tain a passionate nationality. Torn from the civilizing influences of the West, stricken with an intellectual barrenness, and taking refuge from speculation in a rigid adherence to traditional formulæ, the Greek has clung with desperate tenacity to the venerable forms which connect him in his decay and degradation with the days when he stood at the height of the earthly civilization; and New Rome, in fact and in theory, was the mistress of the world. Nor is the question less interesting in a purely literary point ' of view, when we come to study a series of monuments mounting up to the early Christian times, a continuous and 'fertile creation, formed on a plan at once original and unlike everything else, possessing its schools, its method, its classical writers, its commentaries, its scholia, as numerous as they are little known.' (Pitra, p. 2.) By Greek Hymnography we are to understand a literature much beyond what is understood by hymus in the restricted modern sense. We must by the term extend it to every composition which exhibits a form, measured either by rhythm or by prosodic metre, in the ecclesiastical books of the Greeks. Were we to confine the term to those canticles only which have preserved the classical prosody, we should have to reduce the hymns of the Greek Church to three Canons by S. John Damascene, used at Christmas, the Epiphany, and Whit-Sunday; as it is, we have to deal with a code of literature of unusual fertility and extent. That the form in which it is cast is not without its beauty may be inferred from the accompanying pretty little Theotokion- ὅλη σεμνὴ ὑπέραγνος ὅλη ὑπερτιμὸς ὅλη ὑπερευλογημένη The author whose work we place at the head of this article is a man of European reputation for learning. He is the greatest modern inheritor of the duties and studies of the Maurist Benedictines. When the storm of the French Revolution passed away, the remains of that world-famed congregation quietly returned to their labours. The cataclysm had found them with one volume of the works of S. Gregory Nazianzen edited. No sooner were they restored than they calmly finished their work. The first volume bears the date of 1778, the second of 1840. Of course their beginnings were small and feeble. Still, there was enough to show that they had in no way fallen away from their original institute. Gathering themselves together at Solesmes, amid the ruins of one of their ancient establishments, under the presidency of Dom Guéranger, the learned author of the Institutions Liturgiques,' the little society set itself to continue those labours which had won for their antecessors so great a reputation. Of their number, none is so well known to fame as Cardinal Pitra. His researches in the different libraries of Europe have made him acquainted with the literati of every nation, and have been embodied mainly in the four volumes of the 'Spicilegium Solesmense,' in which, after the example of D'Achéry, he has collected whatever inedited fragments he has got together in his investigations. His Eminence was born on the 31st of July, 1812, at Chamforgueil, in the Diocese of Autun. He entered the Abbey of Solesmes in 1841, after having been professor of rhetoric at the petit séminaire of Autun, where he had for colleagues Mgr. Devoncoux, bishop of Evreux, and Mgr. Landriot, archbishop of Rheims. He published the Life of S. Leger' in 1846, made a literary journey into England at the expense of the French Government in 1849, and published his 'Etude sur les Bollandistes' in 1850, as also his Hollande Catholique.' The volumes of the 'Spicilegium' were given to the world in 1852, 1853, 1855, and 1858 respectively. Cardinal Pitra also took charge of the publication of Migne's 'Patrologie.' After publishing a life of Lieberman, the Superior-general of the Congregation of the S. Esprit, he was summoned to Rome by the Pope in 1858, and made a literary journey through Italy. In 1859-60 he travelled through Germany, Prussia, Poland, and Russia. His literary eminence has received the highest reward of his Church. While the greater number of the present College of Cardinals have been selected rather on account of devotion to Pius IX. than on account of their intellectual gifts, Cardinal Pitra stands in the noble position of having achieved his honours by his learning and industry. Resident in the monastery of San Callisto, where the Benedictines of S. Paul outside the Walls spend one half of the year, on account of the insalubrity of the Campagna, this distinguished personage has now a ready access to the treasures of the Vatican, Minerva, Barberini, and other great libraries of Rome; and it is to be hoped that, if life and health continue to him, he will proceed in the career of Angelo Mai, and give to the world more and more of those yet unpublished documents which are believed and known to exist under the cautelous guardianship of the authorities of the Eternal City. We cannot do better than follow this distinguished author in his tractate on the subject before us, supplementing what we find deficient in it from the learning of our own countryman, Dr. J. M. Neale, who has added to his other great services in the way of English hymnody a little volume of translations from the Greek, to which is prefixed a short treatise on the method, which comes in very usefully on the present occasion. The varied gifts of John Mason Neale need no more than a passing allusion. His great learning as the historian of the Eastern and Jansenistic Churches, his graphic powers of description in his many works of fiction, his facility in a versification which sometimes rose to real poetry, will make his name long remembered; and the author of the popular translation of 'Jerusalem the Golden' will take his place, not indeed on the same bench, but still in presence and company of John Keble and Isaac Williams, among the religious poets of the middle of the nineteenth century. Cardinal Pitra first directs his readers' attention to the rhythm. After expressing his wonder that men so learned as Leo Allatius, Maracci, Gretser, the earlier Bollandists, Querini, and Arevalo should deny to the Greek canons any poetical character whatsoever, and after mentioning an attempt in the opposite direction of two French Benedictines, Toustain and Tassin, who sought to find in them regular verses, perfectly classic and imitated from the ancient dramatists, he goes on to say that, being in S. Petersburg in 1859, in conning over the pages of a Greek manuscript, he came on a canon at its conclusion, in which