7

character altogether. It was the favourite verse for popular songs, like the sufficiently quoted lampoons of Cæsar's army; it was much employed in hymns.1 From William of Poitou to Locksley Hall and a Toccata of Galuppi, and later ("Where the dawn comes up like thunder"), it has been at the service of modern poets, and yet it has never lost its ancient character. The trochaic verse is such-so widely distributed and so much at home-that Latin verses of this sort appeal to every one familiarly. The Latin poets very early gave them their modern character, by trusting a good deal to the accent.

In other kinds of verse there may be something like the same successful transition from classical to mediæval forms. The iambic dimeter becomes an octosyllabic line without strict rule of quantity: yet for all that it may preserve its identity. Between the correct verse,

"A solis ortus cardine,"

and the irregular "rhythmical" verse, as Bede calls it,

"Rex æterne Domine,"

there is indeed an enormous technical difference, but not such as to destroy the identity of type at the back of both; not even though the rhythmical verse drop

1 Bede, in his notice of this verse, says that it is divided into two versicles-that is, he treats it like the "eights and sevens" of the hymn-books :

"Hymnum dicat turba fratrum,

Hymnum cantus personet;

Christo regi concinentes

Laudes demus debitas."

out the opening syllable and put spondees where they ought not to be. And here again there is continuity from early Latin times: "It has been remarked that lines from some of the early Tragedians read almost like lines from a Christian (accentual) hymn -e.g., Ennius, 163 R.:

'O mágna témpla cáelitum | commíxta stéllis spléndidis.' "1

The hymns of St Ambrose and his school, in iambic dimeter, are in the same position with regard to later accentual hymns in this verse as the Pervigilium Veneris in relation to later accentual trochaics-that is, the Ambrosian hymns began by respecting quantity and accent together, and were followed by "rhythmical" poems which neglected the classical quantities. There are four great hymns of St Ambrose, written probably about the time when he baptized Augustine, Easter 387-the Evening Hymn

"Deus creator omnium" ;

the Morning Hymn—

"Eterne rerum conditor" ;

Tierce

"Jam surgit hora tertia";

Christmas

"Veni redemptor gentium."

In these opening lines the coincidence of accent and quantity gives the example for all the later Ambrosian

1 W. M. Lindsay, op. cit.

hymns in which quantity is left out of account. The author of the "rhythmical'

"Rex æterne Domine"

thought that he was using the same verse as

"Deus creator omnium,"

and he was right, though he had added to the principles of St Ambrose a new rule as to quantity, and rejected the classical precedent. St Ambrose, it should be observed, does not consistently make the accent fall as it does in his first verses: variations are frequent. But just as in English blank verse the regular lines are sufficient in number to control the rhythm, without forcing it into the "drumming decasyllabon" of the early monotonous poets, so in the hymns of St Ambrose there is a perfectly distinct preponderance of lines such as "Tu lux refulge sensibus,"

and

"Te vox canora concrepet ;"

while such a line as

"Pontique mitescunt freta,"

where all the accents fall otherwise than the metrical ictus, is exceptional. The practice of St Ambrose is analogous to the practice of Milton: there is no absolute rule about the accent, but it agrees in so many cases with the regular pattern of the metre that the exceptions are recognised as exceptional.

"Póntique mitéscunt fréta "

In

the word-accents all fall on syllables which metrically

are in the weak places of the line. But in the great majority of verses the word-accents fall on the strong syllables of an iambic foot; there are few lines in which the fourth syllable is not accented. This respect for accent, and general agreement in principle with the Pervigilium Veneris, is the more surprising in St Ambrose's hymns, because there was another influence at work tending to the equal neglect of both accent and quantity. St Ambrose was a poet; he wrote to please his own ear. But these poems were not intended for readers of poetry; they were meant to be sung, they were part of an innovation in Church music, "according to the use of the East." Authors less poetical than St Ambrose found that practically there was no need to be careful about either accent or quantity; the hymn-tune could make the syllables anything it pleased, as it does for example in Adeste fideles, a hymn which in the books, and apart from the tune, has no rhythm of its own. A large amount of mediæval Latin verse is really not verse in either of the two great classes used by Bede, neither "metrical" nor 'rhythmical," but simply a provision of syllables to fit a tune, leaving it to the tune to impose its own quantity and accent. The famous hymn of St Augustine against the Donatists, written not long after his baptism at Milan, was composed with an object not unlike that of St Ambrose-namely, to give the common people something to sing, not too complicated, not learned, not remote from their own natural language. It is one of the first precedents for unmetrical popular Latin verse, and it is interesting to

remark how it differs from the Ambrosian form. St Augustine says1 that he would not adopt for this purpose any regular poetical measure, lest he should be forced into the use of learned words not familiar to those for whom it was written. It is an alphabetical poem, in stanzas or tirades of twelve lines each, and a refrain (hypopsalma)—

"Omnes qui gaudetis pace modo verum judicate."

Each line has sixteen syllables, and there is a division in the middle: it is irregular trochaic verse, longer by a syllable than that of Cras amet. Quantity, as the author says, is neglected: thus St Augustine goes further than St Ambrose in complying with the popular voice. But, on the other hand, he does not go as far as St Ambrose in respect for the accent of the ordinary language. Many lines are accentually right according to the medieval usage-e.g., the first—

"Abundantia péccatórum | sólet frátres cónturbáre."

But the second and the third are

"Propter hoc Dominus noster | voluit nos præmonere Comparans regnum cœlorum | reticulo misso in mare

where the rhythm is much less marked. The writer trusts to the tune to carry it through, and does not feel himself obliged to keep a poetical rhythm distinct from the music. He is not under the rules of either prosody; neither the classical nor the modern rule is

1 Retractationum, i. 20: “Non aliquo carminis genere id fieri volui, ne me necessitas metrica ad aliqua verba quæ vulgo minus sint usitata, compelleret."