). Cf. Augustine, 8erm. 293, 4 ; TertuUian, Adv. Jud. 9.

39. lucifer] This title of the light-bringer, the morning

94 PISTOR.

Singular! proplietia

Prophetarum monarcliia

Sublimatur omnium. 45

Hi futurum, hie prassentem,

Hi venturum, venientem

Monstrat iste Filium.

Dum baptizat Christum foris,

Hie a Christo melioris 50

AquEe tactu tingitur :

Duos duplex lavat flumen,

Isti nomen, illi numen

Baptists conceditur.

Dum baptizat, baptizatur, 55

Dumque lavat, hie lavatur Vi lavantis omnia.

star, was a nomen proprium applied to the Baptist : rj (puvi] rov A6yov, 6 \vxvos tov <^cot({s, 6 fuiffcj)6pos 6 rov tjXIov irp6Spo/Mos, as he ■was called in the Greek Church. Durandus : Ideo autem Joannes dictus est Lucifer, quia obtidit novum tempus. To remember this, explains St Bernard's comparison of him and that other 'son of the morning,' or Lucifer (Isai. xiv. 12, 13, Vulg.), who sought not to go before the true Sun, but to usurp his place : Lucet ergo Johannes, tanto verius quanto minus appetit lucere. Fidelis Lucifer, qui Solis justitise non usurpare venerit, sed prfenuntiare splendorem.

43 — 45. sublimatur'] Clichtoveus sees here allasion to Christ's word concerning John, that he was a prophet, ' and more than a prophet' (Matt. xi. 9); compare Gregorj' the Great {Horn. 6 in Evang.). But it was often urged as a prero- gative of the Baptist, that he was the only prophet who was himself prophesied of before his birth ; thus by Augustine (Ser7)i. 288, 3): Hie propheta, immo amplius quam propheta, prsenuntiari meruit per prophetam. De illo namque dixit Isaias,

DE S. JOHANNE BAPTISTA.

95

Aquse lavant et lavantur, His lavandi vires dantur Baptizati gratia.

0 lucerna Verbi Dei,

Ad coelestis nos diei

Ducat luminaria,

Nos ad portum ex hoc fluctu,

Nos ad risum ex hoc luctu

Christi trahat gratia.

60

65

Vox clamantis in deserto; and this is possibly the singularis prophetia, which the poet ■would say lifted him above all his fellows.

58 — 60. lavanturl So Marbod, in a leonine couplet :

Non eguit tergi, voluit qui flumine mergi : Lotus aquas lavit, baptismaque sanctificavit.

66. Other hymns upon John the Baptist, though inferior to this, hare much merit. Thus in Daniel's Thes. Hyninol. vol. ii. p. 217, an anonymous one beginning thus, but not at all main- taining the merits of its opening :

In occursum pracursoris Concurrenti cordis, oris, Curramus obsequio ; In lucemA Lux laudetur, In pr£econe veneretur Judex, Sol in radio.

Solem solet repentinum, Vel quid grande vel divinum Vuigus aegre capere :

Quare nobis hebetatis Sol supemae veritatis Prteluxit in sidere.

Hie precursor et propheta, Immo prophetarum meta, Legi ponens terminum, Mire coepit, per applausum Ventre matris clausus clausum Revelando Dominum.

Another by Adam of St Victor (Gautier, toI. ii. p. 28), yield these stanzas :

Ad honorem tuum, Christe, Recolat Ecclesia PrjBcursoris et Baptistse Tui natalitia.

Laus est Regis in prsconis Ipaius prfficonio, Quern virtutum ditat donis, Sublimat ofScio.

96 TI8T0B.

Agnum monstrat in aperto Multa docet millia.

Vox clamantis in deserto, Non lux iste, sed lucema.

