HYMNS.
1. Classical Hymnody.
The word "hymn" (v/xvos) was employed by the ancient Greeks to signify a song or poem composed in honour of gods, heroes, or famous men, or to be recited on some joyful, mournful, or solemn occasion. Polymnia was the name of their lyric muse. Homer makes Alcinous entertain Odysseus with a " hymn " of the minstrel Demo-docus, on the capture of Troy by the wooden horse, The Works and Days of Hesiod begins with an invocation to the Muses to address hymns to Zeus, and in his Theogonia he speaks of them as singing or inspiring "hymns " to all the divinities, and of the bard as " their servant, hymning the glories of men of old, and of the gods of Olympus." Pindar calls by this name odes, like his own, in praise of con-querors at the public games of Greece. The Athenian dramatists (Euripides most frequently) use the word and its cognate verbs in a similar manner ; they also describe by them metrical oracles and apophthegms, martial, festal, and hymenaeal songs, dirges, and lamentations or incanta-tions of woe.
Hellenic hymns, according to this conception of them, have come down to us, some from a very early and others from a late period of Greek classical literature. Those which passed by the name of Homer were already old in the time of Thucydides. They are mythological poems (several of them long), in hexameter verse,—some very in-teresting. That to Apollo contains a traditionary history of the origin and progress of the Delphic worship ; those on Hermes and on Dionysus are marked by much liveliness and poetical fancy. Hymns of a like general character, but of less interest (though these also embody some fine poetical traditions of the Greek mythology, such as the story of Tiresias, and that of the wanderings of Leto), were written in the 3d century before Christ, by Callimachus of Cyrene. Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno, composed (also in hexa-meters) an " excellent and devout hymn " (as it is justly called by Cudworth, in his Intellectual System) to Zeus, which is preserved in the Eclogce of Stobaeus, and from which Aratus borrowed the words, " For we are also His off-spring," quoted by St Paul at Athens. The so-called Orphic hymns, in hexameter verse, styled reXeral, or hymns of initia-tion into the " mysteries" of the Hellenic religion, are productions of the Alexandrian school,—as to which learned men are not agreed whether they are earlier or later than the Christian era.
The Romans did not adopt the word " hymn; " nor have we many Latin poems of the classical age to which it can properly be applied, There are, however, a few,-—such as the simple and graceful " Diana? sumus in fide " (" Dian's votaries are we ") of Catullus, and " Dianam tenerae dicite virgines " (" Sing to Dian, gentle maidens ") of Horace,— which approach much more nearly than anything Hellenic to the form and character of modern hymnody.
2. Hebrew Hymnody.
For the origin and idea of Christian hymnody we must look, not to Gentile, but to Hebrew sources. St Augustine's definition of a hymn, generally accepted by Christian an-tiquity, may be summed up in the words, " praise to God with song" ("cum cantico"). Bede understood the "can-ticum" as properly requiring metre; though he thought that what in its original language was a true hymn might retain that character in an unmetrical translation. Modern use has enlarged the definition : Roman Catholic writers extend it to the praises of saints; and the word now com-prehends rhythmical prose as well as verse, and prayer and spiritual meditation as well as praise.
The modern distinction between psalms and hymns is arbitrary (see PSALMS). The former word was used by the LXX. as a generic designation, probably because it implied an accompaniment by the psaltery (said by Eusebius to have been of very ancient use in the East) or other instru-ments. The cognate verb " psallere " has been constantly applied to hymns, both in the Eastern and in the Western Church; and the same compositions which they described generically as " psalms " were also called by the LXX. " odes" (i.e., songs) and "hymns." The latter word occurs, _e.g., in Ps. lxxii. 20 ("the hymns of David the son of Jesse"), in Ps. lxv. 1, and also in the Greek titles of the 6 th, 54th, 55th, 67th, and 76th (this numbering of the psalms being that of the English version, not of the LXX.). The 44th chapter of Ecclesiasticus, " Let us now praise famous men," <fcc, is entitled in the Greek iraripuiv vp.vo<;, " The Fathers' Hymn." Bede speaks of the whole book of Psalms as called "liber hymnorum," by the universal consent of Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins.
In the New Testament we find our Lord and His apostles singing a hymn (vp.vrjo-a.vTe; IgqkOov), after the institution of the Lord's Supper; St Paul and Silas doing the same (vpvow TOV Oeov) in their prison at Philippi; St James re-commending psalm-singing (i/raAAero)), and St Paul " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs" (u/aA/xois KCU vp.vois KCU. ipScus TrvevfiaTiKcus). St Paul also, in the 14th chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, speaks of singing (if/aXS)), and of every man's psalm (eKaoros vposv tpaXybv eva), in a context which plainly has reference to the assem-blies of the Corinthian Christians for common worship. All the words thus used were applied by the LXX. to the Davidical psalms; it is therefore possible that these only-may be intended, in the different places to which we have referred. But there are in St Paul's epistles several passages (Eph, v. 14 ; 1 Tim, iii. 16 ; 1 Tim. vi. 15, 16; 2 Tim. ii. 11, 12) which have so much of the form and character of later Oriental hymnody as to have been sup-posed by Michaelis and others to be extracts from original hymns of the Apostolic age. Two of them are apparently introduced as quotations, though not found elsewhere in the Scriptures. A third has not only rhythm, but rhyme. The thanksgiving prayer of the assembled disciples, recorded in Acts iv., is both in substance and in manner poetical; and in the canticles, " Magnificat," " Benedictus," &c, which manifestly followed the form and style of Hebrew poetry, hymns or songs, proper for liturgical use, have always been recognized by the church.
3. Eastern Church Hymnody.
The hymn of our Lord, the precepts of the apostles, the angelic song at the nativity, and "Benedicite omnia opera," are referred to in a curious metrical prologue to the hymnary of the Mozarabic Breviary, as precedents for the practice of the Western Church. In this respect, however, the Western Church followed the Eastern, in which hymnody prevailed from the earliest times.
Philo describes the " Therapeutae " of the neighbourhood There-of Alexandria as composers of original hymns, which (as peutse. well as old) were sung at their great religious festivals,—the people listening in silence till they came to the closing strains, or refrains, at the end of a hymn or stanza (the " acroteleutia " and " ephymnia "), in which all, women as well as men, heartily joined. These songs, he says, were in various metres (for which he uses a number of technical terms); some were choral, some not; and they were divided into variously constructed strophes or stanzas.
Eusebius, who thought that the Therapeutae were com-munities of Christians, says that the Christian practice of his own day was in exact accordance with this description. Gibbon considered it to be proved, by modern criticism, that the Therapeutae were not Christians, but Essene Jews ; but he recognized in their customs " a very lively image of primitive discipline;" and he states that the Christian religion was embraced by great numbers of them, and that they were probably, by degrees, absorbed into the church, and became the fathers of the Egyptian ascetics. Apollos, " born at Alexandria," may possibly have been one of them.
The practice, not only of singing hymns, but of singing Anti-them antiphonally, appears, from the well-known letter of phonal Pliny to Trajan, to have been established in the Bithynian smSm§% churches at the beginning of the 2d century. They were accustomed " stato die ante lucem convenire, carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dicere secum invicem." This agrees well, in point of time, with the tradition recorded by the historian Socrates, that Ignatius (who suffered martyrdom about 107 A.D.) was led by a vision or dream of angels singing hymns in that manner to the Holy Trinity to intro-duce antiphonal singing into the church of Antioch, from which it quickly spread to other churches. There seems to be an allusion to choral singing in the epistle of Ignatius himself to the Romans, where he exhorts them, "vo/aos yev6pevoi" ("having formed themselves into a choir "), to " sing praise to the Father in Christ Jesus." A statement of Theodoret lias sometimes been supposed to refer the
origin of antiphonal singing to a much later date; but this
seems to relate only to the singing of Old Testament Psalms
(rrjv AaviSiKTjv /neXo>8iav), the alternate chanting of which,
by a choir divided into two parts, was (according to that
statement) first introduced into the church of Antioch by
two monks famous in the history of their time, Flavianus
and Diodorus, under the emperor Constantius II.
2d Other evidence of the use of hymns in the 2d century is
century, contained in a fragment of Caius, preserved by Eusebius, which refers to " all the psalms and odes written by faithful brethren from the beginning," as "hymning Christ, the "Word of God, as God." Tertullian also, in his description of the " Agapse," or love-feasts, of his day, says that, after washing hands and bringing in lights, each man was in-vited to come forward and sing to God's praise something either taken from the Scriptures or of his own composi-tion (" ut quisque de Sacris Scripturis vel proprio ingenio potest"). Bishop Bull believed one of those primitive compositions to be the hymn appended by Clement of Alexandria to his Pcedagogus; and Archbishop TJssher considered the ancient morning and evening hymns, of which the use was enjoined by the Apostolical Constitutions, and which are also mentioned in the " Tract on Virginity " jjrinted with the works of St Athanasius, and in St Basil's treatise upon the Holy Spirit, to belong to the same family. Clement's hymn, in a short anapaestic metre, beginning o-TOfuov TniiXmv aSaiov (or, according to some editions, fiarriXev ayliav, Aoye Trav8ap,a.Ttap—translated by Mr Chat-field, " O Thou, the King of saints, all-conquering Word "), is rapid, spirited, and well-adapted for singing. The Greek " Morning Hymn " (which, as divided into verses by Arch-bishop Ussher in his treatise De Symbolis, has a majestic rhythm, resembling a choric or dithyrambic strophe) is the original form of " Gloria in Excelsis," still said or sung, with some variations, in all branches of the church which have not relinquished the use of liturgies. The Latin form of this hymn (of which that in the English communion office is an exact translation) is said, by Bede and other ancient writers, to have been brought into use at Rome by Pope Telesphorus, as early as the time of the emperor Hadrian. A third, the Vesper or "Lamp-lighting" hymn (" <£(Ls l\apbv aytas 80^,"—translated by Canon Bright " Light of Gladness, Beam Divine "), holds its place to this 3d day in the services of the Greek rite. In the 3d century century. Origen seems to have had in his mind the words of some other hymns or hymn of like character, when he says (in his treatise Against Celsus); " We glorify in hymns God and His only begotten Son ; as do also the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, and all the host of heaven. All these, in one Divine chorus, with the just among men, glorify in hymns God who is over all, and His only begotten Son." So highly were these compositions esteemed in the Syrian churches that the council which deposed Paul of Samosata from the see of Antioch in the time of Aurelian justified that act, in its synodical letter to the bishops of Borne and Alexandria, on this ground (among others) that he had prohibited the use of hymns of that kind, by uninspired writers, addressed to Christ.
After the conversion of Constantine, the progress of hymnody became closely connected with church controver-sies. There had been in Edessa, at the end of the 2d or early in the 3d century, a Gnostic writer of conspicuous ability, named Bardesanes, who was succeeded, as the head of his sect or school, by his son Harmonius. Both father and son wrote hymns, and set them to agreeable melodies, which acquired, and in the 4th century still Ephraeni retained, much local popularity. Ephraem Syrus, the first Syrus. voluminous hymn writer whose works remain to us, think-ing that the same melodies might be made useful to the faith, if adapted to more orthodox words, composed to them a large number of hymns in the Syriac language, principally in tetrasyllable, pentasyllable, and heptasyllabic metres, divided into strophes of from 4 to 12, 16, and even 20 lines each. When a strophe contained five lines, the fifth was generally an " ephymnium," detached in sense, and consisting of a prayer, invocation, doxology, or the like, to be sung antiphonally, either in full chorus or by a separate part of the choir. The Syriac Chrestomathy of Hahn (published at Leipsic in 1825), and the third volume of Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus, contain specimens of these hymns. Some of them have been translated into (unmetrical) English by the Bev. Henry Burgess (Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus, &c, 1853). A con-siderable number of those so translated are on subjects connected with death, resurrection, judgment, &c, and display not only Christian faith and hope, but much sim-plicity and tenderness of natural feeling. Theodoret speaks of the spiritual songs of Ephraem as very sweet and profit-able, and as adding much, in his (Theodoret's) time, to the brightness of the commemorations of martyrs in the Syrian Church.
