But Lassus had an open heart also for secular inspiration. The genius that could thrill us with the solemnity and pathos of religious aspirations and sentiments was also moved to expression by the pleasantries of human experience; no other composer of his century was so prolific in humorous works. One is a setting of the Psalm _Super flumina Babylonis_, in which the separate letters and syllables are sung in the fashion of a spelling-lesson, ‘S-U--Su--P-E-R--per--Super,’ evidently parodying the ridiculous handling of words by the older masters. It takes two movements of this comic procedure to get through the first verse. In some of his German songs his humor rises to the height of hilarious joy, though most of them are the expression of a simple naïveté. In one of his Italian villanellas he makes a German infantry captain sing a grotesque serenade to his lady-love. But he was especially famous for his drinking songs, one of the most celebrated of which was a setting of Walter Mapes’ convivial song _Si bene perpendi, causæ sunt quinque bibendi_, to which Dean Aldrich has given the following well-known translation: ‘If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink: Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest you should be by and by, Or any other reason why.’ The remainder of his secular compositions comprise 233 madrigals, 34 Latin songs,[29] 370 French songs, and 59 canzonets, which formidable list reveals him as a lyric writer of great versatility. Notwithstanding his great fame during his lifetime and the succeeding generation, the last half of the seventeenth century witnessed a great decline in his popularity and his music fell into almost complete oblivion, from which it has been happily rescued by the recent revival of interest in the old masters and especially by the publication by Breitkopf & Haertel of a complete edition of his works which will comprise about sixty volumes. V