liturgical plays in the twelfth century. Whatever the exact relation of the divine and profane _ludi_ at Easter and Christmas may be, it seems to have been, in the main, at these two great seasons of festivity that what may be called the spontaneous growth of drama out of liturgy took place. There are yet a fair number of Latin plays to be spoken of which are in a sense liturgical. That is to say, they were acted, certainly or probably, in churches and during intervals in the services. But of these such a spontaneous growth cannot be asserted, although it cannot also, in the present state of the evidence, be confidently denied. Their metrical and literary style is parallel to that of the Easter and Christmas plays in the latest stages of development; and, until further data turn up, it is perhaps permissible to conjecture that they were deliberately composed on the model of the _Quem quaeritis_ and the _Stella_, when these had become widespread and popular. Indeed, some such derivation of the _Peregrini_ from the _Quem quaeritis_ and of the _Stella_ itself, at least in part, from the _Pastores_, has already appeared probable. In dealing with this new group of plays, we come, for the first and only time, upon an individual author. As might be expected, this author is a _scholaris vagans_, by name Hilarius. It would even be doing him no great injustice to call him a goliard. What little is known of Hilarius is gathered from his writings, which exist in a single manuscript. He may have been an Englishman, for a large proportion of his verses are addressed to English folk. He was a pupil, about 1125, of the famous Abelard at his oratory of Paraclete in a desert near Nogent-sur-Seine. Afterwards he made his way to Angers. Many of his verses are of the familiar goliardic type, amorous and jocund; but amongst them are three plays[208]. Two of these are comparatively short, and contain each a few stanzas of French interspersed amongst the Latin. The subject of one is a miracle wrought by St. Nicholas[209]; of the other, the _Suscitatio Lazari_[210]. The third play, wholly in Latin, falls into two parts, and gives at considerable length the story of _Daniel_[211]. I take it that these plays were not written for any church in particular, but represent the repertory of a band of wandering clerks. At the end, both of the _Daniel_ and of the _Suscitatio Lazari_, is a rubric or stage-direction, to the effect that, if the performance is given at Matins, the _Te Deum_ should follow; if at Vespers, the _Magnificat_. Evidently the connexion with the church service, so organic in the plays of the more primitive type, has become for Hilarius almost accidental. As to the place of the plays in the calendar, the manuscript gives no indication, and probably Hilarius and his friends would be willing enough to act them whenever they got a chance. But the St. Nicholas play would come most naturally on the day of that saint, December 6. The _Suscitatio Lazari_ would