XIII.

John Mason Neale

And Some Hymns from the Greek and Latin

Christ's own Martyrs, valiant cohort,
White-robed and palmiferous throng,
Ye that 'neath the Heavenly Altar,

Cry "How long, O Lord, how long?"
Tell us how the fiery struggle

Ended in the Victor song?

""Twas His love that watch'd beside us,
His Right Arm that brought us through;
So, the fiercer wax'd our torture,

Sweeter His consoling grew,

Till the men that killed the body

Had no more that they could do."

All Christ's saints, that none may number,
Out of every land and tongue,

Ye that by the fire and crystal

Have your crowns in worship flung, Tell us how ye gained the region Where the Unknown Song is sung?

"Glory, honor, adoration

To the Lamb that once was slain; Virtue, riches, power, the kingdom, To the Prince that lives again; His entirely, His forever,

His we are, and His remain."

JOHN MASON NEALE.

XIII.

JOHN MASON NEALE,

AND SOME HYMNS FROM THE GREEK AND LATIN.

Many millions of English-speaking people owe to JOHN MASON NEALE an unspeakable debt of gratitude for his translations of Greek and Latin hymns. Before his time such sacred work had hardly been attempted. By him it was not only attempted, but splendidly performed.

His biographer tells us:

"He had great qualifications for the work; and so far as his translations are concerned, his facility had no power to lead him astray. He had too deep a reverence to touch the work of great saints and writers with a rash, unpracticed hand. Upon his translations he spent an unstinted and elaborate care sometimes lacking in the case of his original verse. It is one striking evidence of his love for the past, that the old gems which he reset were neither dimmed nor defaced in the process. * * * He was no mere imitator. Accuracy of expression and perfection of form might in themselves have failed to preserve the beauty and the essence of a poet's conceptions. Like the artist of whom Nathaniel Hawthorne writes, Neale's translations had 'that evanescent and ethereal life-that flitting fragrance, as it were, of the originals-which it is as difficult to catch and retain, as it would be for a sculptor to get the very movement and varying color of a living man into his marble bust.'

"His acknowledged success was the result of religious endeavor and reverent perceptions. Archbishop Trench, to whom Neale over and over again pays a grateful tribute of praise and admiration for his labors in the same field, speaks with the authority of a distinguished expert as to Neale's exceptional gifts as a translator. In his preface to his 'Sacred Latin