CHAPTER XVI. AMBROSE AS POET AND MUSICIAN. UPWARDS of eighty metrical compositions have been ascribed to the pen of St. Ambrose. The great majority of these are certainly the production of different hands, and of a somewhat later age. There are but twelve which are considered to be indubitably the composition of the great Bishop of Milan, and two of these are found imbedded in liturgical hymns of greater length. He seems, however, to have struck a key-note of Church poetry. "I grant," says Grimm, "that the hymns attributed to Ambrose, whom we may justly call the father of Church song, are not all his; I cannot, however, think that the hymns commonly ascribed to him, but not recognised by editorial critics, were composed later than a century or two after him, they have so much of the simplicity of the others." His metre is for the most part carefully regulated by quantity, though in one or two instances he seems to have neglected quantity for accent, so as to render it necessary for those who recast the hymns of the Roman Breviary in a strictly classical form to make a few alterations. His lines occasionally rhyme, but so irregularly as to make it pretty clear that the rhyme was unintentional. There is no trace of the accentuated metre, with set and perfect rhyme, of the later Latin hymns. His style as a hymn-writer is throughout grave and severe, but devout, and profoundly accurate in theological expression. More austere than his contemporary Prudentius, and without any of the impassioned fervour of such writers at St. Bernard, he yet impresses us by his dignified simplicity. "We feel," says Archbishop Trench, "as though there were a certain coldness in his hymns, an aloofness of the author from his subject, a refusal to blend and fuse himself with it. Only after a while does one learn to feel the grandeur of his unadorned metre, and the profound, though it may have been more instinctive than conscious, wisdom of the poet in choosing it, or to appreciate that noble confidence 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 great objects of faith in their simplest expression are felt by him so sufficient to stir all the deepest affections of the heart, that any attempt to dress them up, to array them in moving language, were merely superfluous. The passion is there, but it is latent and repressed, a fire burning inwardly, the glow of an austere enthusiasm, which reveals itself, indeed, but not to every careless beholder. Nor do we presently fail 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 triumphing over, the powers of this world, found its utterance in hymns such as these, wherein is no softness, perhaps little tenderness, but a rocklike firmness, the old Roman stoicism transmuted and glorified into that nobler Christian courage, which encountered and at length overcame the world." The grandest and noblest of his hymns, in the opinion of all editors, is that for Advent. An almost literal rendering of a portion of it may serve to give an idea of its stern simplicity. The metre employed, the rhymeless eight-syllable line, is that of the original. Redeemer of the nations, come, Show them a virgin mother's Child : The "giants" of Gen. vi. 4 were considered to be creatures of a double nature, the offspring of women wedded to spiritual beings; or, as the mythology of Hesiod has it, of Ouranos (heaven), and Ge (earth). The term "giant" is applied in Ps. xix. 5 to the Sun of Righteousness: and this was imagined to be because of His two natures, Human and Divine. It may be as well to add that the Hebrew words rendered "giant" in the two passages are quite different. Now brightly shines Thy manger-bed, There is much severe beauty in the Matin Hymn. The version given imitates its occasional rhyme. O Partner of the Father's light, Thyself the Light of Light, and Day, With hymns we bring to end the night : Remove the darkness of our minds, So, Christ, have mercy on us all, The contribution of Ambrose to the music of the Western Church has been so thoroughly remodelled and systematized by St. Gregory, that it is impossible to determine exactly what and how much is due to the master-mind of Milan. It seems clear that he introduced the practice of antiphonal chanting from the East, and probably not a few of the melodies he employed were from the same source. Some have imagined that these melodies were a reproduction of those used in the Temple service at Jerusalem, traditionally preserved both by Jews and Christians in the churches and synagogues of the East, and that the 1 See p. 57. Ambrosian basilica, while the faithful kept their vigils within its walls, resounded to strains in which David and Solomon had joined some fourteen centuries before. But our ignorance of the Hebrew gamut, and the probability that it differed essentially from the four Greek scales with which Ambrose was acquainted, renders this opinion less tenable than beautiful. would certainly seem to link us yet more closely with the chosen people under the older covenant if we could think that not our psalter only, but our chant also, was an inheritance from the sweet psalmists of Israel; but fact refuses to give way to sentiment. It Compared with the popular church music of our own time, the Ambrosian music appears as severe as the Ambrosian poetry. And yet, as the latter was a comfort to St. Augustine when he lay awake and thought sadly yet joyfully of his departed mother, so the music touched his heart when first he joined in it as a Christian. "How I wept," he says, "at Thy hymns and canticles, touched to the quick by the voices of Thy melodious Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth distilled into my heart, and thence there streamed forth a devout emotion, and my tears ran down, and it was well with me therein." And though he elsewhere says he dreaded lest he should give too much attention to the sound, too little to the sense, and was disposed to banish all chanting from the churches, save the simple "plain tune, after the manner of distinct reading," used in Alexandria by the command of St. Athanasius, he cannot help admitting the value of the Church's song, and, by implication, commending the work of |