messenger," the hymn "Veni Creator," which (says Ekkehard) the same "Spirit had inspired him to write" ("Sibi idem Spiritus inspiraverat"). If this story is to be credited--and, from its circumstantial and almost dramatic character, it has an air of truth--the author of "Veni Creator" was not Charlemagne, but his grandson the emperor Charles the Bald. Notker himself long survived that emperor, and died in 912. Sequences. The invention of "sequences" by Notker may be regarded as the beginning of the later medieval epoch of Latin hymnody. In the eucharistic service, in which (as has been stated) hymns were not generally used, it had been the practice, except at certain seasons, to sing "laud," or "Alleluia," between the epistle and the gospel, and to fill up what would otherwise have been a long pause, by extending the cadence upon the two final vowels of the "Alleluia" into a protracted strain of music. It occurred to Notker that, while preserving the spirit of that part of the service, the monotony of the interval might be relieved by introducing at that point a chant of praise specially composed for the purpose. With that view he produced the peculiar species of rhythmical composition which obtained the name of "sequentia" (probably from following after the close of the "Alleluia"), and also that of "prosa," because its structure was originally irregular and unmetrical, resembling in this respect the Greek "troparia," and the "Te Deum," "Benedicite" and canticles. That it was in some measure suggested by the forms of the later Greek hymnody seems probable, both from the intercourse (at that time frequent) between the Eastern and Western churches, and from the application by Ekkehard, in his biography and elsewhere (e.g. in Lyndwood's _Provinciale_), of some technical terms, borrowed from the Greek terminology, to works of Notker and his school and to books containing them. Dr Neale, in a learned dissertation prefixed to his collection of sequences from medieval Missals, and enlarged in a Latin letter to H. A. Daniel (printed in the fifth volume of Daniel's _Thesaurus hymnologicus_), investigated the laws of caesura and modulation which are discoverable in these works. Those first brought into use were sent by their author to Pope Nicholas I., who authorized their use, and that of others composed after the same model by other brethren of St Gall, in all churches of the West.