Malherbe has been duly appreciated in France: his works, in one edition, are accompanied by an elaborate comment by Menage and Chevreau: Racan wrote his life, and Godeau, Bishop of Vence, a panegyrical preface. He was a man of wit, and ready at an impromptu; yet it is said, that in writing a consolotary poem to the President de Verdun, on the death of his wife, he was so long {105} in bringing his verses to that degree of perfection which satisfied his own fastidious taste, that the president was happily remarried, and the consolation not at all required. Bishop Hurd, in a note on the _Epistle to Augustus_, p. 72., says: "Malherbe was to the French pretty much what Horace had been to Latin poetry. These great writers had, each of them, rescued the lyric muse of their country out of the rude ungracious hands of their old poets. And, as their talents of a _good ear_, _elegant judgment_, and _correct expression_, were the same, they presented her to the public in all the air and grace, and yet _severity_, of beauty, of which her form was susceptible." S.W. SINGER. Mickleham, July 2. 1850. * * * * * "DIES IRÆ, DIES ILLA." In reply to the first of Mr. SIMPSON's Queries (Vol. ii., p. 72.) relative to the magnificent sequence _Dies iræ_, I beg to say that the author of it is utterly unknown. The following references may be sufficient:--Card. Bona, _Rer. Liturgic._ lib. ii. cap. vi. p. 336., Romæ, 1671; or, if possible, Sala's edition, tom. iii. p 143., Aug. Turin. 1753; Gavantus, tom. i. pp. 274-5., Lugd. 1664; and the _Additions_ by Merati, i. 117-18., Aug. Vindel, 1740; Zaccaria, _Biblioth. Ritual._ tom. i. p. 34., Romæ, 1776; Oldoini Addit. ad Ciaconii _Vit. Pontiff. et Cardd._, tom. ii. col. 222., Romæ, 1677. Mr. SIMPSON's second question is, "In what book was it first printed?" Joannes de Palentia, in his notes upon the _Ordinarium PP. Præd._, asserts that this celebrated prose was first introduced into the Venice editions of the Missals printed for the Dominicans. The oldest _Missale Prædicatorum_ which I possess, or have an opportunity of seeing, is a copy of the Parisian impression of the year 1519; and herein the _Dies iræ_ is inserted in the _Commemoratio Defunctorum_; mens. Novemb. sig. M. 5. An inquiry remains as to the date of the general adoption of this sequence by the Roman Church. In Quetif and Echard (_Scriptt. Ord. Præd._ i. 437.), under the name of Latinus Malabranca, we read that it certainly was not in use in the year 1255; and there does not appear to be the slightest evidence of its admission, even upon private authority, into the office for the dead anterior to the commencement of the fifteenth century.