Vox Verbi prienimcia. Christus vere lux fetema,

Ajdens fide, verbo luccns, Lux illustrans omnia. Et ad veram lucem ducens,

These stanzas swarm -witli patristic and Scriptural allusion. And first, the poet brings out the exceptional circumstance, that, while for all other saints it is the day of their death, it is that of his birth, his natalitia, which the Church celebrates — the I^ativity of the Baptist. Augustine gives the reason {Seym. 290, c. 2): Denique quia in magno Sacramento natus est Jo- hannes, ipsius solius jiisti natalem diem celebrat Ecclesia. Et natalis Domini celebratur, sed tanquam Domini. Date mihi alium servum, praeter Johannem, inter Patriarchas, inter Pro- phetas, inter Apostolos, cujus natalem diem celebret Ecclesia Christi. Passionum diem servis plurimis celebramus ; nativitatis diem nemini nisi Johanni. The reasons thus touched on by Augustine, DvLvanins {Rationale, rii. 14) gives at fuU. They are found in the words of the angel, that many should rejoice at his birth (Luke i. 14); that he should be filled with the Holy Ghost fmn his mother's womb (i. 15) ; and in his relation to his Lord as the morning star, whose appearing heralded the rising of the true Sun ; Cant. ii. 12 being in like manner applied to him ; and his the voice of the turtle, which, being heard in the land, told that winter was past, and the rain was over and gone. Nor should the reader miss, in the second stanza, the play with the words Vox and Verbum, which is indeed much more than a play — John a sound, a startling cry in that old world to which he himself belonged, a voice crying in the wilderness ; but Christ a new utterance out of the bosom of the Eternal, an articulate Word. Compare Origen {In Joan. u. 26); and Augustine (5fr»j. 288, 3). The next line, Ardens fide, verbo lucens, is a com- mentary on the Saviour's words : Ille erat lucema ardens et lv/:ens.

DE NATIVITATE DOMINI. 97

VIII. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

PITER natus in Bethlehem, Unde gaudet Jerusalem.

Hie jacet in preesepio, Qui regnat sine tcrmino.

Cognovit bos et asinus Quod puer erat Dominus.

Vni. Corner, Pro7npt. Devot. p. 278 ; Daniel, T^cs. Hymnol. vol. i. p. 334. — This hymn, of a beautiful simplicity, and absorb- ing easily so much theology in its poetry, continued long a great favourite in the Lutheran Churches of Germany ; surviving among them till wellnigh the present day.

5. bos ct asinus] Two passages in the Old Testament sup- plied the groundwork to that wide-spread legend which painters have so often made their own, and to which here the poet al- ludes, viz. that the ox and the ass recognized and worshipped that Lord whom the Jews ignored and rejected. The first, Isai. i. 3 : Cognovit bos possessorem suum, et asinus prsesepe domini sui : Israel autem me non cognovit, et popidus mens non intel- lexit (Vulg.) ; in which was seen a prophetic reference to the manger at Bethlehem ; and no less at Hab. iii. 2, where the Septuagint has strangely enough, «V fiiatf Suo ^oiaiv yvwad^ari : and the old Italic : In medio duoriun animalium innotesceris. The bos and asinus were further mystically applied to the Jew and Gentile, who severally, in the persons of the shepherds and the wise men, were worshippers at the cradle of the new-born King.

6. There is some merit in these lines from the Muscb Angli-

H

98 BE NA TIVITA TE B OMINI.

Reges de Saba veniunt, Aurum, tus, myirliam offerunt.

Intrantes doinum invicem

Novum salutant Principem. 10

De matre natus Virgine Sine virili semine ;

Sine serpentis vulnere De nostro venit sanguine ;

In carne nobis similis, 15

Peccato sed dissimilis;

Ut redderet nos homines Deo et sibi similes.

In hoc natali gaudio

Benedicamus Domino : 20

Laudetur sancta Trinitas, Deo dicamus gratias.

cane, vol. i. p. 115. Christian aleaics, whicli are not wholly profane, are so rare, that on this score they are •worth quoting :

Doloris espers, Mater amabilem Enixa prolem gramineo in toro Deponit immortale pignus, Arma timens pecorumque vultns.

Ast ille cunas fortiter occupat, ■Fassusqiie numen, et jubare aiireo Perfusus, absterret paventes Quadrupedes animosus infans.