The Greek hymnody contemporary with Ephraem fol-lowed, with some licence, classical models. One of its favourite metres was the Anacreontic; but it also made use of the short anapsestic, Ionic, iambic, and other lyrical measures, as well as the hexameter and pentameter. Its principal authors were Methodius, bishop of Tyre (who died about 311 A.D.), Synesius, who became bishop of Ptole-mais in Cyrenaica in 410, and Gregory Nazianzen, for a short time (380-381) patriarch of Constantinople. The merits of these writers have been perhaps too much depreci-ated by the admirers of the later Greek " Melodists." They have found an able English translator in the Rev. Allen Chatfield (Songs and Hymns of Earliest Greek Christian Poets, <fec, London, 1876). Among the most striking of their works are pvwto Xpto-re (" Lord Jesus, think of me "), by Synesius; o-£ TOV a<f>6iTov p.ovap^r]v (" O Thou, the One Supreme ") and ri 0-01 tfeAas yeveo-Bou (" 0 soul of mine, repining "), by Gregory ; also avotOev irapOevoi (" The Bride-groom cometh"), by Methodius. There continued to be Greek metrical hymn writers, in a similar style, till a much later date. Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem in the 7th century, wrote seven Anacreontic hymns ; and St John Damascene, one of the most copious of the second school of " Melodists," was also the author of some long composi-tions in trimeter iambics.
An important development of hymnody at Constantinople Period arose out of the Arian controversy. Early in the 4th of Arian century Athanasius had rebuked, not only the doctrine of colltr°-Arius, but the light character of certain hymns by which %el3J' he endeavoured to make that doctrine popular. When, towards the close of that century (398), St John Chrysostom was raised to the metropolitan see, the Arians, who were still numerous at Constantinople, had no places of worship within, the walls ; but they were in the habit of coming into the city at sunset on Saturdays, Sundays, and the greater festivals, and congregating in the porticoes and other places of public resort, where they sung, all night through, antiphonal songs, with " acroteleutia" (closing strains, or refrains), expressive of Arian doctrine, often accompanied by' taunts and insults to the orthodox. Chrysostom was apprehensive that this music might draw some of the simpler church people to the Arian side; he therefore organized, in opposition to it, under the patronage and at the cost of Eudoxia, the empress of Arcadius (then his friend), a system of nightly processional hymn-singing, with silver crosses, wax-lights, and other circumstances of ceremonial pomp. Riots followed, with bloodshed on both sides, and with some personal injury to the empress's chief eunuch, who seems to have officiated as conductor or director of the church musicians. This led to the suppression, by an imperial edict, of all public Arian singing ; while in the church the practice of nocturnal hymn-singing on certain solemn occasions, thus first introduced, remained an estab-lished institution. Greek It is not improbable that some rudiments of the peculiar systemof system of hymnody which now prevails throughout the hymn- Qjgejj communion, and whose affinities are rather to the Hebrew and Syriac than to the classical forms, may have existed in the church of Constantinople, even at that time. Anatolius, patriarch of Constantinople in the middle of the oth century, was the precursor of that system ; but the reputation of being its proper founder belongs to Eomanus, of whom little more is known than that he wrote hymns still extant, and lived towards the end of that century. The importance of that system in the services of the Greek church may be understood from the fact that the late Dr Neale computed four-fifths of the whole space (about 5000 pages) contained in the different service-books of that church to be occupied by hymnody, all in a language or dialect which has ceased to be anywhere spoken.
The system has a peculiar technical terminology, in which the words "troparion," "ode," ': canon," and "hirmus" (efp/ios)chiefly require explanation.
The troparion is the unit of the system, being a strophe or stanza, seen, wdien analysed, to be divisible into verses or clauses, with regulated esesuras, but printed in the books as a single prose sentence, without marking any divisions. The following (turned into English, from a '' canon " by John Mauropus) may be taken as an example:—"The never-sleeping Guardian, | the patron of my soul, | the guide of my life, | allotted me by God, | I hymn thee, Divine Angel ! of Almighty God." Dr Neale and most other writers regard all these " troparia " as rhythmical or modu-lated prose. Cardinal J. B. Pitra, on the other hand, who in 1867 and 1876 published two learned works on this subject, main-tains that they are really metrical, and governed by definite rules of prosody, of which he lays down sixteen. According to him, each "troparion" contains from three to thirty-three verses ; each verse varies from two to thirteen syllables, often in a continuous series, uniform, alternate, or reciprocal, the metre being always syllabic, and depending, not on the quantity of vowels or the position of consonants, but on an harmonic series of accents.
In various parts of the services solitary troparia are sung, under various names, "contacion," "cecos," "cathisma," &c., which mark distinctions either in their character or in their use.
An ode is a song or hymn compounded of several similar "troparia,"—usually three, four, or five. To these is always pre-fixed a typical or standard " troparion," called the hirmus, by which the syllabic measure, the periodic series of accents, and in fact the whole structure and rhythm of the stanzas which follow it are regulated. Each succeeding " troparion " in the same "ode " contains the same number of verses, and of syllables in each verse, and similar accents on the same or equivalent syllables. The " hirmus" may either form the first stanza of the "ode "itself, or (as is more frequently the case) may be taken from some other piece ; and, when so taken, it is often indicated by initial words only, without being printed at length. It is generally printed within commas, after the proper rubric of the "ode." A hymn in irregular " stichera" or stanzas, without a "hirmus," is called "idiomelon." A system of three or four odes is "triodion" or '' tetraodion."
A canon is a system of eight (theoretically nine) connected odes, the second being always suppressed. Various pauses, relieved by the interposition of other short chants or readings, occur during the singing of a whole "canon." The final " troparion" in each ode of the series is not unfrequently detached in sense (like the "ephymnia"of Ephraem Syrus), particularly when it is in the (very common) form of a " theotokion," or ascription of praise to the mother of our Lord, and when it is a recurring refrain or burden.
There were two principal periods of Greek hymnography constructed on these principles,—the first that of Romanus and his followers, extending over the 6th and 7th centuries, the second that of the schools which arose during the Iconoclastic controversy in the 8th century, and which continued for some centuries afterwards, until the art itself died out.
The works of the writers of the former period were collected in Tropologia, or church hymn-books, which School of were held in high esteem till the 10th century, when they Romanus. ceased to be regarded as church-books, and so fell into neglect. They are now preserved only in a very small number of manuscripts. From three of these, belonging to public libraries at Moscow, Turin, and Rome, Cardinal Pitra has lately printed, in his Analeeta, a number of interesting examples, the existence of which appears to have been unknown to the late learned Dr Neale, and which, in the cardinal's estimation, are in many respects superior to the " canons," <fcc., of the present Greek service-books, from which all Dr Neale's translations (except some from Anatolius) are taken. Cardinal Pitra's selections include twenty-nine works by Romanus, and some by Sergius, and nine other known, as well as some unknown, authors. He describes them as having generally a more dramatic character than the " melodies " of the later period, and a much more animated style; and he supposes that they may have been originally sung with dramatic accompaniments, by way of substitution for the theatrical performances of Pagan times. As an instance of their peculiar character, he mentions a Christmas or Epiphany hymn by Romanus, in twenty-five long strophes, in which there is, first, an account of the Nativity and its accompanying wonders, and then a dialogue between the wise men, the Virgin mother, and Joseph. The magi arrive, are admitted, describe the moral and religious con-dition of Persia and the East, and the cause and adventures of their journey, and then offer their gifts. The Virgin intercedes for them with her Son, instructs them in some parts of Jewish history, and ends with a prayer for the salvation of the world.
The controversies and persecutions of the 8th and sue- Melod. ceeding centuries turned the thoughts of the " melodists " ists. of the great monasteries of the Studium at Constantinople and St Saba in Palestine and their followers, and those of the adherents of the Greek rite in Sicily and South Italy (who suffered much from the Saracens and the Normans), into a less picturesque but more strictly theological course; and the influence of those controversies, in which the final success of the cause of " Icons" was largely due to the hymns, as well as to the courage and sufferings, of these confessors, was probably the cause of their supplanting, as they did, the works of the older school. Cardinal Pitra gives them the praise of having discovered a graver and more solemn style of chant, and of having done much to fix the dogmatic theology of their church upon its present lines of near approach to the Roman.
Among the " melodists " of this latter Greek school there were many saints of the Greek church, several patriarchs, and two emperors,—Leo the Philosopher, and Constantine Porphyrogenitus, his son. Their greatest poets were Theodore and Joseph of the Studium, and Cosmas and John (calledDamascene) of StSaba. DrNeale has translated into English verse several selected portions, or centoes, from the works of these and others, together with four selections from earlier works by Anatolius. Some of his translations, —particularly "The day is past and over," from Anatolius, and " Christian, dost thou see them," from Andrew of Crete, have been adopted into hymn-books used in many English churches ; and the hymn "Art thou weary," &c, which is rather founded upon than translated from one by Stephen the Sabaite, has obtained still more general popularity.
The older learning on the subject of Greek hymnody and church music is collected in a dissertation prefixed to the second volume for June of the Bollandists' Acta Sanctorum ; the more recent in Cardinal Pitra's Hymnographie de VEglise Grecque (Rome, 1867), and Analeeta Sacra, &c. (Paris, 1876), in the Anthologia Grceca Carminum Christianorum (Leipsic, 1871), and in Dr Daniel's Thesaurus Symnologicus. There is also an able paper on Cardinal Pitra's works, by M. E. Miller, in the Journal des Savants for 1876.
4. Western Church Hymnody.
It was not till the 4th century that Greek hymnody was imitated in the West, where its introduction was due to two great lights of the Latin Church,— St Hilary of Poitiers and St Ambrose of Milan. Hilary. Hilary was banished from his see of Poitiers in 356, and was absent from it for about four years, which he spent in Asia Minor, taking part during that time in one of the councils of the Eastern Church. He thus had full opportunity of becoming acquainted with the Greek church music of that day; and he wrote (as St Jerome, who was thirty years old when he died, and who was well acquainted with his acts and writings, and spent some time in or near his diocese, informs us) a " book of hymns," to one of which Jerome particularly refers, in the preface to the second book of his own commentary on the epistle to the Galatians. Isidore, archbishop of Seville, who presided over the fourth council of Toledo, in his book on the offices of the church, speaks of Hilary as the first Latin hymn-writer; that council itself, in its 13th canon, and the pro-logue to the Mozarabic hymnary (which is little more than a versification of the canon), associate his name, in this respect, with that of Ambrose. A tradition, ancient and widely spread, ascribed to him the authorship of the remark-able " Hymnum dicat turba fratrum, hymnum cantus personet" ("Band of brethren, raise the hymn, let your song the hymn resound"), which is a succinct nar-rative, in hymnal form, of the whole gospel history; and is perhaps the earliest example of a strictly didactic _ hymn. Both Bede and Hincmar much admired this com-position, though the former does not mention, in connexion with it, the name of Hilary. The private use of hymns of such a character by Christians in the West may probably have preceded their ecclesiastical use; for Jerome says that in his day those who went into the fields might hear " the ploughman at his hallelujahs, the mower at his hymns, and the vine-dresser singing David's psalms." Besides this, seven shorter metrical hymns attributed to Hilary are still extant.
