service for the dead) [Called dirige or dirge, from the beginning of the first anthem at matins, " Dirige Domine Deus meus in conspectu tuo viam meam."—Rock, ii. 503.] and any special prayer or prayers desired. In the poem called St. Gregory's Trental [Found in two MSS., Cott. Caligula, A ii. fo. 84 vo. of the fifteenth century, and Lambeth, 306, fo. 110, printed in Furnivall's Political, Religious, and Love Poems, 1866, Early English Text Society, p. 83.] the virtues of this means of saving a departed soul are exalted, particular directions are given, and several additions are specially recommended for greater certainty, One of these additions is the dirige, but the prayer also desired by the Brome writer is not among them. The poem (of 240 lines) tells how his mother's ghost, in torture for her sins, appeared to Pope Gregory, and enjoined him to sing "a trentelle
She added that they should be said "within the octaves of the feasts." [Line 124, with which compare ll. 144-5 and 231-2.] The Pope carried out his mother's behests, which were quite effectual; yet the writer rather inconsistently desires (as before mentioned) that a good many other prayers, which are named, should be joined to the masses.
The correspondence of the Brome trental with the trental thus ascribed to the authority of Pope Gregory will be remarked, and we may feel pretty sure that we have here a usual composition of this favourite Office for the Dead. That the rest of the form was variable, according to the wish of the person who ordered the masses, is indicated by this little record at Brome no less than by a will of 1448,