7. Bcges] The old Church legend — the Roman Church makes it almost a matter of faith — that the wise men from the East were kings, rests on Isai. Ix. 3 ; Ps. Ixxii. 10. 15. To this last passage also we owe Saba, as the interpretation of the aiuToKal of Matt. ii. 1.

99

PETER THE VENERABLE.

PETEE the Venerable, born 1092 or 1094, of a noble family of Auvergne, was elected in 1122 abbot of Clugny — being constituted thereby the chief of that reformed branch of the Benedictine order, the head- quarters of which were at Clugny in Burgundy. This admirable man, one of that wonderftd galaxy of illus- trious men who adorned France in the first half of the twelfth century, was probably only second, although second by a very long interval, to St Bernard in the influence which, by his talents and virtues, and position at the head of a great and important congregation, he was able to exercise upon his time. His history is in more ways than. one bound up with that of his gi-eater cotemporary. He is indeed now chiefly known for his keen though friendly controversy with St Bernard, on the respective merits of the "black" and "white" monks, the Clugnian, and the yet later Cistercian, who now in their fervent youth were carrying the world before them. The correspondence is as characteristic in its way as that with which it naturally suggests a comparison, between St Augustine and St Jerome ; casting nearly as much light on the characters of the men, and far more on that of their times. But besides this, it was with him that Abelard found shelter, after the condemnation of his errors, and to his good oflices. the reconciliation which was effected before Abelard's H 2

100 PETEE THE VENERABLE.

death, between him and St Bernard, was owing. Nor ought it to be forgotten, that to Peter the Venerable western Christendom was indebted for its first accurate acquaintance with the Koran. Travelling in Spain, he was convinced how important it was that the Church should be thoroughly acquainted with that system with which it was in hostile contact, and at a great cost he caused a translation of the Koran into Latin to be made. That he should have done this, is alone sufficient to mark him as no common man. He has also himself written a refutation of Mahometanism. He died in 1156.

The poems which bear his name are not considerable in bulk, nor can they be esteemed of any very high order of merit. Yet apart from their interest as pro- ductions of one who played so important a part in the history of his age, these lines which immediately follow, and another hymn occupying a later place in this volume, possess a sufficient worth of their o^vn to jus- tify their insertion.

IX. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

ACELUM gaude, terra plaude, ^ Nemo mutus sit in laude : Auctor rerum creaturam Miseratus perituram,

IX. Bibliotheca Cluniacensis, Paris, 1614, p. 1349.

DE NA TIVITA TE B OMINI. i o i

Pr^bet dextram libertatis 5

Jam ab hoste captivatis.

Coelum terra? fiindit rorem,

Tei'ra gignit Salvatorem.

Chorus cantat angelorum,

Cum sit infans Eex eorum. 10

Venter ille virginalis,

Dei cella specialis,

Fecundatur Spiritu. Et ut virga parit florem, Sic et Virgo Eedemptorem, 15

Carnis tectum habitu. Matris alituj* intactae Puer-Deus sacro lacte,

Ees stupenda sa2culis ! Esca vivit aliena 20

Per quern cuncta manent plena ;

NuUis par miraculis ! Pastu carnis enutritur Vitam carni qui largitur : Matris habet gremium, 25

Quem et Patris solium : Virgo natum consolattir, Et ut Deum veneratur.

ALAN us.

ALANUS de Insulis, or of Lille, in Flanders, called Doctor Universalis fi-om tlie extent of his acquire- ments, was born in tlie first half of the twelfth century, and died at the beginning of the next. His life is as perplexed a skein for the biographer to disentangle as can well be imagined, abundantly justifying the axiom of Bacon : Citius emergit Veritas ex errore quam ex confusione — the main perplexity arising here from the difficulty of determining whether he and Alanus, also de Insulis, the friend of St Bernard and bishop of Auxerre, be one and the same person. The Biographie Univer- selle corrected this as an error, although a generally received one ; Oudinus, it is true, having already shewn the way {De Script. Eccles. vol. ii. p. 1389 — 1404) ; but Guericke and Neander again identify the two. The question, however, does not belong to this volume. The Doctor Universalis is undoubtedly the poet, and it is only with the poet we are here concerned.