Ambrose. Of the part taken by Ambrose, not long after Hilary's death, in bringing the use of hymns into the church of Milan, we have a contemporary account from his convert, St Augustine. Justina, mother of the emperor Valentinian, favoured the Arians, and desired to remove Ambrose from his see. The " devout people," of whom Augustine's mother Monica was one, combined to protect him, and kept guard in the church. "Then," says Augustine, "it was first appointed that, after the manner of the Eastern churches, hymns and psalms should be sung, lest the people should grow weary and faint through sorrow; which custom has ever since been retained, and has been followed by almost all congregations in other parts of the world." He describes himself as moved to tears by the sweetness of these " hymns and canticles ":—" The voices flowed into my ears; the truth distilled into my heart; I overflowed with devout affections, and was happy." To this time, according to an uncertain but not improbable tradition which ascribed the composition of the " Te Deum " to Ambrose, and connected it with the conversion of Augustine, is to be referred the commencement of the use in the church of that sublime unmetrical hymn.
It is not, however, to be assumed that the hymnody thus introduced by Ambrose was from the first used according to the precise order and method of the later Western ritual. To bring it into (substantially) that order and method appears to have been the work of St Benedict. Walafridus Strabo, the earliest ecclesiastical writer on this subject (who lived at the beginning of the 9th century), says that Benedict, on the constitution of the religious order known by his name (about 530), appointed the Ambrosian hymns to be regularly sung in his offices for the canonical hours. Hence probably originated the practice of the Italian churches, and of others which followed their example, to sing certain hymns (Ambrosian, or by the early successors of the Ambrosian school) daily throughout the week, at " Vespers," " Lauds," and " Nocturns," and on some days at " Compline " also-—varying them with the different ecclesiastical seasons and festivals, commemora-tions of saints and martyrs, and other special offices. Different dioceses and religious houses had their own pecu-liarities of ritual, including such hymns as were approved by their several bishops or ecclesiastical superiors, varying in detail, but all following the same general method. The national rituals, which were first reduced into a form sub-stantially like that which has since prevailed, were probably those of Lombardy and of Spain, now known as the " Ambrosian " and the " Mozarabic." That of Spain was settled in the 7th century by Leander and Isidore, brothers, successively archbishops of Seville. It contained a copious hymnary, the original form of which may be regarded as canonically approved by the fourth council of Toledo (633). By the 13th canon of that council, an opinion (which even then found advocates) against the use in churches of any hymns not taken from the Scriptures,—apparently the same opinion which had been held by Paul of Samosata,—was censured; and it was ordered that such hymns should be used in the Spanish as well as in the Gallican churches, the penalty of excommunication being denounced against all who might presume to reject them.
The hymns of which the use was thus established and authorized were those which entered into the daily and other offices of the church, afterwards collected in the "Breviaries;" in which the hymns "proper" for "the week," and for " the season," continued for many centuries, with very few exceptions, to be derived from the earliest epoch of Latin Church poetry,—reckoning that epoch as extending from Hilary and Ambrose to the end of the pontificate of Gregory the Great. The "Ambrosian" music, to which those hymns were generally sung down to the time of Gregory, was more popular and congregational than the " Gregorian," which then came into use, and after-wards prevailed. In the service of the mass it was not the general practice, before the invention of sequences in the 9th century, to sing any hymns, except some from the Scriptures esteemed canonical, such as the " Song of the Three Children" (" Benedicite omnia opera"). But to this rule there were, according to Walafridus Strabo, some occasional exceptions; particularly in the case of Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia under Charlemagne, himself a hymn-writer, who frequently used hymns, composed by himself or others, in the eucharistic office, especially in private masses.
Some of the hymns called " Ambrosian" (nearly 100 in Am-number) are beyond all question by Ambrose himself, and brosian the rest probably belong to his time or to the following u5Tmns-century. Four, those beginning " iEterne rerum conditor " ("Dread Framer of the earth and sky"), "Deus Creator omnium" ("Maker of all things, glorious God"), "Veni Bedemptor Gentium" ("Redeemer of the nations, come "), and " Jam surgit hora tertia" (" Christ at this hour was crucified "), are quoted as works of Ambrose by Augustine. These, and others by the hand of the same master, have the qualities most valuable in hymns intended for congre-gational use. They are short and complete in themselves; easy, and at the same time elevated in their expression and rhythm; terse and masculine in thought and language ; and (though sometimes criticized as deficient in theological precision) simple, pure, and not technical in their rendering of the great facts and doctrines of Christianity, which they present in an objective and not a subjective manner. They have exercised a powerful influence, direct or indirect, upon many of the best works of the same kind in all succeeding generations. With the Ambrosian hymns are properly classed those of Hilary, and the contemporary works of Pope Damasus (who wrote two hymns in commemoration of saints), and of Prudentius, from whose Galhemerina (" Daily Devotions ") and Peristephana ("Crown-songs for Martyrs "), all poems of considerable, some of great length, —about twenty-eight hymns, found in various Breviaries, were derived. Prudentius was a layman, a native of Sara-gossa, and it was in the Spanish ritual that his hymns were most largely used. In the Mozarabic Breviary almost the whole of one of his finest poems (from which most churches took one part only, beginning " Corde natus ex parentis ") was appointed to be sung between Easter and Ascension-Day, being divided into eight or nine hymns; and on some of the commemorations of Spanish saints long poems from his Peristephana were recited or sung at large. He is entitled to a high rank among Christian poets, many of the hymns taken from his works being full of fervour and sweetness, and by no means deficient in dignity or strength.
btli and These writers were followed in the 5th and early in the 6th 6 th century by the priest Sedulius, whose reputation per-centunes. j^pg exceecieci his merit; Elpis, a noble Roman lady, wife of the philosophic statesman Boetius ; Pope Gelasius ; and Ennoclius, bishop of Pavia. Sedulius and Elpis wrote very little from which hymns could be extracted ; but the small number taken from their compositions obtained wide popu-larity, and have since held their ground. Gelasius was of no great account as a hymn-writer; and the works of Ennodius appear to have been known only in Italy and Spain. The latter part of the 6th century produced Pope Gregory the Great, and Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian poet, the friend of Gregory, and the favourite of Radegunda, queen of the Franks, who died (609) bishop of Poitiers. Eleven hymns of Gregory, and twelve or thirteen (mostly taken from longer poems) by Fortunatus, came into general use in the Italian, Gallican, and British churches. Those of Gregory are in a style hardly distinguishable from the Ambrosian ; those of Fortunatus are graceful, and some-times vigorous. He does not, however, deserve the praise given to him by Dr Neale, of having struck out a new path in Latin hymnody. On the contrary, he may more justly be described as a disciple of the school of Prudentius, and as having affected the classical style, at least as much as any of his predecessors.
The poets of this primitive epoch, which closed with the 6th century, wrote in the old classical metres, and made use of a con-siderable variety of them—anapaestic, anacreontic, hendecasyllabic, asclepiad, hexameters and pentameters, and others. Gregory and some of the Ambrosian authors occasionally wrote in sapphics ; but the most frequent measure was the iambic dimeter, and, next to that, the trochaic. The full alcaic stanza does not appear to have been used for church purposes before the 16th century, though some of its elements were. In the greater number of these works, a general intention to conform to the rules of Roman prosody is manifest; but even those writers (like Prudentius) in whom that conformity was most decided allowed themselves much liberty of deviation from it. Other works, including some of the very earliest, and some of conspicuous merit, were of the kind described by Bede as not metrical but "rhythmical,"—i.e. (as he explains the term "rhythm"), "modulated to the ear in imitation of different metres." It would be more correct to call them metrical—(e.g., still trochaic or iambic, &c., but, according to new laws of syllabic quantity, depending entirely on accent, and not on the power of vowels or the position of consonants,—laws by which the future prosody of all modern European nations was to be governed. There are also, in the hymns of the primitive period (even in those of Ambrose), anticipations,—irregular indeed and inconstant, but certainly not accidental,—of another great innovation, destined to receive important developments, that of assonance or rhyme, in the final letters or syllables of verses. Archbishop Trench, in the introduction to his Sacred Latin Poetry, has traced the whole course of the transition from the ancient to the modern forms of versifica-tion, ascribing it to natural and necessary causes, which made such changes needful for the due development of the new forms of spiritual and intellectual life, consequent upon the conversion of the Latin speaking nations to Christianity.
From the 6th century downwards we see this transforma- 6th tion making continual progress, each nation of Western century Christendom adding, from time to time, to the earlier !^°™~ hymns in its service-books others of more recent and fre-quently of local origin. For these additions, the com-memorations of saints, &c., as to which the devotion of one place often differed from that of another, offered especial opportunities. This process, while it promoted the develop-ment of a mediaeval as distinct from the primitive style, led also to much deterioration in the quality of hymns, of which, perhaps, some of the strongest examples may be found in a volume published in 1865 by the Irish Archaeo-logical Society from a manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It contains a number of hymns by Irish saints of the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries,—in several instances fully rhymed, and in one mixing Erse and Latin barbarously together, as was not uncommon, at a much later date, in semi-vernacular hymns of other countries. The Mozarabic Breviary, and the collection of hymns used in the Anglo-Saxon churches, published in 1851 by the Surtees Society (chiefly from a Benedictine MS. in the college library of Durham, supplemented by other MSS. in the British Museum), supply many further illustrations of the same decline of taste:—such sapphics, e.g., as the " Festum insigne prodiit coruscum" of Isidore, and the "O veneranda Trinitas laudanda" of the Anglo-Saxon books. The early mediaeval period, however, from the time of Gregory the Great to that of Hildebrand, was far from deficient in the production of good hymns, wherever learn-ing flourished. Bede in England, and Paul " the Deacon," —the author of a fairly classical sapphic ode on St John the Baptist,—in Italy, were successful followers of the Ambrosian and Gregorian styles. Eleven metrical hymns are attributed to Bede by Cassander; and there are also in one of Bede's works (Collectanea et Flores) two rhythmical hymns of considerable length on the Day of Judgment, with the refrains "In tremendo die" and "Attende homo," both irregularly rhymed, and, in parts, not unworthy of comparison with the " Dies Irae." Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, contemporary with Paul, wrote rhythmical tri-meter iambics in a manner peculiar to himself. Theodulph, bishop of Orleans (793-835), author of the famous pro-cessional hymn for Palm Sunday in hexameters and penta-meters, " Gloria, laus, et honor tibi sit, Rex Christe Redemptor" ("Glory and honour and laud be to Thee, King Christ the Redeemer"), and Hrabanus Maurus, arch-bishop of Mainz (847-856), the pupil of Alcuin, and the most learned theologian of his day, enriched the church with some excellent works. Among the anonymous hymns of the same period there are three of great beauty, of which the influence may be traced in most, if not all, of the "New Jerusalem" hymns of later generations, includ-ing those of Germany and Great Britain:—"Urbs beata Hierusalem" ("Blessed city, heavenly Salem"); "Alleluia piis edite laudibus" ("Alleluias sound ye in strains of holy praise,"—called, from its burden, "Alleluia perenne") ; and "Alleluia dulce carmen" ("Alleluia, song of sweetness"), which, being found in Anglo-Saxon hymnaries certainly older than the Conquest, cannot be of the late date assigned to it, in his Mecliceval Hymns and Sequences, by Dr Neale. These were followed by the "Chorus novas Hierusalem" ("Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem") of Fulbert, bishop of Chartres (1007-1028). This group of hymns is remarkable for an attractive union of melody, imagination, poetical colouring, and faith. It represents, perhaps, the best and highest type of the middle school, between the severe Ambrosian simplicity and the florid luxuriance of later times.
