Vol. VII February 1, 1905 No. 2 ►he JJ ^olphin CONTENTS The Very ftev. P. a. v&X'jn aajsisaaoJi jl/.u., ir.iT,, zjimfynuiw, xjrei*nu. NOTES ON THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE ''DIES IRAE".., 186 By the late C. F. S. W ARBEIT, M.A., author of " Died Irae, M and collabora- tor in the '« Dictionary of Hymnology." COMMENT ON THE "DIES IEAE " 193 The Bev. H. T, HENBY, Litt.D, L Overbrook Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa. I Pabiished Monthly at PHILADELPHIA, 825 ARCH STREET American (BtcitsxaBtuai Heoieto PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK F-46101 .«■ a ^v^.^, nPress Fo ^ Dollars— A YEAR— Sixteen Shilling. I A / £T I 19°*, as second-das* matter, Pott Office at Philadelphia, Pa., under Act of March 3, 1879 ¥ Notice of Change of Address should be sent to us without delay, to ensure receipt of copy promptly. Please mention old address, too. FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF STUDE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY RE Progress ... .238 STTTDE ^H The Perpetual Virginity of Mary and the Immaculate Conception 239 The Age of the Hebrew Language and Literature 241 Vile Books and the Literary Hawkere 244 A Comet'i Motion .246 Beoret Societies among Catholics . 246 CRITICISMS AHD NOTES : Barry: Eeraldi of Revolt 249 Luoai : In the Morning of Life 252 CONTENTS CONTINUED ?2 1936 r c r THE DOLPHIN ! Vol. VI, November 1904. No. 5 DIES IRAE. THE following English version of the Dies Irae is a cento in tro- chaic 7s, collated from various authors whose translations of the selected stanzas are mentioned by Mr. Warren as among the best. The stanzas will be found under their several numerical headings in subsequent articles on the Dies Irae in these pages. Editor. Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla ; Teste David cum Sibylla. Ah that day of wrath and woe, When the fire that seers foreknow All the world shall overflow. (Canon Bright, author of Athanasius.") Quantus tremor est futurus Quan» o Judex est venturus Cuncta stricte discussurus ! O what trembling shall appear When His coming shall be near Who shall all things strictly clear (Dean Alford, 1844.) Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum Coget omnes ante thronum. At the unearthly trump's command Heard in graves of every land All before the throne must stand. (Canon Bright, in Athanasius.') Mors stupebit et natura, Cum resurget creatura Judicanti responsura. Death shall shrink and Nature quake When all creatures shall awake Answer to their God to make. (Dean Alford.) 498 THE DOLPHIN. Liber scriptus proferetur In quo totum continetur Unde mundus judicetur. Then the volume shall be spread And the writing shall be read Which shall judge the quick and dead. (Isaac Williams, British Maga- zine, Jan., 1839.) Judex ergo cum sedebit Quidquid latet, apparebit ; Nil inultum remanebit. When the Judge His place has ta' en All things hid shall be made plain, Nothing unavenged remain. (Archbishop Trench.) Quid sum, miser, tunc dicturus ? What shall wretched I then plead, Quern patronum rogaturus, Who for me shall intercede, Cum vix Justus sit securus? When the righteous scarce is freed? (Isaac Williams.) Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis. Salva me, fons pietatis. King of dread, whose mercy free Saveth those that saved shall be, Fount of pity, pity me. (Lord Lindsay, the late Lord of Crawford.) Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sum causa tuae viae Ne me perdas ilia die. Jesus, 'twas my debt to pay Thou didst wend Thy weary way ; Keep me on that dreadful day. (Messenger S. Hear/, England, 18750 Quaerens me sedisti lassus : Redemisti crucem passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus. Weary satst Thou seeking me, Diedst redeeming on the tree ; Not in vain such toil can be. (Mrs. Elizabeth Charles.) Juste judex ultionis, Donum fac remissionis Ante diem rationis. Thou just Judge of wrath severe, Grant my sins remission here, Ere Thy reckoning day appear. (Dean Alford.) DIES IRAE. 499 Ingemisco tamquam reus : Culpa rubet vultus meus : Supplicanti parce, Deus. Sighs and tears my sorrow speak, Shame and grief are on my cheek, Mercy, mercy, Lord, I seek. (Dr. Schaff.) Qui Mariam absolvisti Et latronem exaudisti, Mihi quoque spem dedisti. Thou who Mary didst forgive And who badst the robber live, Hope to me dost also give. (Archbishop Trench.) Preces meae non sunt dignae, Sed tu bonus fac benigne Ne perenne cremer igne. Though my prayers deserve no hire, Yet, good Lord, grant my desire, I may 'scape eternal fire. . (Office B. V. M., 1687.) Inter oves locum praesta Et ab hoedis me sequestra Statuens in parte dextra. Mid Thy sheep my place command. From the goats far off to stand, Set me, Lord, at Thy right hand. (Archbishop Trench.) Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis ; Voca me cum benedictis. When the curst are put to shame, Cast into devouring flame, With the blest then call my name. (Dr. Schaff.) Oro supplex et acclinis, Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis. Contrite, suppliant, I pray, Ashes on my heart I lay ; Care Thou for me in that day. (Mrs. Charles.) Lacrimosa dies ilia Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus. Huic ergo parce, Deus : Pie Jesu, Domine, Dona eis requiem. Amen. Full of tears the day shall prove W T hen from ashes rising move To the judgment guilty men : Spare, Thou God of mercy, then. (Isaac Williams.) Lord, we bend to Thee for them, Dona eis requiem. (William Hay, 1831.) 500 THE DOLPHIN. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE" AND ITS ENGLISH VERSIONS. 1 By the late C. F. S. Warren, M.A., author of " Dies Irae," etc., and collaborator in the Dictionary of Hymnology. IT is now, I suppose, considered as tolerably certain that this hymn was written by Thomas of Celano, a friend and pupil of St. Francis of Assisi, and one of the first monks of his Franciscan order of Minorites, founded A. D. 1208. The purpose of this essay is to consider the translation of the hymn into English, and the many attempts that have been made so to translate it; and therefore little will be said on the question of its authorship and such kindred points, and at a dissertation on the nature of the composition as a whole no attempt whatever will be made. But for the sake of more completeness a few notes shall be put down from various sources on the former subject. For it is often vexatious to the reader of such an essay as this not to have before him short answers to all the questions bearing on the subject which the reading thereof may raise in his mind, such as he may not recollect at the moment, and such as he may find it wearisome there and then to rise and search out for himself. Thomas of Celano, I said, is now generally considered as the author ; though like all other celebrated writings (from the Epistle to the Hebrews downwards) whose authorship is not demonstra- bly certain, this hymn has been given to many; as to the great names of St. Gregory the Great, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Bonaventure on the one hand, and on the other to the little ones of Latino Frangipani, known as Cardinal Malabrancia (he was a nephew of Pope Nicholas III) ; Cardinal Orsino ; Thurston, Arch- bishop of York, who died 1140; Felix Hammerlein of Zurich, who will be mentioned again; Agostino Biella who died 1491, and Humbertus, a General of the Dominicans. But though the evi- dence cannot be here gone into, Mohnike, Daniel, and other hymnologists, are satisfied with that which gives it to Thomas of Celano, the Franciscan ; dates disprove the claims of some, and internal evidence those of others. Thomas of Celano died about 1255, and the first known men- tion of the hymn is by another Franciscan, Bartholomew Albizzi 1 See Conference in present issue, " Dies Irae." (Ed.) NOTES ON THE "D/ES IRAE." 501 of Pisa, 1385, in his Liber Conformitatum — which conformities are the conformities by somatization and otherwise of St. Francis to our Saviour, briefly summed up by Mr. Myers : "O mate of poverty, pearl unpriced, O coespoused, cotransforate with Christ !" Bartholomew states that the hymn was even then used in the Mass for the Dead ; as would be expected of a Franciscan he praises it much; as would also be expected of a Dominican, Sixtus Senensis, two hundred years after, depreciates it equally. The first printed book in which it is found is a Missal printed at Pavia, 149 1, 2 but it is not of universal occurrence till the Council of Trent inserted it — after the ancient precedent — in the Mass " in Commemoratione omnium Fidelium Defunctorum," where it forms the Sequence, follows, that is to say, the Epistle. There can be little doubt that the original form of the hymn is the seventeen stanzas given by the Archbishop of Dublin in the Sacred Latin Poetry (probably at present the best known source to go to for it), beginning Dies irae, dies ilia, and ending Gere curam mei finis. But in other forms of it the hymn has a new beginning and two separate new endings ; and of the latter one has the authority of the Roman Missal, and is not uncommonly attached. This is the two couplets beginning Lacrimosa dies ilia, and the " Requiem " ; but whereas the hymn itself is not known before 1385, these are found much earlier, 3 and however soon they may have been added — it is possible that their author himself added them — it must be confessed that they spoil the close and can hardly have been part of the original composition. Mone 4 would argue from this that the hymn is founded on others and is perhaps a kind of cento ; but though he does quote a few lines of it from other hymns, 5 these are not shown to be older than the Dies Irae ; and the first line is of course a quotation — indeed a verbatim one — from the Vulgate, Soph. 1 : 15. 6 2 Dr. Rock in Notes end Queries, 1st S., ii, 105. 3 Daniel, Thes. Hymned., v, no. 4 Hyvinen des Mittelalters, i, 408. Several, for instance, are to be found in a Psalta iutn de Nomine Jem, Mone, i, 345- 6 "That day is a day of wrath." Perhaps it is well to keep this word wrath in a version, for the sake of following the prophet as Thomas of Celano did. 502 THE DOLPHIN. But if these spoil the close, much more does the other ending, whose origin is pretty well known ; it is the production of Felix Hammerlein, a priest of Zurich (who died about 1457), an d con- sists of third lines added to these couplets, without the " Requiem" and five more very unnecessary stanzas to wind up ; which may be found in Dr. Coles. Daniel, not stating why, gives but the first three of them, in which the only thing worthy of much notice seems to be the introduction of the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary as an observation — not improbably one, perhaps a chief, reason for its writing — "Vitam meara fac felicem Propter tuam genitricem Jesse Florem et radicem," and the application to her of the title of " root of Jesse ; " other instances of this may be found in Mone, ii, 308, 309. The " new beginning," as I call it, is of less certain origin ; it is what is called the " Mantuan marble," a copy of the hymn said to be engraved in the church of St. Francis at Mantua, start- ing with four stanzas before Dies Irae. But the church is much younger than the date of the hymn, there is no evidence of the date of the engraving, and Daniel even hints doubts of its exist- ence at all ; while from other sources the extra stanzas cannot be traced higher than 1594. The Mantuan marble also gives a new last stanza ; 7 both this version and Hammerlein's may be found in Daniel ; and furthermore there are other various readings in different editions of the hymn, of which all of any importance — these are not more than two or three — will be mentioned in their proper places hereafter. Now then to the more immediate object of this essay, the English versions of the hymn. I have collected, by the kind help of cor- respondents of Notes and Queries and the Athenceum, ninety- seven 8 complete versions in the English language — practically, that, is complete, for two are deficient in one stanza ; and two pro- 7 Dean Stanley appears to have considered the " Mantuan ' ' version as the author- ized one ; using in his introduction to his translation (Macmillart s Magazine, Dec, 1868), words to the effect that "in the Missal one-third of the original is left out." 8 A remarkably full collection of versions for the period at which Mr. Warren made his analytic study of renderings into English. (Ed.) NOTES ON THE ''DIES IRAEr 503 fessed fragments, the well-known one of Sir Walter Scott, and one by Dr. Kynaston ; besides one stray rendering of the first verse only. Of these the great majority are in rhyming triplets ; these again subdivide into three classes : 1. The trochaic eight-syllable triplet, exactly imitating the original. 2. The trochaic seven-syllable triplet, which imitates the original except in putting a single for a double. 3. The iambic eight-syllable triplet, single-rhymed of course, which varies somewhat from the original ; but granting — which of course must be granted — the triplets, it is in my mind its best English representative. Of the other versions some are in triplets, but in singular variations, one in iambic 8 8 10, one in trochaic eights with the third line rhymeless, and one in trochaic eights with the rhyme so irregular that I can find no principle in it, neither give of it any account; and one of the same with no rhyme at all. Of the remaining eleven versions, six are in couplets ; three being in trochaic sevens, one in trochaic eights, and two in iambic eights; while of the last five, one is in 7 6 7 6, and the others in such as used to be called " peculiar measures," two in 8 8 6 8 8 6, one in 778778, and the final one (most peculiar of all) in 66656665. The first known English versions date from the early part of the seventeenth century : the first of all I believe to be Joshua Sylvester's (d. 161 8). It is that which I have just mentioned in 778 778, and may be found in his translation of Du Bartas, 1621, p. 1 2 14, or 1633, p. 620, entitled " A Holy Preparation to a Joy- ful Resurrection." There was another edition of Du Bartas, 1644 (Allibone), but there is no modern reprint of Sylvester as a whole, though some smaller poems are in Sir Egerton Brydges' Restitute/,, this not among them. The next version, 9 about or soon after the same time, is William Drummond's of Hawthornden, among his translations of twenty- one of the best known Latin hymns. It may be found in " The 9 The list of versions contributed by Mr. Warren to the London Athenaum, July 26, 1890, places Drummond's version fourth in chronological order, the second place being given to Crashaw (1646), the third to Patrick Carey (1651), while Drummond's is listed as 1656. (Ed.) 504 THE DOLPHIN. Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden, edited by William B. Turnbull, London. J. B. Smith, Soho Square, 1856," at page 266 among the Posthumous Poems, which were " extracted (preface, page xii) from the Hawthornden MSS. pre- served in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and originally selected and printed with a valuable memoir and notices by Mr. David Laing in the fourth volume of the Transactions of that body." It may also be found in Anderson's Poets, IV, 682 ; but in Peter Cunningham's reprint, 1833, °f what he called "the whole of Drummond's poems worth preserving," it does not appear. These two versions — Sylvester's and Drummond's — are re- markable, as they follow the " Mantuan marble." They were succeeded by Richard Crashaw, whose version or rather paraphrase, in the Steps to the Temple, 1646 (called " In Meditation of the Day of Judgment "), is an exceedingly fine poem in couplets, of four-line stanzas. 10 An Advent hymn abridged from it was published by the Rev. Charles Warren in the Journal of Convocationior December, 1854 (I, 102), and afterward used in a small collection of hymns privately printed by him — be- fore the days of Hymns Ancient and Modern and kindred books — for the use of the parish which he held for thirty-three years* Crashaw was followed by Patrick Carey ; then by " Rosarists." 11 In the same century are also an anonymous version in an Office of the B.V.M., London, Hy. Hills, 1687, which the kindness of Mr. Loftie has enabled me to procure, reprinted in " A Manual of Devout Prayers and other Christian Devotions, 1706, corrected from the errors of former editions," 12 another remarkable and little known one attached to " A Paraphrase in English 13 on the Fol- lowing of Christ written originally in Latin by Thomas a Kempis 1694," which is in rhyming triplets of 8 810; and Lord Ros- 10 Of this it is said in Wilmott's Lives of English Sacred Poets, p. 317 (London, ed. 1839), " To style Crashaw' s poem a translation is scarcely to render justice to its merits ; he has expanded the original outline, brightened the coloring, and enlivened the expression." 11 See Dublin Review, Jan., 1883, p. 59. (Ed.) 12 No name of author, editor, printer or place. 13 Verse. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 505 common's 14 (d. 1684), first published in 1721, 15 which has been several times reprinted, as in "The Divine Office, 1763/' and is partly inserted in the hymn books of Hall and the senior Bicker- steth. Its last two lines were the latest words on its author's lips (Johnson's Life) ; he is noted as the purest among Charles II's impure poets, 16 and his version is good, though sometimes not very literal. In 1656 Bishop Taylor writes to John Evelyn, 17 asking him for a translation ; but if it was ever done this has not been found. It is worthy of note as an indication of the spirit of the time that within my knowledge no single version dates from the eigh- teenth century (at least till its very close), 18 and the hymn appears to be more or less disregarded ; it is told of Dr. Johnson that he could not repeat Tantus labor non sit casstis without weeping ; but it is probable that except to scholars such as he was, the hymn was little known. Interest in it seems to have been revived to- ward the close of that century and the beginning of the present, in Germany by Goethe's introduction of it into Faust and Justin Kernel's into Die Wahnsinnigen Briider ; and in England by Sir Walter Scott's into the Last Minstrel (first published 1805) — ''While the pealing organ rung Thus the holy fathers sung — " and his fragment, imperfect as it is, almost instantly found its way 14 Mr. Shipley thinks the version attributed to Roscommon should rather be given to Dryden. (Ed.) 15 The version appeared previously in Miscellanea Sacra (1696). (Ed.) 16 Bishop Ken's opinion of these poets is no doubt given in the lines : " Of all the gifts which heaven designed To hallow and adorn the mind, Sweet poetry has suffered most By bards from the infernal coast, Who in her beauteous visage spit The putrefaction of their wit." (Twentieth Sunday after Trinity) ; and the two passages in which Pope's good opinion of Roscommon is given are, or more probably were, better known : Essay on Criticism, 726 ; Horace (II Epp. 1), 213. 17 Heber's Ed. I, Ivi. 18 Mr. Warren amended this statement in the Athenaum list, which mentions a version in 1754 and another in 1780, the first in Bona Mors, the second in Office for the Dead, both versions being anonymous. (Ed.) 506 THE DOLPHIN. into sacred anthologies and then into hymn books down to Hymns Ancie?tt and Modern and Novello's Hymnary. The Rev. Louis Coutier Biggs says of it 19 that it " has more of the spirit and tone of an English hymn than most of the more literal translations," which is true not of course altogether because it is Scott's, but because it is a paraphrase, and it is perhaps easier to give that spirit and tone to a paraphrase than to a more literal version. Though if Scott had been a more exact Latinist than he was and had had some knowledge of theological language, he might prob- ably have made as good a version as can well be done. Of him as of Lord Roscommon it is related that the hymn soothed his death-bed — " we very often heard distinctly the cadence of the Dies Irae: m There is an anonymous version in the old monthly Christian Remembrancer, vii, 315, which is in some respects good; Lord Macaulay published his fine version (trochaic seven-syllable coup- lets) in the Christian Observer, 1826, though it was not again published till after his death; there is another in the same metre, too wordy, but here and there striking, by William Hay, Esq., in the Bengal Annual, Calcutta, 1831 ; and in the same year Dr. Husenbeth put forth a version in " peculiar metre" in the Missal for the Laity? 1 With these exceptions, so far as I know, the present crowd of modern versions dates from the Oxford Movement of 1833, and begins, I believe, with Chandler's version in the Hymns of the Primitive Church, 1837, which appears to be the earliest in the trochaic eights, the exact imitation of the original. He was fol- lowed by Isaac Williams (Lyra Ecclesiastica), Caswall (Lyra Catholica), Alford, and Irons, 1848; this last version is now the best known from its insertion in Hymns Ancie7it and Modern. But its notoriety is rather unlucky, since it cannot be called one of the best ; and it is to be regretted that the compilers did not rather choose Isaac Williams or Chandler, if they must needs have the original double rhymes. Among versions more modern still, some of the better known 19 English Hymnology , p. 9. 20 Lockkarfs Life, vii, 391. 21 London: Joseph Booker, 31 New Bond Street. NOTES ON THE -DIES IRAE." 507 names are Dr. F. G. Lee {Poems, 1850), P. S. Worsley, 22 Arch- bishop Trench (first published in Mr. Fosbery's Hymns for the Sick), Dr. Schaff [Christ in Song, 1869; he has also made a German version), Lord Lindsay {Christian Art, i, ccvii) and Dean Stanley [Macmillan 's, Dec, 1868); a supposed version by Dean Hook I have, though with his son's kind help, been unable to trace. So far at this moment for versions of English nationality ; of Scotch ones I have only seen two ; that in the United Presby- terian Hymnal 7 * is by Dr. William Robertson, and there is an- other by Dr. Hamilton Magill in his Songs of the Christian Creed and Life. They are perhaps fair ordinary ones, but not excel- lent ; neither, as far as I can see, is there the least choice between them. L T nder the head of Irish versions it may be noted, as many Roman Catholic versions belong to that country, that among these some of the best are to be found. It cannot, I think, be denied that the change of the Divine Office to the vulgar tongue for use in Anglican services has had its great share in the smaller famil- iarity with Latin as a spoken language exhibited by non-Catholics in England ; and a Roman Catholic priest who performs such offices in Latin, or an educated Roman Catholic layman who fol- lows their performance, can hardly fail to be more deeply pene- trated with the spirit of the Latin hymns and this among them, than an Anglican who has not made them more or less of a special study. At any rate the fact is such, that some Roman Catholic versions are the best ; and in the same way there is no doubt that among Anglican versions those produced by Anglicans are as a rule superior to the productions of those writers who hold Prot- estant and Puritan opinions. The reason of which seems to be not merely that Catholics are usually better scholars and proba- bly more familiar with Latin hymns, but further that a knowledge of theological language and ideas does not usually go with Prot- estantism. Though — to digress for an instant — the converse of these propositions would perhaps be truer ; to say, that is, that such study as I speak of generally leads men to Catholicism. A 22 Blackwood, May, i860, Poems and Translations, 1 863. 23 This " Church, " it must be remembered, is not the Established Scotch Church. 508 THE DOLPHIA. good Roman Catholic version, for instance, was published in the Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 1875 : " Dawns the day, the day of dread, Fast the fires of ruin spread, David and the Sybil said." But I am afraid I cannot equally commend a rather extraordinary version in the " Manual for Sisters of Charity" 1848, by Richard Dalton Williams, an Irish barrister now deceased : " Woe is the day of ire Shrouding the earth in fire, Sibyls' and David's lyre Dimly foretold it ; Strictly the guilty land By the Avenger scanned, Smitten aghast shall stand Still to behold it." The metre is that used by Drayton in the Battle of Agincourt, and Longfellow in a section of the Tales of a Wayside Lin [Saga of King Olaf xvii, King Svend), and with its hurried gallop is but a poor substitute for the solemn Latin triplets. Two other Irish versions may be mentioned, though not Roman Catholic ones ; but both are tolerable, the latter perhaps the better of the two : by Canon Macilwaine of St. Patrick's in his Lyra Hibernica Sacra (Belfast, 1878), one of the latest in triplets I know of; and by the Rev. Orlando Dobbin, LL.D., remarkable because I have been told by the author that he made it without having read any other in the language. Among the American versions, ol which I think I have be- tween forty and fifty, the first place of mention, if it be only for the singularity of such an undertaking, is claimed by " The Dies Irae in TJiirteen Original Versions, by Abraham Coles, M.D., New York, i860." A similar book was one published in Germany; Robert Lecke in 1842 put forth " Twelve Original Versions": of whom Daniel says (ii, 121) that he " rather vomited and foamed forth versions " than did them with any skill — magis evomuit et ebulliit versiones quam subtiliter atque artif close effinxit ! 24 Strong 24 Compare a curious parallel in a note of Cornelius a Lapide on Prov. 30 : I, which in English is to the effect that " they of old were called vomiters who spake forth a thing at the time and not by premeditated oration." NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 509 words these of Daniel, and I had rather he used them than I ; but they are not without their application to Dr. Coles, since hardly more than two or three out of the thirteen are of much value ; some are very paraphrastic ; and one is only lost in wonder at his facility in finding rhymes. One American ' version by Mr. Henry Macdonald I can heartily commend — it is as good as any version that I know; General Dix's, Scribners Monthly, April, 1876, though inferior is not at all bad ; neither is James Ross' in "P. M." (New York Observer, 1864); one by R. W. L. (The Churchman, New York, April 3, 18S0), is also very good, representing the original far better than it could have been thought the metre of 7 6 y 6 could do ; as thus : — " O day of days of anger When earth shall pass away And all be dust and ashes As seer and psalmist say, How great shall be our terror When He our Judge shall be Who then each deed shall measure In strictest equity." In the translation of the Dies Irae — it being a postulate that the hymn can be translated in any proper sense of the word — the triplets may be considered as all but necessary to be kept. 2 ' Some of the versions in other metres, Crashaw's most of all, are fine poems, but they are not the Dies Irae ; the triplets are associated with the hymn in that way that such a poor representation of it as our best version after all must be, must have these to have any- thing of the original's peculiar character : if it have them not, it may (as I said) be a fine poem, but it cannot have the indescrib- able grandness and solemnity which they give to the original ; cannot be in short anything near the wonderful creation which the hymn is now universally allowed to be. There are probably few who would now think with a correspondent of Notes and Queries thirty years ago (1st S., ii, 142) that the hymn deserves not praise either for its poetry or its piety. But while I speak thus of what is necessary in a translation, I must not be understood to recommend by any means the keep- 2i They are used with a somewhat similar effect by Archbishop Trench in the "Day of Death." 5 I O THE D OLPHIN. ing of the double rhyme : the English language, though it sup- plies quite enough, supplies chiefly parts of verbs, participial and others, and words in ation and similar endings. And of all hideous things in poetry, a superabundance of rhymes in ation is the most hideous : 26 how, for instance, can a man away with such lines as these ? " Carceration, trucidation, Flame and axe and laceration." Yet they are in the original form of Dr. Neale's well-known saints' day hymn, Blessed feasts of blessed martyrs ; and another example in the same hymn is the unhappy line, With affection's recollections, of which it is a problem I have never been able to solve whether that be preferable, or Gerard Moultrie's With devotions deep emotions. Another form of the double rhyme, the " two- word rhyme," is also not good, 27 unless perhaps where the second word is a pronoun, and thus of the nature of an en- clitic ; such rhymes as chorus, der us, are allowed by custom, but on the other hand such as Sion, rely on, do not commend them- selves. The fact is that double rhymes, unless managed with such skill which appears to be beyond everybody's power, cannot be used continuously ; and this of course at once excludes them from a version of the Dies Irae. They should only be used in conjunction with single ones, alternately or at longer intervals, and in the middle of a line not at all ; and to most writers indeed poetical instinct has shown this, for I do not know instances of their continuous use in original compositions ; in translation that mistaken lust of exactly preserving the original metre has over- come poetical instinct. There is in the Lyra Mystica, p. 49, a translation by Dr. Kynaston of the Prayer of Hildebert to the Trinity, in 55 couplets of continuous double rhyme : no fewer than 26 are rhymed with participles. In a word, double rhymes 26 " Don't confound the language of the nation With longtailed words in osity and ation. " — Whistlecraft. 27 It is luckily not common in the versions ; though I have seen one particularly unpleasant instance of it by Dr. Crookes, of Philadelphia : " Then the scroll shall be unfolded Wherein's written what each soul did '." NOTES ON THE "DJES IRAE." 5 1 1 always require the utmost skill in handling. Mr. Myers in his St. Paul and shorter poems in the same metre has avoided their dangers as well as anybody. 28 Speaking of them now with more particular reference to our present subject, one great mistake whereinto they cause trans- lators to fall is that of too freely using the participle of a verb with the auxiliary instead of the verb itself ; which Bishop Elli- cott 29 calls a sign of grammatical degeneracy : thus it is not Eng- lish to say with Dr. Irons : " What shall I frail man be pleading, Who for me be interceding," instead of with Isaac Williams : " What shall wretched I then plead, Who for me shall intercede ; " and worse still is this by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall : " On the rocks to hide them calling, On the mountains to be falling.'''' Again, they lead one to translate Rex tranendae majestatis by King of majesty tremendous, which is not a good line — tremendous is a word which has been so used as not to represent trcmendus at all well. But the temptation is one which it seems difficult for those who use this metre to resist ; eight or nine translators, Dean Stanley included, have got the line ; one merit of Dr. Coles is that he has not. Of bad rhymes little need be said ; when you get such as aghast are, faster, and solemn y column, volume (W. R. Williams), you are too much aghast yourself to proceed any farther. Here again Dr. Coles deserves praise ; his rhymes, though often extraordinary in their choice, are, generally speak- ing, good. This question, then, between single and double rhymes may, I think, be considered settled in favor of single ; but there is another — that between iambs and trochees — which is not so easy 28 In modern Latin composition too their difficulties are seen : compare the two versions of Neale's "Art thou weary" by Mr. Gladstone with double rhymes truly, but only alternate, by Mr. Ingham Black with continuous ; the former is far the better. 29 Aids to Faith, p. 464. 5 1 2 THE D OLPHIN. of settling. The trochees, of course, most closely imitate the original, as no doubt do the double rhymes also ; but whereas the latter are at once excluded as (so it appears to me) contrary to the habits of the English language when thus continuously used, and further extremely difficult to manage at all well ; these reasons do not apply to the former, and therefore the consider- ation of their more closely following the original may be allowed such weight as is due to it. For myself, I do not think that very much is due ; I have already granted the triplets, and I do not think it needful to grant more. In these cases the original metre should be imitated more or less closely, but not slavishly stuck to. Here the necessary imitation consists in the triplets, in other cases it may be in other things. But I do not know that there is, on the whole, much more difficulty in writing a good English Dies Irae in trochees than in iambs ; and so, while myself preferring iambs, I should say that the question may be left in the end to the likings and powers of each translator — there are excellent versions of either kind. Some difficulties in trochees of course there are, but they are more easily avoided than those arising from double rhymes. A chief one, at least to English writers, is that of falling into an awkward inversion, as where Dr. Lee writes Offer what can I as plea. Another, which we do not seem to have fallen into, though it may be seen in some American versions, is that of having to dispense with a definite article ; Dr. Coles, for instance, writing Trumpet scattering sounds of wonder; Book where actions are recorded. My farther course will be to go through the Latin by verses, examining what may be considered necessary to make a trans- lation as good as possible ; examining also thereupon such actual translations as shall seem to be, one way or the other, worthy of examination, and tabulating, where necessary or possible, such words and expressions as the different versions use. But before beginning thus upon the hymn, properly so called, a few words may be said upon the Mantuan marble. It has been already stated that it is far inferior to the genuine hymn, and that only Sylvester, Drummond, and Dr. Irons have adopted it as the basis of a version ; Dr. Coles, though he has turned it in his preface, not placing it in his text. Of this version there is hardly COMMENT ON THE « ' NO TES. " 513 anything to be said ; the two former, as might be expected, are both written in strong and forcible English ; and Drummond has one extremely grand line — grand for its simplicity, magnificent for its truth. This is it : " Dies ilia, dies irae " That day of terror, vengeance, ire, Quam conemur praevenire Now to prevent thou shouldst desire, Obviamque Deo ire." And to thy God in haste retire." How vividly this last line expresses the rush of a faithful man to prayer under some temptation or sorrow or disappointment, when he cannot bear it by himself and hurries to lay it upon one who careth for him; when, as Charles Kingsley once said, he prays as if the devil had him by the throat. {Yeast, p. 18.) Dr. Coles' rendering is different — " God to meet when He appeareth; " but it is plain (from the second line) that the older idea is correct. 30 COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." THE professed purpose of Mr. Warren's essay on the Dies Irae is to deal solely with the versions into English of that monumental hymn. He prefaces his " Notes," however, with some account of the hymn itself, because " it is often vexatious to the reader of such an essay as this not to have before him short answers to all the questions bearing on the subject which the reading thereof may raise in his mind, such as he may not recol- lect at the moment, and such as he may find it wearisome there and then to rise and search out for himself." Mr. Warren ob- scurely suggests what Dr. Maitland openly declared in his Dark Ages — a fear that the busy reader of our days will not take the trouble to " see " such and such an author, such and such a work, such and such a tome and page of such and such an edition ; and every reader of Maitland is grateful to him for the editorial energy that makes it unnecessary for the reader to " see " farther than the printed page before him. It is with a similar view to the con- venience of readers that the present writer ventures to supplement the work of Mr. Warren. But he also thinks that the hymn is of 30 A detailed analysis of the Dies Irae, by strophes, will begin in the January issue of the Dolphin. (Ed.) 514 THE DOLPHIN. sufficient interest to Catholics to support a larger body of com- ment on certain of its phases, or on certain portions of its literary- history, than Mr. Warren has indulged in. I. — Authorship. The reasons for the ascription of the hymn to Thomas of Ce- lano are partly negative, partly positive. It has been ascribed to St. Gregoiy the Great (t 604) ; but it cannot be that such a masterpiece should have lain unnoticed for so many centuries ; while the rhyme and the metrical scheme also forbid such an ascription. For somewhat similar reasons the ascription to St. Bernard of Clairvaux is an unlikely one. The text is found in a Dominican Missal (in the Bodleian, Oxford), written toward the end of the fourteenth century ; and thus two other suggested names are excluded, viz., Felix Haemmerlein (t 1457) an d Augustinus Bugellensis (f I 49 )- Cardinal Bona in his great work on the liturgy brings together five names of the thirteenth century. 