And if the beneficial effect in the literary sense of these light songs is not to be overlooked, how much greater in every way is that of the magnificent compositions of which they were in some cases the parody! It will be more convenient to postpone to a later chapter of this volume a consideration of the exact way in which Latin sacred poetry affected the prosody of the vernacular; but it is well here to point out that almost all the finest and most famous examples of the mediaeval hymn, with perhaps the sole exception of _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_, date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[8] Ours are the stately rhythms of Adam of St Victor, and the softer ones of St Bernard the Greater. It was at this time that Jacopone da Todi, in the intervals of his eccentric vernacular exercises, was inspired to write the _Stabat Mater_. From this time comes that glorious descant of Bernard of Morlaix, in which, the more its famous and very elegant English paraphrase is read beside it, the more does the greatness and the beauty of the original appear. And from this time comes the greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems, the _Dies Irae_. There have been attempts--more than one of them--to make out that the _Dies Irae_ is no such wonderful thing after all: attempts which are, perhaps, the extreme examples of that cheap and despicable paradox which thinks to escape the charge of blind docility by the affectation of heterodox independence. The judgment of the greatest (and not always of the most pious) men of letters of modern times may confirm those who are uncomfortable without authority in a different opinion. Fortunately there is not likely ever to be lack of those who, authority or no authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or without much, in all time of their tribulation and in all time of their wealth, will hold these wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of Celano's or another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to sense that they know. [Footnote 8: A few more precise dates may be useful. St Bernard, 1091-1153; Bernard of Morlaix, exact years uncertain, but twelfth century; Adam of St Victor, _ob. cir._ 1190; Jacopone da Todi, _ob._ 1306; St Bonaventura, 1221-1274; Thomas of Celano, _fl. c._ 1226. The two great storehouses of Latin hymn-texts are the well-known books of Daniel, _Thesaurus Hymnologicus_, and Mone, _Hymni Latini Medii AEvi_. And on this, as on all matters connected with hymns, the exhaustive _Dictionary of Hymnology_ (London, 1892) of the Rev. John Julian will be found most valuable.] [Sidenote: _The_ Dies Irae.]