Gloriosa valde facta veris prae laetitia;
Volitando scandit alta arborum cacumina,
Ac festiva satis gliscit sibilare carmina."

Such are the sapphics on the spring, which, though they date from the
seventh century, have a truly modern sentiment of Nature. Such, too,
is the medieval legend of the Snow-Child, treated comically in
burlesque Latin verse, and meant to be sung to a German tune of
love--

_Modus Liebinc_. To the same category may be referred the horrible, but
singularly striking, series of Latin poems edited from a MS. at Berne,
which set forth the miseries of monastic life with realistic passion
bordering upon delirium, under titles like the following--_Dissuasio
Concubitus in in Uno tantum Sexu_, or _De Monachi Cruciata_.[5]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines Anterieures au
Deuxieme: Siecle_, p. 240.]

[Footnote 2: Du Meril, _op. cit._, p. 239.]

[Footnote 3: Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, p.
196.]

[Footnote 4: Du Meril, _Poesies Pop. Lat. Ant._, pp. 278, 241, 275.]

[Footnote 5: These extraordinary compositions will be found on pp.
174-182 of a closely-printed book entitled _Carmina Med. Aev. Max.
Part. Inedita. Ed. H. Hagenus. Bernae. Ap. G. Frobenium_. MDCCCLXXVII.
The editor, so far as I can discover, gives but scant indication of
the poet who lurks, with so much style and so terrible emotions, under
the veil of Cod. Bern., 702 s. Any student who desires to cut into the
core of cloister life should read cvii. pp. 178-182, of this little
book.]

VI.

There is little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of
popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their
existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile
thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the
renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to
connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy.

The first point to notice is the dominance of music in this verse, and
the subjugation of the classic metres to its influence. A deeply
significant transition has been effected from the _versus_ to the
_modulus_ by the substitution of accent for quantity, and by the value
given to purely melodic cadences. A long syllable and a short
syllable have almost equal weight in this prosody, for the musical
tone can be prolonged or shortened