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

But considerations of this kind would lead me too far, and lie too wide 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 written, 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 Poëtarum et Poëmatum Medii Evi, Hala, 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, absurdly fragmentary and imperfect—and this, even when is added to it another essay, which Leyser published two years earlier, Diss. de fictâ Medii Evi Barbarie, imprimis circa Poësin 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 sufficed. Edélestand du Méril's two volumes, Poésies populaires Latines antérieures au douxième Siècle, Paris, 1843, and Poésies populaires Latines du Moyen Age, Paris, 1847, contain many valuable notices, and poems which had not previously, or had only partially 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 one 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 would have sufficient 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

volume, to allow me to follow them further. Already what I thought to put into a few paragraphs has insensibly grown 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 further encroach upon the room which I would reserve for other men's words, rather than pre

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the revival of learning, and which has drawn its inspiration not from the Church, 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 all of any true value has ended, leaving untouched the whole period which really offers much of any deep or abiding interest. I mean Budik, in his work, Leben und Wirken der vorzüglichsten Latein. Dichter des XV-XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1828. Such, however, was not his mind, who could express himself about 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 three 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 poetry are so few; but three or four is all. If Vida, or Sannazar, or Buchanan, or any other of the moderns, would have offered anything of value, I would gladly have adopted it; but repeatedly seeking for something, I always sought in vain.

occupy with my own and whatever else might have been said upon the subject,

spatiis exclusus iniquis

Prætereo.

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 with 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,

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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 indicate his country, leave in some doubt whether England might not have had the honour of giving him birth. The authors of the Histoire Littéraire de la France, vol. xv. p. 40-45, account this not altogether unlikely; 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 Hildebert, 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,

in which he continued 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 hymns I shall have presently to speak, thinks the latter year to be itself the most probable date (vol. i. p. lxxxviii). His epitaph, graven on a plate of 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 Miseriâ 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 on their author. His own lines possess a grand moral flow, and are very well worthy to be quoted.

Hæres peccati, naturâ filius iræ,
Exiliique reus nascitur omnis homo.

Unde superbit homo, cujus conceptio culpa,
Nasci pœna, labor vita, necesse mori?
Vana salus hominis, vanus decor, omnia vana;
Inter vana nihil vanius est homine.

Dum magis alludit præsentis gloria vitæ,

Præterit, immo fugit; non fugit, immo perit.
Post hominem vermis, post vermem fit cinis, heu, heu!
Sic redit ad cinerem gloria nostra simul.

Hic ego qui jaceo miser et miserabilis Adam,
Unam pro summo munere posco precem :
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 culture of the school to which he belonged. This, indeed, is evident from his hymns, which, like the poetry of Dante, have often

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