(3) Pimont, the author of a classic work on the Breviary Hymns, in a number of comments, notes the crudities of the Breviary hymns, even in their revised forms. Thus, in the hymn for Prime, he notes apparent ruggedness. He passes similar comments on the hymns assigned to the little hours. (4) Bacquez states that all the hymns do not join beauty of expression to the merit of the thought expressed, and that a certain number lack style and good prosody. These opinions should not be extended to all, nor even to very many of the Breviary hymns. All serious critics agree about the beauty of such hymns as the _Aeterne rerum Conditor_, the _Somno refectis artubus, Splendor Aeternae gloriae, Verbum supernum prodiens_, and a good number of others. The greater part of the Breviary Hymns are composed according to the rules of prosody, and their form is lyric, the popular form of Latin song, which preceded in Italy the prosodical system borrowed from the Greeks, and used by the classic pagan poets. The critics of the Renaissance period are very loud and very wrathful over the form of these hymns. Some of them accuse St. Ambrose, Prudentius and Gregory the Great of gross ignorance of the rules of Latin verse and, what to the critics was worse, ignorance of the ways of pagan classical models. But, was the rhymed, tonic accented lyric, which was to be sung by all sorts and conditions of men, in public, such an outrageous literary sin? Was it ignorance or prudence that guided the early hymn writers in their adoption of popular poetic form? It is not certain by any means that the early hymn writers wished to copy or adopt the classic forms of the Augustinian age. Nor is it clear that such men of genius as St. Ambrose, Prudentius, St. Gregory the Great, were ignorant of the rules and models of the best Latin poets. It seems that they did not wish to follow them. They wilfully and designedly adopted the popular lyric forms, so that they might give to their flocks in popular and easily remembered forms, prayers and formulas of faith. _Second Proposition_:-The Breviary hymns have the principal elements of poetic beauty. Briefly, these elements are sublimity of thought, beauty of sentiment, aptness of expression, unction of form. In these matters the Breviary hymns are not inferior to the classic poetry of paganism, nor to the much-belauded beauties of the Gallican Breviary hymns (_vide_ Bacquez, _Le Saint Office_, notes vi. and viii. in finem).