Veni Another celebrated hymn, which belongs to the first
Creator, mediaeval period, is the " Veni Creator Spiritus " (" Come,
Holy Ghost, our souls inspire"). The earliest recorded
occasion of its use is that of a translation (898) of the
relics of St Marcellus, mentioned in the Annals of the
Benedictine order. It has since been constantly sung
throughout Western Christendom (as versions of it still are
in the Church of England), as part of the appointed offices
for the coronation of kings, the consecration and ordination
of bishops and priests, the assembling of synods, and other
great ecclesiastical solemnities. It has been attributed—
probably in consequence of certain corruptions in the text
Notker. of Ekkehard's Life of N other (a work of the 13th century)
—to Charlemagne. Ekkehard wrote in the Benedictine
monastery of St Gall, to which Notker belonged, with
full access to its records; and an ignorant interpolator,
regardless of chronology, added, at some later date, the
word "Great" to the name of "the emperor Charles,"
wherever it was mentioned in that work. The biographer
relates that Notker,—a man of a gentle contemplative
nature, observant of all around him, and accustomed to find
spiritual and poetical suggestions in common sights and
sounds,—was moved by the sound of a mill-wheel to
compose his "sequence" on the Holy Spirit, " Sancti
Spiritus adsit nobis gratia" (" Present with us ever be
the Holy Spirit's grace"); and that, when finished, he
sent it as a present to " the emperor Charles," who in
return sent him back, "by the same messenger," the hymn
" Veni Creator," which (says Ekkehard), the same " Spirit
had inspired him to write" (" Sibi idem Spiritus inspira-
verat"). If this story is to be credited,—and, from its
circumstantial and almost dramatic character, it has an
air of truth,—the author of "Veni Creator" was not
Charlemagne, but his grandson Charles the Bald, who
succeeded to the royal crown in 840, about the time when
Notker was born, and to the imperial in 875. Notker
himself long survived that emperor, and died in 912.
Se- The invention of " sequences " by Notker may be regarded
quences. as the beginning of the later mediaeval epoch of Latin hymnody. In the eucharistic service, in which (as has been stated) hymns were not generally used, it had been the practice, except at certain seasons, to sing "laud," or "Alleluia," between the epistle and the gospel, and to fill up what would otherwise have been a long pause, by extend-ing the cadence upon the two final vowels of the " Alleluia " into a protracted strain of music. It occurred to Notker that, while preserving the spirit of that part of the service, the monotony of the interval might be relieved by intro-ducing at that point a chant of praise specially composed for the purpose. With that view he produced the peculiar species of rhythmical composition which obtained the name of " sequentia " (probably from following after the close of the "Alleluia"), and also that of "prosa," because its structure was originally irregular and unmetrical, resembling in this respect the Greek " troparia," and the " Te Deum," " Benedicite," and canticles. That it was in some measure suggested by the forms of the later Greek hymnody seems probable, both from the intercourse (at that time frequent) between the Eastern and Western churches, and from the application by Ekkehard, in his biography and elsewhere (e.g., in Lyndwood's Provinciale), of some technical terms, borrowed from the Greek terminology, to works of Notker and his school and to books containing them.
Dr Neale, in a learned dissertation prefixed to his collection of sequences from mediaeval Missals, and enlarged in a Latin letter to Dr Daniel (printed in the fifth volume of Daniel's Thesaurus), has investigated the laws of caesura and modulation which are discover-able in these works. Those first brought into use were sent by their author to Nicholas I., pope from 858 to 867, who authorized their use, and that of others composed after the same model by other brethren of St Gall, in all churches of the West.
Although the sequences of Notker and his school, which then rapidly passed into most German, French, and British Missals, were not metrical, the art of " assonance " was much practised in them. Many of those in the Sarum and French Missals have every verse, and even every clause or division of a verse, ending with the same vowel " a,"—perhaps with some reference to the terminal letter of " Alleluia." Artifices such as these naturally led the way to the adaptation of the same kind of composition to regular metre and fully developed rhyme. Dr Neale's full and large collection, and the second volume of Dr Daniel's Tliesaurus, contain numerous examples, both of the "proses," properly so called, of the Not-kerian type, and of those of the later school, which (from the religious house to which its chief writer belonged) has been called " Victorine." Most Missals appear to have contained some of both kinds. In the majority of those from which Dr Neale's speci-mens are taken, the metrical kind largely prevailed ; but in some (e.g., those of Sarum and Liege) the greater number were Not-kerian.
Of the sequence on the Holy Ghost, sent by Notker (according to Ekkehard) to Charles the Bald, Dr Neale says that it " was in use all over Europe, even in those countries, like Italy and Spain, which usually rejected sequences"; and that, " in the Missal of Palencia, the priest was ordered to hold a white dove in his hands, while intoning the first syllables, and then to let it go." Another of the most remarkable of Notker's sequences, beginning "Media in vita" ("In the midst of life we are in death"), is said to have been suggested to him while observing some workmen engaged in the construction of a bridge over a torrent near his monastery. Miss Winkworth states that this was long used as a battle-song, until the custom was forbidden, on account of its being supposed to exercise a magical influence. A translation of it (" Mitten wir im Leben sind ") is one of Luther's funeral hymns; and all but the opening sentence of that part of the burial service of the Church of England which is directed to be "said or sung" at the grave, "while the corpse is made ready to be laid into the earth," is taken from it.
The "Golden Sequence," " Veni, sancte Spiritus " ("Holy Spirit, Lord of Light"), is an early example of the transi-tion of sequences from a simply rhythmical to a metrical form. Archbishop Trench, who esteems it " the loveliest of all the hymns in the whole circle of Latin sacred poetry," is inclined to give credit to a tradition which ascribes its authorship to Bobert II., king of France, son of Hugh Capet (997-1031). Others have assigned to it a later date,—some attributing it to Pope Innocent III., and some to Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. Many translations, in German, English, and other languages, attest its merit. Berengarius of Tours, St Bernard of Clairvaux, and Abelard, in the 11th century and early in the 12th, followed in the same track; and the art of the Victorine school was carried to its greatest perfection by Adam of St Victor (who died between 1173 and 1194),—"the most fertile, and" (in the concurrent judg-ment of Archbishop Trench and Dr Neale) "the greatest of the Latin hymnographers of the Middle Ages." The archbishop's selection contains many excellent specimens of his works.
But the two most widely celebrated of all this class of compositions,—works which have exercised the talents of the greatest musical composers, and of innumerable trans-lators in almost all languages,—are the "Dies Irae" Dies Ira?. (" That day of wrath, that dreadful day "), by Thomas de Celano, the companion and biographer of St Francis of Assisi (who died in 1226), and the " Stabat Mater Stabat dolorosa" ("By the cross sad vigil keeping") of Jacopone Mater, or Jacobus de Benedictis, a Franciscan humorist and reformer, who was persecuted by Pope Boniface VIII. for his satires on the prelacy of the time, and died very old in 1306. Besides these, the 13th century produced the famous sequence " Lauda Sion Salvatorem" ("Sion, lift thy voice and sing "), and the four other well-known sacra-Aquinas, mental hymns of St Thomas Aquinas, viz., " Pange lingua gloriosi corporis mysterium" (" Sing, my tongue, the Saviour's glory"), " Verbum supermini prodiens " ("The Word, descending from above "—not to be confounded with the Ambrosian hymn from which it borrowed the first line), " Sacris solemniis juncta sint gaudia " (" Let us with hearts renewed our grateful homage pay"), and " Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas" (" O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore Thee "),—a group of remarkable compositions, written by him for the then new festival of Corpus Christi, of which he induced Pope Urban IV. (1261-1265) to decree the observance. In these (of which all but "Adoro Te devote," &c, passed rapidly into Breviaries and Missals) the doctrine of transubstantiation is set forth with a wonderful degree of scholastic precision; and they exercised, probably, a not unimportant influence upon the general reception of that dogma. They are undoubtedly works of genius, powerful in thought, feeling, and expression. Medieval These and other mediaeval hymn-writers of the 12th and hymns, i 3 th centuries may be described, generally, as poet-school-men. Their tone is contemplative, didactic, theological; they are especially fertile and ingenious in the field of mystical interpretation. Two great monasteries in the East had, in the 8th and 9th centuries, been the principal centres of Greek hymnology; and, in the West, three monasteries,—St Gall, near Constance (which was long the especial seat of German religious literature), Cluny in Burgundy, and St Victor, near Paris,—obtained a similar distinction. St Gall produced, besides JSTotker, several dis-tinguished sequence writers, probably his pupils,—Hart-mann, Hermann, and Gottschalk, —to the last of whom Dr Neale ascribes the " Alleluiatic Sequence " (" Cante-mus cuncti melodum nunc Alleluia"), well known in England through his translation, " The strain upraise of joy and praise." The chief poets of Cluny were two of its abbots, Odo (who died in 947) and Peter the Venerable (1122-1156), and one of Peter's monk1;, Bernard of Morlaix, who wrote the remarkable poem on " Contempt of the World" in about 3000 long rolling "leonine-dactylic " verses, from parts of which Dr Neale's popular hymns, " Jerusalem the golden," <fec, are taken. The abbey of St Victor, besides Adam and his follower Pistor, was destined after-wards to produce the most popular church poet of the 17th century.
There were other distinguished Latin hymn-writers of the later mediaeval period besides those already mentioned. Bernard The name of St Bernard of Clairvaux cannot be passed of Clair- over with the mere mention of the fact that he was the vaux. author of some metrical sequences. He was, in truth, the father, in Latin hymnody, of that warm and passionate form of devotion which some may consider to apply too _freely to Divine Objects the language of human affection, but which has, nevertheless, been popular with many devout persons, in Protestant as well as Roman Catholic churches. Spee, "Ángelus," Madame Guyon, Bishop Ken, Count Zin-zendorf, and Frederick William Faber may be regarded as disciples in this school. Many hymns, in various lan-guages, have been founded upon St Bernard's " Jesu dulcís memoria" ("Jesu, the very thought of Thee"), "(Jesu dulcedo cordium" ("Jesu, Thou joy of loving hearts "), and "Jesu Rex admirabilis " (" O Jesu, King most wonderful"), —three portions of one poem, nearly 200 lines long. Cardinal Damiani, the friend of Pope Gregory VIL, Marbode (bishop of Rennes) in the 11th, Hildebert (arch-bishop of Tours) in the 12th, and Cardinal Bonaventura in the 13th centuries, are other eminent men, who added poetical fame, as hymnographers, to high public distinction.