1 Of these, two were Dominicans : Cardinal Ursino (+ 1294), mentioned by Benedict XIV, and the Dominican Cardinal Leander Albertus ; and Humbert, fifth general of the Dominicans (t 1276), mentioned by the Jesuit Possevino as the author. Attempts are made to show that a Dominican authorship is veiy improbable. Thus the Presbyterian Dr. Thompson, editor of Duffield's Latin Hymns, thinks "the Dies Irae is a Franciscan, not a Dominican poem. It deals with the practical and the devotional, not the doctrinal ele- ments in religion. Had a Dominican written it, he would have been anxious only for correct doctrinal statement." It is some- what curious, in this connection, to recall that Ozanam, in his history of the Franciscan poets in Italy, ascribes the poem to Innocent III (t 12 16). Internal evidence of this kind is not en- tirely trustworthy, and a stronger argument is found in a Domin- ican prohibition of the poem in Requiem Masses as unrubrical 1 Leander Albertus Cardinali Ursino, ordinis Praedicatorum, adscribit ; Lucas Waddingus Thomae de Celano, ordinis Minorum ; alii apud eundem Waddingum S. Bonaventurae vel Matthaeo Aquaspartano, Minorum Cardinali. Possevinus in appar. sacro tribui ait Augustino Bugellensi Pedemontano, ord. S. Augustini, subdens ibidem, verum auctorem esse Umbertum, Vic. Gen. ordinis Praedicatorum. — De Ret. Li/., lib. II, cap. vi. COMMENT ON THE " NO TES: ' 5 1 5 (Salamanca, 1576). Sixtus Senensis, a Dominican writer (t 1569) refers in his Bibliotheca Sacra to the hymn as an " uncouth poem" : " Haec Augustinus, ad cujus sententiam perspexisse videtur auc- tor ejus inconditi rhythmi quern ecclesia in sacris defunctorum mys- teriis decantat : Liber scriptus proferetur, in quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur." Whereupon Julian, echoing Daniel, 2 remarks that " this points to a Franciscan origin ; the old rivalry between the Franciscans and Dominicans, as is well known, was very great. Hence this writer's hostility furnishes a substantial argument." The force of these arguments is impaired, however, by the fact that the oldest known source for the text of the poem is a Dominican Missal written about the close of the fourteenth century ; and while its most frequent use is found in Franciscan Missals, it is also found in the Dominican processional, Venice, 1494, and the Dominican Missal, Venice, 1496. Among the Franciscan claimants, preference is given to Thomas of Celano, for the reason that he is considered to be the author of two Sequences in honor of St. Francis (Fregii victor virtnalis and Sanctitatis nova signa), and there is therefore noth- ing improbable in such an ascription of authorship ; and for the further reason that the earliest mention of the hymn is that made by the Franciscan Bartholomaeus Pisanus, who in his Liber Con- formitatnm (1385) remarks that the Prose in the Mass for the Dead " is said to have been composed by Brother Thomas of Ce- lano." As has just been noted, the Liber Conformitatnm was writ- ten in 1385. In Duffield's Latin Hymns, the editor (who contends with much zeal for the ascription to Thomas of Celano) bases his strongest argument on a curious mistake in the date of the Liber, which he writes, in the three places where he refers to it, " 1285": " Thomas's claim to its authorship," he says, " does not rest on the weakness of rival pretensions. In the year 1285, when Thomas had been dead about thirty years and Dante was twenty years old, the Franciscan Bartholomew of Pisa wrote his Liber Confor- mitatnm, in which he drew a labored parallel between the life oi Francis of Assisi and that of our Lord. Having occasion to speak of Celano in this work, he^ goes on to describe it as ' the place 2 " Habes pro hac sententia . . . vituperium Sixti Senensis, quod odio Praedicatorum in fratres Minores bene congruere videtur." II, p. 115. 516 THE DOLPHIN. whence came Brother Thomas, who by order of the Pope wrote in polished speech the first legend of St. Francis, and is said to have composed the prose which is sung in the Mass for the Dead : Dies irae, dies ilia! This testimony out of Thomas's own century is confirmed by . . ." The citation of the Liber, even in its correct date of 1385, is a strong argument, for it is the earliest source known for a mention and ascription of the poem ; but it is needless to point out that its value would be so enormously increased if it but dated one centuiy earlier, as to constitute it an almost irrefutable argument for the ascription which it makes. Finally, all the editors refer to Luke Wadding, the Franciscan, who in his Scriptores Ordinis Minorum (Rome, 1650) ascribes the poem to Thomas of Celano, although he also mentions the ascrip- tion by others to St. Bonaventure and Matthew of Acqua- Sparta, both Franciscans. From all this we infer that the poem was written in the thir- teenth century — " the most interesting century in the history of Christendom ;" that it was of Italian origin, inasmuch as its earli- est use was Italian and also because of its " peculiar three-line stanza, which approximates to the terza-rima structure of their poetry, but is not found in poetry of the Northern nations, except in later imitation " (Dr. Thompson) ; that its author was probably a Franciscan ; that amongst all the names suggested for the high honor of its authorship, that of Brother Thomas of Celano, the friend and biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, presents the most acceptable grounds for an ascription. II. — Sequences or Proses. With respect to the meaning of the word " Sequence," Mr. Warren's implied explanation is not happy. In the Mass in Commemoratione omnium Fidelium the Dies Irae, he says, "forms the Sequence; follows, that is to say, the Epistle." It is true that it " follows the Epistle," but not immediately ; nor is that fact the reason why it is called " Sequence." The Epistle is followed, in Festivals, by the Gradual, which, in turn, is fol- lowed by Alleluias and a verse of a psalm with an added Alleluia, or (as in Septuagesima time) by the Tract. In Paschal time the Gradual is omitted, and only the Alleluias and psalm-verse, fol- CO. MMENT ON THE ' 'NO TES. " 517 lowed by an Alleluia and another verse, are sung. Anciently, the Alleluia, whensoever it occurred after the Gradual, closed in a long series of notes or continued melody, to which only the final vowel of Alleluia was sung. This prolongation was called " sequentia," or sequence. " Later on, however, words appropriate to the Festival were supplied to this protracted chant, to which the name Sequence was restricted. ... By degrees every Sunday and Festival had its proper Sequence, until the correction of the Missal, when only four were retained in use." 3 Pre- Tridentine missals have as many as one hundred such ; but the general reform of the Missal ordered by Pius V eliminated all but the four most beautiful. These are : Victimae paschali landes of Wipo (eleventh century), for Easter ; the " Golden Sequence," Veni sancte Spiritus, attributed with most probability to Inno- cent III, for Pentecost; Lauda Sio?i, of the Angelic Doctor, for Corpus Christi ; (Stabat mater dolorosa, of Jacopone, added to the Missal about 1727, for the Seven Dolors B. V. M.) ; and finally the Dies Irae, which, however, should scarce be classed with the other four, as it occurs in the Mass for the Dead, which has no Alleluia, and therefore should not in strictness be styled " Sequence." In mediaeval Latin the words sequeiitia and prosa were practically interchangeable ; the sequence being styled prose, either because the earlier attempts at sequence-composition were unmetrical, although somewhat rhythmical in character (and therefore to be discriminated from the strict hymni), or because, as Mr. Rockstro suggests, the rhymed rhythmus was not con- sidered technically a hym?tus, as it had not classical metre. The former explanation of prosa, which is the more common one, is probably the more correct; for Notker Balbulus, the first who adapted words to the alleluiatic neumes, wrote his sequences in rhythms of unequal extent, fitting them word for note to the neumes. III. — Liturgical Use. It is very probable that the Dies Irae was composed as a sequence for the first Sunday in Advent. u En effet, cette Prose roule en entier sur le jugement dernier, excepte {'invocation Pie 3 Amberger : Pastoraltheofozie, Vol. II. 518 THE DOLPHIN. Jesu, qui y a ete manifestement ajoutee, lorsqu'on l'adapta pour les moi ts." 4 The seventeen stanzas of the Roman Missal text no doubt constitute the original form of the poem as composed by Thomas of Celano ; while the remaining six lines — Lacrimosa dies ilia, Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus. Huic ergo parce, Deus ! Pie Jesu Domine Dona eis requiem — were perhaps added to the hymn to make it suitable for a Requiem Mass. This conjecture is strengthened by the fact that Mone 5 found in a Reichenau manuscript of the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century a long series of verses or antiphons for a funeral service, containing this verse : Lacrimosa dies ilia, qua resurget ex favilla judicandus homo reus ; tu peccatis parce deus. He found also 6 in a Karlsruhe MS. of the fourteenth century these lines : Lacrimosa dies ilia, qua resurgens ex favilla homo reus judicandus, Justus autem coronandus. Mone points out that these verses antedate the composition of the Dies Irae, one of them being of the twelfth century or early thirteenth, while both are evidently derived from some common type not yet discovered. Daniel (Vol.V, p. no) considers such foreshadowings, as collected by Mone, of the Dies Irae, " con- sideration dignissimas." Trench, in his Sacred Latin Poetry, gives the Roman Missal text, with the exception of the last six lines (beginning Lacrimosa and ending with requiem} ; but while this represents in all probability the original text, the Missal text, with the exception of its closing couplet, is usually given in full by such editors as March, Coles, the compiler of Seven Great 4 Encyc. TheoL, vol. Lidirgie, col. 1054, Migne. b Vol. I, p. 406. 6 I, p. 404. COMMENT ON THE "NOTES/' 519 Hymns, etc. March includes the last couplet [Latin Hymns, p. 156.) IV. — The Latin Texts. Mr. Warren refers to two other texts, one of which — the so-called Mantuan Marble — prefixes four stanzas of introduction to the Dies Irae, dies ilia; while the other, the Haemmerlin text, expands the four lines of the Lachrymosa dies ilia into six, and adds five new strophes. The Mantuan Marble text is found in an old Lutheran hymn-book of Konigsberg (1650), together with a German translation and a note declaring that the old Latin rhyme was found on a crucifix (" bei einem Crucifix ") in the Church of St. Francis at Mantua. Mohnike (1824) came upon it in the handwriting (dated 1676) of Charisius, burgomaster of Stralsund, with the heading: " Meditatio Vetusta et Venusta de Novissimo Judicio quae Mantuae in aede D. Francisci in marmore legitur" But Daniel (II, p. 1 18), who plainly doubts the exist- ence oi the " marble," thinks Charisius transcribed his copy from a Florilegium Magnum of 1621, which contains no reference to a Mantuan marble. Mohnike, in a subsequent edition (1836), refers to the Variorum in Europa Itinerant Deliciae (first edition, 1594) of Nathan Chytraeus, who gives the text with the simple remark that he found it among the inscriptions in the Church of St. Francis at Mantua. Mr. Warren contributed a long and interesting note on the subject to Mr. Shipley's article in the Dublin Review (April, 1883, pp. 374-377) ; and both hymnologists add a common note on the subject to the same Review (July, 1883, p. 243) cor- recting some points of the essay. We shall transcribe merely two paragraphs from Mr. Warren's remarks in the Review (April, 1883, p. 375): " Father Narcisso Bonazzi, Maestro di Capella to the Bishop of Mantua, has, upon application, most obligingly written to this effect : That the Church and Con- vent of St. Francis were suppressed in 1797 (the year of the French occupation of Mantua) ; that in 1811 the church was desecrated and the convent was turned into a military arsenal ; and that no trace of the slab can now be found, neither in the churches to which the monuments of St. Francis were removed, nor in the royal or civic museums of the town. " Whatever be the origin of the text, it seems clear that it was not from the pen of Thomas of Celano. The style, and the otiose character of the additional verses, are enough to decide this. The few authorities who have thought otherwise (though 520 THE DOLPHIN. •11 of them cannot, perhaps, be called so) are Mohnike, Dean Stanley {Macmillan* s Magazine, December, 1868), and one or two American translators of the hymn." The Mantuan Marble. Chytraeus. Daniel. Quaeso anima fidelis, Cogita (Quaeso) anima fidelis Ah quid respondere velis, Ad quid respoudere velis Christo venturo de coelis, Christo venturo de coelis. Cum a te poscet rationem, Cum deposcet rationem Ob boni omissionem, Ob boni omissionem Et mali commissionem ? Ob mali commissionem. Dies ilia, dies irae, Dies ilia, dies irae, Quam conemur praevenire, Quam conemur praevenire Obviamque Deo ire Obviamque Deo ire. Seria contritione Seria contritione Gratiae apprehensione Gratiae apprehensione Vitae emendatione. Vitae emendatione. Then follow the first sixteen stanzas of the Roman Missal text with but a few minor discrepancies (such as " Nil incultum," Nil inultum ; " venisti lassus," sedisti lassus ; etc.) with the exception that " Teste David " of Chytraeus and the Missal is changed into " teste Petro " of Daniel's text. The remaining stanzas of the Missal are omitted, and the Mantuan text ends with : Consors ut beatitatis Vivam cum justificatis In aevum aeternitatis. Is Thomas of Celano responsible for these four introductory strophes ? As pointed out above, Mohnike argues for such as- cription, while Dean Stanley and Dr. Coles appear to share his view. But it is incredible that the man who could write the Dies Irae could also have produced stanzas so lacking in virility of thought and expression ; so replete with halting rhythm ; so guilty, within such a small compass, of elisions (Cogita, anima fidelis; Gratiae apprehensione) and hiatuses (Ob boni omissionem, Vitae emendatione, Obviamque Deo ire). The third strophe is a poor echo of the Missal's first : " ex prima Thomae misere con- suta et recocta," says Daniel, who further points out that the third and fourth strophes contain but jejune expositions of doc- COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." 52 1 trine, and seem rather to maim than to sing the language of the Schools, " terminos scholae magis claudicare quam cantare videntur." Even Dr. Coles, who in his preface gives a new English rendering of the four strophes, writes : " That the abbre- viation of the poem, by the omission of the four opening stanzas, adds greatly to its general and still more to its lyric effec- tiveness, there can be no doubt." He continues, rather mildly, to remark that " the rejected verses, partaking of a quiet and medi- tative character, impair the force of the lyric element." With greater vigor of utterance the editor of Seven Great Hymns re- jects the additions to the Missal text : " There have been stanzas prefixed to the hymn and others added ; but, in its great strength, it has shaken off all such spurious additions " (7th £d., p. 49). This last remark leads us directly to consider the " spurious addition " known as the Haemmerlin text. Felix Haemmerlin (or Haemmerlein, Latinized into Malleolus), who died circa 1457, left behind him MSS. amongst which was found a copy of the Dies Irae with additional stanzas which were, thinks Mr. Warren, un- doubtedly his own composition. They were published by Leon- hard Meister, a Swiss writer, who " put forward an absurd claim for Haemmerlein to have written the whole hymn." Daniel thinks the additional verses languid and superfluous : " Nemo non videt strophis quae ecclesiasticum carmen excedunt nihil inesse nisi languorem ac priorum versuum repetitionem " (II, p. 120). For the sake of clearness, it may not be amiss to give in this place the exact text of the Roman Missal in one column, and in another the variant readings of the other texts, concluding with the Haemmerlin stanzas. It will be immediately seen that where- ever a variation from the " Received " or Missal text occurs, it is to introduce but a change for the worse ; and that, as Dr. Coles admits, " in its present form, all is vehement stir and movement, from the grand and startling abruptness of its opening, to the sweet and powerful pathos of its solemn and impressive close." ROMAN MISSAL TEXT. VARIANT TEXTS. TV ,. .,. x Mantuan : Petro. 2 The French missals Dies irae, dies ilia . _, . D __ Qs ' (e. g., Pans, 1738; Metz, 1778) omit Solvet saeclum in favilla, the third line and int erpose between the Teste David 1 cum Sibylla. 2 first and second Cruets expand ens vexitta. 522 THE Quantus 3 tremor est futurus Quando judex est venturus Cuncta stricte discussurus ! Tuba mirum spargens* sonum Per sepulchra regionum Coget omnes ante thronum. Mors 6 stupebit at natura, Cum resurget 6 creatura, Judicanti responsura. Liber scriptusproferetur, 7 In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. Judex ergo cum sedebit 8 Quidquid latet apparebit, 9 Nil inultum 10 remanebit. Quid sum miser tunc 11 dicturus. Quem patronum rogaturus, Cum vix 12 Justus sit securus ? Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos 13 salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis ! u Recordare, Jesu 15 pie, Quod sum 16 causa tuae viae : Ne me perdas ilia die. Quaerens me sedisti 17 lassus, Redemisti crucem 18 passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus. Juste Judex ultionis, Donum fac remissionis Ante diem rationis. Ingemisco tanquam reus, 19 Culpa rubet vultus meus ; Supplicanti parce, Deus. DOLPHIN. 3 Haemmerlin : Tantus. 4 Lubeck Missal (1480) : sparget. 5 Haemmerlin : Mens stupescit. 6 Haemm. : resurgit. 7 Haemm. : Liber scriptus tunc docetur, 8 Augustinian Missal (1497) : censebit. 9 Haemm. : comparebit. 10 Mant. and Haemm. : incultum. 11 Mant. : turn. 12 Mant. : Quu/n nee ; Haemm. : Dum vix. 13 Missal of Venice (1479) : salvando. 14 Koenigs. G.-B. : bonitatis. 15 Haemm. : Jesum. 1G Mant. (Charisius) : sim ; Ven. Missal quia sum. 17 Mant. (Charisius) : venisti ; Haemm. fuisti. 18 Mant., Haemm., Lubeck Missal et al cruce. u Chytraeus : vere reus. COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." 523 Qui Mariam 20 absolvisti Et latronem exaudisti, Mihi quoque spem dedisti. Preces meae non sunt dignae, Sed tu bonus 21 fac benigne Ne perenni cremer igne. Inter oves locum praesta Et ab hoedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. 2S Confutatis maledictis, 23 Flammis acribus addictis, Voca 24 me cum benedictis. Oro supplex et acclinis,' 25 Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis. Lacrimosa dies ilia Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus ■ Huic ergo parce Deus. Pie Jesu Domine, Dona eis requiem. (The Haemmerlin text, given in the opposite column, omits the last couplet, expands the preced- ing four lines into six, and adds five entirely new stanzas. Die ilia for dies ilia is unhappy as a change, for it creates a hiatus — something unknown throughout the text of the Roman Missal hymn. To say nothing of the languid movement of the added verses, the broken rhythm of Esto semper adjutor metis, and the forbidding pronun- ciation requisite for fitting Sed Metz Missal : Peccatricem. 21 Haemm. bone. bonas : Chytraeus et al. 22 Chyt. : Statuens vie parte ; K.G.-B : Me loces; Lubeck M.,; Statuens me in parte dextra. rA Haemm. : A r e conjungar maledictis. 2 * K. G.-B. : Loca. 25 Haemm. : a minis. At this point the Haemmerlin expansion begins, by making triplets of the Lacri- mosa and Judicandtis couplets. Lacrimosa die ilia Cum resurget ex favilla, Tanquam ignis ex scintilla, Judicandus homo reus ; Huic ergo parce Deus, Esto semper adjutor meus. The Haemmerlin addsthe following : Quando coeli sunt movendi Dies adsunt tunc tremendi, Nullum tempus poenitendi : Sed salvatis laeta dies Et damnatis nulla quies Sed daemonum effigies. O tu Deus majestatis, Alme candor trinitatis, Nunc conjunge cum beatis. 524 THE DOLPHIN. daemonum effigies to any rhyth- Vitam meam fac felicem mical swing, alike plead loudly Propter tuani genitricera, ., , . ,. r [esse floreru et radicem. against any possible ascription of these added strophes to the n ,. r Fraesta nobis tunc levamen, author— whoever he may have Dulce nostrum fac certamen, been — of the Dies Irae. ) Ut clamemus omnes, Amen ! V. — Early English Versions. The first known translation into English was that of Joshua Sylvester (i 563-1618), a Puritan writer, translator from the French, and author of " Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shat- tered by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Heli- con." This title may not promise well for his translation (published in 1 62 1 at the end of his translation of DuBartas' Divine Weeks), which, however, has the merit of being not only the first but the type for more modern imitation. Although perhaps well-known, it is not very accessible to readers, and a few stanzas from it will not be amiss in this connection. It is written in very curious metre — the first, second, fourth and fifth lines of each stanza being trochaic ys and the third and sixth lines iambic 8s. In the first two stanzas is given a version of the Mantuan Marble's intro- ductory four strophes — an example followed by Drummond, Dr. Irons, and Dr. Coles. The title runs : A HOLY PREPARATION TO A JOYFUL RESURRECTION. Deare, deare Soule, Awake, awake, Ah ! what answer wilt thou make When Christ in glory shall appear? When Hee comes to take Account Of thy Sins that hourely mount, By acting or neglecting heer. Of that irefull Day to come (That red dreadfull Day of Doome) Th' affrighting Terrour to prevent, Bleeding tears let heart distill ; Right reform thy crooked will ; But speedily Repent, Repent. Then begins the Dies Irac proper, of which the first stanza will suffice for illustration : COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." $2$ That, That dreaded Day of Ire, Shall dissolve the World in Fire ; As holy Prophets have foretold. Oh ! What horrour will be then, When the Lord shall come agen, Our deeds of Darkness to unfold ! Of Crashaw's version (in his Steps to the Temple, 1646) — "the earliest rendering of Dies Irae from the devotion of a Catholic " — Mr. Shipley says : " The version is rugged in character and irregular in metre, and is more of an imitation of the original than a translation ; at least in some of its stanzas. It contains, how- ever, much delicate play of thought and expression, in language and idea, and in certain parts is touchingly beautiful." Dr. Schaff, although a Protestant clergyman as well as hymnologist, declares that in strength no version compares with Crashaw's; and the editor of Seven Great Hymns, who prints his version among the seven translations selected for illustration, repeats the thought of Dr. Schaff, in the judgment that "no translation surpasses Crashaw's in strength, but the form of his stanza and the measure of his verse are least like those of the original." The first three stanzas will serve to show both the strength of the version and the wide limits of rendering which it vindicates to itself: Hear'st thou, my soul, what serious things Both the Psalm and Sibyl sings Of a sure Judge, from whose sharp ray The world in flames shall fly away ! O that Fire ! before whose face Heaven and earth shall find no place : O those Eyes ! whose angry light Must be the day of that dread night. O that Trump ! whose blast shall run An even round with th' circling sun, And urge the murmuring graves to bring Pale mankind forth to meet his King. His rendering of the last stanza of the original hymn : Oro supplex et acclinis, Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis — is not only pathetic and lovely in the extreme, but was clearly the 526 THE DOLPHIN. source of Roscommon's inspiration in the rendering of that stanza. Crashaw translates : O, hear a suppliant heart all crush'd, And crumbled into contrite dust ! My hope, my fear — my Judge, my Friend ! Take charge of me and of my end ! The Earl of Roscommon's version (if indeed it be his, and not Dryden's, as Mr. Shipley contends with much acuteness) trans- lates : Prostrate my contrite heart I rend, — My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do nor forsake me in my end ! Besides Sylvester, Drummond of Hawthorn den represents Prot- estant interest in the hymn, in the way of translation, in the seven- teenth century ; and besides Crashaw, examples of the Catholic interest are: a version in the Rosarists' Daily Exercises (1657); one by James Dymock, Clergyman, in the Sacrifice of the Nciv Law (1687); one (anonymous) in the Follozving of Christ (1694). The seventeenth century witnessed eight versions into English ; the eighteenth — that century which, philosophizing itself into idiocy, finally " blew its brains out," as Carlyle remarks, in the French Revolution — counts only three recorded versions ; and the British versions, beginning with Scott's fragment in the Lay, made in the nineteenth century, number fifteen before the year 1841 — the year, that is, of the first American translation. Since that date, the activity in translation has been prodigious both in the British Isles and in America. It is to be hoped that a complete list of these may soon be compiled and published. VI. — Metrical Forms. Mr. Warren is nowhere more interesting than in the discus- sion of the question of the metrical and stanzaic form which translations should follow. Briefly, he considers (1) the rhymed triplet stanza necessary; (2) double rhymes impracticable; (3) trochaic or iambic metre a matter of taste — although he prefers iambic. He thinks triplets a necessity for the reason that a version " must have these to have anything of the original peculiar char- COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." $ 2 7 acter ; if it have them not ... it cannot have the indescrib- able grandness and solemnity which they give to the original ; cannot, in short, be anything near that wonderful creation which the hymn is now universally allowed to be." Versions in other stanzaic forms may be, he grants, fine poems, but cannot fairly be considered translations. Sylvester's and Crashaw's versions, from which we have already drawn illustrations, were in sestet and quatrain form respectively (the latter being in reality, how- ever, in pairs of couplets, as the rhyme shows). Sir Walter Scott's fragment is in stricter quatrain form : That day of wrath, that dreadful day, When heaven and earth shall pass away, What hope shall be the sinner's stay, How shall he meet that dreadful day ? Canon Husenbeth {Missal for the Laity, 1831) used the sestet, with varying lengths of verse : The dreadful day, the day of ire Shall kindle the avenging fire Around the expiring world ; And earth, as Sybils said of old, And as the prophet-king foretold, Shall be in ruin hurled. Dean Stanley {Macmillaris Magazine, Dec, 1868) used continu- ous couplets in sestet form : Day of wrath, O dreadful day, When this world shall pass away, And the heavens together roll, Shrivelling like a parched scroll, Long foretold by saint and sage, David's harp and Sybil's page. So, too, Lord Macaulay {Christian Observer, 1826); "O" {Chris- tian Remembrancer, 1825); Abrahall {Ibid., 1868), who, how- ever, has trochaic rhyming. Dr. Coles has one of his many versions in couplets joined into quatrain form : That day, that awful day, the last, Result and sum of all the Past, Great necessary day of doom, When wrecking fires shall all consume ! 528 THE DOLPHIN. A very peculiar metre for the hymn is that of R. D. Williams, {Manual for Sisters of Charity, 1S48) : Woe is the day of ire Shrouding the earth in fire — Sybil's and David's lyre Dimly foretold it — Strictly the guilty land, By the avenger scanned, Smitten, aghast shall stand Still, to behold it. Nearly all the translations, however, are in rhymed triplets, the trochaic metre having a great preponderance over the iambic (doubtless to secure greater resemblance to the trochaic feet of the original), although a large minority of the trochaic renderings have single rhyme. The first translation into trochaic eights was that of the Rev. Joel Chandler {Hymns of the Primitive Church, 1837). The trochaic sevens may be illustrated by the version of Dymock (1687), and the iambic eights by that of the Rosarists (1657). Their initial stanza served as a type of rendering of the first strophe of the Latin for many other translators. Both, as has been said, are Catholic versions : Rosarists. Dymock. That day of wrath, that dreadful day Day of wrath, that dreadful day, Shall all the world in ashes lay, Shall the world in ashes lay, As David and Sybilla say. David and the Sybils say. In a list of versions contributed to the London Athenceum in 1890 by Mr. Warren (comprising 86 British and 91 American) I find of triplet versions in iambic 8s, 19 British and 13 American; in trochaic 7s, 20 British and ^American; in trochaic 8s, 29 British and 41 American. We thus have 70 versions in the exact trochaic metre of the original ; 34 versions in trochaic 7s, the next nearest approach to it; and 32 in iambic 8s. As the metrical form recedes from that of the original, the number of translations decreases. And it thus appears that if " authority " have any weight as an argument, a version should be in the exact metre of the original — a view that Mr. Warren has, as we have seen, strongly combated. In general it may be said that any translation should, as far as COMMENT ON THE "NOTES." 529 possible to the genius of an alien tongue, imitate an original in its complete form. In the translation of a recognized masterpiece of literature, whose cadences have sounded in many ears through many ages, the duty of close imitation seems to be the more obligatory'. In addition to this, the metre of the Dies Irae has not merely become, through its frequent liturgical use, a " haunt- ing memory " in all ears ; but it was singularly adapted to the emotional content of the " Hymn of the Ages." Guericke, bor- rowing from Fred. v. Meyer, compared the triple rhyme to blow after blow of a hammer striking, as it were, the innermost soul until it quivers with the repeated impact. " Who does not feel," asks Daniel, " how aptly the rhythm is fitted to the argument ? how marvellously, like the resurgent billows of the sea, the verses beat against the ear ? and, finally, what sober dignity the hymn gains from the ternary rhyming ?" To him, every word in the grand hymn seems a thunderstroke — " quot sunt verba tot pon- dera, immo tonitrua." Dean Trench speaks of " the metre so grandly devised, of which I remember no other example, fitted though it has here shown itself for bringing out some of the noblest powers of the Latin language." Dr. W. R. Williams says : " Combining somewhat of the rhythm of classical Latin with the rhymes of the mediaeval Latin, treating of a theme full of awful sublimity, and grouping together the most startling imagery of Scripture as to the last Judgment, and throwing this into yet stronger relief by the barbaric simplicity of the style in which it is set, and adding to all these its full and trumpet-like cadences . . ." Dr. Coles, a physician, appropriately com- pares the rhythm to the beating of the heart : " Underneath every word and syllable a living heart throbs and pulsates. The very rhythm, or that alternate elevation and depression of the voice which prosodists call the arsis and the thesis, one might almost fancy were synchronous with the contraction and the dilatation of the heart." A more formal declaration is that of General Dix, whose ver- sion was made at Fortress Monroe during the gloomiest period of the Civil War. It is in the trochaic eights, for which he contends : " A production universally acknowledged to have no superior of its class, should be as literally rendered as the structure of the 530 THE DOLPHIN. language into which it is translated will admit. Moreover, no translation can be complete which does not conform to the orig- inal in its rhythmic quantities. The music of the Dies Irae is as old as the hymn, if not older; and with those who are familiar with both, they are inseparably connected in thought. To satisfy the exactions of such minds, the cadences must be the same." Mor- gan Dix, in his Memoirs of his father, gives (Vol. II, p. 236) sev- eral high appreciations of this translation (from Wilkie Collins, George Ticknor, Brantz Mayer, etc.), and among them one from Bayard Taylor, containing a pertinent observation which, as the strongly expressed conviction of a poet and translator, may be quoted in this connection : " I have always had a special admira- tion for the majestic poem, and have heretofore sought in vain to find an adequate translation. Those which reproduced the spirit neglected the form, and vice versa. There can be no higher praise for yours than to say that it preserves both. It has always been an article of my literary creed that the rhythmical character of a poem is a part of its life, and must be retained, to its nicest cadence, by the translator." Dr. Coles, eight of whose sixteen versions are in trochaic eights, admits the " difficuly involved in triplicating the double rhymes, owing to the poverty of our lan- guage in words suitable for the purpose, without practising awk- ward and inelegant inversions." Dr. Johnson, commenting on Young's thesis that the pleasure of rhyme arises from the sense of difficulty overcome, somewhat grimly says : " But then the writer must take care that the difficulty is overcome ; that is, he must make rhyme consist with as perfect sense and expression as would be expected, if he were perfectly free from that shackle." Lowell, in the Biglow Papers, goes still farther when he makes Parson Wilbur counsel the young poet : " Unless one's thought pack more neatly in verse than in prose, it is wiser to refrain." Mr. Warren thinks double rhymes " extremely difficult to manage at ail well," and illustrates his view with abundant quotation. The lure, nevertheless, is so powerful — as witness the large number of versions with triple trochaic rhymes — that a lover of the magical rhythm of Dies Irae will live in hope that the quest may not prove wholly fruitless. H. T. Henry. Ovevhrook Seminary, Pa. STUDIES AND CONFERENCES. 59 1 He would recall the forest dense and dark, where the gray- chief and gifted seer worshipped the god of thunder, whilst the full river's flowing waters filled the fresh wood with grateful melody. Not so does the poet describe the visit of the white man whose sires upon England's pleasant shores Left not their churchyards unadorned with flowers Or blossoms ; and indulgent to the strong And natural dread of man's last home, the grave, Its frost and silence — they disposed around, To soothe the melancholy spirit that dwelt Too sadly on life's close, the forms and hues Of vegetable beauty. He mentions the plants that speak of a source of energy be- neath the grave, symbolizing life's ways and hopes. Thus . . . On the infant's little bed, Wet at its planting with maternal tears, Emblem of early sweetness, early death, Nestled the lowly primrose. The riper age of youth is pictured in the spot Where the sweet maiden, in her blossoming years, Cut off, was laid with streaming eyes ; and hands That trembled as they placed her there : the rose Sprung modest, on bowed stalk, and better spoke Her graces, than the proudest monument. A kindred antithesis, which sometimes appears like parallelism, may be discovered in such compositions on death as The Knighfs Epitaph and Monument Mountain ; The Death of Aiathar and The Disinterred Warrior; "No man knoweth his grave" and "Blessed are they that mourn;" The Hymn to Death and The Burial of Love, The Two Graves and The Conqueror s Grave. But throughout these verses there ring notes of contentment with the present and hopefulness in the better future through God's mercy, which are hardly to be found in the work of models whom Cullen Bryant had at one time or other admired. Kirke White, for example, had written on immortality in his Atha?zatos, and he had written on death in Thanatos and other poems, but his verses were but the echoes of that discontent which finds fuller 592 THE DOLPHIN. expression in the unfinished verses on Despair. Our poet on the contrary loves the brighter, we should say the Catholic, views of life. Hence he was fond of the Spanish writers, as his transla- tions from Leonardo de Argensola and from Luis Ponce de Leon, notably the latter's The Life of the Blessed, among his religious pieces attest. In this poem Bryant pictures " The Good Shepherd " with all his flock around him, while From his sweet lute flow forth Immortal harmonies, of power to still All passions born of earth, And draw the ardent will Its destiny of goodness to fulfil. The poet sees him in the region of life and light where after death the good whose earthly toils are over rest ; where neither frost nor heat may blight the vernal beauty of the fertile shores, yielding their blessed fruits for evermore. Hence he prays that he may be of that company and there hear the shepherd's sweet invitation. Might but a little part, A wandering breath of that high melody, Descend into my heart, And change it till it be Transformed and swallowed up, oh love, in thee ! Ah ! then my soul should know, Beloved, where thou liest at noon of day, And from this place of woe Released, should take its way To mingle with thy flock and never stray. OUR "DIES IEAE " CONTRIBUTIONS. It is now more than twenty-one years since Mr. Orby Shipley contributed to the Dublin Review an elaborate essay entitled " Fifty Versions of Dies Irae" which served both to illustrate the power exercised by the great hymn over the intellects and hearts of its many votaries and to point the way to an approximate finality in the matter of translation. In the course of that admirable paper on comparative hym- nology its author several times acknowledged indebtedness for helpful references to an unnamed friend "who contemporaneously STUDIES AND CONFERENCES. 