Hilary’s other adaptation from Origen, the Homilies on the Psalms, happily remains to us. It is at least as great a work as the De Trinitate, and one from which we can learn even more what manner of man its writer was. For the De Trinitate is an appeal to all thoughtful Christians of the time, and written for future generations as well as for them; characteristic, as it is, in many ways of the author, the compass of the work and the stateliness of its rhetoric tend to conceal his personality. But the Homilies Tractatusought to be translated thus. It is the term, and the only term, used so early as this for the bishop’s address to the congregation; in fact, one might almost say that tractare, tractatus in Christian language had no other meaning. It is an anachronism in the fourth century to render prædicare by ‘preach;’ cf. Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, i. 126.on the Psalms, which would seem to have reached us in the notes of a shorthand writer, so artless and conversational is the style, shew us Hilary in another aspect. He is imparting instruction to his own familiar congregation; and he knows his people so well that he pours out whatever is passing through his mind. In fact, he seems often to be thinking aloud on subjects which interest him rather than addressing himself to the needs of his audience. Practical exhortation has, indeed, a much smaller space than mystical exegesis and speculative Christology. Yet abstruse questions are never made more obscure by involution of style. The language is free and flowing, always that of an educated man who has learnt facility by practice. And here, strange as it seems to a reader of the De Trinitate, he betrays a preference for poetical words E.g. fundamen, Tr. in Ps. cxxviii. 10, germen, cxxxiv. 1, revolubilis, ii. 23, peccamen, ii. 9 fin. and often. The shape of sentences, though simple, is always good; to take one test word, sæpe, which was almost if not quite extinct in common use, occurs fairly often near the end of a period, where it was needed for rhythm, which frequenter would have spoiled. Some Psalms, e.g. xiii., xiv., are treated more rhetorically than others., which shews that his renunciation of such ornament elsewhere is deliberate. Yet, even here, he indulges in no definite reminiscences of the poets.