Before the time of the Reformation, the multiplication of sequences (often as unedifying in matter as unpoetical in style) had done much to degrade the common conception of hymnody. In some parts of France, Portugal, Sardinia, and Bohemia, their use in the vernacular language had been allowed. In Germany also there were vernacular sequences as early as the 12th century, specimens of which may be seen in the third chapter of Miss Winkworth's Christian Singers of Germany. Scoffing parodies upon sequences are said to have been among the means used in Scotland to discredit the old church services. After the 15th century they were discouraged at Rome. They retained for a time some of their old popularity among German Protestants, and were only gradually relinquished in France. A new " prose," in honour of St Maxentia, is among the compositions of Jean Baptiste Santeul; and Dr Daniel's second volume closes with one written in 1855 upon the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
The taste of the Renaissance was offended by all deviations from Roman re classical prosody and Latinity. Pope Leo X. directed the whole vision of body of the hymns in use at Rome to be reformed ; and a volume hymns, of '' new ecclesiastical hymns," prepared by Ferreri, a scholar of Vicenza, to whom Leo had committed that task, appeared in 1523, with the sanction of a later pope, Clement VII. The next step was to revise the whole Roman Breviary. That undertaking, after passing through several stages under different popes (particularly Pius V. and Clement VIII.), was at last brought to a conclusion by Urban VIII., in 1631. From this revised Breviary a large num-ber of mediaeval hymns, both of the earlier and the later periods, were excluded; and in their places many new hymns, including some by Pope Urban himself, and some by Cardinal Bellarmine and another cardinal (Silvius Antonianus) were introduced. The hymns of the primitive epoch, from Hilary to Gregory the Great, for the most part retained their places (especially in the offices for everyday of the week); and there remained altogether from seventy to eighty of earlier date than the 11th century. Those, however, which were so retained were freely altered, and by no means generally improved. The revisers appointed by Pope Urban (three learned Jesuits,—Strada, Gallucci, and Petrucci), professed to have made "as few changes as possible " in the works of Ambrose, Gregory, Pru-dentius, Sedulius, Fortunatus, and other "poets of great name." But some changes, even in those works, were made with consider-able boldness ; and the pope, in the " constitution" by which his new book was promulgated, boasted that, "with the exception of a very small number ('perpaucis'), which were either prose or merely rhythmical, all the hymns had been made conformable to the laws of prosody and Latinity, those which could not be corrected by any milder method being entirely rewritten." The latter fate befel, among others, the beautiful "Urbs beata Hierusalem," which now assumed the form (to many, perhaps, better known), of " Ccelestis urbs Jerusalem." Of the "very few" which were spared, the chief were " Ave maris Stella "(" Gentle star of ocean "), " Dies Irae, " "Stabat Mater dolorosa," the hymns of Thomas Aquinas, two of St Bernard, and one Ambrosian hymn, "Jesu nos-tra Redemptio" ("O Jesu, our Redemption "), which approaches nearer than others to the tone of St Bernard. A then recent hymn of St Francis Xavier, with scarcely enough merit of any kind to atone for its neglect of prosody, " O Deus, ego amo Te " (" O God, I love Thee, not because"), was at the same time introduced without change. This hymnary of Pope Urban VIII. is now in general use throughout the Roman Communion.
The Parisian hymnary underwent three revisions—the first in Parisian 1527, when a new "Psaltery with hymns" was issued. In this revisions, such changes only were made as the revisers thought justifiable upon the principle of correcting supposed corruptions of the original text. Of these, the transposition, " Urbs Jerusalem beata," instead of " Urbs beata Hierusalem," may be taken as a typical example. The next revision was in 1670-1680, under Cardinal Perefixe, pre-ceptor of Louis XIV., and Francis Harlay, successively archbishops of Paris, who employed for this purpose Claude Santeul, of the monastery of St Magloire, and, through him, obtained the assist-ance of other French scholars, including his more celebrated brother, Jean Baptiste Santeul, of the abbey of St Victor,—better known as " Santolius Victorinus." The third and final revision was completed in 1735, under the primacy of Cardinal Archbishop de Vintimille, wdio engaged for it the services of Charles Coffin, then rector of the university of Paris. Many old hymns were omitted in Archbishop Harlay's Breviary, and a large number of new compositions, by the Santeuls and others, was introduced. It still, however, retained in their old places (without further changes than had been made in 1527) about seventy of earlier date than the 11th century,—including thirty-one Ambrosian, one by Hilary, eight by Prudentius, seven by Fortunatus, three by Paul the Deacon, two each by Sedulius, Elpis, Gregory, and Hrabanus Maurus, "Veni Creator," and "Urbs Jerusalem beata." Most of these disappeared in 1735, although Cardinal Vintimille, in his preface, professed to have still admitted the old hymns, except when the new were better —(" veteribus hymnis locus datus est, nisi quibus, ob sententiarum vim, elegantiam verborum, et teneriores pietatis sensus, recentiores anteponi satius visum est"). The number of the new was, at the same time, very largely increased. Only twenty-one more ancient than the 16th century remained, of which those belonging to the primitive epoch were but eight, viz., four Ambrosian, two by Fortunatus, and one each by Prudentius and Gregory. The number of Jean Baptiste Santeul's hymns (who had died in 1697) rose to eighty-nine ; those by Coffin,—including some old hymns, e.g., "Jam lucis orto sidere " ("Once more the sun is beaming bright"), which he substantially re-wrote,—were eighty-three ; those of other modern French writers, ninety-seven. Whatever opinion may be entertained of the principles on which these Roman and Parisian revisions proceeded, it would be unjust to deny very high praise as hymn-writers to several of their poets, especially to Coffin and Jean Baptiste Santeul. The noble hymn by Coffin, beginning—
u 0 luce qui mortalibus " 0 Thou who in the light dost dwell,
Lates inaccessa, Deus, To mortals unapproachable,
Prsesente quo sancti tremunt Where angels veil them from Thy rays,
Nubuntque vultus angeli," And tremble as they gaze,"
and several others of his works, breathe the true Ambrosian spirit ; and though Santeul (generally esteemed the better poet of the twoj delighted in alcaics, and did not greatly affect the primitive manner, there can be no question as to the excellence of such hymns as his " Fumant Sabseis templa vaporibus" ("Sweet incense breathes around"), " Stupete gentes, fit Deus hostia" ("Tremble, ye Gentile lands"), " Hymnis dura resonat curia ccelitum" ("Ye in the house of heavenly morn "), and " Templi sacratas pande, Sion, fores" ("0 Sion, open wide thy gates"). It is a striking testimony to the merits of those writers that such accomplished translators as the Rev. Isaac. Williams and the Rev. John Chandler appear (from the title page of the latter, and the prefaces of both) to have supposed their hymns to be " ancient" and "primitive." Among the other authors associated with them, perhaps the first place is due to the Abbe Besnault, of Sens, who contributed to the book of 1735 the " Urbs beata vera pacis Visio Jerusalem," in the opinion of Dr Neale "much superior" to the " Ccelestis urbs Jerusalem" of the Roman Breviary. This stood side by side with the " Urbs Jerusalem beata" of 1527 (in the office for the dedication of churches) till 1822, when the older form was at last finally excluded by Archbishop de Quelen.
The Parisian Breviary of 1735 remained, in use till the national French service-books were superseded (as they have lately been, generally, if not universally) by the Roman. Almost all French dioceses followed, not indeed the Breviary, but the example, of Paris ; and before the end of the 18th century the ancient Latin liymnody was all but banished from France. Modern In some parts of Germany, after the Reformation, Latin hymns Latin continued to be used even by Protestants. This was the case at hymns. Halberstadt until quite a recent date. In England, a few are still occasionally used in the older universities and colleges. Some, also, have been composed in both countries since the Reformation. The "Carmina Lyrica " of John Jacob Balde, a native of Alsace, and a Jesuit priest in Bavaria, have received high commendation from very eminent German critics, particularly Herder and Augustus Schlegel. Some of the Latin hymns of William Alard, a Protestant refugee from Belgium, and pastor in Holstein (1572-1645), have been thought worthy of a place in Archbishop Trench's selec-tion. Two by W. Petersen (printed at the end of Haberkorn's supplement to Jacobi's Psalmodia Germanica) are good in different ways,—one, " Jesu dulcis amor metis" ("Jesus, Thee my soul doth love "), being a gentle melody of spiritual devotion, and the other, entitled Spes Sionis, violently controversial against Rome. An English hymn of the 17th century, in the Ambrosian style, " Te Deum Patrem colimus " ("Almighty, Father, just and good"), is sung on every May-Day morning by the choristers of Magdalen College, Oxford, from the top of the tower of their chapel; and another in the style of the Renaissance, of about the same date, " Te de profundis, summe Rex" (" Thee from the depths, Almighty King"), is, or until lately was, sung as part of a grace by the scholars of Winchester College. Authori- The principal ancient authorities on Latin hymnody are the 25th ties. chapter ("De hymnis et cantilenis et incrementis eorum") of the treatise of Walafridus Strabo, and a treatise of the 14th century ("De Psalterio observando"), by Radulphus, dean of Tongres in the Netherlands. Next to those are the first book of, Clichtoveus's JElueidcctorium Ecclesiasticum (Paris, 1556) ; the chapter on Ambrosian and other hymns in the works of George Cassander (Paris, 1616) ; the Psalterium, &c, in the second volume of the works of Cardinal J. M. Thomasius (Rome, 1747) ; and the treatise "De Hymnis Ecclesiasticis," prefixed to the Hymnodia Hispanica of Faustinus Arevalus (Rome, 1786). The present century, more especially within the last fifty years, has added much to the stores of learning accessible on this subject. In Germany, Rambach's Christian Anthology ; Mone's Hymni Latini inedii Aivi; Daniel's
Thesaurus Hymnologicus; and Mohnike's LTymnologische Forsch-ungen ;—and in England, Archbishop Trench's Sacred Latin Poetry ; Dr Neale's two collections of Latin Hymns and Sequences (Oxford, 1851 and 1852), and his Essays on Liturgiology and Church His-tory ; the Oxford collection of Hymns from the Roman, Sarum, York, and other Breviaries (1838) ; the Psalter, &c, according to Sarum use, of Mr J. D. Chambers (1852) ; and the two volumes already referred to of Anglo-Saxon and Irish hymns, published in 1851 and 1865 by the Surtees Society and the Irish Archaeological Society, have left little to be added by any future labourers in this field. The same period has also produced numerous English translations of Latm hymns, many of which are good and interesting, though perhaps few of the translators have overcome the inherent difficulties of their task sufficiently either to represent the char-acteristic merits of the originals, or to add to our vernacular hymns many adaptations really well-suited for popular use. The most important are—Mr Isaac Williams's Hymns from the Parisian Breviary (1839), and Mr Chandler's Hymns of the Primitive Church (1837) ; Bishop Mant's volume of 1837, and the Rev. Edward Caswall's Lyra Catholica (1849), both from the Roman Breviary ; the versions of Mr Chambers, in his Sarum Psalter, &c.; Dr Neale's Mediceval Hymns and Sequences (1862), with his versions, separ-ately published, of some other works ; and Hymns of the Latin Church, translated by David T. Morgan, with the originals appended (privately printed in 1871). The first lines, in English, given in this article, are generally adopted from some of these.
5. German Hymnody.
Luther was a proficient in and a lover of music. He Luther, desired (as he says in the preface to his hymn-book of 1545) that this "beautiful ornament" might "in a right manner serve the great Creator and His Christian people." The per-secuted Bohemian or Hussite Church, then settled on the borders of Moravia under the name of "United Brethren" (which their descendants still retain), had sent to him, on a mission in 1522, Michael Weiss, who not long after-wards published a number of German translations from old Bohemian hymns (known as those of the " Bohemian Brethren "), with some of his own. These Luther highly approved and recommended. He himself, in 1522, pub-lished a small volume of eight hymns, which was enlarged to 63 in 1527, and to 125 in 1545. He had formed what he called a " house choir " of musical friends, to select such old and popular tunes (whether secular or ecclesiastical) as might be found suitable, and to compose new melodies, for church use. His fellow labourers in this field (besides Weiss) were Justus Jonas, his own especial colleague; Paul Eber, the disciple and friend of Melanchthon; John Walther, choirmaster successively to several German princes, and professor of arts, &c, at Wittenberg; Nicholas Decius, who from a monk became a Protestant teacher in Brunswick,and translated the "Gloria in Excelsis," &c; and Paul Speratus, chaplain to Duke Albert of Prussia in 1525. Some of their works are still popular in Germany. Weiss's " Funeral Hymn," " Nun lasst uns den Leib begraben " (" Now lay we calmly in the grave "); Eber's " Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott" ("Lord Jesus Christ, true Man and God "), and " Wenn wir in höchsten Nötheu sein" ("When in the hour of utmost need"); Walther's " New Heavens and new Earth " (" Now fain my joyous heart would sing"); Decius's "To God on high be thanks and praise ;" and Speratus's " Salvation now has come for all," are among those which at the time produced the greatest effect, and are still best remembered.
