Ut nox splendescat, splendor tenebrescit; eclipsi Sol verus languescit, ut astra reducat ad ortum. 15 Ægrotat medicus, ut sanet morbidus ægrum. Se cœlum terræ conformat, cedrus hysopo, Ipse gigas nano, fumo lux, dives egeno, 20 HILDEBERT. 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 Tours. 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 pilgrimages 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 Bernard, pp. 447-458. His verses amount, as the Benedictine editors calculate, to ten thousand or more. The enforced leisure of imprisonments and exiles may have given him opportunity for composing so many. Of these a great number consist of versifications of scriptural history, or of the legends of saints, in heroic or elegiac verse, sometimes rhyming and sometimes not, and possess a very slight value. More curious than these is a legendary life of Mahomet, whereof Ampère (vol. iii. p. 440) has given a brief analysis; and his lines on the death of his master Berengarius display true feeling, and a very deep affection: however hard we may find it to go along, in every particular, with praise such as this: Cujus cura sequi naturam, legibus uti, 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. Te siquidem, licet occiduo sub sole latentem, And the following have a real energy. They make part of the soul's complaint against the tyranny of the flesh : Angustæ fragilisque domûs jam jamque ruentis Hospita, servili conditione premor. Triste jugum cervice gero, gravibusque catenis Proh dolor! ad mortem non moritura trahor. But grander still are the lines which follow. I have not inserted them in the body of this collection, lest I might seem to claim for them that entire sympathy Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent, At simul effigies, arasque superstitiosas Vix scio quæ fuerim : vix Romæ Roma recordor; Rostra vacant, edicta silent, sua præmia desunt Ista jacent, ne forte meus spem ponat in illis Civis, et evacuet spemque bonumque crucis. As modern Rome builds in here and there an antique frieze or pillar into her more recent structures, so the poet has used here, as will be observed, three or four lines that belong to the old Latin anthology. NE XI. DE NATIVITATE CHRISTI. ECTAREUM rorem terris instillat Olympus, Vertitur in fœnum, fit caro nostra Deus. XI. Hildeberti et Marbodi Opp. 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 Christ, 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 mundi cito transit et aret, ad illam |