The only collected edition of his works was pub- lished by Charles de Visch, Antwerp, 1654 ; a volume so rare that only in the Imperial Library at Paris was I able to get sight of it, and to obtain a perfect copy of a very beautiful Ode, inserted later in this volume. His Parables were a favourite book before the revival of learning ; but the work of his which enjoyed the high- est reputation was a long moral poem, entitled Antl-

ALAN us. 103

Claudiwius, it does not very clearly appear why. (See Leyser, p. 1017, who gives copious extracts irom it.) I know not whether it will bear out the praises which have been bestowed upon it and on its author. One says of him (Leyser, p. 1020) : Inter ajvi sui poetas facile familiam duxit ; and Oudinus (vol. ii. p. 1405), characterizes the poem as singulari festivitate, lepore, et elegantia conscriptum ; see also Eambach, Anthol. Christl. Gesdnge, vol. i. p. 329. Certainly, in the fol- lowing lines, the description of a natural Paradise, Ovidian both in their merits and defects, we must recognize the poet's hand.

Est locus ex nostro secretus climate, tractu Longo, nostrorum ridens fermenta loeorum : Iste potest solus quidquid loea csetera possunt. Quod minus in reliquis, melius suppletur in uuo ; In quo pubescens tener4 lanugine florum, Sideribus stellata suis, succensa rosarum Muriee*, terra novum contendit pingere coelum. Non ibi nascentis exspii-at gratia floris, Nascendo moriens ; nee enim rosa, mane puella, Vespere languet anus, sed vultu semper eodem Gaudens interni juvenescit munere veris. Hune florem non lu'it hyems, non decoquit sestas, Non ibi bacchautis Borese furit ira, nee illic Fulminat aura noti, nee spieula grandinis instant. Ambit silva locum, muri mentita figuram : "Non florum pr*datur opes, foliique capillum Tondet hyems, teueram florum depasta juventam. Sirenes nemorum, citharistse veris, in ilium Convenere locum, mellitaque carmina sparsim

* Elsewhere he has this couplet :

Ver, quasi fullo novus, reparando pallia pratLs Horum succendit muricis igne togas.

104 ALAN US.

Commentantur aves, d^iin guttxrris organa pulsant. In medio lacrymatur humus, fletuque beato Producens lacrymas, fontem sudore perenni ParUirit, et dulces potus singultat aquarum. Exuit ingemitas (?) fades argenteus amnis ; Ad puri remeans dementi jura, nitore Fulgurat in proprio, peregrina fece solutus.

The following lines form part, or, as Oudinus asserts, the whole, of the genuine epitaph of Alanus. The last of them is striking enoiigh :

Alanum brevis bora brevi tiimulo sepelirit, Qui duo, qui septem, qui totum scibile seivit ; Scire suum moriens dare vel retinere nequivit.

X. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

HIC est qui, carnis intrans ergastula nostras, Se pcenee vinxit, vinctos ut solveret ; jeger Factus, ut Eegrotos sanaret ; pauper, tit ipsis Pauperibus conferret opem ; defunctus, ut ipsa Vita donaret defunctos: exsulis omen 5

Passus, ut exilio miseros subduceret exul. Sic livore perit livor, sic vulnere vulnus. Sic morbus damnat morbum, mors morte fugatur : Sic moritur vivens, ut vivat mortuus ; hseres Exulat, ut servos hasredes reddat; egenus 10

Fit dives, pauperque potens, ut ditet egenos. Sic liber servit, ut servos liberet ; imum Summa petunt, ut sic ascendant infima summum ;

X. Alani Opera, ed. C. de Visch, Antwerp, 1654, p. 377.

BE NA TI VITA TE B OMmi. 1 05

Ut nox splendescat, splendor tenebrescit ; eclipsi

Sol verus languescit, lit astra reducat ad ortum. 15

^grotat mediciis, ut sanet morbidus a?grum.

Se coelum terrse conformat, cedrus hysopo,

Ipse gigas nano, ftuno lux, dives egeno,

^groto sanus, servo rex, purpura sacco.

