It is quite amusing to read some of these effusions. He advises Radegunda, as Paul did Timothy, to drink wine on occasion. And when the queen and the abbess conspire to make his life pleasant he has plenty of metrical gratitude to offer. They send him butter (_butyr_) in a lordly dish; they furnish chestnuts in baskets woven by their own hands; they provide milk, and prunelles, and olives, and eggs. For all these he renders thanks in kind. Never were eggs and butter sung in a loftier strain! But sometimes the poet descends a trifle from his elevated phrases. He says pathetically in one of these effusions that they sent him “various delicacies for his full stomach” (_tumido ventre_), and that he got asleep after it and failed to furnish the appropriate verses. He laments this in proper metre, declaring that he had opened his mouth and shut his eyes (the old gormandizer!) and had eaten on, regardless of his duty. And for this he craves forgiveness from his _beata domnia_ [it ought to be _domina_] _filia_—his blessed queen-daughter. But be good enough to observe that his own gifts in return are very small, and that he is always apologizing and hoping that they may not be rejected. Truly this was such a man as Sir Walter Scott has sung, for “The best of good cheer and the seat by the fire Was the undenied right of the barefooted friar.” Only it may be safely questioned whether our Fortunatus was any more of an ascetic than Damasus himself. One almost wishes for an historical picture—and it should be a good theme, by the way—in which Fortunatus and his two friends appear. It should be that celebrated feast which he describes [J. P. Migne: _Patrologia_; _Opera Fortunati_, Lib. xi., cap. ii.], where Agnes had adorned the tables and the apartment with “every species of blossoming plant;” where the rich wines, and the generous fare, and the crystal, and the gold, and the flowers should brighten the fine hall of the chateau; and where, perhaps, the ecclesiastic should take his small harp and strike its strings with a delicate hand, while the fair face of Agnes and the darker beauty of Radegunda should inspire his song. One traces to this mellow undercurrent of human life the swing of his best lyrics—the _Pange lingua gloriosi praelium certaminis_ and those hymns to the Virgin of which he was the earliest promoter. No ene can doubt the influence of these women upon the _Ave maris stella_ or the _Quem terra pontus aethera_. Say what we please about his piety, he has written what will live with the best. And to compare him to the melancholy Cowper, as Mrs. Charles has done, can only be characterized as a most amusing misconception.