er. It is
of course humanly possible that their love was not a guilty one, but it
is certain that the poet wasted the greater part of his life writing
verses to her and her adopted daughter Agnes. In a beautiful poem in
praise of virginity, composed in honour of Agnes, he speaks in a very
disgusting way of the love with which nuns regard our Redeemer, and the
recompence that awaits them in Heaven for their chastity. If it had not
been for the great interest attaching to his verse as an example of the
radical alteration that had been effected in the language, I do not
think I should have spoken of this poet. Up to his time rhyme had
slipped only occasionally into the verse, it had been noticed and had
been allowed to remain by poets too idle to remove it, a strange
something not quite understood, and yet not a wholly unwelcome intruder;
but in St Fortunatus we find for the first time rhyme cognate with the
metre, and used with certainty and brilliancy. In the opening lines of
the hymn, 'Vexilla Regis,' rhyme is used with superb effect....

"But for signs of the approaching dissolution of the language, of its
absorption by the national idiom, we must turn to St Gregory of Tours.
He was a man of defective education, and the _lingua rustica_ of France
as it was spoken by the people makes itself felt throughout his
writings. His use of _iscere_ for _escere_, of the accusative for the
ablative, one of St Gregory's favourite forms of speech, _pro or quod_
for _quoniam_, conformable to old French _porceque_, so common for
_parceque_. And while national idiom was oozing through grammatical
construction, national forms of verse were replacing the classical
metres which, so far as syllables were concerned, had hitherto been
adhered to. As we advance into the sixth and seventh centuries, we find
English monks attempting to reproduce the characteristics of Anglo-Saxon
alliterative verse in Latin; and at the Court of Charlemagne we find an
Irish monk writing Latin verse in a long trochaic line, which is native
in Irish poetry.

"Poets were plentiful at the court of Charlemagne. Now, Angilbert was a
poet of exquisite grace, and surprisingly modern is his music, which is
indeed a wonderful anticipation of the lilt of Edgar Poe. I compare it
to Poe. Just listen:--

"'Surge meo Domno dulces fac, fistula versus:
David amat versus, surge et fac fistula versus.
David amat vates, vatorum est gloria David
Qua propter vates