593 and unknown to him has made a far larger collection of versions than the present one — a collection which includes all the transla- tions from America and two fresh British ones, one from the collector's own pen." l The author points (p. 51) to the fact that " two early renderings have been discovered by the research of another, and are left for the discoverer himself to make public," — a reference to the same collector. Further on (p. 74) he acknowl- edges indebtedness " for a copy of the translated sequence con- tained in the edition of the Following of Christ, named and quoted above," to the " friend who has made Dies Irae a study for years." He remarks that " as this rendering will probably be published at no great interval of time, and as the credit of discovery belongs elsewhere, but a slender use of it has been made in this place." Finally, in the continuation of Mr. Shipley's paper in the April issue of the same Review, there is (pp. 374-7) a long quotation from a letter of the " friend who has made Dies Irae the study of years, and of whose collection of English translations — numbering considerably more than one hundred — there is now every prospect of the publication." This letter from the " friend " ends with a footnote signed " C. F. S. W." The hope and expectation thus expressed and reiterated, that the results of the long labors of " C.F.S.W." should be published, was destined never to be realized. Although the grandeur of Dies Irae might well merit such a tribute, the scheme was in truth somewhat monumental in character ; for a collection of "consider- ably more than one hundred " translations would have made a volume of no mean dimensions. Besides this difficulty of publica- tion, such a collection must contain not a little dross mixed with the pure gold ; and, withal, would in a few years be very much out of date, as would be seen immediately by glancing at the table of English and American versions published by " C.F.S.W." in the London Athenceum, July 26, 1890. That indefatigable gleaner had, in the less than eight years separating the appearance of Mr. Shipley's article in the Dublin Review from that of the Athenczum tabulation, been able to swell his list from " considerably more than one hundred " to one hundred and fifty-five. More anon of this excellent list published by Mr. C. F. S. Warren in the 1 Dublin Review, Jan., 1883, p. 54. 594 THE DOLPHIN. Athenceum. Needless to say, many translations have appeared since that date, while it is fair to surmise that a comparison of this list with the table given in Julian's Dictionary of Hymnology, as also with the bibliography of Dies Irae in English version, com- piled by Mr. John Edmands, the librarian of the Mercantile Libraiy of Philadelphia, and issued in 1884, would discover some few translations passed over by one or other collector. It is our hope to make such a detailed comparison, and to bring the tabula- tion down to date, should leisure and the kind assistance of cor- respondents permit. Meanwhile, however, it is pleasant to reflect that while the growing list of translators makes a complete col- lection of versions into English a practical impossibility for any publisher, there have not been wanting to the ardent lover of Dies Irae volumes which have found it possible to include several of the most noted renderings. Everybody is aware of the unique volume in which Dr. Coles, a physician of Newark, presented to the public no less than thirteen, versions from his own pen. Of these, the first six were written in triplets of trochaic eights, thus imitating exactly the metre of the original Latin ; the succeeding five, in triplets of trochaic sevens ; the twelfth, in triplets of iambic eights, and the thirteenth, in quatrains of iambic eights. The volume appeared in 1859 an< ^ soon passed into its fifth edition. In 1868 appeared The Seven Great Hymns of the Medieval Church, containing eight renderings of the hymn by various, authors. In 1892, Mr. W. Stryker published three of his own versions in a little volume. All of these volumes contained the Latin text as found in the Roman Missal, while Dr. Coles added the texts known as the " Mantuan marble " and " Haemmerlin " texts. The table given in the Dictionary of Hymnology (referred to above) was compiled by Mr. Warren and Mr. W. T. Brooke. While the Dictionary bears the date of 1892, and the table pub- lished by Mr. Warren in the Athenceum bears the date of 1890, the earlier date represents a later revision of the table, as the first pages of the Dictionary passed through the press some ten years before the final appearance of the completed work. The finest gains of a comparative study of English versions of the hymn are to be found, however, not in a volume of com- STUDIES AND CONFERENCES. 595 plete translations (which must of necessity be few in number at the best), but by comparing selected stanzas from the better ver- sions with a view of perfecting the good, and by comparing these with poorer selections with a view of indicating what to avoid in translation. In this field of comparative hymnology, Dr. Schaff (in the magazine Hours at Home, in two issues, 1 868) ; Mr. Ship- ley (in the article already referred to, in the Dublin Review for January and April, 1883); and Mr. Warren (in the Manuscript volume which will appear serially in The Dolphin) have labored with much success, each in a different way. While Mr. Shipley selected fifty versions for analysis, Mr. Warren considered no less than ninety-seven, which must be acknowledged to have been a very complete list for the date at which he made his analysis (1882.) While Mr. Shipley's endeavor was to construct ideal versions by selection of typical and excellent strophes from his collection of renderings, Mr. Warren considered separately the difficulties of strophe after strophe in the original Latin, illustrated these difficulties from the English versions, and by approval of some and condemnation of others, practically pointed the way to a single ideal version of the great hymn. The first installment of Mr. Warren's essay appears in the present issue of The Dolphin, and forms an introduction to the more detailed analysis which is to appear serially in the succeed- ing issues. NEW INDULGENCES. Invocation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the End of Mass. The Holy Father has granted a special Indulgence (7 yrs and 7 quadr.) for the devout recitation of the ejaculatory : Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us f This invocation is to be repeated thrice after the prayers recited at the end of Low Masses by the priest and congregation. The Indulgence is applicable to the souls departed. (S. C. I., June 17, 1904. Cf. The Ecclesiastical Review for the text of the document.) Criticisms and JMotes, IDEALS OF SCIENCE AND PAITH. Essays by various authors. Edited by the Eev. J. E. Hand (Editor of Good Citizenship). New York : Longmans, Green & Co.; London : George Allen. 1904. Pp. 333. I. Although the writers of these Essays on Science and Religion ex- press their views from widely different standpoints and quite inde- pendently of each other in thought and treatment, the symposium is more than an attempt to present merely a group of articles upon a com- mon theme. It is professedly an expression of the aspirations of leading minds to combine scientific and religious activity toward the realiza- tion of man's highest ideals. These ideals make for enjoyment, but en- joyment which is at the same time action. " Let the religious become scientific, and the scientific religious ; then there may be peace. But the only true peace is active peace, constructive peace." It is then for the purpose of formulating these aspirations from the scientific and the religious points of view, that men of different schools, different spheres of scientific activity and religious conviction, are called upon to state some definite proposition in their own field of action, which is to be elucidated and defended, with the purpose of drawing a clearer distinction than has in the opinion of the editor been hitherto done between the elemental sense of things from the standpoint of obser- vational science, and their widest significance ' ' from the highest standpoint of man's mental, moral, social, religious evolution" (In- trod. xviii). Thus the compiler hopes that the pretended antagonism between religion and science will at least in great part disappear through the recognition that the ideals common to both are "not only numerous, but are indeed the very ideals for which the nobler spirits on both sides care most." The book before us is therefore intended as a sort of suggestive programme for a cooperative campaign on behalf of the ideals common to both the theological and scientific thought of the day. The different writers are selected from among the best representatives of various fields of scientific and religious 5 Purgatory, pp. 118, 119. NOTES OX THE "DIES IRAE." 35 NOTES ON THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE "DIES IRAE." Stanzas I-III. By the late C. F. S. Warren, M.A. AS has been already announced in these pages, The Dolphin has obtained from Mr. Orby Shipley, the veteran Catholic hymnologist, who has recently become the literary heir of Mr. Warren, the copy of Mr. Warren's MS. work on the English versions of the Dies Irae. This MS. was subsequently enlarged by its author to include additional quotations from recent transla- tions of the hymn, and formed thus the basis of his published volume. Instead of enlarging the MS. work as Mr. Warren thought proper to do for the sake of completeness, it is proposed, in this issue and the following issues of The Dolphin, to condense it into narrower limits by omitting much of the illustration bor- rowed from the vast number of English versions of the hymn, and retaining almost exclusively the valuable lessons to be derived from a study of those versions. Despite the great industry of translators of the hymn, it is evident that there is still room for the conscientious and cultivated labors of those who would desire to see it rendered adequately into English verse ; and perhaps one of the best means to such an end is the study of the faults into which previous translators have fallen. While Mr. Warren discusses this phase of the Dies Irae, the Rev. Dr. Henry, in his accompanying articles, discusses the more general phases of the literary history of the Hymn. It is thus planned, within the limits of these papers, to furnish our readers with a conspectus of the Dies Irae which shall satisfy all the lovers of " the greatest of all uninspired hymns." The hymn naturally divides itself into two parts : the " epic " or descriptive stanzas (i-vi) and the " lyric " (vii-xvii). The remaining six lines, beginning with Lacrimosa dies ilia, are evidently not a part of the original poem, comprising as they do two rhymed and one unrhymed couplet, while the hymn is written exclusively in triplets. In the present issue of The Dolphin the first three stanzas will be treated ; and in the following issues the remainder cf the hymn. — Editor. 36 THE DOLFHIN. The Hymn. i. Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla. The Sibyl quoted in the third line is supposed by Mohnike to be the Erythraean in those well-known lines ("Orac. Sib.," viii, 216 et seq. ) forming the acrostic '\yQv% on the name of our Saviour. Eusebius gives the Greek original in the " Constantini Oratio," chap, xviii, and St. Augustine has them partly in Latin in the ' ' Civitas Dei, ' ' xviii, 23, thus beginning — ' ' Judicii signum tellus sudore madescet. ' ' That this is the genuine third line of the hymn there can be, if any, little doubt : but the Mantua Marble, at least as given by Chari- sius, reads Teste Petro, and the Parisian Missal substituted without any authority a new line altogether, Cruets expandens vexilla, placing it between the two original ones. There has been a very general disposition among translators to fight shy of the Sibyl : for though few besides those mentioned above have boldly taken the Crucis line, many while keeping the orignal, like Sylvester and Drummond, have, like them, turned it generally so as to shirk the word Sibyl. There are, in fact, fewer than fifty who have used the word itself, of whom five have made it plural, one uses it with the indefinite article, " a Sibyl," and three versions, singularly in authorship, the Rosarists', the Bona Mors version, and the Quakers', strangely have it in the original form of Sibylla, David and Sibylla say. There seems, however, authority for thus using the word in English : see Bingham (Orig. Eccl. I, ii, 7), where he uses the phrase, " Sibylla their own prophetess." On this head two curiosities are to be found in American versions : the use of the word priestess in one which is marked in my note-book as " altogether worthless ; " and more singular still, the replacing of David by Virgil in another by the Rev. Charles Rockwell, which I have been unable to procure, though this first stanza is quoted by Dr. Schaff. It is thus — " Day of wrath, O direful day, Earth in flames shall pass away, Virgil and the Sibyl say," XOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 37 and the writer must of course have had in his mind the famous lines where Virgil quotes the Cumaean Sibyl in the fourth Bucolic — ' ' Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas, Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo : Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna, Jam nova progenius coelo demittitur alto." 1 Still, he can hardly have supposed this the passage alluded to by Thomas of Celano, and his reference to Virgil is thus somewhat un- accountable. Virgil is used in mediaeval mysteries as a heathen witness to Christ. Of those versions which turn the original line generally, almost all use such words as seer or prophet j one or two turn it more generally still, as Dean Disney's Great theme of inspiration 1 s lyre ; while there are again one or two who so dilute the verse that they cannot be said to have taken either reading. Of this class Worsley is a specimen, whose verse — " Day of anger, day of wonder When the world shall roll asunder, Quenched in fire and smoke a?id thunder" — can only be described by the favorite modern word sensational. But all this will be more fully set out in the tabulation of renderings at the end of the remarks on each verse ; and any repetitions, sometimes perhaps unavoidable, must, and it is hoped will, be pardoned. Many translators appear to have set before themselves no very distinct idea whether they shall be as literal as possible, or more or less paraphrastic : thus you shall see verses here and there absolutely literal, and anon you shall find others departing from their text to all appearance uncompelled. Of this an example may be seen in this very first verse. The plain prosaic translation, such as Lord Macaulay's school boy or any other would give, is simply ' ' the day of wrath, that day, shall dissolve the world in ashes;" but the vast majority of trans- lators, instead of simply taking dies irae, dies ilia, as two nominatives in apposition governing the verb solvet, have made an apostrophe of 1 " The virgin has returned again, Returned the old Saturnian reign, And golden age once more." — Lo?igfeliotu > s Golden Legend. 38 THE DOLPHIN. one or both of them ; with in the latter case this result, that they appear (I trust it is only appearance) to take saeclum as the nomina- tive to solvet, and solvet as a neuter verb, which it never is ; 2 and thus they alter the idea in a way which, if justifiable in a paraphrase, is hardly so in a literal version. Nor is it for the better ; for though it is a bold thing, and demands an apology, to differ from so many, I can hardly think that the majesty of the poem is increased by an apostrophe. Thomas of Celano thought none to be necessary ; why should we think otherwise ? In the third verse of the Mantuan text there is perhaps one in the weak inversion, Dies ilia, dies irae ; but even that text is not improved by it. Another point which demands consideration, and which partly depends upon the former, is the liberty which many writers have taken of changing the tense from the future to the present throughout. No doubt the present tense may be managed as a historical present, so as clearly to shew forth the future meaning which is to be given to it by the reader ; and Dr. Dobbin has skilfully managed this by beginning with the following emphatic verse — ' ' Cometh the day, that day of ire, When melts the universe in fire, By Sibyl sung and David's lyre." The prominence here given to the word cometh marks the sense which the present tense is to have throughout ; but without some such note of meaning as this it seems better to preserve the future. Thus the familiar Dr. Irons, in his version in H.A.M., hardly brings out enough in his first verse the notion of the coming of the day of wrath ; apostro- phizing a day is not to say the day will come ; if he had used the future tense it would have been different ; but when he goes on O what fear man's bosom rendeth all seems vague, the occasion of the fear seems insufficiently defined even by the succeeding line, and the use of the present tense hardly gives so much force and vigor as the writer probably intended it should give. But I must not find fault too liberally ; and a really good trans- lator will hardly need such warnings as he might get from ungram- matical first verses like Dr. Coles' — 2 The American, Dr. Stryker, has actually made this blunder in a literal prose version which he has printed, but which I have thought it needless to reproduce. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 39 ' ' Day of wrath, that day of burning, Seer and Sibyl speak concerning, All the world to ashes turning" — 3 or from far-fetched participles entailed on a man by the exigencies of double rhyme. No ; it will be a pleasanter task to call attention to a few really good first verses. And as it has hitherto been necessary to speak rather badly of the American versions, one of those shall be put first, which is as good as any that I have seen. * ' The day of anger, ah that day, Shall melt the world in flames away, This David and the Sibyl say." In this, by Mr. Henry MacDonald, ah that day must be taken as a parenthesis, and then the simplicity of the wording and the emphasis of the last line are both very good points in its favor. Of those which are now commonly inserted in hymnals, the best is perhaps Isaac Williams' — "Day of wrath, that awful day Shall the bannered cross display, Earth in ashes melt away." These following vary somewhat from the ordinary style — " Nigher still and still more nigh Draws the day of prophecy, Doomed to melt the earth and sky. ' ' — Caswall. ' ' Dawns the day, the day of dread, Fast the fires of ruin spread, David with the Sibyl said. ' ' — ' ' Messenger of the Sacred Heart, " 1875. Before passing on it may be well to point out a singular mistake made by another Roman Catholic translation, which is believed to be an early one of Father Aylward, in the " Crown of Jesus," 1862 — 3 The writer probably intended a relative to be supplied, " Day of wrath concerning which Seer and Sibyl speak;" but it is hardly a fit case for such an omission. 40 THE DOLPHIN. 11 Day of wrath, that day of woe, Doomed to melt all things below, Psalms and Sibyl -songs foreshew." The translator's difficulty for a rhyme has caused him to restrict the day of judgment to the earth — all things below — forgetting that " the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved." (Dorian N.T. ) In the tabulated views * of which I am now about to give the first, it will be seen, first, that they relate chiefly to words, phrases, and turns of expression, and therefore if any line does not admit of inser- tion in such a table it is omitted; and, secondly, I have to premise that slight differences in the order of the same words are occasionally disregarded ; thus, for instance, David and the Sibyl and The Sibyl and David would be placed under the same head. The versions also not in triplets are sometimes, not admitting of insertion, left out ; and in short, though the tabulations may be considered correct as far as they go, they are not to be taken as altogether exhaustive. Line i. — Wrath, 40; anger, 7 ; ire, 6 ; vengeance, 4; judgment, 2 ; fury, horror, doom, each 1. Dread, dreaded, dreadful, 12 ; awful, 6. Line ii. — World, 25; heaven, 2; earth, 19; heaven and earth, 10; earth and sky, 2 ; earth and time, 1 ; time, 2 ; ages, 2 ; universe, 2. Ashes, 3 1 ; dust, 3 ; dust and ashes, 2 ; fire, 1 2 ; flame, 10 ; smoke, 1 ; embers, 2 ; crumbling fire, 1 ; fire and smoke and thunder, 1. Melt, 17; consume, 4; dissolve, 4; lay (in ashes), 11; turn (to ashes), 3 ; burn, 3 ; expire, 2 ; fade, flee. Line Hi. — Reading Sibylla. David and Sibyl, 27; Seer and Sibyl, 9 ; Seer and Psalmist, 6 ; Sibyl and Psalmist, 3 ; Oracle and Psalmist, 1 ; Sibyl and Prophet, 5 ; Psalm and Sibyl, 6; David and Seer, 4; Saint and Seer, 3 ; David (alone), 1 ; Seer (alone), 2 ; Seer and heathen, 1 ; all Seers, 1 ; Prophet and Priestess, 1 ; Zion, 1 ; Scripture, 2. Reading Crucis. Bannered cross, 3 ; banner of the cross, 1; cross (simply), 3; sign, 1. 4 Many of the latter versions are not included. XOTES OX THE "DIES IRAE." 4 1 2. Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus. As indeed all through the Hymn, a simple rendering is here the best; "weird horrors," for instance, should be avoided, which a Roman Catholic writer (Mr. Charles Kent, Barrister-at-Law) in the Month of November, 1874, has inserted. The additional idea of some is not only useless, but wrong, as this line of Mr. Samuel Watson {Belforo? s Magazine, Toronto, May, 1878) — "When the Judge shall come in glooming /" the writer probably remembered that our Lord will come in a cloud, which is no doubt true, but the cloud will be a bright one. The verse is not one of the most difficult to turn, but yet most translators seem to have diluted it more or less, and some unfortunately by sinking the last line, which is just what should be prominent ; so Archdeacon Rowan of Ardfert, in the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal for June, 1849 — ' ' Lo, that solemn Advent nearing, How the nations mazed and fearing Wait their Judge's reappearing." The point in this last line is of course in the word discussurus, not so much to judge as to search and thoroughly, stricte, lay bare. To express the idea, the word assize is not a bad one ; I do not, however, find that many translators have used it here, though there are exam- ples in James Dymock, 1687, and in the Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 1875 ; anc * others have used the word in the fourth verse and at the end of the hymn. Mr. Copeland's version — 1 ' What a trembling far and near, When the Judge shall straight appear Winnowing all with fan severe " — is the only instance of an allusion to the text, ' * Whose fan is in His hand," though it is not very uncommon to introduce a kindred idea by the use of the word "sift." Another metaphor, as might be expected, is sometimes suggested by the use of the word ' ' weigh. ' ' 42 THE DOLPHIN. Line i. — Fear, 24; trembling, 17; terror, 14; tremor, 4; dread, 6 ; horror, 2. Of several other words, such as fright, agony, distress, there are solitary instances. Line ii. — Judge, all but universal ; avenger, 1; " judgment sign, " 1. Christ, Christ Jesus, Redeemer, each once used. Epithets. Great, 3 ; severe, 3 ; dread, dreadful, 2 ;' impartial, 2 ; sore, strict, high, righteous, tremendous, om- niscient, potent. Line Hi. — So very variously dealt with as to hinder classing. 3. Tuba mirum spargens sonum, Per sepulcra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum. ' ' The trumpet gives a wondrous sound, but there is no need to say that it "blares," as Dr. Macgill, 1876, and two or three writers of America do. ' ' Blares aloud that trump of thunder, Crashing, waking death in wonder, Citing all the white throne under. ' ' — Dr. Macgill. One is reminded of Lord Tennyson's line, "Warble, O bugle, and, trumpet blare" — the word may do very well for military music to welcome the Princess of Wales, but it cannot suit the trumpet of the last day of judgment. Of the Americans who have used it, one is Dr. Coles, who in another version calls the sound a "reverberating roar;" this is even worse. The word itself, trumpet or trump, is used almost without exception; W. J. Blew turns it into an "unearthly clarion " 5 in a verse which is an example of what I have called the sensational style ; and two or three others simply speak of " the blast. ' ' " Hear the unearthly clarion knelling Through dim vault and charnel dwelling, All before the throne compelling." — Blew. If this characteristic of the sound is to be emphasized, a simple way of doing it is "with loudest crash" (The Lamp, 1856), and if the 5 The word clarion had been used before in the " Bona Mors" version. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAEr 43 blast is to be attributed to any agent, it should be to the Almighty Himself — " the voice of the archangel and the trump (tuba) of God " — it would seem that to give the trump to the archangel, as is some- times done, is a sort of confusion arising from the seven apocalyptic trumpets. Still, Dean Stanley and other writers have made the trump an angelic one ; and it is indeed very few who have made it divine. Among these few are the Rosarists, and, later, Dr. Coles, in two of his versions ; in his freer version in couplets he has taken the fuller idea of St. Paul as above — the lines, except the "dreadful shrieks," are good — ' ' What dreadful shrieks the air shall rend When all shall see the Judge descend, And hear the Archangel's echoing shout From heavenly spaces ringing out. The trump of God with quickening breath Shall pierce the silent realms of death And sound the summons in each ear, Arise, thy Maker calls : appear. ' ' While another American, calling himself "Somniator," though also introducing both the Almighty and the angel, has curiously enough exactly reversed St. Paul's expression, and written of The archangel' s trump, the voice of God. The other points to be noticed are the force of regiones and coget. The regions being, of course, in strictness the four quarters of the earth — the four corners, as Dr. Coles in one version has it — this idea, or a kindred one, should be preserved (but let no one go after Mr. Justice O'Hagan and rhyme regions with obedience), whereas such generalities as tombs of earth, death's dominions, caves sepulchral, earth' s myriad graveyards, dark and dusty dwellings (sic), lose sight of it ; also to translate the regiones into kingdoms, or as Mr. Copeland has it, empires, is an error — the word has not, that I can find, this sense at all ; a good general rendering is perhaps " death's valley " (Miss Pearson, an American lady). Coget, too, must not be watered down into a mere statement of the fact that the dead will come — the blast brings them. But to find a word is difficult ; summon and bid are perhaps hardly strong enough, for a summons and a bidding may be disregarded. So indeed may a citation, but we know at once that if it be, further steps are often taken ; and though this is true also, and indeed more universally true, of a u summons" in the technical 44 THE DOLPHIN. sense, yet this sense is not so evident in the word su?nmon as in cite ; cite therefore has more of the required force, and is preferable. Of other words which have not this technical sense about them, force and hale, though quite strong enough, seem not sufficiently dignified ; compel is probably as good a word as can be found ; bring up is less common, and thus perhaps better still. It should be said that unless otherwise stated all words suggested are actually found in at least one version. A fine, solemn line is the Rev. A. T. Russel's (1851), To the tomb the trumpet calleth. On the whole, then, some of the best and simplest renderings of this third verse appear to be these — "The trumpet's wonder-working "Hark the trumpet's wondrous tone tone Through graves in every region Through the tombs of every blown zone, Shall hale us all before the Summons all before the throne. ' ' throne. ' ' — Dr. Philip Schaff, 1869. — H. F. Mac donald (America) . For its singular metre and word in the last line, this, of which a specimen has not yet been given, must be quoted— The dismal trumpet with sad tone Sounds to the grave of every one To rise and rendez-vous before His Throne. ' ' — Anon. , 1 694 (" Thomas a Kempis " ) . Line i. — Trumpet, 56 ; trumpets in plural, 1 ; trump, 32 ; clarion, 3; "trump of clarion," 1; blast (alone), 2; other addi- tional words : tone, 18; sound, 13; voice, 3 ; blare (noun), 3 ; blare (verb), 1. Epithets. Wondrous, 18; awful, 6; thrilling, 4; dread- ful, 3 ; startling, 2 ; thundering, fearful, unearthly, shrill, hoarse, terrific, astounding, mysterious. Line ii. — Cannot well be classed. Line Hi. — Verbs representing coget : Summon, 15; compel, 11; call, 10 ; bid, 5 ; gather, 6 ; cite, 3 ; bring, 3 ; force, 4 ; drive, 3 ; muster, 2 ; hale, command, constrain. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 45 COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." Stanzas I— III. I. 1. Dies irae, dies ilia The day of wrath, that day Solvet saeclum in favilla, Shall reduce the world to glowing ashes, Teste David cum Sybilla. So saith David, with the Sibyl. All lovers of the great hymn will probably find Mr. Warren's " Notes " quite as interesting as they undoubtedly are valuable. Assuredly, the task of the translator is herculean. His many failures are so many confessions : " I am haunted," we can almost hear him say, " by the subtle melody of the Latin original, by the triple verse of the strophe, by the cadenced rhyme falling upon my ear with the rhythmic insistence of sledge upon anvil : — ' Could I but speak it and show it, This pleasure more sharp than pain That baffles and lures me so, The world should once more have a poet Such as it had In the ages glad Long ago' — that is, such as it had in the humble Franciscan friar in that mar- vellous age known to the ecclesiast, the schoolman, the artist, the poet, as the Thirteenth Century of the Christian Era. But Eng- lish is a rugged speech, and Latin a mellifluous tongue ; trochaic verse singularly accords with the genius of a syntax not hinged upon the unavoidable particles of my own language, but moving upon the oiled courses of inflectional speech ; continuous trochaic rhyming, so natural to a vocabulary that knows no accent on the final syllable of a word, is a practical impossibility — so declareth Mr. Warren — in English. So much for the mere external form that thus ' baffles and lures me so.' But the crystalline conden- sation of the idea possible to the Latin, the amber-like solidity yet lucidity of the phrase — how shall I imitate that ? Brevis esse labor o y obscurus fio, in my forced acceptance of the intractable trochaic opening of each verse. English expression lends itself so naturally to iambic metre that nearly all of our verse is iambic ; 46 THE DOLPHIN. but how dare I sacrifice to such a necessity the incomparable melody of the Latin masterpiece ? " The particles and accents of English do indeed make iambic the most facile of all metres and trochaic (and for a similar reason, dactylic) the most difficult. But the difficulty of the double rhyming essential to pure trochaic lines is well-nigh insurmount- able. Mr. Warren has demonstrated this difficulty a posteriori in such an admirable fashion as to leave nothing to be desired. But it is not de trop to quote in this connection General Dix's rather humorous allusion to the difficulty, in his comment on his own translation of the first stanza : (i86 3 .) Day. of vengeance without morrow, Earth shall end in flame and sorrow, As from saint and seer we borrow. " It is this stanza," wrote the General, " which has always proved most troublesome to translators, and it is the one with which I was dissatisfied more than with any other in my translation when I allowed it to go to the press. My dissatisfaction was greatly increased a few years later on finding in one of Thackeray's novels — I do not at this moment recollect which — a passage somewhat like this : ' When a man is cudgeling his brains to find any other rhymes for " sorrow " than " borrow " and u morrow," he is nearer the end of his woes than he imagines' : I felt instinct- ively that any one familiar with this passage would, on reading my translation, be conscious, at the very commencement, of a sense of the ludicrous altogether incompatible with the solemnity of the subject. I therefore resolved, at my earliest leisure, to attempt the production of an improved version of the first stanza ; and in doing so I remodelled several others, to make them con- form more nearly to the original . . . How successful I have been in the change I have made in the first two lines of the stanza I am at a loss to determine. I can only say that, after an elabo- rate effort, it was the best I could do." ! This is General Dix's revision of the stanza : 1 Memoirs of John A. Dix, II, pp. 233-4. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 47 (I875-) Day of vengeance, lo ! that morning On the earth in ashes dawning, David with the Sybil warning. Quite apart from the question of the bad rhyming of " dawning" with " warning " and " morning," the revision has dropped out of sight the important future tense of the Latin — a tense faithfully- reproduced in the first draft ; and in addition to this distinct loss, there is in the whole stanza an uncomfortable suggestion of the " ablative absolute " construction which is found only in the first line of the first draft. The old wine was the best, and the General has but added one more to the many illustrations of the thesis maintained by Dr. Coles 2 (who translated the hymn eighteen times), that no single version can reflect the totality of the ori- ginal : "To preserve, in connection with the utmost fidelity and strict- ness of rendering, all the rhythmic merits of the Latin original, — to attain to a vital likeness as well as to an exact literalness, at the same time that nothing is sacrificed of its musical sonorousness and billowy grandeur, easy and graceful in its swing as the ocean on its bed, — to make the verbal copy, otherwise cold and dead, glow with the fire of lyric passion, — to reflect, and that too by means of a single version, the manifold aspects of the many-sided original, exhausting at once its wonderful fulness and pregnancy, — to cause the white light of the primitive so to pass through the medium of another language as that it shall undergo no refraction whatever, — would be desirable, cer- tainly, were it practicable \ but so much as this it were unreasonable to expect in a single version." Dr. Coles thus apologizes for his tour de force in making so many versions. It is doubtful, to say the least, whether the suc- cess of his effort can be considered as having justified it ; and his apologia is quoted here merely as a rhetorical summary of the difficulties crowding hard upon the translator. The untrans- latableness of the hymn is also testified to by the Rev. Mr. Duf- field, who confessed that he thought his sixth version had not carried him " one inch " beyond his first. 2 Dies Irae in Thirteen Original Versions, 5th ed., p. 33. 