Hie est, qui nostram sortem miseratiis, ab aula 20

j5^terni Patris egrediens, fastidia nostras

Sustinuit sortis ; sine crimine, criminis in se

Defigens poenas, et nostri danina reatus.

io5

HILDEBEET.

HILDEBERT, born in 1057, shared as the scholar of Berengarius, in all the highest culture of his age ; and having himself taught theology for a while at Mans, was in 1097 consecrated bishop of that see, and in 1125 became archbishop of Totirs. A wise and gentle prelate, although not wanting in courage to dare, and fortitude to endure, when the cause of truth required it, he must ever be esteemed one of the fairest ornaments of the French Church. In his Letters he more than once seeks earnestly to check some of the superstitions of his time, as, for instance, the exaggerated value attributed to pil- grimages made to the Holy Land, and to the shrines of saints. He died in 1134. There is an interesting sketch of his character and of his work in Neander's Life of St Bernaixl, pp. 447 — 458.

His verses amoimt, as the Benedictine editors calcu- late, to ten thousand or more. The enforced leisure of imprisonments and exiles may have given him op- portunity for composing so many. Of these a great number consist of versifications of scriptm-al history, or of the legends of saints, in heroic or elegiac verse, some- times rhyming and sometimes not, and possess a very slight value. INIore curious than these is a legendary life of Mahomet, whereof Ampere (vol. iii. p. 440) has given a brief analysis ; and his Hues On the death of his master Berengarius display true feeling, and a very

HILBEBEET. 107

deep affection : however hard we may find it to go along, in every particular, with praise such as this :

Cujus cura seqiii natiiram, legibus uti,

Et mentem vitiis, ora negate dolis ; Virtutes opibiis, verum prseponere falso,

Nil vacuum sensu dicere, nil facere.

Two or three further specimens of his poetry will shew that he could versify with considerable elegance and ease, as the following lines from a poem in praise of England :

Anglia, terra ferax, tibi pax diuturna quietem,

Multiplicem luxum merx opulenta dedit. Tu nimio nee stricta gelu, nee sidere fervens,

Clementi cceIo temperieque plaees. Cum pareret Natura parens, varioque favore

Divideret dotes omnibus una loeis, Elegit potiora tibi, matremque professa,

Insula sis locuples, pleuaque paeis, ait, Quidquid luxus amat, quidquid desiderat usus,

Ex te proveniet, aiit aliunde tibi. Te siquidem, licet occiduo sub sole latentem,

Quseret et inveniet merce beata ratis : &c.

And the following have a real energy. They make part of the soul's complaint against the tyranny of the flesh:

Angustse fragilisque domiis jam jamque mentis

Hospita, serviLi couditione premor. Triste jugimi cervice gero, gravibusque catenis

Proh dolor ! ad mortem non moritura trahor. Hei mihi ! quam doeilis falli, quam prompta subire

Tm-pia, quam velox ad mea damna fui.

But grander still are the lines Avhich follow. I have not inserted them in the body of this collection, lest I

io8 HILBEBEBT.

miglit seem to claim for them that entire sympathy wliich I am very far from doing. Yet, believing as we may, and, to give any meaning to a large period of Church history, we must, that Papal Rome of the middle ages had a work of God to accomplish for the taming of a violent and brutal world, in the midst of which she often lifted i;p the only voice which was anywhere heard in behalf of righteousness and truth — all which we may believe, with the fullest sense that her dominion was an imrighteous usurpation, however overruled for good to Christendom, which could then take no higher blessing, — ^believing this, we may freely admire these lines, so nobly telling of that true strength of spiritual power, which may be perfected in the utmost weakness of all other power. It is the city of Kome which speaks :

Dum simulacra mini, dum niimiiia rana placerent,

Militia, populo, mcenibus alta fui : At simul efiigies, arasque superstitiosas

Dejiciens, uni sum famulata Deo ; Cesserunt arees, cecidere palatia diATun,

Servivit populus, degeneravit eques. Vix scio quae fuerim : vix Romse Roma recorder ;

Vix siuit occasus vel meminisse mei. Gratior hsecjaetura mihi suecessibus illis,

Major sum pauper divite, stante jacens. Plus aquiHs rexilla crueis, plus Csesare Petrus,

Plus einctis dueibus vulgus inerme dedit. Stans domui terras ; infernum diruta pulse ;

Corpora stans, animas fraeta jacensque rego. Tunc miserse plebi, nunc principibus tenebrarum

Impero ; tune urbes, nunc mea regna polus : Quod ne Csesaribus videar debere vel armis,

Et species rerum meque meosque trahat, Armorum vis ilia perit, ruit alta Senatus

Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent.