Luther's own hymns, thirty-seven in number (of which about twelve are translations or adaptations from Latin originals), are for the principal Christian seasons ; on the sacraments, the church, grace, death, &c; and paraphrases of seven psalms, of a passage in Isaiah, and of the Lord's Prayer, Ten Commandments, Creed, Litany, and " Te Deum." There is also a very touching and stirring song on the martyrdom of two youths by fire at Brussels, in 1523-24. Homely and sometimes rugged in form, and for the most part objective in tone, they are full of fire, manly simplicity, and strong faith. Three rise above the rest. One for Christmas, " Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her " (" From Heaven above to earth I come "), has a reverent tenderness, the influence of which may be traced in many later productions on the same subject. That on salvation through Christ, of a didactic character, " Nun freuet euch,liebenChristen g'mein" ("DearChristian people, now rejoice "), is said to have made many conversions, and to have been once taken up by a large congregation to silence a Eoman Catholic preacher in the cathedral of Frankfort. Pre-eminent above all is the celebrated para-phrase of the 4:6th Psalm : " Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott" (" A sure stronghold our God is He "),—" the production " (as Banke says) "of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in the consciousness that he was defending a divine cause which could never perish." Carlyle compares it to "a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes." Heine called it " the Marseillaise of the Reformation."
Luther spent several years in teaching his people at Wittenberg to sing these hymns, which soon spread over Germany. Without adopting the hyperbolical saying of Coleridge, that " Luther did as much for the Reforma-tion by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible," it may truly be affirmed that, among the secondary means by which the success of the Beformation was promoted, none was more powerful. They were sung everywhere,— in the streets and fields as well as the churches, in the workshop and the palace, " by children in the cottage and by martyrs on the scaffold." It was by them that a con-gregational character was given to the new Protestant worship, This success they owed partly to their metrical structure, which, though sometimes complex, was recom-mended to the people by its ease and variety; and partly to the tunes and melodies (many of them already well known and popular) to which they were set. They were used as direct instruments of teaching, and were therefore, in a large measure, didactic and theological; and it may be partly owing to this cause that German hymnody came to deviate, so soon and so generally as it did, from the simple idea expressed in the ancient Augustinian definition, and to comprehend large classes of compositions which, in most other countries, would be thought hardly suitable for church use.
Fol- The principal hymn-writers of the Lutheran school, in
lowers of latter part of the 16th century, were Selnecker, Nicholas Luther. jjermann; an(j Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nuremberg, also known in other branches of literature. All these wrote some good hymns. They were succeeded by men of another sort, to whom Cunz gives the name of " master-singers," as having raised both the poetical and the musical standard of German hymnody:—Bingwaldt, Helmbold, Pappus, Schalling, Rutilius, and Weingartner. The prin-cipal topics of their hymns (as if with some foretaste of the calamities which were soon to follow) were the vanity of earthly things, resignation to the Divine will, and pre-paration for death and judgment. The well-known English hymn, " Great God, what do I see and hear," is founded upon one by Ringwaldt. Of a quite different character were two of great beauty and universal popularity, com-posed by Philip Nicolai, a Westphalian pastor, during a pestilence in 1597, and published by him, with fine chorales, two years afterwards. One of these (the " Sleepers wake ! a voice is calling," of Mendelssohn's oratorio, St Paul) belongs to the family of Advent or New Jerusalem hymns. The other, a " Song of the believing soul concerning the Heavenly Bridegroom" (" Wie schon leucht't uns der Morgenstern,"—" O morning Star, how fair and bright"), became the favourite marriage hymn of Germany.
The hymns produced during the Thirty Years' War are characteristic of that unhappy time, which (as Miss Winkworth says) " caused religious men to look away Feriod of from this world," and made their songs more and more Thirty expressive of personal feelings. In point of refinement ^y^.s and graces of style, the hymn-writers of this period excelled their predecessors. Their taste was chiefly formed by the influence of Martin Opitz, the founder of what has been called the " first Silesian school" of German poetry, who died comparatively young in 1639, and who, though not of any great original genius, exercised much power as a critic. Some of the best of these works were by men who wrote little. In the famous battle-song of Gustavus Adolphus, published (1631) after the victory of Leipsic, for the use of his army, "Verzage nicht du Häuflein klein " ("Fear not, O little flock, the foe"), we have almost certainly a composition of the hero-king himself, the versification corrected by his chaplain Fabricius, and the music composed by Altenburg, whose name has been given to the hymn. This, with Luther's paraphrase of the 67th Psalm, was sung by Gustavus and his soldiers before the fatal battle of Lützen. Two very fine hymns, one of prayer for deliverance and peace, the other of trust in God under calamities, were written about the same time by Löwen-stern, a saddler's son, poet, musician, and statesman, who was ennobled after the peace by the emperor Ferdiuand III. Martin Rinckhart, in 1636, wrote the "Chorus of God's faithful children" ("Nun danket alle Gott,"—"Now thank we all our God "), introduced by Mendelssohn in his " Lobgesang," which has been called the " Te Deum " of Germany, being usually sung on occasions of public thanks-giving. Weissel, in 1635, composed a beautiful Advent hymn ("Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates"), and Meyfart, professor of theology at Erfurt, in 1642, a fine adaptation of the ancient " Urbs beata Hierusalem." The hymn of trust in Providence by Neumarck, librarian to that duke of Weimar who was a distinguished general in the war (" Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten "—" Leave God to order all thy ways "), is scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of Paul Gerhardt on the same theme. Paul Flemming, a great traveller and lover of nature, who died young in 1639, also wrote excellent compositions, coloured by the same tone of feeling; and some, of great merit, were composed, soon after the close of the war, by Louisa Henrietta, electress of Brandenburg, granddaughter of the famous Admiral Coligny, and mother of the first king of Prussia. With these may be classed (though of later date) a few striking hymns of faith and prayer under mental anxiety, by Anton Ulrich, duke of Brunswick, whose nominal conversion to Romanism cast a shade over the close of a life otherwise conscientious and honourable.
The most copious, and in their day most esteemed, hymn- Heer-writers of this first half of the 17th century, were Heermann maun, and Rist. Heermann, a pastor in Silesia, the theatre (in a peculiar degree) of war and persecution, experienced in his own person a very large share of the miseries of the time, and several times narrowly escaped a violent death. His Devoti Musica Cordis, published in 1630, reflects the feel-ings natural under such circumstances. With a correct style and good versification, his tone is subjective, and the burden;of his hymns is not praise, but prayer. Among his works (which enter largely into most German hymn-books), two of the best are the " Song of Tears," and the " Song of Comfort," translated by Miss Winkworth in her Christian Singers of Germany. Bist published about 600 hymns, Rist. " pressed out of him," as he said, " by the cross." He was a pastor, and son of a pastor, in Holstein, and lived after the peace to enjoy many years of prosperity, being appointed poet-laureate to the emperor, and finally ennobled. The bulk of his hymns, like those of other copious writers, are of inferior quality; but some, particularly those for I Advent, Epiphany, Easter Eve, and on Angels, are very good. They are more objective than those of Heermann, and written, upon the whole, in a more manly spirit. Next to Heermann and Rist in fertility of production, and Dach. above them in poetical genius, was Simon Dach, pro-fessor of poetry at Königsberg, who died in 1659. Miss Winkworth ranks him high among German poets, "for the sweetness of form and depth of tender contemplative emotion to be found in his verses."
The fame of all these writers was eclipsed in the latter part of the same century by three of the greatest hymno-graphers whom Germany has produced,—Paul Gerhardt (1604-1676), John Franck (1618-1677), and John Scheffler (1624-1677), the founder of the "second Silesian Gerhardt, school," who assumed the name of "Angelus." Gerhardt is by universal consent the prince of Lutheran poets. His compositions (which may be compared, in many respects, to those of the Christian Year) are lyric poems, of consider-able length, rather than hymns, though many hymns have been taken from them. They are, with few exceptions, subjective, and speak the language of individual experience. They occupy a middle ground between the masculine sim-plicity of the old Lutheran style and the highly wrought religious emotion of the later Pietists, towards whom they (on the whole) incline. Being nearly all excellent, it is not easy to distinguish among the 123 those which are entitled to the highest praise. Two, which were written one during the war and the other after the conclusion of peace, " Zeuch ein zu deinen. Thoren " (" Come to Thy temple here on earth"), and " Gottlob, nun ist erschollen," ("Thank God, it hath resounded"), are historically in-teresting. Of the rest, one is well known and highly appreciated in England through Wesley's translation, " Commit thou all thy ways," &c. ; and the Evening ancl Spring-tide hymns (" Now all the woods are sleeping," and " Go forth, my heart, and seek delight ") show an exquisite feeling for nature ; while nothing can be more tender and pathetic than " Du bist zwar mein und bleibest mein" ("Thou'rt mine, yes, still thou art mine own"), on the
Franck.
death of his son. Franck, who was burgomaster of Guben in Lusatia, has been considered by some second only to Gerhardt. If so, it is with a great distance between them. His approach to the later Pietists is closer than that of Gerhardt. His hymns were published, under the title of Spiritual Zion, in 1674, some of them being founded on Ambrosian and other Latin originals. Miss Wink worth gives them the praise of a condensed and polished style and fervid and impassioned thought. It was after his
Scheffler.
conversion to Romanism that Scheffler adopted the name of "Angelus," and published (1657) his hymns, under a fantastic title, and with a still more fantastic preface. Their key-note is divine love; they are enthusiastic, in-tense, exuberant in their sweetness, like those of St Bernard among mediaeval poets. An adaptation of one of them, by Wesley, "Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower," is familiar to English readers. Those for the first Sunday after Epiphany, Sexagésima Sunday, and Trinity Sunday, in Lyra Germanica, are good examples of his excellences, with few of his defects. His hymns are generally so free from the expression, or even the indirect suggestion, of Boman Catholic doctrine, that it has been supposed they wero written before his conversion, though published afterwards. The evangelical churches of Germany found no difficulty in admitting them to that prominent place in their services which they have ever since retained.
Pietists. Towards the end of the 17th century, a new religious school arose, to which the name of "Pietists" was given, and of which Philip Jacob Spener was esteemed the founder. He and his pupils and successors, August Hermann Francke and Anastasius Freylinghausen, all wrote hymns. Spener's hymns are not remarkable, and Francke's are not numer-ous. Freylinghausen was their chief singer: his rhythm is lively, his music florid; but, though his book attained extraordinary popularity, he was surpassed in solid merit by other less fertile writers of the same school. The " Auf hinauf zu deiner Freude " (" Up, yes, upward to thy glad-ness ") of Schade may recall to an English reader a hymn by Seagrave, and more than one by Lyte ; the " Malabarian hymn " (as it was called by Jacobi) of Schiitz, " All glory to the Sovereign Good," has been popular in England as well as Germany; and one of the most exquisite strains of pious resignation ever written is " Whate'er my God ordains is right," by Rodigast.