4 8 THE DOLPHIN. I. — Dies irae, dies illa. Doubtless one of the elements of difficulty found in trans- lating the first stanza arises from the startling suddenness with which the poet ushers in his theme : Dies irae, dies illa. With- out premonitory hint of any kind, " as in the twinkling of an eye " (as St. Paul strikingly puts it), we are brought face to face with the one thing we would have farthest removed from our thoughts. The awful pageant of convulsed nature 3 — the roarings 3 The "signs and wonders" heralding the Day of Judgment are very strikingly set forth in W. G. Palgrave's poem (written in 1844, when the full tide of British versions of the Dies Irae had set in but a few years) entitled " The Eve of the Day of Judgment." Our readers will pardon us if we quote it entire in this connection, partly as a vivid description of the preludings of the Last Trumpet, partly as an intro- duction to the great hymn itself, and partly as an illustration of a curious stanzaic and rhymic scheme — the last word of each stanza rhyming with the four lines of the suc- ceeding stanza, while the last word of the last stanza rhymes with the four lines of the first, a complete cycle of rhyme being thus completed : When he comes Who died on Tree Signs and wonders there shall be In the earth and air and sea, Horror and perplexity On the quick and dead. Darkness o'er the earth shall spread, Earth shall reel beneath the tread, Strange amazement overhead, Round them shall be fear and dread As a troubled dream. All shall strange and altered seem, As from some unwonted gleam, Plain or mountain, marsh or stream, Other shew than we did deem Mid the mist and rain. Forms the eye may not retain Shall be seen and lost again, Sounds be heard of broken strain, Frequent on the shaded plain Or the lonely way. Near when draws that wrathful day Nature's bonds shall all decay; Stone from stone shall drop away, Wood from wood and clay from clay, Nought be constant there. Ships that mid the waters fare Sink tho' smooth the waves and fair, Birds shall fall through yielding air, Earth the tread refuse to bear And asunder start. Wearied all, amazed, apart Shall remain with speechless smart, Failing eyes and sickening heart, Longing till the shadows part And the darkness hie. They for death aloud shall cry, But before them death shall fly ; Ever present to their eye, Yet their prayer shall he deny, Mocking at their moan. Rock and water, wood and stone, With a lamentable groan, Him Who sits upon the Throne Call to haste and take His own, And no more delay. Yet ere dawn the eternal day Such long night must wear away ; If before it stick dismay, What shall be that very Day, What that Judgment be ? COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 49 of the sea, the stars falling from heaven, the darkened sun and moon, and the moving of the powers of heaven — prophesied by our Saviour, was no doubt in the poet's mind when he wrote ; but none of these terrors does he picture for us — nor even the fore- heralding of these in the moral convulsions in the nations of the earth — as an introduction to the Day itself. With a frightful ab- ruptness the theme is announced ; but the Scriptural text — a classical one in Latin — on which the hymn is built made that abruptness not inartistic in the Latin, while the absence of a similar classical text in English allows the translator to stumble blindly for an opening line that shall, like the original, seem like a blast blown from the very " trump of God " itself. The Latin text, namely, was that of the prophet Sophonias (I, 15 : 16) : Dies irae, dies ilia dies tribulationis et angustiae, dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis, dies tubae et clangoris .... Such is doubtless the inspirational text of the hymn, furnishing it at once with the motif and the first utterance thereof. The " tuba " is heard throughout ; but what similar classic and conven- tional text do we find in English ? " That day is a day of wrath" is the rendering of the text into English. Its Biblical use would fit it for the office of " first line " in an English version of the hymn, and no other rendering could be anything else than a weak dilution of its simple, direct strength. It must be the final Eng- lish rendering ; but, unfortunately, that rendering is not rhythmical, and no amount of tortuous ingenuity can make it rhythmical. It would be a curious and interesting experiment to give a paraphrase of the Dies Irae in a similar series of rhyme-coupled stanzas. The metre — trochaic 7s — is a favorite one with translators of the hymn. The marvellous triple trochaic rhyming of the original would indeed be lost ; but its absence could in a measure be atoned for by a certain soberness and solemnity found in the repetition of the fourfold rhyme : O that day, the day of ire, Ah, how many a dying throe When in vast consuming fire Heaven and earth shall undergo Earth and Time at length expire, When the Judge of weal and woe David's psalm and Sibyl's lyre Comes in flaming after-glow Did of old foreshow. All their deeds to try ! etc. 50 THE DOLPHIN. " Stat difficultas " for the translator ; and the difficulty stares him in the face at the very commencement of his task — is indeed the very threshold of the mansion he would enter. If at least an approximate conformity to the original rhythm were not so desirable as it is in such a hymn, it would indeed be possible to translate the opening line with absolute literalness : The Day of wrath — that day Shall melt the earth away, As Saint and Sybil say. An interesting illustration of the startling suddenness of the opening line is furnished by Sir Walter Scott's fragment of the hymn introduced into the Lay of the Last Minstrel. Even with an introductory warning, how suddenly the grand line bursts upon the ear ! " The mass was sung, and prayers were said, And solemn requiem for the dead ; And bells tolled out their mighty peal, For the departed spirit's weal ; And ever in the office close The hymn of intercession rose ; And far the echoing aisles prolong The awful burden of the song : Dies irae, dies ilia ! Solvet saeclum in favilla ; While the pealing organ rung ; Were it meet with sacred strain To close my lay so light and vain, Thus the holy Fathers sung : That day of wrath, that dreadful day ! When heaven and earth shall pass away, What power shall be the sinner's stay ? How shall he meet that dreadful day ? When shrivelling like a parched scroll The flaming heavens together roll ; When louder yet and yet more dread Swells the high trump that wakes the dead ! Oh ! on that day, that wrathful day When man to judgment wakes from clay, Be thou the trembling sinner's stay, Though heaven and earth shall pass away !" COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE. 51 The author of the Mantuan Marble text apparently shared the same feeling that the abruptness of the first line of the hymn demanded some kind of introduction ; and accordingly he begins with a quiet warning : Cogita, anima fidelis, Ad quid respondere velis Christo venturo de coelis,- Think, O Christian soul, and sigh- Unto what thou must reply, When Christ cometh from the sky — Version of Dr. Irons (1848)- and follows on with the three stanzas already printed in the No- vember issue of The Dolphin. Doubtless for the same reason a certain Stephanus Proisthinius, who attributed the authorship ot the hymn to St. Bernard, includes for the hymn the following prologue : Cum recordor moriturus Quid post mortem sim futurus Terror terret me venturus Quem expecto non securus. Terret dies me terroris, Dies irae ac furoris, Dies luctus ac moeroris, Dies ultrix peccatoris, Dies Irae, dies ilia, etc. When I, doomed to certain death, Think what follows my last breath, Grips me now that coming terror Shadowed forth as from a mirror : Day of tumult and of clangor, Day of vengeance and of anger, Day of grief and tears and wailing, Day of vengeance all-prevailing, Day of wrath, that awful morning, etc. These verses, however, antedate the hymn, and are found in a MS. of the twelfth century, where they form part of a long hymn of nearly 400 lines which was published for the first time in complete form by Edelestand du Meril in his Poesies Populaires du Moyen Age, and afterwards by Mone. So, too, Goethe in the Church Scene in Faust makes Mephis- topheles suggest the unhappy earthly future of Marguerite, before the choir utters the terrors of the unearthly future in the words : Dies irae, dies ilia Solvet saeclum in favilla. It is an interesting fact that the two grandest of all the mediaeval hymns should have had for their first lines almost start- lingly abrupt quotations from the Scriptures. Thus the Stabat Mater, by another Franciscan, Jacopone da Todi, commences with a quotation from St. John (19 : 25). The quotations from Sophonias and St. John are only two out of the well-nigh innumerable illus- of the world of the Mid ththeS I and the New Test Hov :ten as they did on this s II. S N 7AVILLA. k trans ators make an - phe . thus :ed to render . 7 . : -> the norni:: .md :h it never is He thinks : _. - - stifiabk a poetic paraphrase, it can : opos, a certain M. W. St - - - sars after Id barren's ess afterwards put - me on the Dies Ir.:. which sc : : ting the Lathi bead ith a "Literal Prose Trans- s of n. It is one of the s hich have appeared on the si and on cc . - J it,] - I • -. . .- tes The - ts -.::.;.::. that the tra: slate g rhe " Day." The confusion of ideas in g . - sometimes transiti r ■ sometimes intra:".- that the English diss oh > may die Lat:: ran be used only trans i the subject :ead : The wore . vet is taken < - II Pete IO-: : . dies D: in quo coeli magno :. ero calore sohh terra autei era e [mentor. Cum igitur haec omnia hxnd* sir.: . . . proper:, bes in advenb Domini per e: elementa vg iore the Lon shall come as a thief: in th gTeat v. . . x and the COMMEXT OX THE "DIES IRAE: 53 elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it shall be burnt up. Seeing then that all these things are to be dissolved',' etc.). Mr. Warren remarks that out of his collection of versions, 31 render the word f civil la, ashes; 3, dust: 2, dust and ashes; 12, fire; 10, flame; 1, smoke; I, embers; I, fire and smoke and thunder; 1, crumbling fire. Of all these, "embers" would seem to be the best translation — but glowing embers would be a better one. For the poet chose a strikingly vivid word in favilla, which does not merely mean "ashes,'' but "glowing" ashes or embers. The world shall indeed be destroyed ; but the whirlwind of fire shall scarce have consumed it ere the Judgment begin. III. — Teste David cum Sybilla. The Mantuan text has Petro instead of David. The testimony of Peter is found in his second Epistle I chapter 3. verse 7 1 : " But the heavens and the earth which now are . . . are . . . reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men ; " and again (verse 10): " But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief : in which the heavens shall pass away with o-reat violence, and the elements shall be melted with £reat heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up." While such texts as these would naturally suggest the name of Peter, it is probable that they were not in the mind of the singer, who had found in his daily psalmody so many allu-: of David's to the great Day : " He shall rain snares upon sinners ; fire and brimstone and storms of winds shall be the portion of their cup " (Ps. 10:7); " God shall come manifestly, our God shall come, and shall not keep silence. A fire shall burn before him ; and a might}- tempest shall be round about him. He shall call heaven from above; and the earth, to judge his people. Gather ye together his saints to him ; who set his covenant before sacri- fices. And the heavens shall declare his justice; for God is : uige " (Ps. 49: 3-6); and finally: "In the beginning. O Lord, thou foundedst the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest ; and all of them shall grow old like a garment. And as a vesture thou shalt change them, and they shall be changed'' (Ps. 101 : 26-28), 54 THE DOLPHIN. Mr. Warren notes the various renderings of the line. Let us add that General Dix had first translated it " As from saint and seer we borrow," but revised it into " David and the Sibyl warning," for the curious reason that " it was not quite orthodox to style King David a saint, though he was in his latter days a model of true penitence. Besides, I believe there is a Saint David in the calendar, and there is danger of confounding them." A few French missals have omitted the line and have intro- duced an entirely new one — Crucis expandens vexilla, — which is placed in the middle of the stanza. The omission attempts apparently to avoid a reference to the Sibyl. Dean Trench accounts for the change by the supposition of " an unwill- ingness to allow a Sibyl to appear as bearing witness to Christian truth ; " and he thinks the reference to the Sibyl " quite in the spirit of the early and mediaeval theology. In those uncritical ages the Sibylline verses were not seen to be that transparent forgery which indeed they are ; but were continually appealed to as only second to the Sacred Scriptures in prophetic authority ; thus on this very matter of the destruction of the world, by Lac- tantius, Inst. Div., vii, 16-24; c ^ Piper, Method, d. Chris tl. Kunst, p. 472-507; those, with other heathen testimonies of the same kind, being not so much subordinated to more legitimate pro- phecy, as coordinated with it, the two being regarded as parallel lines of prophecy, the Church's and the World's, and consenting witness to the same truths. Thus is it in a curious mediaeval mystery on the Nativity, published in the Journal des Savans, 1846, p. %%. It is of simplest construction. One after another patriarchs, and prophets, and kings of the Old Covenant advance and repeat their most remarkable word about Him that should come ; but side by side with them a series of heathen witnesses, Virgil, on the ground of his fourth eclogue, Nebuchadnezzar '(Dan. 3 : 25), and the Sibyl ; and that it was the writer's intention to COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 55 parallelize the two series, and to show that Christ had the testi- mony of both, is plain from some opening lines of the prologue: — O Judaei, Verbum Dei Qui negatis, Hominem Vestrae legis, testem Regis Audite per ordiHem. Et vos, gentes, non credentes Peperisse virginem, Vestrae gentis documentis Pellite caliginem.' And such is the meaning here — ' That such a day shall be has the witness of inspiration, of David, — and of mere natural religion, of the Sibyl — Jew and Gentile alike bearing testimony to the truths which we Christians believe.' All this makes it certain that we should read Teste David, and not Teste PetroT We may not enter upon a discussion of the authenticity or genuineness of the Sibylline books. Billuart remarks that while some reject the books and oracles as Christian figments, and others accept them, perhaps the juster opinion is that neither are the oracles Christian figments nor are they genuine and incorrupt {Tract, de Incarn., Diss. II, Digr. II). For a somewhat extended discussion, the volume Proprieties of Migne's Encyc. TheoL, article Sibylles, may prove acceptable. The author despatches the question of the authenticity, etc., of the oracles in a concluding summary : " Le lecteur . . . fera bien de ne conserver les vers sibyllins que comme un objet de pure curiosite, nous ne disons pas de littera- ture, et sans y attacher une plus grande importance." Mohnike thinks that the author of Dies Irae had in mind the verses of the Erythraean Sibyl, which Eusebius gives in Greek (forming the well-known acrostic, T^crou? 'Kptarb^ Seov v to? acorr/p — Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) and which St. Augustine quotes, in a Latin translation which attempts to preserve, poorly enough, the transliterated Greek acrostic. 3 Mystical-minded, St. Augustine calls attention to the fact that there are just twenty- seven lines in the extract, and that twenty-seven is the cube of three; and that "if you join the initial letters of the five Greek words " you will get the word t'%#t>?, " that is, ' fish,' in which word Christ is mystically understood, because He was able to live, that is, to exist, without sin in the abyss of this mortality as in the depth of waters." The saint also points out that in the Latin 3 De Civ. Dei, xviii, 23. 56 THE DOLPHIN. verses " the meaning of the Greek is correctly given, although not in the exact order of the lines as connected with the initial letters." The translation, with the acrostic rectified, appears in another rendering : Judicii adventu tellus sudore madescet ; E coelo veniet princeps per saecla futurus, Scilicet ut carnem praesens ut judicet orbem ; Omnis homo, fidusque deum infidusque videbit, Una cum Sanctis excelsum fine sub aevi. Sede sedens animas censebit corpora et ipsa, Chersos erit mundus, spinas feret undique tellus. Reiicient simulacra homines et munera Ditis, etc. The last two lines just quoted preserve the " Ch " and the " Re" of the Greek, as well as obviate the difficulty alluded to by St. Augustine. The acrostic has been rendered several times into English ; by Dr. Schaff, in his edition of "The City of God," by a writer in the Christian Remembrancer (Oct., 1861), by an old translator of St. Augustine, J. Healey (1620), whose version, " very much forced and labored," begins : " In sign of Doomsday the whole world shall sweat : Ever to reign, a King in heavenly seat Shall come to judge all flesh." The following translation 4 similarly preserves the acrostical form in English : "Judgment shall moisten the earth with the sweat of its standard, hh Ever enduring, behold the King shall come through the ages, \/± Sent to be here in the flesh, and judge at the last of the world. Q O God, the believing and faithless alike shall behold Thee i-3 Uplifted with saints, when at last the ages are ended. M Sifted before Him are souls in the flesh for His Judgment. Hid in thick vapors, while desolate lieth the earth. r^ Rejected by men are the idols and long hidden treasures ; Earth is consumed by the fire, and it searcheth the ocean and heaven | _ H Issuing forth, it destroyeth the terrible portals of hell. M Saints in their body and soul freedom and light shall inherit ; H Those who are guilty shall burn in fire and brimstone forever. Occult actions revealing, each one shall publish his secrets ; Secrets of every man's heart God shall reveal in the light. 1/ 4 The City of God. Translated by the Rev. Marcus Dods. Edinburgh. Vol. II, p. 242. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 57 ~ Then shall be weeping and wailing, yea, and gnashing of teeth ; f_. Eclipsed is the sun, and silenced the stars in their chorus. q Over and gone is the splendor of moonlight, melted the heaven. -1 Uplifted by Him are the valleys, and cast down the mountains. j Utterly gone among men are distinctions of lofty and lowly. h- 1 Into the plains rush the hills, the skies and oceans are mingled. O Oh, what an end of all things ! earth broken in pieces shall perish ; M Swelling together at once shall the waters and flames flow in rivers. 1^ Sounding the archangel's trumpet shall peal down from heaven, £-*, Over the wicked who groan in their guilt and their manifold sorrows. ^3 Trembling, the earth shall be opened, revealing chaos and hell. P£ Every king before God shall stand in that day to be judged. ^ Rivers of fire and of brimstone shall fall from the heavens." Strikingly suggestive though these lines be of the theme and content of the Dies Ii-ae, Daniel in his Thesaurus 5 is inclined to think that the mediaeval singer caught some of his suggestions rather from portions of the Sybilline Oracles other than the locus classicus just quoted in translation from the City of God. He gives five quotations in Chateillon's Latin version, and not inappropriately asks ; " Sed unde Saul inter prophetas ? Quid Sibylla in carmine ecclesiae ?" The Sybilline prophecy is indeed so explicit as to justify anyone in wondering how Saul should be found amongst the prophets ! Daniel, however, does not ask his questions re- provingly, but quotes Staudenmaier, 6 who, apparently crediting the Sibylline Oracles, extols their profound and lofty assertion of the providence of God over His creation, shows how the super- natural revelations of the prophets have their counterpart in the Sibylline Oracles that enlightened the pagans, while both declare the justice of God in language which culminates in the grand description of the consummation of all things. In deference to the critical thought that declares the Sibylline Oracles to be spurious, or at least corrupt, should the line be changed, as we have found some of the French texts doing ? The task would be a long one to eliminate the Sibyls from the works of the Fathers, the hymns of the Middle Ages and from such master- pieces of Christian Art as the five Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel, the 5 II, p. 124. 6 Geist des Christenthums, etc., II, p. 483. 58 THE DOLPHIN. Delphic Sibyls in Van Eyck's altar-piece at Ghent, the eight in Ulm Cathedral, not to speak of the series of twelve which once existed at Cheyney Court in Herefordshire. Once we begin tampering with the text of the Dies Irae, we shall have the French " Crucis expandens vexilla " to get rid of the Sibyl, and the Ger- man " Petro " to get rid of the" David." " The old wine is the best." The Protestant Dr. SchafT remarked that " the mythical Sibyl, which, as the representative of the unconscious prophecies of heathendom, is here placed alongside the singer and prophet of Israel, has long since lost the importance which it once occupied in the apologetic theory of the fathers and schoolmen. Yet there is a truth underlying this use made of the Sibylline oracles, and the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, inasmuch as heathenism, in its nobler spirits, was groping in the dark after ' the unknown God,' and bore negative and indirect testimony to Christ, as the Old Testament positively and directly predicted and foreshadowed His coming." {Christ in Song, p. 374.) II. II. Quantus tremor est futurus What trembling there shall be Quando judex est venturus When the Judge shall come Cuncta stricte discussurus. To investigate rigidly all things. Little need be added to Mr. Warren's interesting analysis of this stanza. It recalls the words of our Lord in St. Luke : " And there shall be signs in the sun . . . and upon the earth dis- tress of nations . . . Men withering away for fear, and ex- pectation of what shall come upon the whole world . . . And then they shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud with great majesty." Many editors and translators of the hymn have indulged in rhetorical appreciations of the hymn as a whole, but in very few instances have undertaken to analyze any verse of the hymn in de- tail from a poetical standpoint. An approach to such analysis is found in Duffield's Latin Hymns, where the editor says, apropos oftheMantuan prologue and Haemmerlin epilogue(which he thinks are "feeble, lumbering excrescences, and are fastened to it in such an external way as to destroy the unity of the poem if left as they COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 59 stand ") : " The text in the Missal gives us a new conception of the powers of the Latin tongue. Its wonderful wedding of sense to sound — the u assonance in the second stanza, the assonance in the third, and the a and i assonances in the fourth, for instance — the sense of organ music that runs through the hymn, even un- accompanied, as distinctly as through the opening verses of Lowell's ' Vision of Sir Launfal,' and the transition as clearly marked in sound as in meaning from lofty adoration to pathetic en- treaty, impart a grandeur and dignity to the Dies Irae which are unique in this kind of writing." Here attention is directed to a poetic value — that of assonance — in the hymn ; and the quota- tion from Duffield is made in this place, as the illustration of the assonance begins with this second stanza. III. III. Tuba miruni spargens sonum The trumpet scattering a wondrous sound Per sepulchra regionum Through the sepulchres of the earth Coget omnes ante thronum. Shall gather all before the throne. I find in Saintsbury's Flourishing of Romance (p. 9) an interesting word on the first line : " It would be possible, indeed, to illus- trate a complete dissertation on the methods of expression in serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the Dies Irae. Rhyme, alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of vowel and consonant values,— all these things receive perfect expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the last four are a little in- ferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect upon the careful art or the felicitous accident of such a line as Tuba mirum spargens sonum, with the thud of the trochee 7 falling in each instance in a different vowel ; and still more on the continuous sequence of five stanzas, from Judex ei'go to non sit cassus, in which a word could not be displaced or replaced by another without loss." An old abecedary on the Last Judgment, ascribed by some to the Venerable Bede, refers to the trumpet : Clangor tubae per quaternas Clangor of the trumpet sounding, Terrae plagas concinens Unto earth' s four quarters spread Vivos una mortuosque Shall before the Judge advancing Christo ciet obviam. Summon both the quick and dead. 7 Of course no one of the four is a pure classical trochee : but all obey the trochaic rhythm. 60 THE DOLPHIN. The justness of Mr. Saintsbury's admiration for the line Tuba mirum spargens sonum is obvious when we compare concinens with spargens sonum, or per quatemas terrae plagas with per sepulchra regionum, or ciet with coget. Coget, by the way, recalls a somewhat similiar word coaxes used by Horace in his address to Mercury (Bk. I, ix, 5) : Tu pias laetis animas reponis Sedibus, virgaque levem coerces Aurea turbam, superis deorum Gratus et imis. The coercion (coerces) used by Mercury is as gentle as it is in- sistent — the rod he uses is a golden one, yet the airy flock of the blest souls must attain their happy thrones. The idea suggested is that of a shepherd shepherding his fleecy flock into happy pastures. Now with respect to the hymn's use of the word coget, it has several times occurred to me that the singer had in mind a similar metaphor ; for afterwards, in a more formal way, the figure is elaborated : Inter oves locum praesta, Et ab hoedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. The souls of men, standing before the tribunal of God, shall be dealt with after the parable of our Saviour ; and the sheep of the Gospel picture must be separated from the goats. Virgil uses cogere in this sense : " Cogite oves pueri." Those whom the last trumpet must bring before the judgment seat comprise not alone the wicked, but as well the " beloved of my Father" ; and the Horatian metaphor of the flock shepherded by Mercury might perhaps be applicable to the picture of the trump that is to gather 'all,' "the good and the bad, the just and the unjust." Force is implied by both words, coerceo and cogo ; but just as Horace adds to the idea of " force" that of gentleness in its ex- ercise, so it may be that in the hymn, too, a similar implication would not prove amiss. Mr. Warren thinks it difficult to find a good word for coget in English, for " summon and bid are perhaps hardly strong enough ;" and he prefers the stronger word cite. And yet, in such an interpretation, cite is not strong enough ; for BROTHER AND SISTER. 6 1 although we know that, as Mr. Warren argues, a citation, if un- heeded, will be followed by stronger measures of the law — still it may be disregarded, whereas the last trumpet shall be of all-com- pelling power. On the other hand, the shepherd's crook, however gentle in its suggestion, is always effective for its purpose. Would not the verb shepherd answer the requirements of coget ? Then shall the trump's resounding tone Scattered through graves of every zone Shepherd all souls before the throne. An additional reason for such an interpretation is furnished by the text of St. Matthew describing the last trumpet (24: 31): " And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice : and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them." Here the effect of the trumpet is that of " gathering together," or shepherding from all parts into one fold. St. Paul (I Cor. 1 5 : 52) lays no stress on the legal citing power of the trumpet, but describes its effect merely : "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet : for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise again incorruptible : and we shall be changed." So, too, in I Thess. 8 H. T. Henry. Overbrook Seminary, Pa. BROTHER AND SISTER. Chapter XVIII. — A Life for a Life. AFTER my departure my sister's disease began to develop with alarming rapidity. She failed visibly from day to day. Sleeplessness, night-sweats, an unconquerable aversion to food, soon exhausted her little remaining strength. Fine thread-like lines of blood began to show in the expectorations, and then hemorrhages, more and more severe, announced the fatal progress of the malady which was fast undermining a constitution naturally vigorous but worn out before its time by the pious excesses of charity. Marguerite was only thirty-two years old. 8 4: 15- 62 THE DOLPHIN. At this juncture Charles was ordered to Senegal as Lieutenant- Governor. This was a hard blow for him under the circumstances. That he would never see Marguerite again was almost certain, and, to add to his hardships, he was forced to leave for his new post quite alone. For several years past his wife's health had caused him great anxiety, and it was out of the question to take her to such a place. The unwholesome climate would have proved fatal in a few months. Lucie, on the other hand, could not bear to be left behind. The very idea upset her completely, and she was also much distressed because she could not go to Anjou and be with her sister-in-law. The physicians absolutely forbade it. Indeed, she could not have done much good at the Hutterie, and would have been more of a hindrance than a help, as the little woman did not know the first thing about taking care of a sick person. So it seemed that our dear Guitte was to be left to the care of Cillette and Lexis at the Hutterie. They were faithful and de- voted servants, without doubt, and had been with their mistress ever since their childhood, and fairly worshipped her, but the poor creatures were clumsy and incapable of giving the poor invaiid the care and attention which her condition demanded. When I heard of Charles' orders, and knew that Lucie could not go to Anjou, I at first thought of going home myself and stay- ing until the end came ; but Providence ordered all for the best. A great friend of Marguerite's, Mademoiselle de la Croix, volun- teered to go and live with her and take charge of the house-keep- ing. This proposal was most gratefully accepted, and Mademoi- selle de la Croix was soon established at the head of affairs. Her companionship was a great boon to my sister, for she not only relieved her of all external responsibilities, but cheered her, and helped her to bear the trying ordeal of her illness. The good country people were in a state of utter consternation when they heard that Mademoiselle Leclere was in danger of death and that the physician had no hope for her recovery. Their grief was, if possible, even more intense than when she had come so near dying ten years before. Pilgrimages to Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secour, novenas, Holy Communions, days and nights before the Blessed Sacrament — all THE DOLPHIN. Vol. VII. February, 1905. No. 2. Red. " An' I hope we'll have a rale night of it." " I hope so," said Donal, moving homeward. " I say, Donal," said Red, as if suddenly recollecting himself. " Well, Red, what is it?" said Donal. " Tis a family business, an' I suppose I shouldn't interfare," said Red, blushing in the darkness. " But they say your intinded, Donal, don't want Nodlag on the same flure wid her, an' the ould woman here does be lonesome sometimes " " You mane you'll like to have her here ?" said Donal. " That is, av there's no room for her at Glenanaar," said Red. " So long as there's bit, bite and sup yonder," said Donal solemnly, " Nodlag will have her place at our table, no matter who comes in " " Oh, I meant no offince," said Red. " An' I take none," said Donal. " An' at laste, it is somethin' to know that she has a friend in you, Red, if all fails her." " That she has, and some day I may have the chance to prove it," said Red. " Good-night !" P. A. Sheehan. Doneraile, Ireland. 1 86 THE DOLPHIN. NOTES ON THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE "DIES IRAE." TN the following article we present Mr. Warren's treatment oi v the three stanzas, IV to VI, of the famous sequence, followed by Dr. Henry's literary comment on the same stanzas. The reader familiar with the literature of this subject may have noticed that not only Mr. Warren, but commentators generally have done scant justice to American Catholic translators of the Hymn, and it is therefore pleasant to note that Dr. Henry has laid particular stress upon the fertility which characterizes this field of English versions. As a result partly of our suggestion made in the pages of The Dolphin, that readers of these articles would kindly indi- cate to us any new translations of the hymn made after the year 1895, Dr. Henry has been enabled to record no less than thirty- five Catholic versions, only a few of which had been noticed heretofore from the viewpoint of literary comment. Thus the value of Dr. Henry's articles consists not merely in the fact that he offers original criticism on a theme of world-wide literary interest, but also in this that he directs attention for the first time to the labors of Catholic translators among the host of hymnolo- gists who have occupied themselves with this theme. — Editor. Stanzas IV-VI. By the late C. F. S. Warren, M.A. 4. Mors stupebit, et Natura, Cum resurget creatura, Judicanti responsura. "The old order changeth, yielding place to new." The first line of this verse probably describes simply the instant cessation at the last day of the whole former course of things, without any direct refer- ence to the text which tells us that Death and Hell shall be cast into the lake of fire. Though Crashaw would seem to have had this in his mind by his line — " Horror of Nature, Hell, and Death !" and one version of Dr. Coles, instead of, like Crashaw, adding Hell, substitutes it for Nature. But most versions have Death and Nature XOTES OX THE "DIES IRAEX 187 (trochaic), or Nature and Death (iambic), a few Death alone, and Archbishop Trench Nature alone — "What amazement shall o'ertake Nature when the dead shall wake, Answer to the Judge to make." Besides several very general versions, two (Isaac Williams and Father Caswall) have written Death and Time with a remembrance probably of the angelic oath that there shall be time no longer ; Archbishop Benson has Earth and Death, and Mr. W. H. Robinson Death and Life. This last translation is perhaps a rather daring one, but I am tempted to think that it best represents the original word, which is plainly opposed to Mors. The whole verse is this, and is a good one — "Death and Life astonished view Every creature rise anew, Rise to meet the judgment true." Among others of the more ordinary type, Dean Alford's is one of the best — ' ' Death shall shrink and Nature quake When all creatures shall awake, Answer to their God to make," though I rather doubt the replacing of Judge by God. One iVmerican writer has this, plainly taking Nature (as is shown by the adjective) in the so common modern sense of the mere external face of things — ' * Death shall die, fair Nature too, As the creature, risen anew, Answers to his God's review," a stanza which is an admirable instance of the uncertainty pervading so many versions : fair Nature is a decided blunder, and indeed it must be said rather a silly one ; but Death shall die is a fine expres- sion, first used in the Saturday Magazine paraphrase of 1832 by Canon Parkinson ; it brings to mind that grand sonnet of Donne's (most readily perhaps to be found in Trench's Household Poetry, p. 144), which ends thus — "Why swellest thou then? One short sleep past we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more : Death, thou shalt die." 1 88 THE DOLPHIN. With respect to the translation of stupebit, it need only be said that it seems better, like Thomas of Celano, to apply one word, and that a simple one, to both subjects, Death and Nature, rather than to endeavor to differentiate that which is predicted of each, and to go about in search of elaborate expressions to that end. Where, as is here the case, almost every writer has a different form of language, it is not easy to select examples : one striking expression is used by the old Rosarists, who make Nature and Death stand at gaze ; but as a rule the error has been greatly in the direction of too much elabora- tion ; if it may be so said without irreverence, such phrases as Death shall swoon and Nature sicken are far too like the words of a physician who should describe with accuracy the symptoms of his patients. The strangest version of this kind is the following : " Death aghast and Nature dying Start and swoon." Dean Stanley, however, having avoided the (so to say) technical words above quoted, has produced a striking couplet — "Nature then shall stand aghast, Death himself be overcast ; ' ' and Mr. Simms' is also fine — "Death, the last enemy, shall fall, And Nature cease to be. " Mr. Blake's version in The Lamp, 1856, is good too in its own style — ' ' Nature will tremble with affright And Death recoil before the sight, When God shall come to judge with might. ' ' The word creatura is, of course, used as we now say ' ' the crea- tion ;" it is all creation that is here stated to rise, not man simply ; as Mr. T. D. Morgan has in this verse taken it — " Death shall grow pale and Nature quake To see created man awake, An answer to his Judge to make," nor does the last line prove Mr. Morgan right, for angels too are to be judged. I think we are familiar enough, from the Epistles of St. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 189 Paul, with the creature in the sense of the creation to use it so here, though if we do we should apply no epithet to it. I do not speak positively ; but if not this phrase, creation should be used in preference to each or every creature or all creatures — it seems hardly well to use the English form of the original word in any but the exact original sense; and such phrases as the pale offender (Lord Roscommon), or the buried ages (Father Caswall), should, strictly speaking, be kept for less literal versions. But I must go on to my tabulation, which will be more incomplete even than usual ; the phrases chosen (especially to represent the stupebit) are so very various that it is impossible to give them all, and a selection can be but made of some which are more important or less common. Line i. — Nature and death, 60 ; death (alone), 7 ; nature (alone), 1 ; death and #// nature, 1 ; death and time, 3 ; death and life, 2 • death and creation, 1 ; earth and death, 1 j death, earth, skies, 1 ; the world, 1. Quake, 13; quiver, 1; shake, 1; shiver, 1. Other words beginning with q and s are quail, start, sink, shrink, sicken, swoon. Of phrases the commonest is stand (or be) aghast, 8 ; stand at gaze, 1 . Line ii. — The creature, 7 ; every (or each) creature, 7 ; the (or all) creatures, 5; creation, 12; the dead, 13; man, 4; man- kind, 2 ; mortals, 2 ; earth, flesh. Line Hi. — Judge, 24; judge and master, 1; judicature, 1; God, 6. Rise, or arise, 24 ; wake, or awake, 11. Answer, 12; make (or give) answer, 12. 5. Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. The judgment was set and the books were opened (Dan. 7 : 10). This verse of Daniel the prophet would so plainly tell us, if we wanted telling, what book the ' ' liber scriptus ' ' is, or rather what books are represented by it, that the mistake of Mr. Hutton in the Spectator is a very strange one. He writes thus : "Then shall the book divine appear Where every word of God stands clear For which the world must answer here, ' ' 190 THE DOLPHIN. taking the " liber scriptus " to be the Bible ; stating indeed in his subsequent analysis l that he so takes it. This is a solitary case ; but into an error of another kind many translators have fallen by speaking only of what Dr. Dobbin calls our "daily defalcations," only, if one may so say, of the debtor's side of the account and disregarding the creditor's. But the book of judgment contains all deeds of men what- ever, good and bad ; and in a translation of the Dies Iroz the original should not be so far narrowed as to exclude its one -half. The true meaning is clearly given in Mackellar's version — "The written book will forth be brought With good and evil records fraught, And man be judged for deed and thought," in what must be called the " Thomas a Kempis " version — "Then is brought forth that great record Containing each thought, work and word Which damns or saves before this council board," and in another style by Mr. Justice O'Hagan, who remembered the text just quoted — "Open then with all recorded Stands the book from whence awarded Doom shall pass with deed accorded. ' ' Little more need now be said on the two first lines of this verse ; the actual words taken to turn liber and mundus are very commonly the best and simplest ones, book and world ; and though a few idle epithets, 2 such as the mystic leaves of the dread book, are occasionally found, or the leaves "burn," or the whole book perhaps "glares," or is not a book at all, but a " huge unwieldly volume," a description which, suggesting as it does nothing but an enormous bank ledger, by no means adds to the dignity of the idea — yet the versions, where free from the mistakes already mentioned, are so far tolerably good. Where failures chiefly shew themselves is in the third line, either by sinking it altogether or by such careless work as this — 1 This analysis is a singularly mistaken one. The writer writes of a silver-toned trumpet — of flute-like notes — charming all by suasive coercion, by invisible compulsion, before the judgment seat ! Fancy such epithets of the trump of God. 2 A version in Lippincotfs Magazine, June, 1869, calls it "writ in blood;" which if intended to have any meaning is wrong, and if not, is idle. