The greater part of the Breviary Hymns are composed according to the rules of prosody, and their form is lyric, the popular form of Latin song, which preceded in Italy the prosodical system borrowed from the Greeks, and used by the classic pagan poets.  The critics of the Renaissance period are very loud and very wrathful over the form of these hymns.  Some of them accuse St. Ambrose, Prudentius and Gregory the Great of gross ignorance of the rules of Latin verse and, what to the critics was worse, ignorance of the ways of pagan classical models.  But, was the rhymed, tonic accented lyric, which was to be sung by all sorts and conditions of men, in public, such an outrageous literary sin?  Was it ignorance or prudence that guided the early hymn writers in their adoption of popular poetic form?  It is not certain by any means that the early hymn writers wished to copy or adopt the classic forms of the Augustinian age.  Nor is it clear that such men of genius as St. Ambrose, Prudentius, St. Gregory the Great, were ignorant of the rules and models of the best Latin poets.  It seems that they did not wish to follow them.  They wilfully and designedly adopted the popular lyric forms, so that they might give to their flocks in popular and easily remembered forms, prayers and formulas of faith.

Second Proposition:-The Breviary hymns have the principal elements of poetic beauty.

Briefly, these elements are sublimity of thought, beauty of sentiment, aptness of expression, unction of form.  In these matters the Breviary hymns are not inferior to the classic poetry of paganism, nor to the much-belauded beauties of the Gallican Breviary hymns (vide Bacquez, Le Saint Office, notes vi. and viii. in finem).

The composition of the hymns is in perfect harmony with the end for which they are intended, that is, liturgical prayer, chanted prayer.  Their phrases do not display the vain and superfluous literary glitter of the much-lauded Gallican hymns, but their accents go out from the sanctuary and live in the hearts of the people.  Their language is, like the thought and expression of the psalms, the word of a soul praying to God and adoring Him in fervour, in simplicity, and in faith.  Of the piety and expression of the French hymns, Foinard, an ardent apostle of the French liturgical novelties, wrote:  “Il ne parait pas que ce soit l’onction qui domine dans les nouveaux Breviaries; on y a la verite, travaille beaucoup pour l’esprit; mais il semole qu’ on n’y a pas travaille autant pour le coeur.”  Letourneux, the fierce Jansenist, wrote to the Breviary-poet, Santeuil, his co-worker:  “Vous faites fumer l’encens; mais c’est un feu estranger qui brule dans l’ensenoir.  La vanite fait en vous ce que la charite devrait faire.”  And the Catholic De Maistre, so famed for his fair-minded criticisms, wrote of the new hymn-makers’ works:  “They make a certain noise in the ear, but they never breathe prayer, because their writers were all alone (i.e., unaided by the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit) when they composed them.”  Of the Roman Breviary hymns he wrote:  “They always pray and excite the soul to prayer.”  “Train your hearts to attention, and hear all their prayers.  You will in them see the true religion, as clearly as you see the sunbeams.”