Joachim Neander, a schoolmaster at Diisseldorf, and a Neander. friend of Spener and Schiitz (who died before the full development of the " Pietistic " school), was the first man of eminence in the "Reformed" or Calvinistic Church who imitated Lutheran hymnody. This he did, while suffering persecution from the elders of his own church for some other religious practices, which he had also learnt from Spener's example. As a poet, he is sometimes deficient in art; but there is feeling, warmth, and sweetness in many of his " Bundeslieder " or " Songs of the Covenant," and they obtained general favour, both in the Beformed and in Lutheran congregations. The Summer Hymn (" O Thou true God alone ") and that on the Glory of God in Creation (" Lo, heaven and earth and sea and air ") are instances of his best style.
With the "Pietists" may be classed Schmolke and Dessler, representatives of the "Orthodox" division of Spener's school; Hiller, their leading poet in South Ger-many ; Arnold and Tersteegen, who were practically inde-pendent of ecclesiastical organization, though connected, one with the "Orthodox" and the other with the "Reformed" churches; and Louis Count Zinzendorf. Schmolke, a Schmolke. pastor in Silesia, called the Silesian Rist (1672-1737), was perhaps the most voluminous of all German hymn-writers. He wrote 1188 religious poems and hymns, a large proportion of which do not rise above mediocrity. His style, if less refined, is also less subjective and more simple than that of most of his contemporaries. Among his best and most attractive works (which, indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly) are the " Hosianna David's Sohn," for Palm Sunday,—much resembling a shorter hymn by Jeremy Taylor; and the Ascension, Whitsuntide, and Sabbath hymns,—"Heavenward doth our journey tend," " Come deck our feast to-day," and " Light of light, enlighten me." Dessler was a greater poet than Schmolke. Dessler. Few hymns, of the subjective kind, are better than his " I will not let Thee go, Thou Help in time of need;" " O Friend of souls, how well is me; " and " Now the pearly gates unfold," &c. Hiller was a pastor in Wiirtemberg Hiller. (1699-1769), who, falling into ill-health during the latter part of his ministry, published a Casket of Spiritual Songs, in a didactic vein, with more taste than power, but (as Miss Winkworth says) in a tone of " deep, thoughtful, practical piety." They were so well-adapted to the wants of his people that to this day Killer's Casket is prized, next to their Bibles, by the peasantry of Wiirtemberg; and the numerous emigrants from that part of Germany to America and other foreign countries generally take it with them wherever they go. Arnold, a professor at Giessen, and Arnold, afterwards a pastor in Brandenburg, was a man of strong will, uncompromising character, and austere views of life, intolerant and controversial towards those whose doctrine or practice he disapproved, and more indifferent to sepa-ratism and sectarianism than the "Orthodox" generalbj thought right. His hymns, like those of our own Toplady (whom in these respects he resembled), unite with con-siderable strength more gentleness and breadth of sympathy than might be expected from a man of such a character.
Tersteegen.
Tersteegen (1697-1769), wlio never formally separated himself from the " Reformed " communion, in which he was brought up, but whose sympathies were with the Moravians and Count Zinzendorf, was, of all the more copious German hymn-writers after Luther, perhaps the most remarkable man. Pietist, mystic, and missionary, he was also a great religious poet. His 111 hymns were published in 1731, in a volume called The Spiritual Flower-garden. They are intensely individual, meditative, and subjective. Wesley's adaptations of two—" Lo ! God is here; let us adore," and "Thou hidden Love of God, whose source" —are well known. Among those translated by Miss Winkworth, " O God, O spirit, Light of all that live," and " Come, brethren, let us go," are specimens which exhibit favourably his manner and power. Miss Cox speaks of him as "a gentle heaven-inspired soul, whose hymns are the reflexion of a heavenly, happy life, his mind being full of a child-like simplicity; " and his own poem on the child-character, which Miss Winkworth has appropriately con-nected with Innocents' day (" Dear Soul, couldst thou become a child")—one of his best compositions, ex-quisitely conceived and expressed-—shows that this was in truth the ideal which he sought to realize. The Zinzen- hymns of Zinzendorf are often disfigured by excess in dorf. the application of the language and imagery of human affections to Divine Objects ; and this blemish is also found in many later Moravian hymns. But one hymn, at least, of Zinzendorf may be mentioned with unqualified praise, as uniting the merits of force, simplicity, and brevity,— "Jesu, geh voran" ("Jesus, lead the way"), which is taught to most children of religious parents in Germany. Wesley's " Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness" is a translation from Zinzendorf.
The transition from Tersteegen and Zinzendorf to Gellert and Klopstock marks strongly the reaction against Pietism which took place towards the middle of the 18th century. Gellert. The Spiritual Odes and Songs of C. F. Gellert were pub-lished in 1757, and are said to have been received with an enthusiasm almost like that which " greeted Luther's hymns on their first appearance." It is a proof of the modera-tion both of the author and of his times that they were largely used, not only by Protestant congregations, but in those German Boman Catholic churches in which ver-nacular services had been established through the influ-ence of the emperor Joseph II. They became the model which was followed by most succeeding hymn-writers, and exceeded all others in popularity till the close of the century, when a new wave of thought was generated by the movement which produced the French Revolution. Since that time they have been, perhaps, too much depre-ciated. They are, indeed, cold and didactic, as compared with Scheffler or Tersteegen; but there is nevertheless in them a spirit of genuine practical piety; and, if not marked by genius, they are pure in taste, and often terse, vigorous, and graceful.
Klop-stock.
Klopstock, the author of the Messiah, cannot be considered great as a hymn-writer, though his " Sabbath Hymn " (of which there is a version in Hymns from the Land of Luther) is simple and good. Generally his hymns (ten are translated in Mr Sheppard's Foreign Sacred Lyre) are artificial and much too elaborate.
Of the " romantic" school, which came in with the French Revolution, the two leading writers are Frederick von Hardenberg, called " Novalis," and Frederick de la Motte Fouque, the celebrated author of Undine and Sintram, — both romance-writers, as well as poets. Jxbvalis. The genius of Novalis was early lost to the world; he died in 1802, just thirty years old. Some of his hymns are very beautiful; but even in such works as " Though all to Thee were faithless," and " If only He is mine," there is a feeling of insulation and of despondency as to good in the actual world, which was perhaps inseparable from his ecclesiastical idealism. Fouque survived till 1843. Fouque. In his hymns there is the same deep flow of feeling, richness of imagery, and charm of expression, which distinguishes his prose works. The two missionary hymns—" Thou, solemn Ocean, rollest to the strand," and " In our sails all soft and sweetly,"—and the exquisite composition which finds its motive in the gospel narrative of blind Bartimeus, " Was du vor tausend Jahren " (finely translated both by Miss Winkworth and by Miss Cox), are among the best examples.
The later German hymn-writers of the present century are numerous, and belong, generally, to the revived " Pietistic " school. Some of the best, e.g., Arndt, Albertini, Krummacher, and especially Spitta, have produced works Spitta. not unworthy of the fame of their nation. Mr Massie, the able translator of Spitta's Psaltery and Harp (published at Leipsic in 1833), speaks of it as having "obtained for him in Germany a popularity only second to that of Paul Gerhardt." Such praise is hyperbolical; posterity alone can adjust the relative places of the writers of this and of former generations. In Spitta's poems (for such they generally are, rather than hymns) the subjective and meditative tone is tempered, not ungracefully, with a didactic element; and they are not, like some contemporary hymns, disfigured by exaggerated sentiment, or by a too florid and rhetorical style.
The best and fullest modern collection of choice German hymns is Authori-that of Baron von Bunsen, in his Versuch eines allgemeinen Gesang- ties. und Gebetbuchs of 1833, unfortunately not reprinted after the first edition. This contains about 900 hymns. In his later Allgemeines evangelisches Gesang- und Gebetbuch of 1846 the number was reduced to 440. Many other authors, besides those who have been here mentioned, are represented in these collections, and also in the excellent English translations contained in the Lyra Germanica of Miss Winkworth ; Miss Cox's Sacred Hymns from the Ger-man ; Miss Fry's Hymns of the Reformation ; Miss Dunn's Hymns from the German ; the Misses Borthwick's Hymns from the Land of Luther; and the Bev. Arthur T. Russell's Hymns for the Church of England-. In Cunz's Geschichte des deutschen Kirchen-liedes (Leipsic, 1855), the number of German hymn-writers named considerably exceeds 300. Besides the volumes of mixed trans-lations from different authors just enumerated (of which the earliest is that of Miss Cox, 1841), translations of Luther's hymns were pub-lished by Mr John Hunt, of Preston, in 1853, and by Mr Massie, of Eccleston, in 1854. The Lyra Domestica of Mr Massie (which appeared in 1860) contains his translations from Spitta. A much earlier series of English versions of ninety-three mixed German hymns was published in 1722, 1725, and 1732, by John Christian Jacobi, under the patronage of Caroline, queen of George II. To this collection, entitled Psalmodia Germanica, a supplement, con-taining thirty-one more, and also two Latin hymns by Petersen, was added by John Haberkorn in 1765, with a dedication to the mother of George III. Some of these are now sung (though not without considerable alteration) in English churches.
Much of the historical and critical information contained in the foregoing account of German hymnody has been taken from Miss Winkworth's book, entitled Christian Singers of Germany (Macmillan, 1869); and to her also we are in most instances in-debted for our English renderings of the first lines of hymns. The principal German authorities on the subject, Wackernagel's Has Deutsche Kirchenlied, Koch's Geschichte des Kirchenliedes u Kirch-engesanges, &c, are mentioned in her preface; to which may be added the work already mentioned of F. A. Cunz.
