I make no attempt to analyze the feelings that have prompted this strange austerity. Isaac Taylor has already done this in a most masterly fashion in his _Fanaticism_. But the essence of it is that wild delusion which leads men (and even women) to fancy that they can vicariously atone for others’ sins and “make merit,” as the heathen do, for those who are less bold than themselves. They have fastened themselves down like the poor wretched geese doomed to furnish _pattes-de-fois-gras_. They are before the hot fire of zeal and gorged upon indigestible dogmas. Hence their charity becomes as abnormal as the livers of the geese, and the moral epicure, alas, finds in them dainties suitable for his depraved taste! It would be a grievous injustice to a good man if Damiani should only bear with us the character of an ardent zealot and not of a Christian poet. In this last guise he is at his best. Doubtless he often offends by his Mariolatry, but he will as often charm by the music of his verse. He may serve also as a convenient example of this worship of Mary, for in one of his prayers he has given us the pith and core of that peculiar devotion. It runs thus: “O queen of the world, stairs of heaven, throne of God, gate of paradise, hear the prayers of the poor and despise not the groans of the wretched. By thee our vows and sighs are borne to the presence of the Redeemer, that whatsoever things are forbidden to our merits may obtain, through thee, place in the ears of divine piety. Erase sins, relieve crimes, raise the fallen, and release the entangled. Through thee the thorns and shoots of vice are cut down, and the flowers and ornaments of virtue appear. Appease with prayers the Judge, the Saviour, whom thou didst produce in unique childbirth, that He who through thee has become partaker of our humanity, through thee may also make us partakers of His divinity. Who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.” I have given this as an example of his prose. Here is a petition “against a stormy time,” composed in that “leonine and tailed rhyme” in which Bernard of Cluny, a century later, wrote the _De Contemptu mundi_. It commences, “_O miseratrix, O dominatrix, praecipe dictu!_ O thou that pitiest, O thou the mightiest, hark to our crying; Lest we be beaten down, lest we be smitten down when hail is flying. Thine is a priestly breast, O thou that succorest, mother eternal Therefore we pray to thee, lest we be stayed from thee, by storm infernal. Quiet the tempest-wrack! Give us the sunshine back for our fair weather! Lend us clear light again, make the stars bright again where the clouds feather! Virgin, oh cherish thy friends lest we perish by sickness or anger; Drive all these ills away, thou whose love stills away thunder’s mad clangor!”