and first refers to the hymns as “Ambrosian”. Metre The Ambrosian strophe has four verses of iambic dimeters (eight syllables), e. g. — Aeterne rerum Conditor, / noctem diemque qui regis, / et temporum das tempora / ut alleves fastidium. The metre differs but slightly from the rhythm of prose, is easy to construct and to memorize, adapts itself very well to all kinds of subjects, offers sufficient metric variety in the odd feet (which may be either iambic or spondaic), while the form of the strophe lends itself well to musical settings (as the English accentual counterpart of the metric and strophic form illustrates). This poetic form has always been the favourite for liturgical hymns, as the Roman Breviary will show at a glance. But in earlier times the form was almost exclusively used, down to and beyond the eleventh century. Out of 150 hymns in the eleventh-century Benedictine hymnals, for example, not a dozen are in other metres; and the Ambrosian Breviary re-edited by Charles Borromeo in 1582 has its hymns in that metre almost exclusively. It should be said, however, that even in the days of Ambrose the classical metres were slowly giving place to accentual ones, as his work occasionally shows; while in subsequent ages, down to the reform of the Breviary under pope Urban VIII, hymns were composed most largely by accented measure. Ambrosian authorship That Ambrose himself is the author of some hymns is not under dispute. Like Hilary, Ambrose was also a “Hammer of the Arians”. Answering their complaints on this head, he says: “Assuredly I do not deny it ... All strive to confess their faith and know how to declare in verse the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.” And Augustine of Hippo speaks of the occasion when the hymns were introduced by Ambrose to be sung “according to the fashion of the East”. However, the term “Ambrosian” does not imply authorship by Ambrose himself. The term, (Hymni Ambrosiani) is used in the rule of St. Benedict, and already Walafridus Strabo notes that, while Benedict styled Ambrosianos the hymns to be used in the canonical hours, the term is to be understood as referring both to hymns composed by Ambrose, and to hymns composed by others who followed in his form. Strabo further remarks that many hymns were wrongly supposed to be Ambrose's, including some “which have no logical