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 191 ' ' Comes that Judge His book unsealing, Secret writ of doom revealing ; All attent but none appealing. ' ' — Dr. Macgill, 1876. "Then the mighty book unsealing Whence all deeds shall have revealing, God shall judge the world appealing.'" —Round Table, N. Y., Feb. 23, 1867. Which two versions I put together for the sake of shewing the directly opposite statements they make, the idle character of the former, and the mistaken one of the latter. For what appeal could then possibly be made ? and if the idea be introduced which is expressed by the laxer use of the word, it should be worked out as Crashaw has worked it out in the grand lines — "O that Judge, Whose hand, Whose eye, None can endure, yet none can fly ;" where none can endure gives the cause which a lost soul may be per- haps imagined to attempt to shew, and then none can fly the utter uselessness of it. An appeal indeed there is, or rather has been ; but it must be made in due time, before the time in which this verse places us ; and this, too, Crashaw gives us — ' ' But Thou givest leave, dread Lord, that we Take refuge from Thyself in Thee, ' ' to which appeal we shall come in the eighth verse, after the first six have described the judgment, and the seventh has shown the im- possibility of an appeal then. Line i. — Book, 54 ; books, 5 ; volume, 7 ; doomsday book, dooms- day volume, doom-book, book of doom, each 1 ; record, 3 ; scroll, 2; roll, 2; writing, 2; pages, 2; page, 1. Epithets. Written, 12 ; close-writ, 1 ; clear-writ, 1 ; of ages, 4; of record, 3; great, 3; awful, 3; solemn, 2. Line ii. — Can hardly be tabulated. Line Hi. — World, 23 ; living and dead, 4; quick and dead, 6 ; judge, 5 ; arraign, 7. 6. Judex ergo cum sedebit, Quidquid latet apparebit : Nil inultum remanebit. 192 THE DOLPHIN. Of this verse the simplest and best rendering is probably that of Archbishop Trench — "When the Judge His place has ta'en, All things hid shall be made plain, Nothing unavenged remain ; ' ' which is to be praised for its literal turning of quicquid latet. % In this phrase translators have often fallen into an error somewhat like that mentioned under the last verse. Quicquid latet is of course simply all which is hidden ; but it has often been taken for all sin which is hidden, an idea which does not come in till the third line. This second line is the really important one of the verse ; as to the others, the great majority of translators have used the word Judge ; one or two have contented themselves with suggesting it in some such phrase as that awful session, and one has substituted the name of the attribute Justice; Father Ayl ward has adopted the unusual form Lord of Judg- ment. Of these the word Judge, as the commonest, is also the best. lastly, where the third line is literally turned, the favorite words have usually been unavenged, unrequited or unpunished, of which the former seems preferable as less common and yet intelligible. There is a various reading incultum, meaning simply, I suppose, neglected ; but it does not appear to have been much adopted by translators — though in truth there are plenty of vague versions which might just as well stand for one as the other. Line i. — Judge, 48; sits, shall sit, be seated, etc., 22; take, claim, ascend, etc., throne, 9; seat, 8; chair, 2; station, 2; place, 1 ; session, 4 : assize, 1 . Line ii. — If in this line a man should turn to his algebra and calculate the number of permutations and combinations of such words as hidden, secret ; thoughts, works, deeds, feelings, not omit- ting the different forms of the two first, such as hid, secret as an adjective, secret as a substantive, secreted, etc.; if a man, I say, did this, his total would not very much exceed the number of different versions I have found. And equally numerous are the representations of apparebit. Line Hi. — Unavenged, 15 ; unrevenged, 1 ; unpunished, 5 ; unre- quited, 2 ; remain, 8; escape, 6; pass, 2. ! The only objection is the elision in " ta'en." Anything forced for the sake of rhyme is objectionable. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 193 COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." Stanzas IV-VL IV. IV. Mors stupebit et natura Death and nature shall be amazed Cum resurget creatura When the creature shall rise again Judicanti responsura. To answer the Judge. Death and Nature are personified. Death shall be astounded to find its ancient reign ended, its quiet thus disturbed, the primal curse at length removed, and the type of the Risen Lord fol- lowed, so far at least, by all the children of men. " And the sea gave up the dead that were in it ; and death and hell gave up the dead that were in them : and they were judged everyone accord- ing to their works" (Apoc. 20: 13). Nature shall share the amazement at witnessing the fulfilment of the prophecy of St. Paul : " For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality " (I Cor. 15 : 53). Is the singer speaking mystically as well as poetically in his personification of Death and Nature ? To build up his poem into a logical and chronological sequence, he has rifled all parts of the Scriptures, both the Old and the New Testament; and just at this place, he seems to have in mind the awful description given by St. John in the Apocalypse. The word mors offers no difficulty to the translators ; but natura has been variously rendered. What does it really mean or suggest? It can not easily mean the "fair Nature" of one translator, that is, the external face or appearance of the earth and the sky. Other translators understand it to mean the " great frame " of the universe. The oath of the Angel that " Time shall be no longer" (Apoc. 10: 6) is echoed by Father Caswall's version in its rendering of natura by " time." Others, perhaps considering that the poet meant some opposition between the words mors and natura, and doubtless justifying their contention on the ground of the relation between natura and nascor, have ventured, as prettily as daringly, to translate natura by " life." Thus Dr. SchafT in one of his German versions : — 194 THE DOLPHIN. Tod und Leben seh'n mit Beben Die Geschopfe sich erheben, Antwort vor Gericht zu geben — although in another version he wanders farther afield, with the picture of the Apocalypse in his mind : Erd' und Holle werden zittern In des Weltgerichts Gewittern, Die das Todtenreich erschiittern. Spurred on, doubtless, by the desire to avoid monotony, Dr. Duffield frequently omits the " Death and Nature " entirely, giving a paraphrastic version, — his eighteen translations almost compel- ling him thereto. Similarly, W. W. Nevin gives both words in six of his nine renderings, while one has " Death and Life," and the remaining two have " Nature " only : — Nature reels in blanched surprise Nature cowers with faint and quiver When the sheeted dead arise When in a weird spectral river And falter to the grand assize. Death and Hell their dead deliver. The Catholic versions, which as a rule stick with remarkable pertinacity to the text of the Latin throughout the hymn, attempt- ing no interpretation and following the tradition of literalness established by the translators of the Douay Bible, seeking first of all a direct and simple rendering, have nevertheless used some freedom in translating this stanza of the hymn. Mr. Warren, while praising highly the qualities of simplicity and fidelity ex- hibited by Roman Catholic translators of the hymn, has quoted but few illustrations, comparatively, in his analysis of the several stanzas of the hymn. Partly, therefore, in recognition of the ex- cellent versions of those of "the household of the Faith," and partly in illustration of the stanza now under consideration, we shall give here a few quotations from Catholic translations. As a rule our American versions render mors and natura by " death " and " nature." The first translation given below is that of Mr. Charles H. A. Esling, whose many versions of the Latin hymns have received recognition from Protestant as well as from Catholic sources. His version appeared in the Catholic Record, a monthly magazine published in Philadelphia. Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 appeared in the Catholic World. The last named probably first appeared in the Sunday Press, under the pseudonym of " Rev. John Bird, of Albany," and afterwards in the Catholic World with the initials COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE. 195 " C. W." Its author was the priest of undoubted poetic gifts The version afterwards appeared Hymns, etc. By Rev. C. A. W rhymic build, having sometimes times no rhymes in the stanzas. I. C. H. A. ESLING. 1 874. Death and Nature see with wonder The dead burst their tombs asunder, Answering those tones of thunder. 3. J. D. VAN BUR EN. 1 88 1. Death in stupor, Nature quaking When the dead are seen awaking, Each to summons answer making. 5. j. m. brown. 1884. Nature and Death amazed will stand When that innumerable band Shall rise to answer God's command. Rev. Clarence A. Walworth, a as well as theological learning, in " Andiarocte and Other Poems, ." l The version is unique in its three, sometimes two, and some- 2. JOSEPH J. MARRIN. 1882. All Nature, and e'en Death shall quail When, rising from the grave's dark vale, Mankind pleads at the judgment rail. 4. GEORGE M. DAVIE. 1 884. Death and Nature stand aghast, As the Legions of the Past Rise to meet their doom at last. 6. REV. C. A. WALWORTH. Death shall stand aghast, and Nature, When from dust the summoned creature Rises trembling to make answer. No. 7, by Miss Emery, first appeared in the Boston Advertiser of March 21, 1887, and reappeared in the Sacred Heart Review, Boston, November 26, 1904. No. 8 first appeared in the Student? November, 1890 or 1891, signed with the single initial " G." It was written doubtless by the Rev. F. P. Garesche, S.J. It after- wards appeared in a fly-sheet. No. 9, by the Rev. Florence J. Sullivan, S.J., written some time after 1895, similarly appeared in a fly-sheet. No. 10 was published in The Ecclesiastical Review, December, 1895. Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14, by the Rev. J. E. Dunn, of Catonsville, Md., are still in manuscript, having been composed the present year. No. 12, in trochaic 5s, was suggested by the version in iambic 6s which appeared last month in The Dolphin. 7. SUSAN L. EMERY. 1 887. Death stands wondering and all Nature At the uprising of the creature, To meet its awful Judge and Teacher. 8. REV. F. P. GARESCHE, S.J. Nature and Death, in dread surprise Will shudder, as all men arise To answer at that dread assize. 9. REV. F. J. SULLIVAN, S.J. Both Death and Nature stand aghast, As man the creature wakes at last. His Judge to answer for the past. 1 Putnam, New York, 1888. 2 Immaculate Conception College, New Orleans IO. REV. H. F. FAIRBANKS. 1 895. Death and Nature with surprise Shall behold the creature rise, And in judgment make replies. 196 THE DOLPHIA. II. REV. J. E. DUNN. I9O4. 12. REV. J. E. DUNN. Death and Nature stand aghast : Death and Nature, quake ! Creatures risen must at last Creatures shall awake To the Judge unfold their past. Answer strict to make. 13. REV. J. E. DUNN. 1 4. REV. J. E. DUNN. Nature and Death, aghast, Death and Nature shall affrighted Shall quail when men at last Quail, when men shall rise, now cited Rise to unfold their past. To respond, that wrong be righted. All of the quotations from versions by American Catholics, as just given, stick closely to the original. Not so the versions by our British brethren. Father Caswall, who, in his Lyra Catholic a, translated all the hymns of the Roman Breviary and Missal, trans- lates natura by " time." He is followed by " F. J. P." (Mrs. Partridge) in the Catholic Hymnal, whose version has been ascribed variously to Father Faber, and to the Rev. A. D. Wackerbarth. I. REV. EDWARD CASWALL. 1848. 2. MRS. PARTRIDGE (" F. J. P."), i860. Time and death it doth appal, Death and time in consternation To see the buried ages all Then shall stand, while all creation Rise to answer at the call. Rises at that dread citation. Charles Kent, in the Month, 1 874, retains the two words, but in nearly all else departs from the original. The Rev. Dr. Wallace (Hymns of the Church, 1874) similarly departs from the original in the second line. 3. CHARLES KENT. 1 874. 4. REV. DR. WALLACE. 1 874. Nature, death, aghast, affrighted, Death and nature stand confounded, Then will view from depths benighted Seeing man, of clay compounded, Myriad life flames re-ignited. Rise to hear his doom propounded. Dr. Wallace's " of clay compounded " was, doubtless, sug- gested by the necessities of rhyme ; but the effect gained was not happy, as he forthwith proceeded to rhyme it with " propounded." The Dominican Prior Aylward left behind him at his death many translations of Latin hymns, and amongst them a rendering of the Dies Irae, over which he appears to have spent much time and effort, resulting in many tentative stanzas. Two variations are given here : 5. REV. J. D. AYLWARD. 6. REV. J. D. AYLWARD. Nature and death in dumb surprise Death and nature in surprise Shall see the ancient dead arise Shall behold the dead arise To stand before the Judge's eyes. Summoned to that last assize. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 1 97 Justice O'Hagan's translation (Irish Monthly, 1874) is very good, as is also that of the Rev. W. F. Wingfield (in Prayers for the Dead, 1845 ; also in Shipley's Annus Sanctus, 1884). 7. J. O'HAGAN. 1874. 8. REV. W. F. WINGFIELD. 1845. Startled death and nature sicken Now death and nature in amaze Thus to see the creature quicken Behold the Lord his creatures raise Waiting judgment terror-stricken. To meet the Judge's awful gaze. The first of the following versions is that of the Daily Exercises of the Devout Rosarists (Amsterdam, 1657), bearing on its title- page the initials" A. C." and "T. V.," of the Order of St. Ben- net. The second is that of The Great Sacrifice of the New Law expounded by the Figures of the Old, by " James Dvmock, Clergy- man, 1687." 9. THE ROSARISTS. 1 657. IO. REV. JAMES DVMOCK. 1 687. Nature and death shall stand at gaze Death and nature both shall quake When creatures shall their bodies raise When mankind from death shall wake And answer for their sore-spent days. Rising his accounts to make. The first of the following versions is that printed anonymously in The Following of Christ, 1694. The second is the one com- monly attributed to Lord Roscommon, but probably with greater justice to Dryden, whose authorship of this version, as well as of versions of many other Latin hymns, Mr. Orby Shipley has done so much to point out and to prove. II. AN'oX. 1694. 12. DRYDEN OR ROSCOMMON. Amazed will death and nature be Nature and death shall with surprise When they shall every creature see Behold the pale offender rise Intent to answer his dread scrutiny. And view the Judge with conscious eyes. The paraphrastic translation of Canon Husenbeth appeared in the Missal for the Laity, 1831. It is in sestet form, the third and sixth lines rhyming. It is to be regretted that this particular stanza should represent so poorly the occasional excellence of the version. Opposite to it we shall place the version of the Very Rev. W. Hilton, V. G., which appeared in the Dublin Review for July, 1883. 13. REV. F. C. HUSENBETH, 183I. 14. VERY REV. \V. HILTON. 1883. Nature and death shall see arrayed Death and nature shall affrighted Poor trembling man for judgment raised Rising see the creature cited Leaving the dreary tomb. And before the Judge indicted. 198 THE DOLPHIN. The version of Richard Dalton Williams, in the Manual of the Sisters of Charity (1848), links two stanzas of the Latin in a single 8-lined stanza, the fourth and eighth lines rhyming. The version is quite paraphrastic ; as also is that of Crashaw, in Steps to the Temple (1646), which we place beside that of Williams. 15. K. D. WILLIAMS. 1848. 1 6. RICHARD CRASHAW. 1646. Death sees in mute surprise Horror of Nature, Hell, and Death ! Ashes to doom arise — When a deep groan from beneath Dust unto God replies — Shall cry, " We come, we come !" and all God in His anger. The caves of night answer one call. The version of the Right Rev. John Maccarthy, Bishop of Cloy ne, appeared in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record (July, 1888). Beside it we place that of the Rev. John A. Jackman, Ord. Min., which appeared in St. Anthony's Annals (Dublin, November, 1904). 17. BISHOP MACCARTHY. 1 888. 1 8. REV. JOHN JACKMAN, O.M. I9O4. Nature and death shall stand amazed Nature is stupefied, and Death, When they shall see the dead upraised When creatures, who resume their breath, That their past lives may be appraised. Answer to what the wise Judge saith. We shall conclude our quotations from British sources with the fourth stanza of the version of Father Ignatius Ryder, Superior of the Oratory at Birmingham. The translation, for a copy of which we are indebted to the Rev. Matthew Russell, S.J., editor of the Irish Monthly , was reprinted in full in that magazine, August, 1902, with the editor's comment, — " a very beautiful and original version." REV. IGNATIUS RYDER. Death and nature stand aghast At the creature hurrying past, Answering to the Judge at last. Two more illustrations (but American ones) and we shall have finished. The first is taken from the Ecclesiastical Review (April, 1890); the second, still in manuscript, is by Albert Rey- naud, Counsellor-at-Law, New York City. I9. ECCLES. REVIEW. 189O. 20. ALBERT REYNAUD. I905. Death and nature, awed, unduly Death aghast and nature see See the creature rising newly Rise whence every grave may be To the Judge to answer truly. Creation answering God's decree. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 199 The stanzas quoted here from thirty-five British and American Catholic versions will serve to illustrate somewhat the activity of Catholics in translation of the hymn, and the wide limits of inter- pretation some of them have taken in rendering this fourth stanza of the Dies Irae. v. v. Liber scriptus proferetur The written Book shall be brought forth In quo totum continetur In which all is contained Unde mundus judicetur. Whence the world is to be judged. "The judgment sat and the books were opened" (Dan. 7: 10). " And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne, and the books were opened ; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Apoc. 20: 12). Daniel sees in his vision " books " ; St. John also sees " books." In so far they agree ; but St. John adds : " And another book was opened, which is the book of life." Wherein does the distinction lie ? St. Augustine understands by the " books," those of the Old and New Testaments, which contain all the laws of God and their sanctions stated ; and by the " book," the record of each one's life, " to show what commandments each man has done or omitted to do." In this sense have practically all the translations understood the liber scriptus ; and the unlucky exegesis of Mr. Hutton {Spec- tator, March 7, 1868), who renders the phrase by "the written Bible," has been ridiculed by other editors than Mr. Warren. The following stanza would indeed seem to take the ground from under Mr. Hutton's feet; for it continues the thought of the bringing forth of the liber scriptus with : " When therefore the Judge shall have been seated, whatsoever is hidden shall be revealed, and nothing shall escape its appropriate punishment." There have been, however, other interpretations. St. Anselm understands by the liber vitae of St. John, the life of our Saviour; the Angelic Doctor contends 3 for the interpretation " Book of the predestined," and of the predestined unto glory, 4 whether irre- vocably by absolute predestination or merely through the posses- 3 Summa TheoL, I, q. 24, art. 1. 4 lb., art 2. 200 THE DOLPHIN. sion of sanctifying grace (which is forfeited by mortal sin) and therefore not irrevocably. 5 Cornelius a Lapide understands the Apocalypse here to speak of absolute election, inasmuch as at the Judgment the record of the soul is a finished record. There can be hardly a doubt that the author of Dies Irae had in mind the passage of the Apocalypse in writing liber scriptus and not libri scripti ; and it seems probable that he had also in mind the interpretation of St. Augustine, given above. Perhaps we may find in this stanza, therefore, another intimation that the author could scarcely have been a Dominican, at the time when the Angelic Doctor was lecturing on the liber vitae. St. Thomas dissents from the opinion of St. Augustine in the gentlest possible manner (as was his custom when differing from anybody), and finds a sense in which that opinion can be verified. And he indi- cates this sense very neatly ; but let us hear St. Augustine him- self. 6 By the " books," he says, " we are to understand the sacred books, old and new, that out of them it might be shown what commandments God had enjoined ; and that book of the life of each man is to show what commandments each man has done or omitted to do." A material interpretation of this book would, he continues, make it of incalculably ample dimensions, for it shall contain all the thoughts, words, actions, of all mankind for all the ages, — it is the " book of Life." He concludes that by the " book " is meant a certain divine power by virtue of which a full record of its past is presented to each soul, so that this knowledge may excuse or accuse ; and that this divine power is called a " book " because in it, as in an opened volume, each may read his judg- ment. Hereupon Sixtus Senensis, the Dominican who has become famous — or notorious — for his depreciation of the Dies Irae as an " uncouth poem," remarks : " Thus St. Augustine, whose view seems to have been in the mind of the author of that uncouth poem {inconditi rhytkmi) which the Church sings in the sacred mysteries for the dead : Liber scriptus proferetur In quo totum continetur Unde mundus judicetur. " 5 lb., art. 3. 6 Dc Civ. Dei, xx. 14. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 201 To sneer at such a hymn was a hardy thing for Sixtus of Siena to do ; and all he succeeded in accomplishing against it was to furnish an easy argument for its Franciscan authorship. Saints- bury hints, in his Flourishing of Romance (p. 9), at more modern critics of what he styles " the greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems, the Dies Irae." He says : " There have been attempts — more than one of them — to make out that the Dies Irae is no such wonderful thing after all ; attempts which are, perhaps, the extreme examples of that cheap and despicable paradox which thinks to escape the charge of blind docility by the affectation of heterodox independence. The judgment of the greatest (and not always of the most pious) men of letters of modern times may confirm those who are uncomfortable without authority in a different opinion. Fortunately there is not likely ever to be lack of those who, authority or no authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or without much, in all time of their tribulation and in all time of their wealth, will hold those wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of Celano's or another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to sense that they know." A Roland for an Oliver; and it is not unlikely that we must thank a Sixtus for a Saintsbury. Or, instead of Sixtus, did Saintsbury have in mind — (" There have been attempts — more than one of them," he says) — the writer in Notes a?id Queries (July 27, 1850), who, not having the courage of his convictions, contented himself with signing the letter " C " to his communication ? This critic's diatribe was occasioned by the terms "extremely beautiful" and "magnificent," applied to the Dies Irae by some of the correspondents of N. and Q., against which he desired to file a protest. He thinks the hymn " not deserving any such praise either for its poetry or its piety." He considers the first stanza the best, though he is " not quite sure that even the merit of that be not its jingle, in which King David and the Sibyl are strangely enough brought together to testify of the day of judgment. Some of the triplets appear to me," he concludes, " very poor, and hardly above macaronic Latin." Macaronic Latin, quotha ! The inconditns rhythmus of Sixtus of Siena was a gentle phrase in comparison, although either might well serve to account for the evident indig- 202 THE DOLPHIN. nation of so great a critic as Saintsbury. To his sensitive appre- ciation of the Dies Irae, it is possible that the very praise of a writer in the British Quarterly (xxxviii, 39) proved somewhat offensive, inasmuch as, while proclaiming the sublimity of the hymn, he couples with his praises such expressions as " uncouth Latin" and "barbarous Leonine rhyme." This writer was speak- ing of " Psalmody " ; and having shown how beautiful certain of the Ambrosian hymns were, although not phrased in the purest of classical Latin, he proceeds to consider the claim of some mediaeval hymns : " But if we have already almost lost caste," he says, " among classical critics of the old school, we fear that we shall excite their horror still more by proclaiming how highly we admire the sublimity, we use no humbler term, of a hymn composed in uncouth Latin and barbarous Leonine rhyme. Spirit of Dr. Parr, repose in peace ! We, however, shelter ourselves behind the authority of a writer whom, in point of taste, we are inclined to consider the representative of the old school of classical English poetry, that of Gray and Mason — Mr. Mathias. This distinguished scholar, who, in the decline of a life devoted to the most elegant literary pursuits, is basking in the delicious climate and inhaling the airs and poetry of his beloved Italy, has put forth an unpretending tract, entitled ' Excerpta ex Hymnis Antiquis,' in which he has anticipated some of our selections. The effect of the hymn to which we allude we must give in his own rich and nervous Latin." Mr. Mathias speaks of having entered St. Peter's at Rome one afternoon and hearing the full choir singing the Dies Irae, and of the tremendous effect upon his soul. He quotes several stanzas, which the writer in the Quarterly repeats, of the Dies Irae. " We are sincerely of opinion," he continues, " that the hymn will justify this lofty panegyric. Most of our readers are familiar with Luther's ' O God, what do I see and hear, The end of things created ' ; and Heber's Advent Hymn is admirable ; but to our taste the simplicity and homely strength of the old monkish verse surpasses every hymn on a similar subject. It has the merit common to some others — it seems to suggest its own music." The article in the Quarterly was probably written by Dean Milman. The excerpt we have made shows how deeply the COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 203 author was impressed by the sublimity of the Hymn, even if he found fault with its technical qualities considered as a Latin poem — technical qualities which, as we have seen, were the very things selected by Saintsbury for praise. The Dean subsequently modified somewhat the harshness of his terminology, and in his Latin Christianity' 1 referred to the " rude grandeur " of the hymn, which made it, together with the Stabat Mater (because of the " tenderness " of this Marian hymn), " stand unrivalled " in Latin hymnody. VI. VI. Judex ergo cum sedebit, When therefore the Judge shall be seated, Quidquid latet apparebit ; Whatsoever lies hid shall be seen ; Nil inultum remanebit. Nothing shall remain unpunished. The five stanzas from Judex ergo to Non sit cassns arouse the enthusiasm of Saintsbury ; for in them " not a word," he thinks, " could be displaced or replaced by another without loss." This stanza, describing the formal seating of the Judge, is the second of the three stanzas used by Goethe for his " Faust ; " on hearing it, Marguerite is overwhelmed with fear. In a Manuscript of the twelfth century (found in Edelestand du Meril and Mone), containing nearly four hundred lines, from which two stanzas have already been quoted as forming an intro- duction to the Dies Iraef occurs a stanza which may be quoted here as suggestive of this strophe, the last line of which is prac- tically identical with the last line of the quatrain : Expavesco miser multum Judicis severum vultum, Cui latebit nil occultum, Et manebit nil inultum. This sixth stanza of the Dies Irae closes the epic or narrative part of the hymn, the remaining stanzas being intensely lyric in character. This will, therefore, be a fitting place to consider the contention of one of the most recent translators of the hymn, W. W. Nevin, 9 that, as the hymn is redolent of the terminology of mediaeval jurisprudence, a translation should seek to preserve, 7 Book 14, Ch. IV. 8 See Dolphin, January, 1905. 9 Dies Irae. Nine Original English Versions. By W. W. Nevin, M.A. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1895. 204 THE DOLPHIN. as far as may be, the legal phraseology of modern vernaculars : " It was many years ago," he writes, " while studying for the law, that my attention, in reading the Dies Irae, was arrested by the remarkable amount of legal phraseology used in its brief lines. Witness as to this: 'Teste,' 'Judex,' 'Judicanti responsura,' ' Cuncta stricte,' 'Judex cum sedebit,' 'Quern patronum,' 'Juste Judex,' ' Diem rationis,' ' Culpa/ ' Reus,' ' Gere curam,' ' Reus judicandus; ' and every verse is gloomy with the black imagery and depressing atmosphere of the court-room. It is a picture of a criminal trial, as criminals were tried in the thirteenth century — dismal, hopeless, hapless." He thinks it " hard for any one, not read in the history of criminal jurisprudence, adequately to con- ceive the terrible and hopeless surroundings that environed the unhappy accused, put on trial in mediaeval times. . . . The prisoner at the bar stood alone, without friends, without rights, without a cause, removed from human aid, and apparently from human sympathies. The very charge seemed to take him out of this world, and throw him on the kinder mercies of the next. . . . It is hard for us now to conceive of such merciless conditions, but even in later times, and under the milder common law of England, a prisoner on trial for a capital crime was not so much as allowed counsel. Indeed, this privilege was never fully attained until the reign of William IV, and then by statute." Accordingly, following this conception that the poem is a picture of a trial, Mr. Nevin " endeavored, in translating it, wherever possible, to render the Latin legal terms by the equivalent terms or formula in use in our land and time, or as near as can be, for it is not always easy to find the exact equivalent in English, for even Spanish or French legal terms in use at this very hour, and this difficulty increases very greatly in going back six hundred years." It is needless to point out that many translators have used legal phraseology, and indeed could scarce avoid doing so, in rendering the words which are common both to legal and to ordinary speech : e.g., Judge, judgment, culprit, crime, criminal, plea, plead, cite, summon (and their derivatives), etc. Some ver- sions, moreover, have consciously borrowed, and with effort, from distinctively legal terminology ; as in the words " assize " " dooms- day book," " session," " daysman," " counsel." Mr. Nevin's nine COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAEr 205 versions strive manfully to add to the atmosphere of the court- room by such translations as these : Coget omnes ante thronum. All before the Bar compelling (No. 1.) To the Judgment Bar appalling (No. 2). As to the Bar all souls are led (No. 5 ). To the Bar the quick and dead (No. 6. ) All flesh before the Bar is found (No. 7). Shall compel all to the Bar (No. 8). To the judgment Bar are led (No. 9.) Judicanti responsura suggests such phrases as these : " Answer at the final hearing," " At the summons," etc., " Ranged at the last assize," "to judgment come," " To answer at the bar of doom," etc. Ante diem rationis appears as : " Ere the last adjudi- cation," " Ere the day of last citation," " Ere the final condemna- tion," " Ere is closed the final writ," " Ere the Day without appeal," " When comes the day of last assize." Gere curam appears as : " Take my cause " (used thrice), " Let my last end be thy commission." Hide ergo parce, Deus appears as : " Spare him, God, the undefended," "... the lone defendant,"" . . . in that inquest." In his desire to make his English versions of the hymn a counterpart of the legalistic Latin of the original as he conceives it, Mr. Nevin tries to have every verse, as far as may be, " gloomy with the black imagery and despairing atmosphere of the court- room" ; for, he says, the hymn "is a picture of a criminal trial as criminal trials were tried in the thirteenth century — dismal, hopeless, hapless." But has he not ventured rather far, in trans- lating the " thronus " of the Apocalypse into " Bar " ? Has he indeed caught the finest argument of the hymn at all ? Has he heightened the tragic feature of the hymn by comparing — rather than contrasting — its terrors with the criminal jurisprudence of the thirteenth century, as he conceives that jurisprudence? Did it give an added touch to any dramatic conception of the Last Judgment in the minds of men in the thirteenth century to say of it, that it should reproduce, in its " hopeless, hapless " char- acter, the features assumed to have characterized the jurispru- dence of that century, — that, in short, it was to be the Last of those earthly trials with which people were familiar, " dismal, 2o6 THE DOLPHIN. hopeless, hapless " ? Men get finally used to " dismal, hopeless, hapless " procedures ; and if the Last Judgment were to be only like the innumerable human ones that had preceded it, much of the Hymn's terrific power must have been lost for the minds for whom it was written. But if Mr. Nevin's view of the old jurisprudence is much exaggerated ; if trials were not quite so dismal, hopeless, and hapless as he conceives them to have been ; if it is not true, even of the "judicium Dei," that "everything proceeded on the fundamental assumption that the accused was guilty in the eyes of man, and was to be cleared or saved only by the special inter- ference of God," — if, in short, a contrast could be effected by the hymn between the gleams of hope that lit up an orderly trial of the thirteenth century, and the dreadfully rigorous scrutiny (Cuncta stride discussurus\ the certain disclosure of the most hidden offences (Quidqidd latet apparebit), the inevitable character of the punishment (Nil inultum remanebif) to be meted out even to the sliglitest fault, the loneliness (Quern patronum rogaturusf) of the culprit and the hopelessness of his case (Quum vix Justus sit securus), — if such a contrast and opposition, rather than the com- parison and quasi-identity conceived by Mr. Nevin, could be set up by the hymn, surely its dramatic horror would be immeasurably increased, while the argument based on that dreadful disparity of the human and the divine judgments would be immeasurably strengthened. And such we believe to be the fact. Trials were not quite the dismal and hapless things pictured by Mr. Nevin and other commentators on the jurisprudence of the thirteenth century. Walter Map, the courtly Archdeacon of the time of Henry II, " himself a judge," although he wrote probably a cen- tury before the composition of the Dies Irae, could see the force lying in the argument of contrast, when, singing of the Last Judgment, he said : — Ibi nihil proderit quidquid allegare, Neque vel excipere neque replicare, Neque ad apostolicam sedem appellare ; Reus condemnabitur nee dicetur quare. Cogitate, miseri, qui et qualis estis, Quid in hoc judicio dicere potestis Ubi nullus codicis locus aut digestis — COMMENT OX THE "DIES IRAE." 207 for, unlike the human courts of law, the Last Judgment will not permit defensive allegation, noting of exceptions, formal replies to the exceptions, appeals to another venue, etc. ; and there Christ shall be accuser, witness, and judge — " idem erit judex, actor, testis." It is scarcely logical to categorize under the one heading of the " Middle Ages " the various centuries in which various usual and unusual forms of legal procedure were used, and to jumble together under the one title of " Criminal Jurisprudence " such various procedures as (1) Compurgation, which flourished in Ger- many and other northern nations of Europe down to the sixteenth century, and was formally abolished in England only in the year of grace 1833 ; (2) Ordeals, prohibited by Innocent III (f 1216) ; and (3) the Wager of Battle, " which, though even more strenu- ously opposed by the Church, did not meet with the same hostility from the secular authorities, and is to be met with occasionally as late as the sixteenth century, 10 and in England was not formally abolished until 18 19. The "Judgment of God" was appealed to when the question to be settled transcended the wisdom of men, and cannot be considered the normal method of legal procedure, whether in mediaeval or in modern England. " But it was in this barbaric, bloody and revengeful way," writes Mr. Nevin, " that these people in the thirteenth century tried each other, and ex- pected God to try themselves." " Throughout the Middle Ages," says another writer, " the theory of the law placed the burden of proof on the negative side ; and it may be counted a most im- portant step in the progress of European civilization when the Germanic idea finally gave place to the Roman maxim that it is impossible to prove a negative, and that the necessity of producing evidence lies with the accuser." ll "Throughout the Middle Ages," says the last-quoted writer. The phrase is at least ambiguous ; for we find Peter the Venerable replying to the strictures of St. Bernard on the monks of Clugny : " It would be proper for you who make these charges to sub- stantiate them by some written authority, to which we must yield, and not let them rest on your bare assertion, by which we are not 10 Trans, and Reprints, etc., Vol. IV, No. 4. 