The following passage from Hugh of St Victor (De Claust. Animæ, c. 36) will make intelligible the third and fourth lines of the quotation De hoc secreto cordis dictum est: Factum est silentium in cœlo quasi media hora. Cœlum quippe est anima justi....Sed quia hoc silentium contemplationis et hæc quies mentis in hâc vitâ non potest esse perfecta, nequaquam hora integra factum in cœlo dicitur silentium, sed quasi media; ut nec media plenè sentiatur, cùm præmittitur quasi: quia mox ut se animus sublevare cœperit, et quietis intimæ lumine perfundi, redeunte motu cogitationum confunditur et confusus cæcatur.

Nor are these lines of Alanus without merit:

Hic risus sine tristitiâ, sine nube serenum,
Deliciæ sine defectu, sine fine voluptas,
Pax expers odii, requies ignara laboris,
Lux semper rutilans, sol veri luminis, ortus
Nescius occasûs, gratum sine vespere mane:
Hic splendor noctem, saties fastidia nescit,
Gaudia plena vigent, nullo respersa dolore.
Non hic ambiguo graditur Fortuna meatu,
Non risum lacrymis, adversis prospera, læta
Tristibus infirmat, non mel corrumpit aceto,
Aspera commiscens blandis, tenebrosa serenis,
Connectens luci tenebras, funesta jocosis:
Sed requies tranquilla manet, quam fine carentem
Fortunæ casus in nubila vertere nescit,

THOMAS OF KEMPEN.

THOMAS Hamerken, of Kempen or Kampen in Over

Yssel, to whom generally, and, I believe, with justice the Imitation of Christ is attributed, was born in 1380, and died in 1471. His works, apart from that disputed one, are numerous. Among them are various ascetic and devotional treatises, which have the same kind of merit, though in an inferior degree, which has caused the Imitation of Christ to be, next to the Bible, the most widely diffused and oftenest reprinted book in the world. They include also a not unimportant life of Gerhard, the founder of the Fratres communis Vitæ, to which Order, if such it may be called, Thomas himself belonged. His poems are not many, nor would they yield a second extract at all to be compared in beauty with the very beautiful lines which follow.

LXX. CANTICUM DE GAUDIIS

COELESTIBUS.

A

STANT angelorum chori,

Laudes cantant Creatori;

Regem cernunt in decore,

Clamant corde, laudant ore,

LXX. Thomæ à Campis Opp., Antverpiæ, 1634, p. 364; Corner, Prompt. Devot., p. 760.

LXXI. Hildeberti et Marbodi Opp., p. 1337; Hommey, Supplementum Patrum, p. 446.-It gives me pleasure that the natural arrangement of this volume has enabled me to reserve to the last a poem which will supply to it so grand a close-a poem which, so soon as it has escaped the straits and embarrassments of doctrinal definition,—although even there it has a most real value, from the writer's theological accuracy and distinctness, and his complete possession of his theme,-gradually rises in poetical feeling, until towards the end it equals the very best productions which Latin Christian poetry anywhere can boast. And this, its excellence, makes not a little strange that almost entire oblivion, even among lovers of the Latin hymnology, into which this hymn has fallen. Hugh of St Victor indeed, a cotemporary of Hildebert's, quotes six lines of it with a well-deserved admiration, though without seeming to intimate that he was acquainted with the author. His words are (Serm. 83): Qualis autem sit exsultatio sanctorum in cœlesti gloriâ, et lætitia in cubilibus istis, exsultationes quoque in gutture eorum, illorum solummodò est cognos

Cujus esse summum bonum,
Cujus opus quicquid bonum;

5

cere, quibus datum est et habere. Unde quidam rhythmico carmine supernam affatus Hierusalem, pulchrè dixit :

Quantùm tui gratulentur,
Quàm festivè conviventur,
Quis affectus eos stringat,

Aut quæ gemma muros pingat,
Chalcedon an hyacinthus,

Norunt illi qui sunt intus.

It is true that there was no collected edition of the works of Hildebert until the Benedictine, edited by Beaugendre, Paris, 1708. But Usher, in an appendix to his work De Symbolis, (Works, v. 7, p. 335, Elrington's edition,) had already printed these lines, not knowing however the name of their author; (ex veteribus membranis rhythmos istos elegantes descripsimus.) They were also subsequently printed by Hommey in his Supplementum Patrum, as noted above, but with a text far inferior to Usher's; indeed, so inaccurate as to be often well-nigh unintelligible. He seems to believe that he was the first to make them known. Guericke, in his excellent Christl. Archæologie, Leipsic, 1847, p. 258, quotes a considerable part of this "magnificent" hymn with a just recognition. Rambach also (Christl. Anthologie, v. 1, p. 260) gives a fragment of it, but with so little sense of its, or its author's, merits, that he so does, as he says, "that he may give something of this author's." The only translation of any part of it which I know, is one in Mr Neale's Hierologus; it embraces only the concluding lines, and scarcely reproduces the beauty of the original.

1. ] This is sometimes printed Omega, but the metre plainly requires that it should appear as it does above: unless indeed we should resolve the into the Oo, of which it was originally compounded, and as which it might be here pronounced, and then print the line thus: A et Oo, magne Deus: it needs not to say what a favourite symbol of Him who is the first and the last (Alpha et cognominatus, ipse fons et clausula: Prudentius) the monogram A-2 or a/w supplied to the early Christians, or [T. L. P.] 20