The word " paean " is now used in the sense of any song of joy or triumph.
It is nearly 20 years since Bill Bryson first penned his deliciously witty paean to precision Troublesome Words.
A soothing tonic indeed to then read Woolf's paean to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel, Flush.
About the 4th century the paean became merely a formula of adulation; its object was either to implore protection against disease and misfortune, or to offer thanks after such protection had been rendered.
Next year he published Le Pape, a vision of the spirit of Christ in appeal against the spirit of Christianity, his ideal follower confronted and contrasted with his nominal vicar; next year again La Pitie supreme, a plea for charity towards tyrants who know not what they do, perverted by omnipotence and degraded by adoration; two years later Religions et religion, a poem which is at once a cry of faith and a protest against the creeds which deform and distort and leave it misshapen and envenomed and defiled; and in the same year L'Ane, a paean of satiric invective against the past follies of learned ignorance, and lyric rapture of confidence in the future wisdom and the final conscience of the world.
