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A roll, in good preservation, composed of several skins, sewed together, containing the Pentateuch in Hebrew, a manuscript of the IXth century. A Terence, with figures of the time and a representation of the masks introduced on the stage by the ancients, together with the various poetical works of PRUDENTIUS; manuscripts on vellum of the IXth century.

He caused careful correction of errors which had crept in through careless printing; he printed the psalms and canticles with the Vulgate punctuation, and he revised the lessons and made additions. He established uniformity in texts of Missal and Breviary. It seemed to be exceedingly rash to regard as barbarous the hymns of men like Prudentius, Sedulius, Sidonius, Apollinaris, Venantius, St.

In prose and metre of all kynde ywys This lady blyssed had lust for to playe With her was blesens Richarde pophys Farrose pystyls clere lusty fresshe and gay With maters vere poetes in good array Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace. Throughout this passage rhetoric is never mentioned in any other context than one of pleasure to the ear of the auditor.

"Now, do you not understand what I mean when I say that the hymns of Prudentius are an anticipation of the form of the English ballad?... And in the fifth hymn the story of St Vincent is given with that peculiar dramatic terseness that you find nowhere except in the English ballad. But the most beautiful poem of all is certainly the fourteenth and last hymn.

When Spain became Christian the first great Christian poet, Prudentius, born about the middle of the fourth century, came from there. He has been called the Horace and Virgil of the Christians.

The final division of the Roman world, which took place in the year 395 between the two sons of Theodosius, synchronises with a division as definite and as final between classical and mediaeval poetry; and in the last years of the fourth century the parting of the two streams, the separation of the dying from the dawning light, is placed in sharp relief by the works of two contemporary poets, Claudian and Prudentius.

In one department of learning, indeed, his proficiency was such as it is hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound.

Romanus calls them in Prudentius "a rebel people"; that Galerius speaks of them as "a nefarious conspiracy"; the heathen in Minucius, as "men of a desperate faction"; that others make them guilty of sacrilege and treason, and call them by those other titles which, more closely resembling the language of Tacitus, have been noticed above.

* This phrase seems to indicate that, if one is to believe Macrobius, the "Copa" is by Virgil. "And since then, O great shade, thou hast received no other messages?" "I have received none." "To console themselves for thy absence, O Virgil, they have three poets, Commodianus, Prudentius, and Fortunatus, who were all three born in those dark plays when neither prosody nor grammar were known.

Was it ignorance or prudence that guided the early hymn writers in their adoption of popular poetic form? It is not certain by any means that the early hymn writers wished to copy or adopt the classic forms of the Augustinian age. Nor is it clear that such men of genius as St. Ambrose, Prudentius, St. Gregory the Great, were ignorant of the rules and models of the best Latin poets.