“Cujus claves lingua Petri,
Cujus cives semper laeti,”
are not included by Trench at all! It was not proper, the Dean thought, to encourage Romish superstitions, and so Peter and his keys were omitted. It is not impossible that Longfellow took his text from a little volume published at Auburn, N. Y., in 1844, which contains “The Hymn of Hildebert and the Ode of Xavier, with English Versions,” probably by Dr. Henry Mills, professor in the Theological Seminary at Auburn, who also published a volume of translations of German hymns (1845 and 1856). Dr. Mills reprints the entire hymn from Ussher, but ignores in his translation the lines
“Deus pater tantum Dei
Virgo mater est, sed Dei.”
The book is memorable as the first American publication in this field. Besides the American translations by Dr. Mills and Chancellor Benedict, there are English versions by Crashaw, by John Mason Neale, and, best of all, by Herbert Kynaston in the Lyra Mystica (London, 1869), copied from his Occasional Hymns.
Further to speak of Hildebert, it can be said that he, like others, took his share of imprisonments, confiscations, and exiles.
Trench quotes from his poetry two compositions in hexameter and pentameter—classic in language, but not always classic in prosody; and two complete poems, one of which is the famous hymn, and which commences
“A et Ω magne Deus.”
The other is a vision and lament over the Church of Poitiers. Of this the editor says: “I know of no nobler piece of versification, nor more skilful management of rhyme in the whole circle of Latin rhymed poetry.” It begins