his attention was directed to certain red points placed at the same intervals in every strophe, measuring the same number of syllables. This led to further investigation, and the result was that he became possessed of the law of this class of poetry-viz., the syllabic system-which, thus early adopted by the Easterns, is now so familiar to modern ears : 'Tel est donc le secret des hymnographes: négligeant la distinction des mètres classiques, écartant la nuance fugitive des longues et des brèves, tombée peut-être en désuétude dans la prononciation vulgaire, ils ont eu recours à un élément invariable, visible, palpable, au nombre syllabique, tel qu'il a fini par prévaloir dans la poésie de toutes les langues modernes.' -Hymnographie, p. 2. The Eastern Church did wisely in thus clinging to some form of poetry. It would have been strange if she had so ill understood the wants of a people who dictated their laws in verse, who turned their Areopagi into theatres, who covered the public places with dramas, went to battle to the sound of the dithyramb, and had popular songs for every trade and every act in common life. More intelligent and generous than Plato, who would crown the poet, and conduct him in banishment to the frontier, the Church opened to him her sanctuaries, gave him the place of honour in her temples, and borrowed from him his melodies to beguile, by day and night, the long hours of Oriental prayer. But if so, why were the classical traditions sacrificed, and a coarser mechanism substituted for the most graceful forms in which human thought and human feeling were ever embodied? We put aside the consideration that syllabic rhythm is probably the most ancient form of all poetry; that it is almost certain, from certain specimens which have been embodied in the New Testament (Eph. v. 4, Rev. iv. 18), that it was the earliest Christian chant; that the acrostic hymn was a heritage from the synagogue, in which Psalms xxv. cxii. cxix. are of that nature. We put aside also the fact that even among modern nations syllabic rhythm is neither ungrateful nor unpopular. It is sufficient to say that it met the circumstances of the religious sentiment of the times. Compared with the contemporary poetry of each epoch, it preserved its highest form without ceasing to be popular. It had its nobility, its distinction, its purity. The metre adopted lacked neither in subtleness, nor in variety, nor in precision. The idea of the chant must never be separated from the conception. Thus the disjunctive particles are in preference placed at the ends; the pronouns destined to individualise the thought fall regularly on the last syllable. But it is believed that the system has held its own from deeper reasons than any of these, and that the solution of the question is to be found in the circumstances of Eastern Christendom. It may appear strange that the Church, more severe in the East than in the West, should repudiate classic forms, and prefer an inferior poetry. In the West she borrowed freely from S. Ambrose, Prudentius, Sedulius, Venantius Fortunatus, accents which the ancient muse would not have disavowed. Even in the East the Armenian and Syriac poetry was classic. Why, then, among the Greeks was no use made of the abundant theological poetry of S. Gregory Nazianzen? Why did no discreet hand glean for the service of the Church, if not from the psalms of Apollinaris and the hymns of Synesius, at the least some strophes from the 'Child's Hymn' of Clement of Alexandria, from the Gospel' of Nonnus, or from the iambics of George of Pisidia? Nay, why were not the iambics of the hymnographers themselves, such as Theodore Studita and S. Sophronius, enlisted in the service of the sanctuary? The real reason, according to Cardinal Pitra, is to be found in the controversial necessities of the times. In the surging of the Oriental mind during the times of the Oriental controversies, the liturgy was the constant and strongest barrier against error, and, at the time when the hymnography took shape, it had been found that the surest way to fix the faith of the people was by the hymns of the public service. This implied that they must be strictly dogmatic. The vague and elastic metres of the ancients must be abandoned; nothing but what is rigorous and precise, in which one can neither add to or diminish from, will meet the case; and it is remarkable that with the consolidation of the hymn-system speculation ceased. After the schism of the Iconoclasts, the great Greek heresies ceased to be popular. Dr. Neale here comes in, and discusses the further question of the absence of rhyme. In the West, about A.D. 630, rhyme and leonines came to be adopted. 'Why did not the new life, instilled 'into the Greek as well as into the Latin language by Christianity, seize the grand capability of rhyme in the one case as well as the other? How stately would it have been in anapæstics; 'how sweet in trochaics! Why was it neglected?' His answer is, first, that accent in the decline of language trampled down quantity, therefore many words that rhymed to the eye did not do so to the ear, as, e.g. povoaι and exovoai would no more rhyme than glory' and 'outcry;' but that the real reason was that it was not sufficiently removed from every-day life. It had too little dignity. There was an innate vulgarity about it which rendered it impossible to the Church. If it be clear that the enormous mass of Greek hymnography is not the work of one effort, or the evolution of one age, it is, on the other hand, difficult to trace through the different centuries the diverse phases of its formation. Besides the voluminous printed works, which are a library in themselves, there are manuscripts, hitherto unprinted, which might double what is now known. At the twelfth century commence the ancient parchment MSS. which the fingering of the daily Officeemphatically called by the Cardinal, 'l'usage devorant des Offices quotidiens—has not reduced to powder. The number of pieces increases as one approaches the ninth century, which filled the East with songs and hymns, to the destruction of much that had gone before, so that it is now difficult to find any one work pure and complete of S. John Damascene, S. Andrew of Crete, or Cosmas, the very fathers of hymnography. Still more difficult is it to unearth what may be called the fossil canticles of the most ancient masters, whose names and prolific works have alike perished. Moreover, Greek hymnography comes to have its certain dates only when the more Eastern religious poetry came |