11 Trans, and Rep., Vol. IV, No. 4, p. 2. 208 THE DOLPHIN, greatly moved. For thus the law requires, that he who accuses any one should prove his charge, since the burthen of proof always lies on the accuser " (Maitland's Dark Ages, No. xxiii). The Latin text can be found in Migne's Patrol. Lat. f Vol. clxxxix, col. 143. This letter of Peter's was written, not in the thirteenth century, but in the early part of the twelfth. It urges, as a well- known principle of the law, that the bnrde?i of proof rests always with the accuser, " actori probatio semper incumbit." This idea of contrast rather than identity of procedure should, we think, be emphasized, if we shall hope to appreciate at its best the terrible picture drawn by the grand Hymn of Judgment. . Mr. Nevin's interpretation does not appeal to us as a happy one ; and, without presuming to compare our layman's knowledge of "the criminal jurisprudence of the thirteenth century" with that of a lawyer discoursing on the history of his profession, we never- theless venture to think that his statement of the features of that mediaeval jurisprudence is too sweeping. The reply of Peter the Venerable (a slight portion of which we have just reproduced above) to the chapter of accusations composed by St. Bernard is a voice heard, not in " the thirteenth century," but as early as the twelfth ; and it utters, as a matter of common notoriety, the great principle that " on the accuser rests the burden of proof." But however the matter be, the translation itself of the hymn is hardly affected by Mr. Nevin's interpretation. He may crowd as much legal phraseology as he well can into the English render- ing, without doing violence to the sentiment of the picture — which is, after all, one of a judgment — drawn by the mediaeval artist. The only thing we are now contending for is the propriety of con- trasting, rather than of identifying, the dreadful conditions of the Last Assize with those of any earthly tribunal whatsoever, ancient, mediaeval, or modern. In this sixth stanza we reach the conclusion of the descriptive part of the hymn. Within the narrow limits of eighteen lines the mediaeval singer has marvellously condensed the various Biblical allusions to the Last Judgment, and has constructed a picture as majestic and overpowering as the great fresco of Michelangelo. H. T. Henry. Over brook Seminar)', Pa. THE DOLPHIN. Vol. VII. April, 1905. No. 4- suddenly upon them and in such manner that it must be solved by the first means which come to hand. But in places where the former choir of mixed voices is suddenly disbanded, and the litur- gical choir is not yet ready for a public appearance, the pastors would do well to have Low Mass, or to engage a temporary unison choir of three or four men. If a sanctuary choir starts upon its career in a crude, unfinished state, it will lay up for itself the criticism and opposition of many years to come. If, on the contrary, it enters upon the performance of its functions in a con- dition of thorough fitness, its success is infallibly ensured. The prudent pastor, in this regard, is he who, reading the signs of the times, and observing the straws which indicate how the wind blows, at once sets about preparing a chancel-choir. If he commences intelligently and permits himself a full year for preparation, there is no doubt but that the new liturgical choir will enter upon its career in such manner as abundantly to vindi- cate its installation and to win the approval of all interested. Francis Joseph O'Brien. Philadelphia, Pa. 4 o8 THE DOLPHIN. NOTES ON THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OF THE "DIES IRAE." IN the January and February issues of The Dolphin the first six stanzas of the Dies Irae were treated from the double standpoint of their accurate version into English metre and rhyme, and their literary history. The eighteen lines comprised in the six stanzas sketch rapidly but with great vividness the picture of the Judg- ment. The remainder of the Hymn, which gives the " lyric cry " of the singer as he contemplates such a picture, is connected with the preceding verses by the seventh stanza, which serves as a bridge to connect the descriptive with the lyric part. With this seventh stanza the present paper deals first ; and the remaining stanzas will be dealt with in this issue and the following (May). — Editor. Stanzas VII-X. By the late C. F. S. Warren, M.A. 7. Quid sum, miser, tunc dicturus ? Quern patronum rogaturus, Cum vix Justus sit securus ? The verse, particularly the third line, is based on the Vulgate of I Peter 4 : 18. The Roman Catholic versions are, as has been said, often among the best \ but it is a mistake to turn miser by wicked, as is done by a writer in the Catholic Manual, New York, 1870. The word has sometimes of course that sense ; but here it refers to the defenceless state of a soul at the Great Judgment — defenceless in all external ways ; his own good deeds must be his defence. The version is this : — " What plea shall wicked! pretend, What patron move to stand my friend, When scarce the just themselves defend?" In other respects it is good, in the second line especially ; but as regards the turning of miser some one such as this is better : — " What shall wretched I then plead, Who for me shall intercede When the righteous scarce is freed ?' ' Isaac Williams. NOTES ON THE U DIES IRAE." 409 The words, however, intercede or mediate can hardly, I think, be considered right ; in patronus there is a legal metaphor which by many translators is hardly enough brought out. The patronus is the advocate, the counsel ; and to substitute, as Isaac Williams, Dr. Irons, and others, have so often done, the idea of intercession or mediation is to alter the verse altogether. Mediation is the intervention between two parties of one who has somewhat in common with both ; to intercede is to set before the Judge on the culprit's behalf either one's own merits, as our Lord Jesus Christ does in heaven, or those of another as a Christian priest does Christ's on earth. This inter- cession we have in the tenth verse : the idea in this is properly of a counsel only ; and the despairing soul who puts the question sees at once that no " counsel " can be had, that more than a " counsel " is wanted, and so turns to Christ as the Intercessor in the ninth and tenth verses. Thus it seems that to turn the patronus into an inter- cessor is to interfere with the due order of the Hymn. Of those who have not done this, many have as usual contented themselves with vague generalities, of which the most that can be said is that they do not exclude the true idea. Of the few who have categorically expressed the correct idea, Drummond of Hawthornden and two or three more have used the word advocate ; others have retained the original word in its English form : this is not perhaps to be recommended, though it may be done. Possibly some way might be found of employing the word counsel in its technical sense ; this 1 have never seen done, for the following curious line of course does not employ it so : — "What shall be my pleading tearful, Where shall I get counsel cheerful, When the just almost are fearful?" — Wallace, Hymns of the [R. C] Church. If it could be done, it must be done very carefully : for after all the ' ' counsel " is to be such a * < counsel ' ' whose office shall so to say merge into intercession ; he shall be in short The Intercessor Himself; and in this light the best word of all, if it were not so unusual a one, might possibly be daysman, actually employed by one American. The third line need not detain us except to mention the occasional use of the word saints instead of the more common just or righteous. 410 THE DOLPHIN. Line i. — Wretch or wretched, 36 ; sinner, 4 ; guilty, 3 ; frail man, 2 ; wicked, 1 ; unworthy, 1 . Plead or plea, 40 ; say, 14; answer, 5 ; reply, 2. Line ii. — Intercede, etc., 24; patron, 14 (-saint, 1) ; guardian, 1 (-creature, 1) ; advocate, 7 ; defend or defender, 6 ; friend, 4 ; protector, protection, 3 ; mediate, mediation, 2 ; mediator, saviour, daysman. Line Hi. — Just, 52; righteous, 18; saint or saints, 6; good, godly, faithful, holiest. Of sit securus the turnings are very various. 8. Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis. How many both in reality and fiction has this verse consoled ! Some may remember two very different tales: Mr. Neale's repentant knight transfixed by the Saracens in the " Stories of the Crusades," whose prayer is rewarded by the armed Prior from the sally absolving him at the last moment \ and Meinhold's poor " Amber Witch " racked for her supposed sorcery. The objections to translating the first line of this verse by King of majesty tremendous have been already stated, neither need be repeated : that translation has probably arisen simply from the need for a double rhyme (though there are some few instances of King of tremendous majesty as an iambic line), for it is of older date than the present crowd of versions of Latin hymns, and therefore than the fashion to which Neale was so much attached of using original Latin words in their English form. Of this I know but one thoroughly successful instance — " They stand, those halls of Syon, Conjubilant with song " — has so succeeded ; conjubilant is a fine word and expressive, and un- less H. A. M. (for which there was hardly a necessity) had altered it into all jubilant, would probably by this time have gone near to take its place in the language; but trucidation (already quoted), and cunctipotent, and praitergrcssing, and others like them, are too pedantic to be of much value. They supply no real want, and only remind one of the Latinisms of some early pedantic writers. The second line is perhaps the hardest line in the whole Hymn to turn well ; indeed the difficulty of this verse and the two next is so NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 411 great that very few writers indeed can be said to have succeeded. The meaning of salvandos is this, — those who, Almighty God sees in His infinite foreknowledge, will endure unto the end, for those are they who shall be saved, and they are saved gratis, according to His mercy and not by works of righteousness which they have done. And the difficulty is to express this in English without falling into Calvinistic views of predestination on the one hand, or watering the words down into nothing on the other. The coexistence of God's purposes and man's free-will is one of the most difficult problems in theology ; and albeit this is not the place to attempt to discuss such a problem, we must remember its existence ; for the remembrance, if it do not show us how to translate the verse, will at least show us how we must not. And most writers, in fact, appear to have been content with the lat- ter knowledge without trying to acquire the former ; for out of my two hundred versions (in round numbers) there is but a very small proportion in which it has been attempted to translate salvandos. One, Dr. Kynaston, has left out the whole verse ; his version, how- ever, is but a fragment ; some have left out the word, as Isaac Williams — " King of dreadful majesty, Saving souls in mercy free, Fount of pity, save Thou me ;" many have taken it as if it were equal to salvatos. In two American versions, and in Mr. D. T. Morgan's, we have the word elect ; chosen is also found. Mr. Hoskyns-Abrahall has boldly used the technical word predestined, wherein he was followed by the ten-syllable version of the Sacred Heart, 1880 ; and other expressions are saints, which has the same indecision as Drummond's word: heirs of grace ; and the very literal one, those who saved shall be} I should consider that the choice lay between the last two versions of salvandos ; and of these — slightly cumbrous as it is — I should prefer the latter, since even in heirs of grace there may be thought a little uncertainty. For the translation of gratis the best word is probably the simple freely, though gratis itself is used in the " Thomas a Kempis " version, 1694, and later also in the Catholic Choralist, 1842, and in the Lamp, 1859 ; while the phrase in Mr. Simms' version is Wliose free salvation none can buy. Without fee has also been used, but does not commend itself. 1 " Those who saved would 'be," once or twice found, is of course wrong. 412 THE DOLPHIN. In the third line there are a few cases of the use of the woxdpiety, but it is an objectionable use ; for this word now represents only our love toward God and the fruit of that love, and can hardly be used of God's love and compassion toward us, which is the meaning of the original. The shorter form of the word, pity, is very common, and between this, love, and mercy, all which are found, there hardly seems to be much choice. Kindness has been occasionally adopted, but seems to produce the same sense of something wanting which one gets from Tate and Brady's 51st Psalm — " Have mercy, Lord, on me, As Thou wert ever kind. ' ' The inexorable necessities of rhyme have driven Dr. Stryker to the unusual phrase Mercy-Laver, a synonym for fount, commoner in old Puritan language than now. Line i. — King, 69; sovereign, 3; monarch, potentate, saviour; majesty, 33 ; splendor, 5 j glory, 4 ; exaltation, 3 ; dread, awe, might, awful, 18; tremendous, 13; dreadful, 11 j dread (adj.), 3; dreaded, 1 ; majestic, 6; supreme, 2 ; supernal, 2 ; fearful, severe, glorious, wondrous, divine, resplendent. Line ii. — The saved, 4; elect, 4; saints, 2; thine, 2; those who saved shall be, 2 ; chosen, 3 ; free or freely, 39. Line Hi. — Fount, 45 ; fountain, 4 ; font, 2 ; source, 5 ; spring, 3 ; head, 1 ; pity, 19 ; piety, 4 ; love, 10 ; mercy, 8 ; salva- tion, 4 ; blessing, 3 ; blessedness, 1 ; bliss, 1 ; compassion, 2 ; kindness, goodness, consolation, clemency, healing. 9. Recordare, Jesu pie, Quod sum causa Tuae viae : Ne me perdas ilia die. ' ' Uncle Tom's Cabin, ' ' like many other books which had an enor- mous circulation at their first publishing, is now comparatively little read ; but some will still remember how the dying St. Clare murmurs these words, and how the authoress in a note quotes one of Dr. Coles' versions, and says, ' ' These lines have been thus rather inadequately translated." 1 Rather or very inadequate indeed are many versions * The version quoted is the first, and must therefore have been quoted from its publication in the Newark Advertiser in 1847. " Uncle Tom " first appeared I think in 1852. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 413 besides the American physician's ; the first difficulty is to find a good word for pie, since it is now hardly possible to use ' ' pious ' ' with the Rosarists. The idea is of course carried on from the fons pietatis of the last verse, and is therefore literally pitiful, compassionate ; but it has always been rendered by epithets somewhat more general than these, and it would indeed be difficult to find a literal and admissible translation. Of those which actually have been used, good is perhaps the best and most susceptible of the required notion ; kind, sweet, gentle, are all unsatisfactory, all have about them an irreverent familiarity unless used with the utmost care ; 3 and perhaps it would be on the whole better to omit any epithet for which there is no real need. Such as blest and holy of course introduce a new idea, and are objectionable on that account. Nor should such boldness be allowed as that of Mr. Brownell, 1847, w ^o replaces the petition Recordare, Jesu pie by the assurance Jesu, Thou hast not forgot. In the second line a new meaning has been suggested for the via by one of the latest American translators, Dr. Franklin Johnson, 1884. "Toa Romanist," he says, " the signification is clear. He has heard much of the via dolorosa through which our Saviour bore His cross. ... To the Romanist the way of Christ is a concep- tion as definite as is His cup to the Protestant. I have no doubt that Thomas de Celano was thinking of the via dolorosa when he wrote the Hymn, and that he considered it a symbol of all the sufferings which the Son of God endured." It is a pleasing theory, but far-fetched, and requires proof which it has not got : there is, for instance, no proof that the phrase via dolorosa was in use so early, and Farrar indeed says ("Life of Christ," p. 691, note, ed. Cassell), "the so- called Via dolorosa does not seem to be mentioned earlier than the fourteenth century." It will be better to retain the older meaning; though even in the application of this there has been some uncer- tainty ; for the via is not our Lord's way to earth or from earth, but upon earth, and further still, the whole of that way ; not His Incarn- ation or Crucifixion exclusively, but His whole course " From the poor manger to the bitter cross." 3 "God infinitely condescends, man must not infinitely presume," are the words of solemn warning used on this subject in some Notes on the Appendix to H.A.M. in the Literary Churchman for December 12, 1868. A reply to this was written by the late Dr. Dykes, which was again rejoined to in February and March, 1869, by three most valuable papers " On Hymns." To these it would have been well if more attention had been paid by subsequent hymnologists. 41 6 THE DOLPHIN. omitted, and that what is referred to in crucem passus is the actual crucifixion, as is plainly shown by redemisti. The great beauty of Lord Macaulay's paraphrase must not be omitted : — " Though I plead not at Thy throne Aught that I for Thee have done, Do not Thou unmindful be Of what Thou hast borne for me, Of the wandering, of the scorn, Of the scourge and of the thorn. Jesus, hast Thou borne the pain, And hath all been borne in vain ?' ' The ' ' Bona Mors ' ' paraphrase represents part of this verse by a triplet with a very curious expression : — " In such dire anguish and distressful pain Angels did weep and heart-broke rocks complain ; Thy labors were immense, O let them not be vain. ' ' Line i. — Derivatives of to seek, 51 ; of to sit, 12 ; faint, 5 ; tired, 2 ; dreary. Line ii. — Cross, 43 ; tree, 8. Line Hi. — Toil, 12; labor, 9; pain, 5; passion, 5 ; suffering, 4; anguish, 3 ; agony, 2 ; travail, 2 ; pangs, 2 ; vain, 23 ; fruitless, 7 ; wasted, 4 ; lost, 3 ; defeated, 2 ; crossed, 1 . COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." Stanzas VII-X. VII. VII. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus, What shall I, wretched, then say, Quem patronum rogaturus, What patron (counsel ?) shall I entreat, Cum vix Justus sit securus? When scarce the just shall be without anxiety? Is the poet borrowing the word patronus from ascetical or liturgical phraseology, or from that of the old Roman Law ? Mr. Warren strongly contends for the legal rather than the ascetical metaphor, for " advocate " or " counsel " rather than " intercessor." If Mr. Nevin's assertion be correct, that in the criminal jurisprudence of the Middle Ages "the prisoner was not COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 417 allowed to have counsel," l and that the Hymn but presents a replica of the picture of a trial in those ages, when " the prisoner at the bar stood alone, without friends, without rights, without a cause," we shall be forced to interpret patronus as " intercessor," or " patron saint," or some such equivalent word or phrase. And indeed the context of the last two lines of the stanza would of itself support such a view; for we can understand the poet as saying : " When the saints themselves are not without anxiety, which one of them shall act as intercessor for me? " The real context of thought may, on the other hand, lie in the first and third line : " What counsel will take up the cause of a wretched sinner like myself, at a time when even holy souls are not with- out fear ? " Perhaps the poet had neither view exclusively in mind, and thought of the patronus as he was in the ordinary relations of life as much as in his relation of counsel or pleader for his client in the courts of Roman law; and the word "patron," as vaguely implying all of these relations even in English, may be the best word to use in translation. The real difficulty encountered by the translator scarcely lies, however, in the English rendering of the Latin patronus, so much as in the insistent temptation, sug- gested by the needs and, in this case, by the facilities, of rhyme, to use " intercede " in the second line (rhyming so beautifully — almost " inevitably " — with " plead " in the first and with " freed " or " need " in the third). Mohnike favors nee instead of vix in the last line. Nee is the reading of the Mantuan and the Haemmerlin text. The meaning would be slightly altered by nee, and not for the better; for while there is an apparent strengthening of the argument, the strength is only apparent and not real, as the argument is not meant to be mathematical but rhetorical. To say that " the just shall not be without anxiety " on that day is not in reality as strong a con- tention as to say that " even the just shall scarce be without anxiety." Mohnike, however, thinks the poet but reflected the thought in Job (4 : 18): " Behold they that serve him are not steadfast, and in his angels he found wickedness " ; and again {lb. 15: 15): "Behold among his saints none is unchangeable, and the heavens are not pure in his sight." Daniel rejects the 1 See Preface to his little volume, p. 5. 41 8 THE DOLPHIN. reading nee and the arguments supporting it, and thinks we have only another illustration of the necessity under which a Latin hymnologist lies of becoming familiar with the Vulgate ; for the line, Cum vix Justus sit securus, is merely an echo of St. Peter's First Epistle (4: 18) : " Etsi Justus quidem vix salvabitur, impius et peccator ubi comparebunt ? " ("And if the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear ? ") St. Anselm repeats the word : "A dextris erunt peccata accusantia, a sinistris infinita daemonia, subtus horrendum chaos inferni, desuper judex iratus, foris mun- dus ardens, intus conscientia urens. Ibi vix Justus salvabitur. Heu miser peccator sic deprehensus quo fugies ? latere enim est impossibile, apparere intolerable." ("At your right hand there shall be your accusing sins, at the left an infinite legion of demons, beneath your feet the frightful chaos of hell, in front of you the angry Judge, without you a world in flames, within you a con- science that burns. Then shall the just man scarcely be saved. Ah, miserable sinner thus surrounded, whither will you flee ? for to lie hid is impossible, and to appear is intolerable.") This stanza is the last of the three quoted by Goethe in Faust. In expression, it is marvellously condensed ; in emotional qual- ity, dramatic to the highest degree ; poetically, it is one of the five flawless stanzas referred to by Saintsbury. In the Hymn, it is the bridge separating, or rather uniting, the epic and the lyric stanzas ; for the first six stanzas describe the scene, while the remaining stanzas are wholly given up to the anguish of one of the multi- tude there present in spirit, — his cry of utter loneliness and friend- lessness, his realization of the tremendous issues at stake, his appeal to the pity of that Christ who had sought for him with weary feet, who had borne for him the heavy weight of the Cross, who had suffered and died upon that Cross for the very culprit that now, in anticipation of that Day of Judgment, pleads before Him. This stanza begins the litany of supplication which has seemed like the universal " Cry of the Human " to its Judge and Saviour; and in the great " Book of Life " that shall be displayed at the Judgment, doubtless will be recorded the history of many a conversion to justice through the instrumentality of this very COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 419 picture of the " Day of Wrath." Occasionally we get glimpses of this power in the lives of men. Lockhart records of Sir Walter Scott, whose fragment of the Hymn leaves the regret that he did not complete a full rendering, that upon his death-bed he " very often " muttered verses of the Dies Irae : " Whatever we could follow him in was some fragment of the Bible, or some petition of the Litany, or a verse of some psalm in the old Scotch metrical version, or some of the magnificent hymns of the Romish {sic) ritual. We very often heard distinctly the cadences of the Dies Irae!' So, too, St. Alphonsus refers in his Preparation for Death 1 to the incident in the life of the Venerable Ancina (the Oratorian who as Bishop of Saluzzo died in the odor of sanctity) which proved the means of a complete change of calling for him. " Hearing the Dies Irae sung," says St. Alphonsus, " and reflect- ing on the terror of the soul when she shall be presented before the tribunal of Jesus Christ, the Venerable P. Juvenal Ancina took, and afterwards executed the resolution of forsaking the world." The incident is narrated more fully in Bacci's Life of the Venerable Servant of God (Rome, 1671). Ancina had studied at the Uni- versity of Turin, had taken with distinction his degrees of Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Medicine, and had been practising his profession with great success before this vivid realization of the Judgment Day so touched his heart as to cause him to dedi- cate his whole energies to the more perfect calling of the religious life. The true turning-points of life are not often recognized as such, and are less often chronicled by biographers. The literary history of the Hymn is very incomplete ; but we may well conjec- ture that if it were written the record would be a marvellous one. The power of the Hymn over the hearts of our separated brethren is evidenced, not alone in the large number of recorded versions made into German 3 and English, but by the formal 2 Consideration xxiv, First Point. 8 The first recorded version into German was that of Martin von Cochem, 1613. Like the earlier English versions, it is not in the metre of the original Latin : {Catholic Hymn Book, Munich, i6ij.) An jenem Tag, nach David's Sag, Soil Gottes Zorn erbrinnen : Durch Feuer's Flamm, muss allesamm Gleichwie das Wachs zerrinnen. 420 THE DOLPHIN. estimates given of its power and the literary uses made of it. " Frederick von Meyer, a Senator of Frankfort-on-the-Main, and author of a revision of Luther's German Bible, in introducing two original translations of the Dies Irae, calls it ' an awful poem, poor in imagery, all feeling. Like a hammer it beats the human breast with three mysterious rhyme-strokes. With the unfeeling person who can read it without terror, or hear it without awe, I would not live under one roof. I wish it could be sounded into the ears of the impenitent and hypocrites every Ash Wednes- day, or Good Friday, or any other day of humiliation and prayer in all the churches.' " 4 SchafT also quotes from Victor Cousin, the celebrated French philosopher: "The Dies Irae, recited only, produces the most terrible effect. In those fearful words, every blow tells, so to speak ; each word contains a distinct sentiment, an idea at once profound and determinate. The intellect advances at each step, and the heart rushes on in its turn." 5 Goethe's introduction of a few lines of the Hymn into Faust, and Sir Walter Scott's fragment in the Lay are sufficiently famous. The hymn seems to have impressed Scott very much. " Tantus labor non sit cassus," he quotes in a letter to Bunsen, in reference to the The earliest translation in the original metre appears to be that of Andraeas Gryphius, 1659 : Zorntag ! Tag, der, was wir ehren, Wird durch schnelle Glut zerstoren, Wie Sibyll und Petrus lehren. Schaff (who, in his Literature and Poetry, pp. 1 73-182, gives nearly fifty illustrative quotations from as many versions into German, and adds two from his own pen) declares that the best among the German versions are those of Schlegel, Silbert, Bunsen, Knapp and Daniel. " But none of them has become so popular as the free reproduction in the old German hymn, ' Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit, ' by Bartholomaeus Ringwaldt, 1582." The activity thus early begun received great stimulus, in Germany as in England, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Mohnike publishing (1824) specimens of 24 versions, while eight years later he was able to add 21 more to his list. In 1840 Lisco, in his monograph on the Dies Irae, gave 54 complete versions as well as a number of fragments ; and three years later in his Stabat Mater gave in an appendix 1 7 additional versions. It is probable that the list would now rise to over 100, Schaff estimating, in 1890, that the number then was from 80 to 100. Just as the English list can boast such names as those of Crashaw, Dryden, Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, so the German includes versions by Herder and A. W. von Schlegel. 4 Schaff, p. 141. 5 Lectures on the True, the Beautiful and the Good, p. 177. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE. 421 German " War of Liberation " of 181 3 ; and in a letter to Crabbe he remarks : " To my Gothic ear, the Stabat Mater, the Dies Irae, and some of the other hymns of the Catholic Church, are more solemn and affecting than the fine classical poetry of Buchanan ; the one has the gloomy dignity of a Gothic church, and reminds us constantly of the worship to which it is dedicated ; the other is more like a pagan temple, recalling to our memory the classical and fabulous deities." Lockhart tells us how, in his dying hours, he was distinctly overheard repeating frequently " the cadence of the Dies Irae" Like Goethe and Scott, Justinus Kerner, "the Swabian poet and mystic," introduced effectively the first two lines of the Hymn in his Wahnsinnige Briider, to exhibit the awful power of the doom-foreboding cadences on hearts that have spurned heavenly things. James Clarence Mangan's translation is so exquisite, and is withal apparently so little known, that we may be pardoned for giving it entire in a footnote. 6 6 The Four Idiot Brothers. So spake he, and died : the Four All unmoved beheld him die. Happy he ! — his labors o'er, He was ta'en to bliss on high, While his sons, like very devils Loosed from Hell, pursued their revels. Still they courted each excess Atheism and Vice could dare ; Ironhearted, feelingless, Not a hair of theirs grew grayer. "Live," they cried, "while life ena- bles! God and devil alike are fables ! " Once at midnight, as the Four Riotously reeled along, From an open temple- door Streamed a flood of holy song, 11 Cease, ye hounds, your yelling noises !" Cried the devil by their voices. Through the temple vast and dim Goes the unhallowed greeting, while Still the singers chant their hymn. Hark ! it echoes down the aisle — "Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla. " Dried, as 'twere, to skeleton chips, In the Madhouse found I four : From their white and shrivelled lips Cometh language never more. Ghastly, stony, stiff, each brother Gazes vacant on the other ; Till the midnight hour be come ; Bristles then erect their hair, And their lips, all day so dumb, Utter slowly to the air : "Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla. " Four bold brothers once were these, Riotous and reprobate, Whose rake-hellish revelries Terrified the more sedate. Ghostly guide and good adviser Tried in vain to make them wiser. On his deathbed spake their sire — " Hear your father from his tomb ! Rouse not God's eternal ire ; Ponder well the day of doom, ( Dies irae, dies ilia, Solvet saeclum in favilla.'' " 422 THE DOLPHIN. VIII. Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis. VIII. King of awful majesty, Who savest freely those who are to be saved, Save me, fount of loving pity. An interesting addition to the literary history of the Hymn is furnished us anent this eighth stanza by the Rev. Dr. Thompson, editor of Duffield's Latin Hymns, in his treatment of the Dies Irae : " Carlyle shows us the Romanticist tragedian Werner quoting the eighth stanza in his strange ' last testament,' as his reason for hav- ing written neither a defence nor an accusation of his life : ' With trembling I reflect that I myself shall first learn in its whole ter- rific compass what I properly was, when these lines shall be read by men ; that is to say, in a point of time which for me will be no time ; in a condition in which all experience will for me be too late : ' Rex tremendae majestatis, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis ! ! ! ' " Mr. Warren notes that the simplicity of the English " tre- mendous " as a rendering of the Latin treme?idae seems to have proved too great an attraction for translators, who forget that the English connotations of " tremendous " are not exactly those of tremendae. Yet the word can not be easily rendered into Eng- lish, — such words as " fearful " and " awful," which might literally translate it, having acquired colloquially a most trivial meaning ; while such a phrase as " to-be-feared " would never answer the On the instant, stricken as By the wrath of God they stand, Each dull eyeball fixed like glass, Mute each eye, unnerved each hand, Blanched their hair and wan their fea- tures, Speechless, mindless, idiot creatures ! And now, dried to skeleton chips, In the Mad-cell sit the Four, Moveless : — from their blasted lips Cometh language never more. Ghastly, stony, stiff, each brother Gazes vacant on the other ; Till the midnight hour be come ; Bristles then erect their hair, And their lips, all day so dumb, Utter slowly to the air: "Dies irae, dies i//a, Sclvet saeclum in /avi//a. i> Mangan was a half-mystic himself, and the poem of Kerner must have moved him to seek special vividness in this translation. As was Mangan' s custom, he every- where writes the name of God in capitals. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 423 necessities of rhythm, metre, condensation of phrase, or perhaps of rhyme. The second line — Qui salvandos salvas gratis — has given trouble theologically to more than one translator and commentator, quite apart from its crucial demands upon the flexi- bility of English phraseology in the rendering of salvandos, — " those-who-are-to-be-saved." " There seems to be no utility," thinks Mr. Orby Shipley, " in treating of the dogmatic question which underlies the language of the eighth triplet in connection with the words Qui salvandos salvas gratis. This line has con- siderably exercised certain Protestant translators ; but it is no concern of ours. We may be well content with the sanction for the orthodoxy of Thomas of Celano's theology which is afforded by the adoption of his hymn by the Catholic Church." Either very little or very much must indeed be said by anyone who undertakes to treat of " election." Briefly it may be said that by corresponding with grace we may merit additional grace ; but it remains nevertheless true that, as Cardinal Manning somewhere says, we must confront the great fact that God holds in His own hands the first and last links in the chain of salvation — Baptism and Final Perseverance — the former of which we can in no wise merit, and the latter only de congruo ; for history seems to concur with theology in the sad reflection of Cardinal Newman : — " The white-haired saint may fail at last, The surest guide a wanderer prove : Death only binds us fast To the great shore of love ! " But while the grace of final perseverance is in the strictest sense a gratuitous gift of God ; while, that is to say, we may not merit such a grace de condigno or as something proportioned to the good works we shall have performed, — still, we can merit it de congruo or as something which the mercy of Christ may accord to works which, juridically considered, have no such legal reward. And so the immortal Hymn reminds us that we should appeal to the " sweet pity of Christ " : Salva me, fons pietatis ! 424 THE DOLPHIN. It is somewhat curious to notice, in this connection, that the last stanza of Charles Wesley's " Jesus, lover of my soul," sounds almost like a translation of Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Salva me, fons pietatis. The last four lines run : " Thou of life the Fountain art ; Freely let me take of Thee : Spring Thou up within my heart ; Rise to all eternity.' ' On the other hand, Augustus Toplady, whose Calvinism was so fiercely arrayed against the Arminianism of Wesley, seemed to have gained the day polemically in the mere writing of the famous hymn Rock of Ages. " Nothing in my hand I bring " is not, it is needless to say, the Catholic idea of meriting de congruo : " Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling ; Naked, come to Thee for dress, Helpless, look to Thee for grace ; Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die." The " fons pietatis " appears again here, as in Wesley's hymn ; and both may have had in mind the great line of the Dies Irae. The Catholic will have, however, a different thought from Toplady 's in singing the Dies Irae verse. Gladstone translated the Rock of Ages into Latin in the style of the mediaeval poets. The above stanza runs in his version : " Nil in manu mecum fero, Sed me versus crucem gero ; Vestimenta nudus oro, Opem debilis imploro ; Fontem Christi quaero immundus, Nisi laves, moribundus. " It is a strange, but withal an interesting fact, to record in this connection, that in the Appendix to the American edition of Father Caswall's Lyra Catholica] the Rock of Ages should have been printed entire, with the first line of Gladstone's version into 7 New York : Edward Dunigan and Brother. 1851. P. 349. