letters in verse, now in the rhymed couplets of his own
day, now m hexameters. Sometimes k the initials of the
an acrostich : once the saint writes a long
letter composed of a string of adonics.[1] Meagre as
his performances may appear, if judged by ancient models.
Columban s more serious poems are neither awkward
nor ungraceful. All of them are full of conceits and
mythological allusions ; they read as the work of an
entire pagan.[2] Equally they prove the breadth and
freedom of the training which he had received at Banchor
and which was the peculiar possession of the Scots. There
is a vein of poetry running through the whole lives of
these Irish confessors, a poetry of which the stories of their
acts are indeed better witnesses than their practical essays
in verse-making. They brought imagination, as they
brought spiritual force, into a world well-nigh sunk in
materialism.
Their lighter productions shew one side of the Scottish nature : their earnest, single-hearted pursuit of learning in the widest sense attainable, their solid hard work as
- ↑ Accipe, quaeso,
nunc bipedal!
condita versu
carminulorum
munera parva.
Afterwards he excuses the eccentricity of his metre :
Sufficit autem
ista loquaci
nunc cecinisse
carmina versu.
Nam nova forsan
esse videtur
ista legenti
formula versus.
Sed tamen ilia
Troiugenarum
inclita vates
nomine Sappho
versibus istis
dulce solebat
edere carmen.
Then he explains the construction of the verse and concludes with a second apology, this time in hexa- meters, urging the weariness of old age and feeble health as a justifi- cation of his license : Ussher 13-18. [The genuineness of these verses has been questioned, but it is defended by W. Gundlach, in the Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere Deutsche Geschichtskundc, 15. 514-526, 1890.] - ↑ M. Haureau, Singularites 12 sqq., rightly dwells on this charac- teristic. I have not noticed the poem ascribed to saint Livinus, whom tradition makes the apostle of Brabant in the seventh century ; because the likelihood is that these elegiacs (printed in Ussher 19 sqq.) are as spurious as the biography, called saint Boniface s, with which they appear to stand plainly con- nected. The poetry of the Scots is however far from being limited to these two examples : Ussher prints another piece, pp. 36 sq. ; and in later times instances, as that of John Scotus, are not un- common.
