Line 8. Glosa, -ae, f., from glossa (yλwooa), tongue, language, word, whence easily expression, image, type-late Latin. Med. Lat. Dict. -13-18. "Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye; Thy root is ever in its grave And thou must die." GEORGE HERBERT. -32. Cuius esse, whose being; supply est. vespere: 36. Mane claudit "Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright; The bridal of the earth and sky: The dew shall weep thy fall to night For thou must die." GEORGE HERBERT. -40. Supply Mors: he puts us to labor, he to pain, the end is his. They represent him.-52. Rector et auriga, i. e., God. HYMN II. Königsfeld, with a German translation, in Lat. Hymnen und Gesänge, 1, 164. It is hesitatingly ascribed to Alanus. Theme. The Life of Man. Line 1. Supply est. HYMN III. Alani Opera, p. 377; Trench, p. 104. A bundle of paradoxes. Compare a similar bundle in Bacon's Works. Theme. The Birth of Christ. Line 5. Donaret: see p. 261, note on Hymn I., line 15.—Omen, the condition.-17. Hysōpo, i. e., hyssopo.-23. Reatus: the genitive. XXVIII. THOMAS OF CELANO. Life. The THOMAS Who is believed to have written the "Dies Irae" is called À CELANO from a small town near Lake Fucino, in the further Abruzzo. He was one of the earliest members of the order of Minorites, founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1208. He wrote a life of his friend St. Francis, and two hymns in his honor, which still survive. St. Francis died in 1226. But dates and biographical incidents are wanting for Thomas, and not even his name is to be found in many of our best dictionaries of biography. THE HYMN. In Daniel, 2, 103; Wackernagel, 1, 137; Trench, p. 297; The Seven Great Hymns, p. 56; and in all breviaries and collections. Translations are to be found in many languages. In English, seven translations are given in The Seven Great Hymns, besides the well-known stanzas of Sir Walter Scott; Mrs. Charles, Christian Life in Song, p. 188; Schaff, Christ in Song, p. 373. The literature of this hymn is considerable. Its external history is told. It appears in Church services in Italy in the thirteenth century, and spreads into France and Germany, the first complete copies found in Germany being of the latter half of the fifteenth century; it became more highly and widely esteemed from century to century, and since the rendering of it in Mozart's requiem it is used through all Christendom. Then the translations. A German author, Lisco, in his Dies Irae, Hymnus auf das Weltgerichte, Berlin, 1840, gives 87 versions, nearly all German; Dr. Schaff, in the Hours at Home, has given specimens of about 100 translations; and there are many more. The earliest in English is that of Sylvester, 1621; then Crashaw, 1648; Drummond, Roscommon, Scott, Alford, Irons, Trench, Macauley, Dix, Mrs. Charles, Dr. A. Coles (thirteen original versions), and others. In German, Herder, Fichte, and A. Schlegel may be mentioned. Then there is the history of criticism upon it, and the use made of it by students and artists. Mozart, Haydn, Goethe, Schlegel, Johnson, Dryden, Scott, Milman, and Jeremy Taylor are mentioned in The Seven Great Hymns as among the great who have avowed a supreme admiration for it; while the attempts by the less famous critics to find and set forth the secret of its power are innumerable. Goethe's use of it in Faust, and Scott's in the Lay of the Last Minstrel, are known to all. Then there is the question of authorship. Attempts have been made to give it to Matthaeus of Aquasparta, A.D. 1302; Latinus Frangipani, 1294; Malabranca, bishop of Ostia, 1275; Bonaventura, 1274; Bernard of Clairvaux, 1153; Gregory the Great, 630; and others. A leading essay on this subject is in Mohnike's Hymnologische Forschungen, 1, 1-24. Then there is its internal history. It had been treated as a creation of its writer out of nothing; but Mone, 1, 408, 409, undertakes to show that it is a condensation of the old hymns on the judgment-day. He points out some of the most striking expressions, and even whole lines in these older and ruder and longer hymns. They are not enough, however, in number or kind to lessen the originality of this hymn. It is strange there are not more of them. Nothing is born of nothing. "This marvelous hymn is the acknowledged masterpiece of Latin poetry, and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. . . . The secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately meter, the triple rhyme, and the vowel assonances, chosen in striking adaptation to the sense- all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel summoning the quick and the dead, and saw the 'king of tremendous majesty' seated on the throne of justice and mercy, and ready to dispense everlasting life or everlasting woe."