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 425 Latin as a heading or title (as though the hymn were a transla- tion from the Latin) : Jesus pro me perforatus. The prepossession in the mind of the Catholic compiler that the hymn was merely an English rendering of a Latin hymn probably forbade an ad- verse interpretation of the non-Catholic sentiment of the line : " Nothing in my hand I bring." It is true, of course, that after we shall have done all things commanded, we should, as our Saviour warns us, account ourselves " unprofitable servants ;" and there is therefore a true sense in which the Catholic may humbly declare : " Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to Thy cross I cling;" but that sense is scarcely Toplady's meaning in the two lines of his famous hymn. Speaking of this eighth stanza of the Dies Irae, the Protestant Mr. Hutton, one of its translators, wrote in the London Spectator (March 7, 1868):— "This tense and majestic and intense verse is the very key of the whole hymn. It is an individual appeal on the part of an individual soul which has been following up slowly the whole train of thought connected with the scene in which it will have to play a part. And thus realizing that Christ's will to save is his only hope, the writer goes on to draw out a personal appeal to Christ why He should not lose even this single grain of His possible harvest. Was it not Christ's love for each individual sinner that brought Him down from heaven to earth ; that moved Him to wander over the earth, where He had no- where to lay His head ; that inspired Him, when He sat weary by the well of Samaria ; that led Him to bear His cross and endure His pas- sion ? Should such acts as these fail of their effect, even in the case of the worst of sinners who desires to be saved ? The writer hopes nothing from his own prayers, but much from the love shown in the pardon of such sinners as Mary Magdalene and the thief upon the cross. The whole tenor of the hymn is one of personal appeal, of loving devotion, of humble contrition. When it is grandest, it is sweetest and contains least of physical imagery. ' ' Mr. Hutton is in so far correct that the final appeal is to be made to the love of Christ ; but such an appeal presupposes some- thing on the part of the penitent : 426 THE DOLPHIN, Ingemisco tanquam reus, Culpa rubet vultus meus — Supplicanti parce, Deus ! The culprit must acknowledge his guilt, bewail his fault, and ask for pardon. IX. IX. Recordare, Jesu pie, Remember, loving Jesus, Quod sum causa tuae viae : That for me Thou earnest on earth : Ne me perdas ilia die. Lose me not upon that day. The difficulty which Mr. Warren has with the rendering of pie by some such word as " loving," " sweet," " gentle," is not easily intelligible. He fears the suggestion, in such words, of too great familiarity with the infinite majesty of God ; and he quotes with apparent approbation the " words of solemn warning " uttered by an annotator of Hymns Ancient and Modem : " God infinitely condescends, man must not infinitely presume." On the other hand, however, we must not forget that the loving effusiveness of Italian hearts — and the hymn is undoubtedly Italian in author- ship — is the opposite pole of that legal and academic phraseology which, in English prayers, makes the soul seem to " memorialize " the Almighty, as Cardinal Wiseman acutely observes in his dis- cussion of " Prayers." Besides, the whole Catholic attitude in prayer is one of pious familiarity with the Infinite, — not through a spirit of presumption, but through that " spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry Abba (Father)," as St. Paul so encourag- ingly has it (Rom. 8 : 15). In addition to all this, it is to be noted that the Hymn has turned away, in the progress of its thought, from the engrossing picture of the stern and unrelenting Judge, to recall the picture of the loving Saviour, to whom the suppliant now appeals by all that marvellous excess of love and pity mani- fested in the life of Christ on earth. The Catholic, in short, belongs to the "household of the faith"; God is his Father; Christ is his Brother ; Mary is his Mother ; he is living " at home," and he enjoys the privilege of respectful familiarity with those of the household. In the tender appeal which this stanza makes to the mercy and love of Christ, there lies a complete refutation of all such utterances as that of Lord Lindsay, who, while he pays the Hymn COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 427 the tribute of translation in his Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847), takes occasion in the preface of that work to describe the wonderful Sequence as " expressive of the feelings of dread and almost of despair, with which Christians of the Middle Ages — taught to look on Christ as Jehovah, rather than the merciful Mediator through whose atoning Blood and all-sufficient merits the sinner is reconciled to his Maker — looked forward to the con- summation of all things." But Lord Lindsay must have forgotten many hymnological treasures — not to speak of other religious monuments — of the Middle Ages, before he could pen such a statement concerning the Christians of those days. For instance, there is the exquisite and most pathetic hymn of St. Bernard — the Jesn dulcis memoria — which the Protestant Schaff calls " the sweetest and most evangelical hymn of the Middle Ages," and whose 200 lines are full of the " subjective loveliness " (to quote a phrase of the Anglican hymnologist, Dr. Neale) of that great saint. And he must also have forgotten the direct address by the same tender saint to each member of Christ's suffering Body, in the still longer hymn Salve tmtndi Sa/utare, — a hymn which has been a source of prolific inspiration to the most beautiful of Protestant hymns, such as the famous paraphrase of Paul Ger- hardt. He must have forgotten the Eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Re cor dare sanctae Crucis of St. Bonaventure, and — not to continue a list which could be swelled out to vast limits to illustrate the fact that the Christians of the Middle Ages looked on Christ as the Mediator and not, as Lord Lindsay sug- gests, as the Jewish Jehovah — the Ad perennis vitae fontem of St. Peter Damian, which looks forward to the consummation of all things not " with feelings of dread and almost despair," but even " as the hart panteth after the fountains of waters " : — Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitivit arida ; Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima ; Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur exul frui patria. " My thirsty heart hath panted for the fountain of everlasting life. My soul would break forthwith through this prison of flesh — it spreads its wings, it beats the bars, it struggles to break through its cage, poor exile, to gain its native skies." Is this Lord Lindsay's " dread and almost despair " ? And yet the day 428 THE DOLPHIN. of liberation contemplated by the saint is the day of that " particu- lar judgment" which shall be but ratified at the Last Assize. More directly contradictory of his thesis concerning the " feelings of dread and almost despair," however, is the long poem of the twelfth century from which we have already quoted some verses. 8 From a part of it dealing directly with the Last Judgment some stanzas were selected by Mrs. Charles for translation in The Voice of Christian Life in Song, which present us with the joyful aspect of that Day. Although her rendering does not follow the exact order of the original Latin, the poem is of such interest to us in this connection, both as illustrating the Dies Irae and as refuting the contention of Lord Lindsay, that we shall print her version here, and place opposite to it the appropriate stanzas from the Latin original : — Dies ilia, dies vitae, Dies lucis inauditae, Qua nox omnis destruetur Et mors ipsa morietur. Appropinquat enim dies In qua justis erit quies, Qua cessabunt persequentes, Et regnabunt patientes. Ecce rex desideratus Et a justis expectatus Jam festinat exoratus Ad salvandum praeparatus. O quam pium, o quam gratum, Quam suave, quam beatum Erit tunc Jesum videre His, qui eum dilexere ! O quam dulce, quam jocundum Erit tunc odisse mundum, Et quam triste, quam amarum Mundum habuisse carum. O beati tunc lugentes Et pro Christo patientes, Quibus saeculi pressura Regna dat semper mansura. Lo ! the day, the day of life, The day of unimagined light, The day when death itself shall die, And there shall be no more night. Steadily that day approacheth When the just shall find their rest, When the wicked cease from troubling, And the patient reign most blest. See the King desired for ages, By the just expected long ; Long implored, at length He hasteth, Cometh with salvation strong. Oh, how past all utterance happy, Sweet and joyful it will be When they who, unseen, have loved Him, Jesus face to face shall see. In that day how good and pleasant, This poor world to have despised ; And how mournful and how bitter, Dear that lost world to have prized. Blessed then earth's patient mourners, Who for Christ have toiled and died, Driven by the world's rough pressure In those mansions to abide. •See The Dolphin for January, p. 51. COMMENT ON THE -DIES IRAE." 429 Ibi jam non erit metus, There shall be no sighs nor weeping, Neque luctus, neque fletus, Not a shade of doubt or fear, Non egestas, non senectus, No old age, no want, nor sorrow, Nullus denique defectus. Nothing sick or lacking there. Ibi pax erit perennis There the peace will be unbroken, Et laetitia solennis, Deep and solemn joy be shed ; Flos et decus juventutis Youth in fadeless flower and freshness, Et perfectio salutis. And Salvation perfected. Nemo potest cogitare What will be the bliss and rapture Quantum erit exultare, None can dream and none can tell, Tunc in coelis habitare There to reign among the Angels, Et cum angelis regnare. In that heavenly home to dwell. Ad hoc regnum me vocare, To those realms, just Judge, oh call me, Juste Judex, tunc dignare, Deign to open that blest gate, Quem exspecto, quem requiro, Thou whom seeking, looking, longing, Ad quem avidus suspiro. I with eager hope await. These stanzas present the joyful aspect of the Day of Judgment ; but the poem nevertheless deals also, as it should, with the un- happy lot of the condemned souls : O quam grave, quam immite Ibi flammis exuretur A sinistris erit : Ite ! Et a vermibus rodetur, Cum a dextris : Vos venite ! Ab angustiis angetur, Dicet rex, largitor vitae. Qui salvari non meretur, etc. It is unnecessary to illustrate further; for it is clear by this time that the mediaeval mind saw in the Day of Judgment its terrors, indeed (as Christ would have all Christians, of whatever age, con- template those terrors), but could also see its blessed joys, — could in spirit " look up " and see that their redemption was at hand. It is strange that anyone should, in the face of such hymno- logical demonstrations as those we have referred to (and they form but a slight portion of the testimony that could easily be adduced), arraign the Middle Ages for ascetical harshness. It is strange, too, that the Dies Irae should be the text chosen for such comment as : " Taught to look on Christ as Jehovah rather than the merciful Mediator whose atoning Blood," etc. This generali- zation of the Dies Irae into a sweeping arraignment of the Middle Ages would be a piece of very poor logic, even were the logic based on a correct analysis of the great Sequence. But what could be more " evangelical " than the Dies Irae itself? 430 THE DOLPHIN. Recordare, Jesu pie Quod sura causa tuae viae — what is this but an appeal to Christ ? not as the terrible Jehovah of the Old Law, but as the loving Mediator of the New Law, whose atoning Blood was made a possibility by the Incarnation, as ex- pressly alluded to in the line : Quod sura causa tuae viae ? And from this stanza until the end of the Hymn we find nothing but an elaboration of this one thought. " The atoning Blood and all-sufficient merits " of our Saviour appear in the next stanza : Quaerens me sedisti lassus, Rederaisti crucem passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus ! — where the singer makes the very point that he has been purchased — redemisti — by the Blood shed upon the Cross for him. Redem- isti, — Christ has not merely purchased the sinner: He has re- deemed him, has paid the ransom necessary, has paid it com- pletely; and the appeal is now to that love of Christ for the sinner, to the end that what has been so dearly bought may not be lost again : Tantus labor non sit cassus ! And where are the " feelings of dread and almost of despair " in the stanza which chronicles the forgiveness shown to the " sinful woman" who in the Hymn is called Mary, and the mercy granted to the " penitent thief," — instances of mercy on which the singer bases, not despair, but an explicit hope ? Mihi quoque spem dedisti ! The simple truth is that the hymnody of the Middle Ages, so replete with exquisite and direct allusions to the saving power of the Cross, demonstrates the very opposite thesis to that of Lord Lindsay, whose generalization, howev r er, is shared by other similarly hasty reasoners ; and if this were the place to do it, and if space sufficed, a very interesting paper might be constructed of merely hymnodal — not to speak of other sources of illustration — tributes to the fact we assert. With respect to the Dies Irae, we have shown that the Hymn of Judgment itself was made by its author to pay such a tribute. The Protestant Dr. SchafT recog- COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 43 1 nizes this fact when he says : 9 " The feeling of terror occasioned by that event (i. e. y the Judgment) culminates in the cry of re- pentance, ver. 7 : ' Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,' etc.; but from this the poet rises at once to the prayer of faith, and takes refuge from the wrath to come in the infinite mercy of Him who suffered nameless pain for a guilty world, who pardoned the sinful Magda- lene, and saved the dying robber." X. X. Quaerens me sedisti lassus. Seeking me Thou sattest weary ; Redemisti crucem passus : Redeemedst me, suffering the cross ; Tantus labor non sit cassus. Be not so-great a labor vain. While the idea of resting {sedisti) during the long journey (via of the preceding stanza) is typical, as Mr. Warren is inclined to allow, of all the restings of Jesus, still there can be little doubt that the poet had in mind the exquisitely touching picture of our Lord resting by Jacob's Well, and awaiting the Samaritan woman. "Jesus, being wearied with his journey, sat thus at the well" (John 4: 6). And St. Augustine comments : "Not in vain was Jesus wearied. . . . Jesus was wearied with the journey for your sake." Jesus was indeed wearied " seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The Sacred Humanity of Christ is presented here with such an appealing weakness as to touch every heart to pity and love. Dr. Johnson could not repeat the stanza Quaerens me sedisti lassus without shedding tears ; and his emotion must be shared by all in some measure. Turning from the content of the stanza to its mere form, we meet " the climax of verbal harmony " of the five flawless stanzas beginning with Judex ergo cum sedebit. " The climax of verbal harmony," says Mr. Saintsbury, 10 " corres- ponding to and expressing religious passion and religious awe, is reached in the last, Quaerens me sedisti lassus, Redemisti crucem passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus ! — where the sudden change from the dominant e sounds (except in the rhyme foot) of the first two lines to the a's of the last is simply miraculous, and miraculously assisted by what may be called the 9 Christ in Song, p. 373. 10 Flourishing of Romance, p. 10. 432 THE DOLPHIN, internal sub-rhyme of sedisti and redemisti. This latter effect can rarely be attempted without a jingle : there is no jingle here, only an ineffable melody. After the Dies Irae, no poet could say that any effect of poetry was, as far as sound goes, unattainable, though few could have hoped to equal it, and perhaps no one except Dante and Shakespeare has fully done so." It is indeed interest- ing to listen to so eminent a critic praising in such apparently unmeasured terms a great mediaeval hymn with which Catholics become so familiar from early childhood as to lose, perhaps, a sufficiently keen appreciation of its many and marvellous excel- lences. H. T. Henry. Overbrook Seminary, Pa. THE SOUL OF OLD JAPAN. 1 A STUDY at once more timely and more attractive has seldom offered itself than that lately furnished by Mr. Lafcadio Hearn in his " Interpretation " (tentative as this professedly is) of the inner life of Japan. So far as this is possible to a Western, the writer has learned to see with the eyes, hear with the ears, and think with the brain, of the Far East; and the object of this, the final work of his life, is on the one hand to indicate the breadth of the gulf by which this ancient world lies sundered from us ; and on the other to explain as far as may be how so great a gulf has come to be. It would be impossible without voluminous extracts to do justice to the suggestion of archaic charm with which the opening chapter abounds. " The Calling of the East " which here greets us is the voice of a past already old when history and literature were young. Many people, observes the writer, would be de- lighted, were it only possible, to step backwards into time and find themselves living for a while in the beautiful vanished world of Greek culture ; but even could they do so, the privilege, arch?eologically speaking, would be by no means so great as that which the present still offers us in the existing life of Japan ; for 1 Japan — An Attempt at Interpretation. By Lafcadio Hearn. New York and London: Macmillan & Co. 1904. NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 563 THE DOLPHIN. Vol. VII. May, 1905, No. 5. pretty stories of the butterflies, wonderfully protected by their colors, and of fishes and other animals coming under the same category, which have had to be corrected afterwards and which, now that the passing of Darwinism has become one of the stock subjects in all biological magazines, are seen to have been a good deal more fiction than anything that Verne wrote, but with unfor- tunate tendencies in the matter of unsettling conservative thought with regard to great truths, such as his works were never guilty of. James J. Walsh. New York City. NOTES ON THE ENGLISH VERSIONS OP THE "DIES IRAK" THE following articles by the Rev. Mr. Warren and the Rev. Dr. Henry conclude the series of papers on the Dies Irae. The Hymn has thus been adequately treated in respect both of its proper rendition into English and of its more general literary history. Should any of our readers, however, desire to supple- ment the treatment with quotation or reference, we should be grateful for the courtesy ; and we take this occasion to acknowl- edge the kindness of those who have called our attention to 564 THE DOLPHIN. several translations into English which had escaped the notice of previous bibliographers of the Hymn. — The Editor. Stanzas XI— XVIII. By the late C. F. S. Warren, M.A. 11. Juste Judex ultionis, Donum fac remissionis, Ante diem rationis. Like other lines in the Hymn, this first line is doubtless taken from the Vulgate, in Ps. 94 : 1, " Deus ultionum "; retained as the title of the Psalm in the English Prayer-book version. This has been from the first translated as in the familiar beginning, " O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth," and we may take such to be the primary meaning here. But most translators have taken the passing on of the interpreta- tion to the subject now in hand, according to Isaiah's verse, 35 : 4, "Your God will come with vengeance," as thus — " Thou just Judge of vengeance due, Pardon of my sins renew, Ere the reckoning day ensue. ' ' — Dymock. Other versions, of course, there are which so far as this first line is concerned are not unsatisfactory, but throughout they satisfy not : as where a writer begins with such a line as Mighty Judge of retribu- tion, and going on successfully it may be with Grant the gift of abso- lution, is forced to close with Ere the day of restitution, or execution, or dissolution, or even prosecution — a lame and impotent conclusion. I know that an apology is due for lapsing into such a style of fault- finding ; but it is hard to resist the temptation ; and a man who deliberately chooses the difficult double rhymes when he might choose the easier single ones, has not so much right to claim forbearance, unless it be his firm conviction that he has no right to abandon the exact metre of the original ; and even then it may be answered that the necessity is but imaginary, and the thought therefore nothing more than a delusion. The third line supplies another of the many instances of Thomas of Celano's use of Scriptural language. Ratio is the word used by the Vulgate in the parables both of the Unmerciful Servant (Matt. 18) NOTES ON THE ''DIES 1RAE." 565 and of the Talents (Matt. 25). The allusion is of course directly to the latter of the two parables, where the original phrase is " venit dominus . , . et posuit rationem." The corresponding English word every one will remember, "the lord of those servants cometh and reckoneth with them, ' ' and it has happened here what has not always happened in such cases, that the word reckoning has been very often adopted in the versions. Curiously enough too the Revised New Testament has adopted the identical participial form, altering the translation from reckoneth to ?naking a reckoni?ig. Line i. — Judge, all but universal; avenger, dispenser; just, 21; righteous, 19; dread, great, severe, mighty, supreme, impartial, inexorable ; vengeance, 8 ; retribution, 6 ; deci- sion, 3 ; recompense, 2 ; decree, 1 ; penalty, 1 . Line ii. — Remission, 14 ; absolution, 9 ; pardon, 7 ; forgiveness, 2. Line Hi. — (Day of) reckoning, 19; accounting, 5; execution, 4; inquisition, 3 ; assizes or assize, 3 ; retribution, 2 ; restitu- tion, 2 ; dissolution, 2 ; prosecution, 1 ; decision, division, revision, exaction, revealing, declaring, review, punish- ment, agony. 12. Ingemisco, tanquam reus : Culpa rubet vultus meus : Supplicanti parce, Deus. " Reus " in the first line is not merely one against whom a charge may be brought, but one against whom a charge actually is brought ; for the soul looks upon herself as already accused, if not, so to say without irreverence, "committed for trial "; this is shewn by the line quern patronum rogaturus. But there are very few translators (of those who are categorical ; many as usual are vague and indistinct) who have thus marked out the word ; one is Mr. D. T. Morgan — "As one condemned I sigh apace ; All scarlet is my guilty face ; Lord, to a suppliant grant Thy grace. ' ' With regard to the second line, we must remember that the soul is still in the body while she speaks ; forgetfulness of this led " O," in the Christian Remembrancer, 1825, greatly struck with the seeming absurdity of attributing blushes to a disembodied spirit, to offer the following singular apology — 566 THE DOLPHIN. ' 'Abashed and guilty would I kneel, In blushes deep my shame conceal, Could ghosts thus utter what they feel." The two ways of turning the last line are to retain the imperson- ality of the original supplicanti, or to define it by adding me, or in some like manner ; there are good versions of both kinds, and it is a matter on which opinions may very well be allowed to differ ; still, however, perhaps the former plan is preferable — it is better on the whole to be literal while you can. As to such an ending as "thy suppliant groaning, " or " moaning, ' ' this must be avoided at all risks ; and more certainly still, if one of these words has been used in the first line, the other must not be rhymed with it in the third. I am indeed not very sure that they are now sufficiently dignified to be used at all. Line i. — Groan, 32; sigh, 5; grieve, 2; mourn, 2; wail, sob. Guilty or guilt, 20 : guilty creature, 2 ; guilty thing, 1 ; culprit, 7 ; condemned, 4 ; convicted, 2 ; arraigned, wretched, malefactor. Line ii. — Shame, 22 ; guilt, n ; sin, 3. Blush (verb or noun), 25 ; flush, 3 ; burn, 5 ; dye, 5 ; sting, 1. Crimson, 7 ; scarlet, 2; red, 1. Face, 18; cheek, 10; each cheek, 1 ; brow, 4 ; feature, 2 ; visage 1. Line Hi. — Spare, 39 ; hear, 5 ; pity, 3 ; (grant or give) grace, 6 ; mercy, 5. Suppliant, 37 ; who supplicate, 1 ; supplicating cry, 1 ; beseecher, 1. God, 24; Lord, 16; Jesu, Saviour, Holy One. 13. Qui Mariam absolvisti, Et latronem exaudisti ; Mihi quoque spem dedisti. We come in this verse to another various reading worthy of notice. There can be no doubt that Qui Mariam as here given is the correct reading ; but the same Paris Missal mentioned under verse 1 reads Peccatricem, and as there, so here too, alters the reading without any authority. It used to be held almost, so to say, as an article of faith, that the woman whose anointing of our Lord's feet is recorded in Luke 7 was no other than Mary Magdalene ; opinion on this point began to change almost immediately after the Reformation (leading to the omission of St. Mary Magdalene's Day, 2 2d July, from the Second NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 567 Book of King Edward) ... As this latter opinion grew, it would seem that editors (which few men would now do) considered them- selves at liberty to alter the text of the Hymn accordingly ; but there can surely be no objection to keeping the original reading as showing the old opinion, . . . any more than there can be in verse 1 to keep- ing Teste David cum Sibylla, even if the introduction of the Sibyl to a Christian hymn be thought questionable ; and thus those translators, not very many, who have taken Peccatricem to turn, must be con- sidered mistaken ; their tabulation will as usual be given hereafter. Mr. Russell's doubt on this point has caused the very general line, " Peace Thy love to faith declared"; Dr. Coles is inconsistent with himself, for in his original he gives Mariam, and yet in two versions he translates Peccatricem. In Doctor Coles' thirteenth version, a professed paraphrase, there is a rendering of some beauty — "When Mary Thy forgiveness sought, Wept, but articulated nought, Thou didst forgive ; didst hear the brief Petition of the dying thief. ' ' And one more version of his, which must be noticed as the only one to introduce the occasion on which Mary, as supposed, was absolved, is this — "Thou didst smile on Mary' 's unction, Tearful love and deep compunction, On the dying thief's confession." ' ' To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise " ; so said our Saviour to the dying thief, and Paradise is not the same as Heaven ; but there are writers who have disregarded this and given such a line as Thou who ledst the thief to heaven, or Thou didst call the thief to heaven ; though such a one as To the thief Thou openedst heaven, or didst promise heaven may be passed as only expressing the implied promise of heaven necessarily to succeed paradise, not, like the others, its actual enjoyment by the thief. The error is an important one, for it in- volves — or it would involve if it were likely the translators thought what they were writing — nothing less than a denial of the Interme- diate State ; to which doctrine the slight attention paid by Protest- antism has been and is one of the greatest blemishes of that religious system. Thomas of Celano has hinted at no doctrine in his original, 568 THE DOLPHIN. and therefore we are not bound to do so in our translations ; but if we do, let us at least do like the awkward lines of Mr. Hoskyns- Abrahall, and hint at a correct one — "Thou to Mary from pollution Didst pronounce full absolution, Nor wast to the felon dying E'en Thy paradise denying." The third line is a distinct avowal that hope has been given, and it is therefore wrong to turn it into a petition for the giving of hope, as is done by two versions of very opposite character ; a Roman Catholic one — ' ' Thou who Mary of the garden And the dying thief didst pardon, Grant e'en me hope's heavenly guerdon." — C. Kent. and a Presbyterian one — "Thou didst save the woman pleading, And the thief beside Thee bleeding ; Grant me hope like pity needing ;" — Dr. Macgill. and to this must be added that the hope still exists, the whole tenor of the verse rests in it ; therefore Mr. Cayley in the Church Times, ( Thou) Once to me a hope appearedst, is also wrong as hinting that the hope is gone. While a mistake of a different kind is in this — "Thou to Mary gavest remission, And didst hear the thief's petition ; Hope shall also cheer my vision." — Dr. Wallace. Mrs. Vansittart is altogether singular in introducing the legendary name of the thief from the Gospel of Nicodemus (Ante-Nicene Library, xvi, 187) — "A pitying ear in mercy lend As erst to Dismas Thou didst bend And hope to Magdalen extend." Lord Roscommon has also what I believe to be a unique version — NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." 569 "Thou who wert moved with Mary's grief, And by absolving of the thief Hast given me hope, now give relief. ' ' Line 1. — Mary, 50; Magdalene, 10; Mary Magdalene, 1; Magda- lene, (four syllables 1 ), 1 ; Mary of the garden (John 19 : 41), 1 ; adulteress, 1 ; harlot (an American variation of Dr. Irons), 1 ; sinner, 3 ; her that sinned, frail one, lost one, sinner grieving, woman pleading, woman crying. Line ii. — Thief, 61; robber, 13 ; malefactor, 1; heaven, 9 ; paradise, 1. Line Hi. — (Hope) hast given, etc., 36; give, etc. (a prayer), 6. 14. Preces meae non sunt dignae ; Sed Tu, bonus, fac benigne, Ne perenni cremer igne. There is here another various reading : the Hammerlein Codex has in the second line donas, which Daniel prefers (" Placet Haem- merlini lectio "), but I find that hardly any translators have taken it except William Drummond of Hawthornden — "My prayers imperfect are and weak, But worthy of Thy grace them make, And save me from hell's burning lake." The translation of the first line is usually fairly literal, though, of course, some writers have added another word to prayers, as Dr. Macgill — " Vows and prayers can save me never, Grace alone can me deliver From the fire that burns for ever. ' ' or an American calling himself Somniator — 1 This syllabification, by the way, is quite wrong. The feminine nature of the word gives it a false appearance of correctness ; but, in fact, the e is not the long e of the Greek, but the mere silent terminal of the English, nor to be sounded any more than in the stock cases of Urbane, and the Libertines, and the Nicolaitanes. If it is to be considered Greek, the form Maria also should be used ; to make half the name English and half Greek is an incongruity. However, good writers have fallen into such an error as this ; cf. Byron — " Thus Nature played with the stalactites, And built herself a chapel of the seas." The Island, t'v. 7. 570 THE DOLPHIN. ' ' All worthless are ray prayers and tears, But be Thou greater than my fears, Lest flame consume my endless years ;" or substituted one for it, as Father Aylward cry — " Worthless though my feeble cry, Help me, gracious Lord, or I Burn in flames that never die, ' ' or some others petition, being particularly useful in its capacity of a rhyme for perdition. Dr. Robertson's line is, Worthless all my tears and turning; which last word thus used alone without anything to define or explain it, is hardly intelligible — but this had to rhyme with burning / Others have expanded the idea, as Archdeacon Rowan — * ' Unworthy Thee my purest prayer, Yet, gracious Lord, Thy servant spare, Doomed else eternal fire to share. ' ' The second line is well turned by Dr. Coles thus — ' ' My prayers are worthless, well I know, But, good, do Thou Thy goodness shew, And save me from impending woe," which verse, if unending were read for impending, might be among the best renderings. One or two others also have like expressions, as Mrs. Charles — "All unworthy is my prayer, Gracious One, be gracious there, From the quenchless fire O spare." — but on the whole the lines representing this second one are often somewhat indefinite. In the third line I am inclined to think that the use of the word burn should be avoided, I mean as employed of the passive agent ; it seems to have something about it of an undignified sound rather difficult to explain, and it will be remembered that the compilers of Hymns Ancient and Modern have altered it in Father Caswall's well- known translation of St. Francis Xavier — "My God, I love Thee, not because I hope for heaven thereby, Nor because they who love Thee not Must burn eternally. ' ' NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." S7 l And perhaps one of the best ways of turning the verse, both so as to avoid this word and for other reasons, is something thus — " My prayers are all unworthy Thee, Yet of Thy goodness favor me, Lest endless fire my portion be, ' ' — H. J. Macdonald. or thus — "Though my prayers deserve no hire, Yet, good Lord, grant my desire, I may 'scape eternal fire." — James Dymock. The ten-syllable triplet of the Sacred Heart, 1880, is thus, alluding to Mary Magdalene's prayer — "Not that my prayers with Thee like power may claim, But that Thy love and pity are the same To save us from the everlasting flame." The Lamp of 1856 has a verse containing a curious line — ' * Through Thee my thoughts to heaven aspire ; Thy mercy can withstand Thine ire, And save me from avenging fire." Mr. Simms' line is also rather singular, I pray, yet prayer is not my plea. The Earl of Crawford introduces the word Gehenna — "Worthless are my prayers, I know, Yet in mercy spare me, so Shall I 'scape Gehenna's woe," and one other singularity which may be noted is that of a Roman Catholic writer who plainly refers the ignis, perennis though it be, to purgatory — "Worthless though my prayers, benignly Save me by Thy grace, divinely Stretched midst purging fires supinely. ' ' — Charles Kent. Line i. — Prayer or prayers, 67 ; petition, 3 ; cry, 2 ; supplication, pleading. Worthless, 28; unworthy, 12; vain, 2; poor, 2 • weak, unavailing, imperfect, valueless. 572 THE DOLPHIN. Line ii. — Good, 5 ; gracious, 4 ; benign, 2 ; mild, dear. Line tit.— Fire or fires, 23; flame or flames, 22; hell, 5; woe, 4; perdition, 3; pain, Gehenna. Endless, 18; eternal, 17; unending, 6 ; for ever, 6 ; undying, 3 ; quenchless, 3 ; deathless, 2 ; everlasting, 2 ; lasting, 1 . Burning, 1 1 . 15. Inter oves locum praesta, Et ab haedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. To take the words as they stand before us, one would think that in the face of the text " He shall set the sheep on the right hand, but the goats on the left, ' ' there would be no hesitation in translating the verse literally. Yet for some strange reason not a few writers seem loath to use the word goats even where they use that sheep. They might have had the authority of Ben Jonson's "Elegy on Lady Digby"— " Indeed she is not dead, but laid to sleep In earth till the last trump awake the sheep And goats together, whither they must come To hear their Judge and His eternal doom." Two writers, on the other hand, have used goats without sheep, and two for sheep have substituted lambs ; much as Wiclif of old, perhaps it may be said, substituted kids for goats. Another turning not un- common is to make the necessary distinction by contrasting the words flock and herd, usually of course with some epithet, though there is one case where they are used alone, thus — "Midst the flock O make my station, From the herd in separation ; At Thy right be my vocation." — Dr. Krauth, Philadelphia. One writer has the following line, as if sheep never had horns (this, however, is a little hypercritical, for there is no doubt that most men's first idea of a sheep is of a hornless beast) — "Shepherd, midst thy flock enfold me, Nor with horned herd behold me, Having on Thy right enrolled me." This is by Mr. Charles Kent. One or two other singularities are these — NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAEr 573 ' ' ' Mongst the sheep grant me a stand, Drive me from the goats' cursed band, Placing me on Thy right-hand." — Patrick Carey. « 'Mid Thy sheep be my place given, Far the goats from me be driven, At Thy right-hand fixed in heaven." — W. R. Williams. where the expression, strangely enough, is the exact reverse of Carey's. Archbishop Trench well shows the simple style which here, as always, should be preferred — " 'Mid Thy sheep my place command From the goats far off to stand ; Set me, Lord, at Thy right-hand. ' ' Line i. — Sheep and goats, 50 ; sheep (alone), 7 ; Thy sheep, 37 ; lambs, 2 ; right-hand flock, 1 ; the flock, 1 ; Thy flock, 1 ; Thy friends, 1; chosen (subst.), 1; chosen (adj.), 3; blessed (adj.), 2 ; blessed (subst.), 1 ; favored, holy, elected. Line ii. — Goats (alone), 3; he-goats, 1; goat-like race, 1 ; " goat- ish ' ' band, 2 ; unwashed and sordid, 1 ; unhallowed band, unholy band, brutish band, convicted band, ungodly band, condemned band, sinful band ; apostate race, wicked race ; accursed line; guilty nation; cursed (subst.), vile, dark, foul, lost, evil. Line Hi. — Right-hand, 45; right-side, 2; right (alone), 15; Thy side. 16. Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis ; Voca me, cum benedictis. In the versions of Sylvester and Drummond, and in others beside^ the word confutatis is left untranslated. This is a piece of careless- ness which the translators probably allowed themselves from failing to perceive its full force ; this I imagine to be not simply that the cursed are put aside, but that they are put down by words — in short, "con- futed ; ' ' that is to say, that the divine answer, ' ' Inasmuch as ye did it not, etc.," was in Thomas of Celano's mind. It would not be easy 574 THE DOLPHIN. to express this fully in English, unless by the use of this very word confuted; few if any translators have adopted it in literal versions, except in one somewhat unmeaning line which I have seen, When hard speeches are confuted. Nor indeed is it necessary to do so ; but at least the word, having a fuller meaning than many writers seem to have found upon the surface, must not be totally omitted. A good translation is this, though hardly simple enough by reason of the duplication of epithets on the flame — ' ' When the accurst are put to shame, Banished to fierce devouring flame, Then with Thy blessed call my name. ' ' — R. M'Corkle. Line i. — Accursed or cursed, $$ '■> wicked, 8 ; lost, 7 ; damned, 3 ; condemned, 3 ; doomed, 2 ; reprobate, 2 ; foes, 2 ; vile, guilty, sinners, scorners. Line ii. — Flame or flames, 40 ; fire, fiery, 9 ; hell, 5 ; burning, 3 ; torment, tormenting, 5 ; devouring, 6 ; fierce, 6 ; penal, 2 ; direful, scorching, piercing, bitter, keen; eternal, ever- lasting, never-ending, never-dying, quenchless. Line Hi. — Blessed or blest, 34 ; saints, 9 ; child, children, 2 ; elect, chosen, ransomed, saved, redeemed. 