business to lay before them the translations I had prepared, and theirs to correct. The study which this required drew out the beauties of the original in a way which nothing else could have done, and the friendly collision of various minds elicited ideas which a single translator would, in all probability, have missed. I have been amused to find, in some reproductions of these hymns, a line given as I had at first written it, to the exclusion of our deliberate correction. If any one cares to see how much the hymns were improved by the process, he may compare the two of Venantius Fortunatus, as they stand in the first and in the present edition of this book.
There is only one thing with respect to the use of any of my hymns that has grieved me; the rejection of the noble melody of the Alleluiatic Sequence, and that for a third-rate chant. What would be said of chanting the Dies Iræ? And yet I really believe that it would suffer less than does the Cantemus cuncti by such a substitution. Further, be it noticed, every sentence, I had almost said every word, of the version was carefully fitted to the music: the length of the lines corresponds to the length of each troparion in