-SCHAFF, p. 373. Theme. The Last Judgment. "Dies irae dies illa, dies tribulationis et angustiae, dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis, dies tubae et clangoris, super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos." Zephaniah i., 15, 16; Matt. xxv.; 2 Peter iii., 10-12. Line 1. Dies irae, dies illa: These are the words of Zephaniah i., 15. They are current expressions in the older hymns, and in the fathers. Mone, 1, 403-409. Illa, the day by emphasis, the day of the Lord, of Zeph. i., 14. Many read these clauses as exclamatory, and solet as intransitive: "That day of wrath, that dreadful day! SCOTT. -2. Solvet, resolve, cause to crumble. Elementa vero calore solventur. 2 Peter iii., 10.—Saeclum, i. e., seculum, first a generation of men like Ang.-Sax, weor-old (weor=Lat. vir), when applied by Christian authors to the material universe, still retains something of its early sense; it is the world in relation to man, rather than the cosmos, or God's beautiful order.-In favilla, in glowing ashes, not into dead dust. The line shows the conflagration still at white heat. In igne zeli eius devorabitur omnis terra. Zeph. i., 18.-3. Teste David, absolute. H., 430; A. and G., 54, 10, b, note; M., 304, d; Psalm cii., 27; interpreted by Isaiah li., 6; 2 Peter iii., 10. Some read teste Petro. Trench calls attention to Psalm xcvi., 13; xcvii., 3; xi., 6.—Sybilla, i. e., Sibylla, spelled for its rhyme. For the Sibyl, and her oracles and books, see Classical Dictionaries, Webster's Dict., and elsewhere. Milton mingles freely Bible and heathen mythology, believing the heathen gods to be real devils. Emerson says: and it is all one to him whether they come through the mouth of David or Sibylla. Schaff has a note pointing out the "truth underlying this use made of the Sibylline oracles," inasmuch as, he says, heathenism was groping in the dark after "the unknown God," and bore indirect testimony to Christ. But the pious frauds by which the Sibylline oracles were made to bear direct testimony to Christ are the explanation of this passage, and of the general credit given by early Christians to the Sibyl; and the remembrance of them makes the line a blemish in the poem. The Church generally, following the old Paris missal, read for this line: "Crucis expandens vexilla." Matt. xxiv., 30. "Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterne, quando coeli movendi sunt et terra, dum veneris iudicare saeculum per ignem." From the Service for the Dead, Mone, 1, 402. For the rhythm, also compare from another Service for the Dead: "Lacrimosa dies illa, Compare p. 71, lines 11, 12, Flamma ignis, etc.—4-6. Rev. vi., 15– 17; xx., 11-13; p. 71, lines 13, 14.-7-9. Zach. ix., 14; 1 Cor. xv., 52; Matt. xxiv., 31; John v., 25; 1 Thess. iv., 16.-Spargens, not concinens, as on p. 71, 5; this trumpet blares.-Sepul cra regionum, the graves of regions, of all regions-not political divisions, but natural expanses marked by the hills, the vales, the venerable woods, "old ocean's gray and melancholy waste;" sepulchres of earth, "the great tomb of man." Compare with the simpler per regiones sepulcrorum; and the whole stanza with lines 5, 6, on p. 71, as perfect lines as these in their way, but wanting the terrible compulsive energy (deivórns).—10-12. Rev. xx., 13. See note on Mors, p. 229, VIII., 25.-Natura: supply stupebit. The resurrection is unnatural.-13-15. Liber: Rev. xx., 12; Dan. vii., 10.—17. Apparebit: Matt. x., 26; Mark iv., 22; Luke viii., 17; xii., 2, 3.—19-21. Patronum: 1 John ii., 1.—Cum vix iustus: 1 Peter iv., 18.-21. Tremendae is one of the recurring epithets in the old judgment hymns marked by Mone, but I do not sce it coupled with maiestatis. -Tremendae maiestatis: Job xxxvii., 22 (not in the Vulgate).—22, 23. Rev. xxi., 6.—Fons pietatis: see the hymn of Bernard, p. 127, line 37; 129, 85, and notes: "From thee all pity flows."-George Herbert. -25. Recordare: Psalm xxv., 7; Luke xxiii., 42. — 26. Sum causa: 1 Timothy i., 15; Matt. ix., 13; Mark ii., 17; Rom. v., 8.27. Perdas: John xvii., 12; xviii., 9.-28. Sedisti: by the well. John iv., 6.-29, 30. Heb. xii., 2. It is said that Dr. Samuel Johnson would repeat this stanza in Latin, and burst into floods of tears.-31-33. Matt. xxv., 19-30. Post multum temporis venit dominus servorum illorum et posuit rationem cum eis.”— 34. Ingemisco: Rom. viii., 23.-35. Vultus rubet: Ezra ix., 6.37. Mariam Magdalene: Mark xvi., 9.-Latronem: Luke xxiii., 43.-42. Ne cremer, an object clause after fac. Matt. xxv., 41. -43-48. Matt. xxv., 33.—46. Maledictis, the accursed ones, absolute with confutatis and addictis.-50. Cor, appositive with the subject of oro. Psalm li., 19.-Cinis: Job xlii., 6. The Earl of Roscommon, "at the moment in which he expired, uttered with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of Dies Irae : 'My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end!"" Dr. JOHNSON. |