17. Oro, supplex et acclinis, Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis. This last verse of the Hymn seems on the whole to have tried translators as much as any ; not that there is any difficulty in the actual rendering of the words, for the two first lines at any rate are extremely clear, and there is hardly a possibility of mistake ; but it seems not to have been found easy to put the simple and pathetic Latin into equally pathetic and simple English. There are indeed few versions to be found at the same time literal, simple, and correct — for there has been a very common failure, which will be mentioned directly, to see the full meaning of the last line. One of the best is Isaac Williams — " Suppliant, fallen, low I bend, My bruised heart to ashes rend, Care Thou, Lord, for my last end ; ' ' NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAEr 575 the mistake is in the confusion of metaphor in the second line — you cannot turn a thing into ashes by rending it ; what the original does is to compare the heart to ashes, but not to state how it may be imagined to have become such. With regard to that word cinis itself, ashes, as it is the most com- mon, so it is the best English ; Mr. Mackellar adds the epithet gray ; clay is not applicable, and cinders, though used by two or three, and even by Father Caswall, has a ludicrous sound, and besides is incor- rect j cinis is not a cinder or cinders. Nor is it beneath our dignity to remember that though coal was of course not unknown when Thomas of Celano wrote, yet in all probability wood-ashes were in his mind, to which as far as I know the word cinders is never applied. Again, how far more dignified a simile to compare the contrite heart, the worn-down heart, to the fine powder of wood-ashes, than as Father Caswall seems to do, to the rough, hard cinder of coal ! Acclinis I take to be not strictly speaking prostrate, as some have turned it ; bending, bowing, kneeling, all of which are common enough, are nearer to the true meaning. The mistake just mentioned which many translators have made in the last line is in limiting the meaning of finis to that which we com- monly call death — that is, the separation of soul and body. Though this is no doubt included, finis is the end in the widest sense, i.e., the doom of the soul at the Day of Judgment, which forms the whole subject of the Hymn. Line i. — Suppliant, 20 ; prostrate, etc., 15 ; low or lowly, 15 ; bend, etc., 16; bow, etc., 6; kneel, etc., 4; downcast, prone. Line ii. — Contrite, etc., 22; crushed, n; bruised, 3; broken, 3; scorched, dry; ashes, 22 ; dust, 15 ; cinders, 3; clay, 2 ; embers, 1. Line Hi. — End, etc., 23 ; death, etc., 16. 18. Lacrimosa dies ilia, Qua resurget ex favilla, Judicandus homo reus ; Huic ergo parce, Deus : Pie Jesu, Domine, Dona eis Requiem. It has already been shown that this so-called eighteenth verse is probably not part of the original Hymn, and thus some translators 576 THE DOLPHIN. have omitted it altogether, though on the other hand more than might be expected have inserted it. But more freedom has been taken with it than with any other part, for the original metre of couplets has often been altered into |the triplets of the Hymn's main body ; it is perhaps a mistake to do this, for the change of metre is not without its beauty, and to give this up without a reason seems useless — musical considerations may probably in some cases have been the reason. It is a want of exactness not to notice that the favilla of this eighteenth verse is of course the favilla of the first ; Mr. Copeland's version brings this out very clearly, thus — (First verse.) " Day of doom, that day of ire ; Earth shall sink in crumbling fire, (Last verse.) Day of tears, that day of ire, Which shall from the crumbling fire . > » • • . . . , but several writers have passed it over, and instead of earth 1 s ashes have made the favilla to be mari 's ashes, or modified their own idea into that of a grave or tomb, or even given it some " slight poetical amplification," as the late Dr. Dykes once euphemistically described wordiness, in some such way as this — 1 i O that day of lamentation When from his dark habitation Man shall rise to hear his sentence ; Spare him, God, on his repentance. ' ' The Requiem, as it is sometimes called par excellence, or the Sus- pirium, as Daniel names the last two lines, is what perhaps may be termed the most crucial point in the whole Hymn. Containing as it does, a distinct " prayer for the dead," its translation instantly shews its translator's bias. One Roman Catholic has, as in a former verse, and with even less authority, gone out of his way to introduce pur- gatory — "Spare me, Lord, Thy mercy shewing, Jesus, Thy sweet rest bestowing On them 'mid the clean flame glowing." NOTES ON THE "DIES IRAE." S77 And (a lighter comment) the professional ideas of Mr. Epes Sargent, the American barrister-poet, have been at the last too much for him, causing him to write 2 — "When, that day of tears impending, From his ashes man ascending At Thy bar shall be attendant, Spare him, God, spare the defendant." The best translation that I have found is both Roman Catholic and American, from the Catholic Manual, N. Y., 1870, where the metre is changed to a ten-syllable line, thus — 1 ' O bounteous Jesus, Lord for ever blest, Give faithful souls departed endless rest. ' ' Mr. Simms' version on the other hand is a ^-syllable triplet — "Lord Jesus, to Thy knee In life and death we flee ; Vouchsafe us rest in Thee, ' ' and it is the solitary instance of a return to triplets after the use of couplets in agreement with the original in the first part of the verse. Mr. Hay in his paraphrase has kept the original Latin in the last line, thus — "O that day of lamentation, When in sudden consternation All the doomed shall hide their face ; Spare them, spare them, God of grace ; Lord, we bend to Thee for them, Do?ia eis requiem ! ' ' The word requiem alone is also used by the Catholic Choralist, 1842, and Mr. Thomas, 1867. For printing Dona eos requie to preserve the rhyme — as it were " Gift them with rest " — I can, though I have once seen it done, find no authority. 2 In the same way Dr. Coles the physician has written — " When I enter death's dark portal, Feebly beats ihe pulse aortal." 578 THE DOLPHIN. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." Stanzas XI— XVIII. XI. XL Juste Judex ultionis, Just Judge of vengeance, Donum fac remissionis Grant the gift of pardon Ante diem rationis. Ere the day of accounting. XII. XII. Ingemisco tanquam reus, I groan like one condemned ; Culpa rubet vultus meus : My face reddens with guilt ; Supplicanti parce, Deus. The suppliant spare, O God. XIII. XIII. Qui Mariam absolvisti Who didst absolve Mary, Et latronem exaudisti, Who didst hearken to the thief, Mihi quoque spem dedisti. To me also Thou gavest hope. Mr. Warren interprets the line Juste Judex ultionis : " Just Judge of the punishment, that is, I suppose, of the proportioning of it to a man's deeds." The word ultio occurs in the Vulgate : " Deus ultionum Dominus, Deus ultionem libere egit. Exaltare qui judicas terram " (" The Lord is the God to whom revenge belongeth ; the God of revenge hath acted freely. Lift up Thy- self, thou That judgest the earth ")} There is no need of refining with extreme precision ; for the sense of the verse seems to be that of Deuteronomy (32 : 35), " Mea est ultio, et ego retribuam in tem- pore " (" Revenge is Mine, and I will repay in due time "). That reus should be rendered condemned rather than accused appears to be demanded by the verse following : — Culpa rubet vultus meus, in which the " defendant " (or " accused ") admits the charge and is virtually " condemned " already. Besides, a mere " accusation " should not cause apprehensive groanings such as the poet pic- tures. The line Qui Mariam absolvisti has been changed into Peccatricem absolvisti, perhaps for the reason that St. Luke does not name the peccatrix who anointed the feet of our Lord. 1 Ps. 93 : 1, 21. COMMENT ON THE "D/ES IRAE." 579 Lord Roscommon's version of this stanza : — Thou who wert moved by Mary's grief, And by absolving of the thief Hast given me hope, now give relief! includes the technical word " absolving " used so frequently and in this unique sense by Catholics. In the second stanza, Ros- common renders the third verse — Shall have few venial faults to find. Mr. Orby Shipley contended in the Dublin Review (January, 1883, and October, 1884) that the version ascribed to Roscom- mon was not improbably Dryden's in reality. He thinks that at least an "indirect argument" might be based on the words "venial" and "absolving" occurring, as we have just seen, in this version. " A further indirect argument might be raised for a non-Protestant origin of the version, from its Catholic phraseology, which will be apparent on reading, amongst other triplets, the second and thirteenth, in which the author speaks of the ' venial ' faults of mankind, and of the ' absolving of the thief.' With the exception of two Protestant translators, who use the term 1 shriven,' perhaps none other non-Catholic has employed the later technical phraseology. No one, probably, besides the author, has used the former in his rendering of Dies Irae. On the other hand, it is only fair to say that the concluding stanza of the version ascribed to Roscommon has not a Catholic tone about its render- ing. ' Let guilty man compassion find ' are its last words. These, of course, are no equivalent, either to the original Dona eis requiem, or to the other early translations — e.g., * Give rest to all departed souls ' (1657), or, ' Eternal rest to them afford' (1687). In fact, the final couplet has been omitted." The other arguments by which Mr. Shipley contends for the Dryden authorship need not detain us here. They are acutely reasoned out and clearly set forth. Roscommon died in 1684; and one of the arguments made by Mr. Shipley must be revised, when he declares that the version first appeared in a volume whose preface was written in 17 17, but whose title-page bears the date 1721 ; for the version appeared in Miscellanea Sacra in 1696. The discussion is very interesting and the contention is very likely a just one. In the 580 THE DOLPHIN. Preface of his Annus Sanctus (1884) Mr. Shipley repeats his view- that the version of Dies Irae was in all probability wrongly attributed to Lord Roscommon. XIV. Preces meae non sunt dignae ; Sed tu bonus fac benigne Ne perenni cremer igne. XV. Inter oves locum praesta, Et ab hoedis me sequestra, Statuens in parte dextra. XVI. Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis, Voca me cum benedictis. XVII. Oro supplex et acclinis, Cor contritum quasi cinis, Gere curam mei finis. XIV. Unworthy are my prayers : But do Thou benignly grant that I bum not in everlasting fire. XV. Amid Thy sheep appoint me a place, And separate me from the goats, Placing me at Thy right-hand. XVI. The accursed having been silenced And given over to the bitter flames, Call me with the blessed. XVII. Kneeling and prostrated I pray, With heart broken as it were ashes, Guard Thou my end. The fifteenth stanza borrows its thought and phrase from our Lord's description (Matt. 25 : 32-34): "And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats : And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right-hand : " Come ye blessed of my Father. . . ." etc. Versions that render contritum by contrite do not bring out sufficiently the strong figure in the word itself. Contritus means, of course, broken into small pieces ; but the poet adds to the figure the idea of " reducing to ashes," or impalpable particles — " utterly crushed." Apropos of this last stanza, it may be permissible to repeat the incident related by Johnson of the last moments of Roscom- mon, even though Johnson's information came to him at third or fourth hand : " At the moment in which he expired, he uttered, with an energy of voice that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of Dies Irae : — COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 58 1 ' My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in my end.' " Crashaw's exquisite version was doubtless the inspiration for Roscommon : — " hear a suppliant heart all crushed And crumbled into contrite dust ! My hope, my fear — my Judge, my Friend ! Take charge of me and of my end !' ' With this seventeenth stanza ends the triplet construction of the poem, if not, indeed, the poem itself as originally written. This is therefore an appropriate place for considering the general features of the Dies Irae, — its carefully progressive argument, its Scriptural allusiveness, its vivid descriptiveness in the first six stanzas, and its lyric intensity in the remaining stanzas. With re- spect to the argument of the Hymn, we can scarcely do better than transfer to this page the words of Orby Shipley. 2 "The popularity and appreciation of Dies Irae, and the reasons of both with simple and learned alike, can only, however, be intelli- gently estimated when, leaving the accidental form in which this divine hymn and poem is cast, we carefully examine its substance. Of course the mere perusal of it, or even a casual attention to its recita- tion, impresses the reader or listener with an undefined but real sense of greatness and power. He feels himself in the presence of a noble and masterly production. But, when the sequence is mentally picked to pieces, when each element is weighed, when the union and inter- dependence, and oftentimes the logical following of each succeeding portion, is tested — then the consummate art of the craftsman is dis- closed. The very simplicity of its form becomes a mask for the intri- cate elaborateness of its conception and development. Its story, the incidents, the reflections, their rhythm, flow from source onward to conclusion with unruffled and unbroken continuity. But this result has been attained only by the exercise of extremest skill. In the prose for the dead there is no check, no parenthesis, no wandering from the point, no retrogression or looking backward. It begins with the end of life, it ends with the -beginning of eternity. Between these limits, the legend, so to say, is self-evolved, self-contained. The great mediaeval poem of the day of doom is less a series of independent pictures or detached studies than one long panorama, as it were, 2 Dublin Review, 1883, p. 379. 582 THE DOLPHIN. of some mighty quick-flowing river and its scenery Its imagery and scenes, its facts and events, its words and thoughts, its prayers and ejaculations, its mental records, conscience-searching questions and intellectual memories, as naturally and unaffectedly suc- ceed each other, without a forced cohesion or inharmonious break, as the banks, and towns, and hills, and forests, and islands, and other natural features of a river scene, in a series from the lens of a magic lantern of dissolving views. ' ' In the brief space of the first six stanzas, the prophetic pictur- ing of the Last Judgment is given. A few bold lines on a narrow- canvas (for eighteen lines must be considered as the briefest possi- ble limits within which to paint such a picture) bring the scene of the consummation of the world before us quite as vividly as the masterpieces of painting on this subject, with their multitudinous figures crowded together even within amplest limits of space. The first stanza announces the theme (in the first line), the catastrophe (in the second), and the prophetic witness thereto, both of the Hebrew and of the pagan world (in the third line). It is a sum- mary, majestic and marvellous, of prophecy and fulfilment, crystallized within three short lines — just twenty-four syllables — of rhymed Latin verse. It is a text, clear and compact, for what follows. The second stanza then shows us mankind " withering away for fear and expectation," as the Great Judge appears Cuncta stride discussurus, — to sift everything " like as corn is sifted in a sieve " (Amos 9 : 9). This coming of the Judge, to weigh everything with nicest balance, naturally suggests the summoning of mankind before that Great Assize — Death and Hell must give up their dead, and the Sea must give up the dead that are in it — and the next stanza echoes for us, in its marvellous wedding of sound to sense, the "trump of God" resounding through all the sepulchres of earth and summoning all mankind before the Throne (" And I saw a great white throne . . . and the dead both great and small, standing in sight of the throne." — Apoc. 20 : 11,12). The next stanza appropriately pictures the stupefac- tion of Death and Nature at seeing the innumerable dead whose final chapter had seemed, in the long tale of centuries which had passed over them without disturbing their ancient rest, to have been completely written, rising from countless graves and hurry- COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 583 ing to judgment. There at length they are all assembled, "both great and small " ; and the next stanza shows us the Judge seated in terrific majesty, presiding over all the generations of men, pre- pared to search into their most hidden thoughts and to leave unavenged not even a single " idle word that men shall speak." And therefore, in the next stanza, appears the record of all our thoughts, words, deeds — the liber scriptus — the " book of life " ot the Apocalypse, holding everything on which judgment is to be passed. The first part of the poem is finished — the mise en scene has been arranged — and the agony of one individual soul begins. What, indeed, shall it find to say at that dreadful judgment? When, as St. Peter says, " scarce the just shall be saved," what advocate shall it entreat to take up its cause and plead for it ? This seventh stanza forms the bridge between the epic and the lyric in the Hymn ; it connects, with the scene painted in the first six stanzas, the present cry of the soul that He who shall then appear as a rigorously just Judge shall now prove Himself a tender and forgiving Saviour. The eighth stanza accordingly presents us with this twofold character of Christ — the " Rex tremendae majestatis " in the Last Judgment, the " Fons pietatis " of the present life ; and it does not present us with this two fold character in any confused way, but with almost scholastic precision refers in the first line to the awful majesty of that King (thus connecting Him with the Judgment which has just been pictured) and in the third line to the tender pity of the Saviour (which is to be the basis of the appeal that follows). The argument of the Hymn is thus evolved with exquisite carefulness, the transitions being made with logical facility as well as with rhetorical felicity. The following six stanzas develop the thought of Christ's mercy ; and here again we can perceive the symmetrical and logical development of the argument. They comprise, namely, two divisions of three stanzas each, the first division dealing with the first basis on which an appeal may rest, — the labors and sufferings of Christ ; the second division dealing with the second basis, — the repentance of the sinner ; each division consisting, moreover, of two stanzas followed by a stanza containing an appropriate prayer. Thus, the first division begins with Recordare, Jesu pie, and refers to the love shown by Christ in becoming Man (Quod 584 THE DOLPHIN. sum causa tuae viae) ; the next stanza sums up the whole loving life of Christ in the literal and figurative weariness of Christ at the Well of Jacob ( Quaerens me sedisti lassus), and the last scene of that life on the Cross (Redemisti crucem passus). Each of these stanzas concludes with a prayer ; the third line of the first being Ne me perdas ilia die, and of the second, Tantus labor non sit cassus ; while they are followed by a stanza (symmetrically, like the third lines in the stanzas, a third stanza in the division) of appropriate prayer. Similarly, the second division (of three stanzas, as before), beginning with Ingemisco tanquam reus, and dealing with that repentance which is the second basis of an appeal for mercy, comprises three stanzas, of which the first one contains an acknowledgment of guilt, and the second points to the mercy shown by Christ to the penitent hearts of the sinful woman and the dying thief. Each of these stanzas contains, in its third line, a prayer ; while the third stanza of the division is, as noted in the case of the similar third stanza of the first division, devoted wholly to prayer. Fortified now by remembrance of Christ's love (as shown in His incarnation, life and death) and His mercy (as shown to Mary and to the dying thief), the singer once more turns his gaze, in prospect, to that picture of the Last Judg- ment which had overwhelmed him with terror. Now, however, he looks forward with hope : Inter oves locum praesta, Et ab hoedis me sequestra Statuens in parte dextra. The transition is again natural and logical ; and in making it, he gives himself opportunity to sketch the last scenes of that Great Day of Wrath. The Scriptural division of the sheep from the goats is placed before us ; and in the following stanza we hear the voice of Christ calling the " blessed of His Father " to heaven, and uttering an everlasting woe on the accursed. The following (and final) stanza writes, as the last word of the pathetic final line, the appropriate word finis. Who can venture to say that a hymn which, within such brief limits, can present such a wealth of Scriptural allusiveness moulded into such perfect form ; can state so succinctly and develop so logically its theme ; can bring together, without con- COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAEr 585 fusion of thought or blurring of impressions, such felicitous word- painting of the tremendous scene it handles and such pathetic pleadings of the heart that contemplates that scene ; can condense so adequately whole tragedies and perfect prayers in the space of a single line, and can do this with the precision of a scholastic philosopher stating or proving his thesis, and at the same time with the felicitous ease of an accomplished rhetorician moving with confident gracefulness within the " narrow plot of ground " of his self-imposed poetic and stanzaic and rhymic limitations; who, indeed, can venture to say that such a hymn is not an incomparable masterpiece both of poetry and of hymnody ? XVIII. XVIII. Lacrimosa dies ilia Doleful is that day Qua resurget ex favilla Whereon shall rise from the glowing ashes Judicandus homo reus : Guilty man to be judged : Huic ergo parce, Deus. Him therefore spare, O God. Pie Jesu, Domine, Merciful Jesus, Lord, Dona eis requiem. Amen. Grant them rest. Amen. Daniel remarks that for a time he thought that these verses had been added to the original poem in order to make it suitable for a sequence in the Mass for the dead, but that his more matured judgment considered the poem to have been written by its author as a sequence for the dead. The Mantuan marble text did not include these three couplets, but ended with : Voca me cum benedictis, followed by the stanza : Ut consors beatitatis That amid the blessed band Vivam cum justificatis I may share their glory grand In aevum aeternitatis. In the endless Fatherland. To these twenty-one stanzas (i. e. f the four introductory ones, the sixteen of the Roman missal, and this appended one) of the Mantuan marble, the editor of the Konigsberg Gesangbuch added a further final one : Ubi malorum levamen There, no more by evils pressed, In te, Jesu, mi solamen, Jesus, on Thy loving breast Per saeclorum saecla. Amen. I shall find an endless rest. The Lacrimosa couplets are replaced in a Brandenburg missal by: Ne gehennae ignis laedat Let Thy handiwork be free Tuum plasma ; sed te edat, Of Gehenna ; and in Thee Digne semper in te credat. Find sweet food and liberty. 586 THE DOLPHIN. And in a Vienna MS. by : Ne me perdas, sed regnare, Fac cum tuis, Jesu care, Et in coelis gloriare. Lose me not ; but let me reign, Jesus, with Thy blessed train Who in heaven foraye remain. What end the authors of these supplementary, or rather sup- positious, stanzas sought, is not easily divined. The Lacrimosa couplets are not, it is true, in the stanzaic forms of the preceding strophes of the hymn ; and only two of the couplets rhyme, while the last couplet has lines of only seven syllables. On the other hand, they in no wise mar the beauty of the hymn, even should we agree with some hymnologists in supposing them a mere addition made for liturgical reasons. The gradual lessening of the triple rhyming, as found in the first two couplets, together with the lessening of the metrical line in the last couplet, forms rather a quiet and pleasing cadence, or falling away from the preceding terrors. At the Lacrimosa the Hsemmerlein expansion begins, Dr. Coles' translation of which may be added here for the sake of completeness : Lachrymosa die ilia, Cum resurget ex favilla, Tanquam ignis ex scintilla, Judicandus homo reus ; Huic ergo parce, Deus; Esto semper adjutor meus. Quando coeli sunt movendi, Dies adsunt tunc tremendi, Nullum tempus poenitendi. Sed salvatis laeta dies, Et damnatis nulla quies, Sed daemonum effigies. O tu Deus majestatis, Alme candor Trinitatis, Nunc conjunge cum beatis. Vitam meam fac felicem Propter tuam genitricem Jesse florem et radicem. Praesta nobis tunc levamen, Dulce nostrum fac certamen, Ut clamemus omnes, Amen ! On that day of woe and weeping, When, like fire from spark upleaping, Starts from ashes where he's sleeping, Man account to Thee to render, Spare the miserable offender ! Be my helper and defender ! When the heavens away are flying, Days of trembling then and crying, •For repentance time denying ; To the saved a day of gladness, To the damned a day of sadness, Demon forms and shapes of madness. God of infinite perfection, Trinity's serene reflection, Give me part with the election ! Happiness upon me shower, For Thy Mother's sake, with power, Who is Jesse's root and flower. From Thy fulness comfort pour us, Fight Thou with us, or fight for us, So we'll shout, Amen, in chorus. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 587 It will be noticed that the Hsemmerlein text makes hide refer to the " first person " or the singer of the hymn ; for " Esto sem- per adjutor meus " follows immediately. Translators refer huic generally to the preceding homo reus, Wallace referring it, how- ever, to the corpse to be interred. The Mantuan Marble prefixed, as we have seen, four stanzas, Dr. Irons' rendering of which is as follows : Cogita, anima fidelis, Think, O Christian soul and sigh — Ad quid respondere velis Unto what thou must reply, Christe venturo de coelis ; When Christ cometh from the sky ! Cum deposcet rationem When He asketh one by one, Ob boni commissionem, For each good deed left undone, Ob mali commissionem. And for every evil done. Dies ilia, dies irae, Ah that day, for judgment sent ! Quam conemur praevenire, May we now that day prevent — Obviamque Deo ire ; Meet our God, and now repent ! Seria contritione, With contrition deep and sad, Gratiae apprehensione, With all grace that may be had, Vitae emendatione. And amend our life, if bad. As has been pointed out already, both of these additions to the Missal text must be considered as alien to the original text of the poem. 3 They need not detain us further, and have been included here merely for the sake of completeness. Whether the six lines beginning " Lacrimosa dies ilia " are older than the Missal text or were added to the Hymn for the purpose of adapting it to its liturgical function as a sequence, is a question that has been disputed on both sides. Mone, as has been shown in these papers, judges them older than the century gener- ally considered as that of the composition of the Hymn. Mr. Warren, however, thinks the proof inconclusive. They depart, of course, somewhat violently from the stanzaic structure of the rest of the sequence, and form rhymed couplets instead of trip- lets, although the first two couplets retain the rhythm of the pre- ceding verses. The last two lines depart both from the rhythm and the rhyme of the Hymn, unless we may consider the in of requiem negligible. March favors the construction — 3 See The Dolphin, November, 1904, p. 520. 588 THE DOLPHIN. Pie Jesu, Domine, Dona eos requie, as it consults for the rhymic quality of the sequence and is " a frequent construction with dono, of which an example should be in the grammars." 4 He refers for illustration to the Ven. Bede's hymn De Natali Innocentium, in which these lines occur : — Donat supernis sedibus Quos rex peremit impius. The concluding couplet of the Dies Irae contains distinctly a prayer for the happy repose of the souls of the dead, and has been therefore looked at askance by many Protestant translators, who have evaded its direct rendering in various twisting fashions. Like so many other Latin hymns, the Dies Irae has proved too attractive for our separated brethren, and they were forced to pay it the tribute of translation, although their religious views constrain them to a makeshift as its concluding couplet. " It is not won- derful," says Trench, " that a poem such as this should have con- tinually allured and continually defied translators ;" and he refers to the letter sent by Jeremy Taylor to John Evelyn, suggesting that Evelyn make a translation of it : "I was thinking to have begged of you a translation of that well-known hymn, Dies Irae, dies ilia, which, if it were a little changed, would make an excel- lent divine song." 5 " If it were a little changed " — that has been the text held in mind by our separated brethren. But Mr. Orby Shipley, who as a convert to Catholicity as well as a distinguished hymnologist could look at such a treatment of the Hymn from the double standpoint of his previous and his subsequent religious convictions, has not a kind word for the revisers of the Hymn. " Perhaps the main point of hostile criticism which in any case demands a protest at our hands, and which may first be stated, though it comes last in order of time, is one which most unfavor- ably impresses a Catholic reader of many Protestant translations. It is this, the manner, unjustifiable in morals and false in criticism, in which the concluding couplet of Dies Irae is either tampered * Latin Hymns, p. 26 1. 6 Quoted in Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry from Life of Jeremy Taylor, Eden's Ed. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAEr 589 with, or mistranslated. This course is often adopted by authors who do not boldly and more honestly omit from their rendering the couplet altogether. Underthe circumstances, simple omission would be commendable by comparison with the more usual method of making Thomas of Celano speak in English like a Protestant, rather than, as he really speaks, in universal accents, the faith of a Catholic. At least twelve or thirteen of these thirty- two translations (including fragments) either omit the Dona eis requiem, or, to use the received term amongst Anglican editors of Catholic devotions and biography, not to speak of theology, 'adapt' it — which phrase, being interpreted, means to make a deliberate mistranslation. There are, however, noble exceptions to this category. . . . But, even then, a fresh difficulty in ethics arises, which may be named, but which it is no business of the writer to attempt to solve. How can one, being a Protestant, who is loyal to his own communion, become an accomplice to the singing, in a hymn before God, of words the meaning and tenor of which have been systematically and avowedly expunged in prose from the public worship of his persuasion — such words involving Catholic prayer for the dead and the implied doctrine of purgatory ? It is also noteworthy that some translators, from whom (even at the cost of moral consistency) we should expect at least a Catholic-worded remembrance of the faithful departed, have disappointed us : whilst others, from whom we should expect less, have given us more." 6 Dr. Coles, who prints the Latin text, 7 omits the concluding couplet, and of course gives no English rendering of it. Thus, too, the seven versions in Judge Nott's volume omit the couplet, with the exception of Dr. Irons', which makes the couplet a prayer uttered by the living for their own eternal rest : — Lord, who didst our souls redeem, Grant a blessed requiem ! Amen. Hymns Ancient and Modern comes out boldly with a revision of Dr. Irons' couplet : Lord, all-pitying, Jesus blest, Grant them Thine eternal rest. Amen. 6 Dublin Review , April, 1883, p. 371. 7 Dies Irae i?i Thirteen Original Versions. 590 THE DOLPHIN. This change, which is really the version of Isaac Williams (ap- pearing first in 1834 as a translation of the Paris Missal text, Crucis expandens vexilld), had already been adopted by other Protestant hymnals. In this connection it may be noted as a curious fact that our own authentic prayer-book, the Baltimore Manual of Prayers, which uses the version of Dr. Irons, retains the mistranslation of the last couplet, while Hymns Ancient and Modern revised it, properly, by taking Williams' translation. It is a perfect rendering of the Catholic thought of the original, and a Catholic can not but feel gratified that in Hymns Ancient and Modern, whose annual sales run up, it is said, into the million mark, the true translation should be so widely spread. So, too, the Rev. Mr. Copeland's version renders the thought correctly : Prince of pity, Jesu blest, Lord and Saviour, give them rest. More direct still, if possible, is the rendering by " O " in the Christian Remembrancer (1825) : Saviour, listen while we plead, We, the living, for the dead. The thought of the original is also retained, in the very words of the Hymn, in the translation of William Hay, in the Bengal An- nual (1831) : Lord, we bend to Thee for them, All of these correct versions illustrate the hunger of humanity for a prayerful remembrance of the dead, and are a direct tribute to Catholic doctrine by Protestant writers. And so the Rev. J. Anketell moralizes in the American Church Review (1873, p. 206), when describing an incident that happened during his missionary stay in Dresden. By the explosion of fire damp in a mine some six miles from that city, three hundred unfortunates perished. One of the many charitable undertakings for the relief of their families was a sacred concert in a Lutheran church in Dresden, at which Mozart's Requiem was sung with full orchestral accom- paniment: "It would be vain to attempt," wrote Mr. Anketell, " to describe in words the effect of the Dies Irae on that occasion. COMMENT ON THE "DIES IRAE." 591 Many were moved to tears, and when the splendid basso com- menced his solo : Tuba minim spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, and the clarion notes of a trumpet accompanied his voice, one could well imagine that the final doom was about to be pro- nounced ! Toward the close of the hymn, Voca me cum benedictis ! a golden ray of light from the declining sun came shooting through the stained windows and fretted aisles. . . . Passing strange was it to hear, in that Protestant church, the sound of a requiem for the dead. But hardened indeed, in its prejudices, must have been the heart which could not have joined in the prayer : Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, Et lux perpetua luceat eis." The Rev. Mr. Anketell was a Protestant minister ; and the prayer in which, as he thought, only a heart hardened by its prejudices could have refused to join, is a prayer for the happy repose of the souls of the dead. He can not have been insensible to the doc- trinal point involved, for he takes his quotation, not from the Hymn itself, but from another part of the liturgy of the Requiem Mass. The thought in both is identical ; but his quotation serves to emphasize strongly the liturgical character of the Hymn and the uncompromising Catholicity of its concluding couplet. Death is not the Divider, but the Reuniter ; and Protestants will con- tinue to utter for the dead a couplet of the great Hymn that illus- trates a devotion wholly Catholic as it is wholly beautiful, and as human as it is divine. H. T. Henry. Overbrook Seminary, Pa. Student's Library liable* RECENT SCIENCE. Uranium, Mother of Metals. — It was the custom till quite re- cently to laugh at the philosophers and physical scientists of the centuries before the nineteenth for thinking that such a thing as a transmutation of metals was possible. It was practically a universal belief that almost any metal might by natural processes after a sufficient length of time be converted into any other. Even so distinguished and so recent a scientific genius as Newton was a firm believer in the possibility of transmutation. To a friend about to visit certain copper mines on the Continent, Newton sug- gested less than two hundred years ago that the friend might find it especially to his advantage to study the process of transmutation in situ in some of the copper mines. The English mathematician advanced as a proof of the fact that such change must take place, some specimens in the museum at Cambridge in which gold was present in connection with copper, and in which therefore it seemed that the transforming process had, to a limited degree at least, taken place. Even at the present time, there are not a few who would laugh at this idea of Newton's, but they are not the ones who know most of the present position of chemical science. If there is one doctrine that has been revolutionized completely within the last few years, it is the supposed individuality of the so-called chemical elements and the assumed impossibility of their ever being transformed into one another. Most of the newer opinion in the matter has come as the result of studies of the radio-active metals and especially of uranium, radium, and helium. As has been recently remarked, Uranus, after whom uranium received its name, was in the old mythology the father of all the gods. Recent results of investigation with regard to uranium would seem to show that the designation given this substance was much more appropriate than perhaps the discoverer ever dreamt. 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