and contains in twenty-three stanzas a confession of sin, an appeal to Christ and an assertion of orthodoxy. The rules of metre are neglected in favour of an uncouth attempt at rhythm. Latin appears to have been a dead language to the writer137, who adorns his lines with little pieces of pagan mythology, and whose taste is indicated by his description of heretics as ‘barking Sabellius and grunting Simon.’ The hymn is probably the work of some bombastic monk, perhaps of the time of Charles the Great; unlike the other four, it cannot possibly date from Hilary’s generation. Omitting certain fragments of treatises of which Hilary may, or may not, have been the xlix author138, we now come to his attack upon Auxentius of Milan, and to the last of his complete works. Dionysius of Milan had been, as we saw, a sufferer in the same cause as Hilary. But he had been still more hardly treated; he had not only been exiled, but his place had been taken by Auxentius, an Eastern Arian of the school favoured by Constantius. Dionysius died in exile, and Auxentius remained in undisputed possession of the see. He must have been a man of considerable ability; perhaps, as we have mentioned, he was the creator of the so-called Ambrosian ritual, and certainly he was the leader of the Arian party in Italy and the further West. The very fact that Constantius and his advisers chose him for so great a post as the bishopric of Milan proves that they had confidence in him. He justified their trust, holding his own without apparent difficulty at Milan and working successfully in the cause of compromise at Ariminum and elsewhere. Athanasius mentions him often and 137 The four quarters of the universe are ortus, occasus, aquilo, septentrio; one of these last must mean the south. This would point to some German land as the home of the author; in no country of Romance tongue could such an error have been perpetrated. Perire is used for perdere, but this is not unparalleled. 138 In Mai’s Patrum Nova Bibliotheca, vol. i., is a short treatise on the Genealogies of Christ. The method of interpretation is the same as Hilary’s, but the language is not his; and the terms used of the Virgin in §§ 11, 12, are not as early as the fourth century. In the same volume is an exposition of the beginning of St. John’s Gospel in an anti-Arian sense. In spite of some difference of vocabulary, there is no strong reason why this should not be by Hilary; cf. especially, §§ 5–7. Mai also prints in the same volume a short fragment on the Paralytic (St. Matt. ix. 2), too brief for a judgment to be formed. In Pitra’s Spicilegium Solesmense, vol. i., is a brief discussion on the first chapters of Genesis, dealing chiefly with the Fall. It appears, like the Homilies on the Psalms, to be the report of some extemporary addresses, and is more likely than any of the preceding to be the work of Hilary. It is quite in his style, but the contents are unimportant. But we must remember that the scribes were rarely content to confess that they were ignorant of the name of an author whom they transcribed; and that, being as ill-furnished with scruples as with imagination, they assigned everything that came to hand to a few familiar names. Two further works ascribed to Hilary are obviously not his. Pitra, in the volume already cited, has printed considerable remains of a Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, which really belongs to Theodore of Mopsuestia; and a Commentary on the seven Canonical Epistles, recently published in the Spicilegium Casinense, vol. iii., is there attributed, with much reason, to his namesake of Arles. 70 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.