BE NATIVITATE CHRISTI. 109

Eostra vacant, edicta silent, sua prsemia desunt

Emeritis, populo jura, colonus agris. Ista jacent, ne forte mens spem ponat in illis

Civis, et evacuet spemque bonumque crucis.

As modern Rome builds in here and there an antique frieze or pillar into lier more recent structures, so the poet has used here, as will be observed, three or fotir lines that belong to the old Latin anthology.

XT. DE NATIVITATE CHRISTI.

"VTECTAREUM rorem terris instillat Olympus, •^^ Totam respergunt flumina mollis humum, Aurea sanctorum rosa de prato Paradisi

Virginis in gremium lapsa, quievit ibi. Intra virgineum decus, intra claustra pudoris,

CoUigit angelicam virginis aula rosam. Flos roseus, flos angeHcus, flos iste beatus

Vertitur in foenum, fit caro nostra Deus.

XI. Hildeberti et Marhodi Opf. p. 1313. — These very beautiful lines— for their violation of some ordinary rules of the classical hexameter and pentameter ought not to conceal their beauty from us — form part of a longer poem ; but gain much through being disengaged from verses of an inferior quality.

7. Flos roseus] Elsewhere Hildebert has some lines on Clirist, the rose of Paradise, of which in like manner the real grace is not affected by some metrical and other faults. After a long description of the loveliness of this world, he turns suddenly round :

At quia flos mmidi cito transit et aret, ad illam Quse nunquam marcet currite, quaso, rosam :

110 HILBEBEET.

Vertitur in camera Verbum Patris, at sine damno,

Vertitur in niatrem virgo, sed absque viro. lo

Lumine plena siio manet in nascente potestas,

Virgineum florens in pariente decus, Sol tegitur nube, foeno flos, cortice granum,

Mel cera, sacco purpura, carne Deus. ^theris ac terrge sunt hac quasi fibula, sancto 15

Foederis amplexu dissona regna ligans.

Est rosa quae dicit, Ego flos campi ; rosa certe Aurea, principii nescia, fine carens.

Floruit in coelis, in mundo marcuit ; illic Semper olens, istic pallida facta parum.

Hunc florem Paradisus liabet, Seraphim videt, orbis Non capit, infernus nescit, adorat homo.

11. Lumine] Should we not read .ft^'ifTKiMC ?

ADAM OF ST VICTOK XII. IN NATIYITATE DOMINI.

POTE STATE, non natura Fit Creator creatura, Eeportetur ut factura Factoris in gloria.

Prjedicatus per prophetas, 5

Qiiem non capit locus, setas, Nostrse sortis intrat metas, Non relinquens propria.

Ccelum terris inclinatur,

Homo-Deus adunatur, 10

Adunato famiilatur

Coelestis familia.

Eex sacerdos consecratur

GeneraHs, quod monstratur

XII. Mone, Hymni Lat. Med. Mvi, toI. ii. p. S5 (but without ascription to the author) ; Gautier, Adam de S. Victor, vol. i. p. 10. —Dr. Neale, who before Mone had printed this grand hymn from a MS. missal {Stquentics, p. 80), had rightly divined Adam of St Victor to be its author. It is certainly the richest and fullest of his Nativity hymns ; although the Jubilemus Salvatori, first rescued by Gautier from oblivion (vol. i. p. 32), for which I have been unable to find room, does not fall very far behind it.

3. Beportctifr] Mone reads Beparetur.

11, 12. Cf. Luke ii. 10, 13; Matt. iv. 11 ; Luke xxii. 43; Matt, xxviii. 2.

