rberini, was a poet of no mean rank. Before his
election to the papacy, he was a recognised lover of classical
literature and an adept in following classic themes and classic forms.
Our Breviaries contain some few of his compositions and they show
correctness of form, poetic merit, and piety. They are the hymns,
_Martinae celebri, Tu natale solum_ (January 20); _Nullis te genitor,
Regali solio fortis_ (April 13). His great desire was the correction of
the Breviary hymns. This work of correction was not beyond the personal
power of the Pope himself, if we judge him by his hymns. His views are
expressed in the Bull _Divinam Psalmodiam_, issued to promulgate the
corrected hymns. It found a place in all copies of the Roman Breviary in
the last century. To carry out the corrections outlined by the Pope,
four Jesuits were appointed, and whether the result of the corrections
is the Pope's or the Jesuits' is a highly and hotly disputed point.
First of all, the task set to the Jesuits was a very difficult one, and
one demanding much prudence as well as learning. It may seem to us that
to begin the correction, mutilation and reconstruction of the works and
words of men so great in church history and liturgy as Prudentius,
Sedulius, St. Ambrose, St. Paulinus, was a work of rashness, a sort of
sacrilege, attempting to remodel the glowing piety of their poems to the
pattern of Horace's verse. But the Jesuits had got their commands and
they were bound to obey. They were chosen on account of their classical
scholarship, which was kept sharp by their daily teaching in college,
and they were specially bound by a vow of loyal obedience to Papal
orders. "It is only fair to give them the credit that out of respect for
the wishes of Urban VIII, they treated these ancient compositions with
extreme reserve and, while they made some impressions clearer, they
maintained the primitive unction in a large number of passages" (Baudot,
_op. cit._, p. 185).

They corrected more than nine hundred false quantities found scattered
through the Breviary, 58 in the psalter per hebdomadam, 359 in the
proper de Tempore, 283 in the proper of Saints, and 252 in the common of
Saints. They changed the opening words of more than thirty hymns. Some
hymns were untouched--e.g., the three hymns of the Blessed Sacrament,
the _Ave Maris Stella_, which is rhythmic prose, not verse, and the hymn
of the Angels, which was sufficiently perfect. The metre of three hymns,
_Ti