7. metas] So in the Greek theology, 6 dxdp-nros x«^pe<Tai.

ADAM OF ST VICTOB.

Cum 25ax terris nimtiatur 15

Et in altis gloria.

Causam qu^ris, modiim rei ?

Causa prius omnes rei,

Modus justum velle Dei,

Sed conditum gratia. 20

O quam dulce condimentum,

Nobis mutans in pigmentum

Cum aceto fel cruentum,

Degustante Messia !

O salubre sacramentum, 25

Quod nos ponit in jumentum,

Plagis nostris dans unguentum,

Ille de Samaria.

Ille alter Elisseus,

Eeputatus homo reus, 30

Suscitavit homo-Deus

Sunamitis puerum.

23, 24. Cf. Matt, xxvii. 34; Ps. Lsix. 21.

26 — 28. The poet claims here, as so many have done before him, the good Samaritan of the parable as the type of Christ. He does so more at length in a sequence on the Circumcision (Gautier, Adam de S. Victor, vol. i. p. 49) :

Dum cadit secus Jericho vir Hierosolomita, Samaritanus ailuit, quo lapso datur vita. Perduxit hunc in stabiilum dementia divina, Vinum permiscens oleo siiavl medicina. Curantis regri vulnera sunt dulcia fomenta, Dum cunctis pcenitentia f uit reis inventa. Bini dati denarii sunt duo Testamenta, Dum Christus, finis utriusque, complet sacramenta.

29—32. Cf. 2 Kin. iv, 7—37 ; and on Elisha as a type of Christ, Bernard, In Cant. Serm. lo, 16.

IN NA TIVITA TE B OMINL 1 1 3

Hie est gigas currens fortis,

Qui, destructa lege mortis,

Ad amoena primEe sortis 35

Ovem lert in hiimerum.

Vivit, regnat Deus-homo,

Trahens Oreo lapsum jDomo ;

Coelo tractus gaudet homo,

Denum complens numerum. 40

39, 40. An allusion to that Interpretation of the parable of the ten pieces of silver (Luke xv. 8 — 10), which makes the nine pieces which were not lost to be the nine ranks of angels who stood in their first obedience, and the one lost to be the race of mankind.

"4

MAUBUEN.

JOHN Maiiburn was born at Brussels in 14G0, and died abbot of the Cloister of Livry, not far from Paris, in 1502. He Avas the author of several ascetic treatises, among others the Rosetum Sph'ituale, from which the following hymn is derived.

Xni. DE NATIVITATE DOMINI.

HEU ! quid jaces stabulo, Omnium Creator, Vagiens cunabulo, Mundi reparator ?

XIII. Maubiirnus, Bosctum Spirituale, Diiaci, 1620, p. 416 ; Corner, Prompt. Devot. p. 280 ; Daniel, Thes. Hynmol. toI. i. p. 335. — These three stanzas are taken from a longer poem, con- sisting of thirteen in all, which commences :

Eja, mea anima, Bethleliem eamus.

I have not selected them, for they had long since been separated from the context, and constituted into a Clu'istmas hymn — a great favourite in the early reformed Churches, so long as the practice of singing Latin compositions survived among them. It still occasionally retains a place in the German hymnals, but now in an old translation which commences thus :

Warum lipgt im Krippelein —

As this hj-mn sometimes appears with a text diflFering not a little

DE NATIVITATE DOMINI. 115

Si rex, iibi purpura, 5

Vel clientxim murmura,

Ubi aula regis ?

Hie omnis penuria,

Paupertatis curia,

Forma nova? legis. 10

Istuc amor generis

Me traxit humani,

Quod se noxa sceleris

Occidit profani.

His meis inopiis 15

Gratiarum copiis

Te pergo ditare :

Hocce natalitio,

Vero sacrificio,

Te volens beare. 20

O te laudum millibus

Laudo, laudo, laudo ;

Tantis mirabilibus

Plaudo, plaudo, plaudo :

Gloria, sit gloria, 2o

Amanti memoria

Domino in altis :

Cui testimonia

Dantur et praiconia

Ccelicis a