6. British Hymnody.
After the Reformation, the development of hymnody was retarded, in both parts of Great Britain, by the example and influence of Geneva. Archbishop Craumer appears at one time to have been disposed to follow Luther's course, and to present to the people, in an English dress, some at least of the hymns of the ancient church. In a letter to King Henry VIII. (7th October 1544), among some new "processions" which he had him-self translated into English, he mentions the Easter hymn, "Salve, festadies, toto memorabilis aevo" ("Hail, glad day to be joyfully kept through all generations"), of Fortunatus. In the two "Primers " of 1535 (by Marshall) and of 1539 (by Bishop Hilsey of Boohester, published by order of the vicar-general Cromwell) there had been several rude English hymns, none of them taken from ancient sources. King Henry's "Primer" of 1545 (commanded by his injunction of the 6th May 1545 to be used throughout his dominions) was formed on the model of the daily offices of the Breviary ; and it contains English metrical translations from some of the best-known Ambrosian and other early hymns. But in the succeeding reign different views pre-vailed. A new direction had been given to the taste of the " Reformed " congregations in France and Switzerland by the French metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms, which appeared about 1540. This was the joint work of Clement Marot, valet or groom of the chamber to Francis I., and Theodore Beza, then a mere youth, fresh from his studies under Wolmar at Orleans. Marot's Marot's Psalms were dedicated to the French king and Psalms, the ladies of France, and, being set to popular airs, became fashionable. They were sung by Francis himself, the queen, the princesses, and the courtiers, upon all sorts of secular occasions, and also, more seriously and religiously, by the citizens and the common people. They were soon perceived to be a power on the side of the Reformation. Calvin, who had settled at Geneva in the year of Marot's return to Paris, was then organizing his ecclesiastical system. He rejected the hymnody of the Breviaries and Missals, and fell back upon the idea, anciently held by Paul of Samosata, and condemned by the fourth council of Toledo, that whatever was sung in churches ought to be taken out of the Scrip-tures. Marot's Psalter, appearing thus opportunely, was introduced into his new system of worship, and appended to his catechism. On the other hand, it was interdicted by the Boman Catholic priesthood. Thus it became a badge to the one party of the " Reformed" profession, and to the other of heresy. Stern- The example thus set produced in England the transla-ted and tion commonly known as the " Old Version " of the Psalms, op ns. jj. wag i3egUn Thomas Sternhold, whose position in the household of Henry VIIL, and afterwards of Edward VI., was similar to that of Marot with Francis I., and whose services to the former of those kings were rewarded by a substantial legacy under his will. Sternhold published versions of thirty-seven Psalms in 1549, with a dedication to King Edward, and died soon afterwards. A second edition appeared in 1551, with seven more Psalms added, by John Hopkins, a Suffolk clergyman. The work was continued during Queen Mary's reign by British refugees at Geneva, the chief of whom were William Whittingham (afterwards dean of Durham), who succeeded John Knox as minister of the English congregation there, and William Kethe (or Keith), said by Strype to have been a Scotchman. They published at Geneva in 1556 a service-book, contain-ing fifty-one English metrical Psalms, which number was increased, in later editions, to eighty-seven. On the acces-sion of Queen Elizabeth, this Genevan Psalmody was at once brought into use in England,—first (according to a letter of Bishop Jewell to Peter Martyr, dated 5th March 1560) in one London church, from which it quickly spread to others both in London and in other cities. Jewell describes the effect produced by large congregations, of as many as 6000 persons, young and old, women and children, singing it after the sermons at St Paul's Cross,—adding, "Id sacrificos et diabolum aegre habet; vident enim sacras conciones hoc pacto profundius descendere in hominum animos." The first edition of the completed "Old Version " (containing forty Psalms by Sternhold, sixty-seven by Hopkins, fifteen by Whittingham, six by Kethe, and the rest by Thomas Norton, a barrister, Robert Wisdom, John Mardley, and Thomas Churchyard) appeared in 1562.
In the meantime, the Books of Common Prayer, &c, of 1549, 1552, and 1559 had been successively established as law by the Acts of Uniformity of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. In these no provision was made for the use of any metrical psalm or hymn on any occasion whatever, except at the consecration of bishops and the ordination of priests, in which offices (first added in 1552) an English version of " Veni Creator" (the longer of the two now in use) was appointed to be "said or sung." The canticles, "Te Deum," " Benedicite," &c, the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, the "Gloria in Excelsis," and some other parts of the communion and other special offices were also directed to be "said or sung;" and, by general rubrics, the chanting of the whole service was allowed.
The silence, however, of the rubrics in these books as to any other singing was not meant to exclude the use of psalms not ex-pressly appointed, when they could be used without interfering with the prescribed order of any service. It was expressly provided by King Edward's First Act of Uniformity (by later Acts made appli-cable to the later books) that it should be lawful " for all men, as well in churches, chapels, oratories, or other places, to use openly any psalms or prayers taken out of the Bible, at any due time, not letting or omitting thereby the service, or any part thereof, men-tioned in the book." And Queen Elizabeth, by one of the injunc-tions issued in the first year of her reign, declared her desire that the provision made, '' in divers collegiate and also some parish churches, for singing in the church, so as to promote the laudable service of music," should continue. After allowing the use of "a modest and distinct song in all parts of the common prayers of the church, so that the same may be as plainly understanded as if it were read without singing," the injunction proceeded thus—"And yet, nevertheless, for the comforting of such that delight in music, it may be permitted that in the beginning or in the end of the Common Prayer, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an hymn, or such like song to the praise of Almighty God, in the best sort of melody and music that may be conveniently devised, having respect that the sentence " (i.e., sense) "of hymn may be understanded and perceived."
The " Old Version," when published (by John Daye, for the Stationers' Company, "cum gratia et privilegio Begise Majestatis "), bore upon the face of it that it was "newly set forth, and allowed to be sung of the people in churches, before and after morning and evening prayer, as also before and after the sermon." The question of its authority has been at different times much debated, chiefly by Heylin and Thomas Warton on one side (both of whom disliked and disparaged it), and by Bishop Beveridge and the Rev. H. J. Todd on the other. Heylin says, it was "permitted rather than allowed," which seems to be a distinction without much difference. "Allowance," which is all that the book claimed for itself, is authorization by way of permission, not of commandment. Its publication in that form could hardly have been licensed, nor could it have passed into use as it did without question, throughout the churches of England, unless it had been '' allowed "by some authority then esteemed to be sufficient. Whether that authority was royal or ecclesiastical does not appear, nor (considering the proviso in King Edward's Act of Uniformity, and Queen Elizabeth's injunctions) is it very important. No inference can justly be drawn from the inability of inquirers, in Heylin's time or since, to discover any public record bearing upon this subject, many public documents of that period having been lost.
In this book, as published in 1562, and for many years afterwards, there were (besides the versified Psalms) eleven metrical versions of the " Te Deum," canticles, Lord's Prayer, &c, &c. (the best of which is that of the "Bene-dicite "); and also " Da pacem, Domine," a hymn suitable to the times, rendered into English from Luther; two origi-nal hymns of praise, to be sung before Morning and Evening Prayer; two penitential hymns (one of them the " Humble Lamentation of a Sinner"); and a hymn of faith, begin-ning, "Lord, in Thee is all my trust." In these respects, and also in the tunes which accompanied the words (stated by Dr Burney, in his History of Music, to be German, and not French), there was a departure from the Genevan platform. Some of these hymns, and some of the psalms also (e.g., those by Robert Wisdom, being alternative versions), were omitted at. a later period; and many alterations and supposed amendments were from time to time made by unknown hands in the Psalms which remained, so that the text, as now printed, is in many places different from that of 1562.
Scotch In Scotland, the General Assembly of the kirk caused to Psalms, kg printed at Edinburgh in 1564, and enjoined the use of, a book entitled The Form of Prayers and Ministry of the Sacraments used in the English Church at Geneva, approved and received by the Church of Scotland; whereto, besides that was in the former boo/cs, are also added sundry other prayers, with the whole Psalms of David in English metre. This contained all the Psalms of the " Old Version" by Sternhold, Whittingham, and Kethe, but only thirty-seven of those by Hopkins, and. none by any of the other English translators. Instead of those omitted, it had nineteen more by Kethe and Whittingham; one by John Pulleyn (one of the Genevan refugees, who became Archdeacon of Col-chester) ; six by Robert Pont, Knox's son-in-law, who was a minister of the kirk, and also a lord of session; and fifteen signed with the initials I. C, supposed to be John Craig.
So matters continued in both churches until the Rebellion. During the interval, King James I. conceived the project of himself making a new version of the Psalms, and appears to have translated thirty-one of them,—the correction of which, together with the translation of the rest, he entrusted to Sir William Alexander, afterwards earl of Stirling. Sir William having completed his task, King Charles the First (after having it examined and approved by several arch-bishops and bishops of England, Scotland, and Ireland) caused it to be printed in 1631 at the Oxford University Press, as the work of King James ; and, by an order under the royal sign manual, recommended its use in all churches of his dominions. In 1634 he enjoined the Privy Council of Scotland not to suffer any other Psalms, " of any edition whatever," to be printed in or imported into that kingdom. In 1636 it was republished, and was attached to the famous Scottish Service-book, with which the troubles began in 1637. It need hardly be added that the king did not succeed in bringing this Psalter into use in either kingdom.
When the Long Parliament undertook, in 1642, the task of altering the liturgy, its attention was at the same time directed to psalmody. It had to judge between two rival translations of the Psalms—one by Francis Rouse, a member of the House of Commons, afterwards one of Cromwell's councillors, and finally provost of Eton; the other by William Barton, a clergyman of Leicester. The House of Lords favoured Barton, the House of Commons Bouse, who had made much use of the labours of Sir William Alexander. Both versions were printed by order of parlia-ment, and were referred for consideration to the Westminster Assembly. They decided in favour of Bouse. His version, as finally amended, was published in 1646, under an order of the House of Commons dated 14th November 1645. In the following year it was recommended by the parliament to the General Assembly at Edinburgh, who appointed a committee, with large powers, to prepare a revised Psalter, recommending to their consideration not only Rouse's book but that of 1564, and two other versions (by Zachary Boyd, and Sir William Mure of Rowallan), then lately executed in Scotland. The result of the labours of this committee was the " Paraphrase " of the Psalms, which, in 1649-1650, by the concurrent authority of the General Assembly and the committee of estates, was ordered to be exclusively used throughout the church of Scotland. Some use was made in the preparation of this book of the versions to which the attention of the revisers had been directed, and also of Barton's; but its basis was that of Bouse. It was received in Scotland with great favour, which it has ever since retained; and it is fairly entitled to the praise of striking a tolerable medium between the rude homeliness of the " Old," and the artificial modernism of the " New " English versions—perhaps as great a success as was possible for such an undertaking. Sir Walter Scott is said to have dis-suaded any attempt to alter it, and to have pronounced it, " with all its acknowledged occasional harshness, so beauti-ful, that any alterations must eventually prove only so many blemishes." No further step towards any authorized hymnody was taken by the kirk of Scotland till the follow-ing century.
In England, two changes bearing on church hymnody were made upon the revision of the Prayer-book after the Restoration, in 1661-1662. One was the addition, in the offices for consecrating bishops and ordaining priests, of the shorter version of " Veni Creator " (" Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire "), as an alternative form. The other, and more important, was the insertion of the rubric after the third Collect, at Morning and Evening Prayer : " In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem." By this rubric synodical and parliamentary authority was given for the interruption, at that point, of the prescribed order of the service by singing an anthem, the choice of which was left to the discretion of the minister. Those actually used, under this authority, were for some time only unmetrical passages of Scripture, set to music by Blow, Purcell, and other composers, of the same kind with the anthems still generally sung in cathedral and collegiate churches. But the word "anthem" had no technical signification which could be an obstacle to the use under this rubric of metrical hymns.
The " New Version" of the Psalms, by Dr Nicholas Tate and Brady and the poet-laureate Nahum Tate (both Irishmen), Brady, appeared in 1696, under the sanction of an order in council of William III., "allowing and permitting" its use "in all such churches, chapels, and congregations as should think fit to receive it." Dr Compton, bishop of London, recommended it to his diocese. No hymns were then appended to it; but the authors added a " Supplement" in 1703, which received an exactly similar sanction from an order in council of Queen Anne. In that Supplement there were several new versions of the canticles, &c, and of the "Veni Creator;" a variation of the old "Humble Lamentation of a Sinner;" six hymns for Christmas, Easter, and Holy Communion (all versions or paraphrases of Scripture), which are still usually printed at the end of the Prayer-books containing the new version; and a hymn "On the Divine use of Music,"—all accompanied by tunes. The authors also reprinted, with very good taste, the excellent version of the " Benedicite " which appeared in the book of 1562. Of the hymns in this "Supplement," one ("While shepherds watched their flocks by night") greatly exceeded the rest in merit. It has been ascribed to Tate, but it has a character of simplicity unlike the rest of his works.
The relative merits of the "Old" and "New" versions Old and have been very variously estimated. Competent judges new. have given the old the praise, which certainly cannot be eo^!onS accorded to the new, of fidelity to the Hebrew. In both, pared. it must be admitted, that those parts which have poetical merit are few and far between; but a reverent taste is likely to be more offended by the frequent sacrifice, in the new, of depth of tone and accuracy of sense to a fluent common-place correctness of versification and diction, than by any excessive homeliness in the old. In both, however, some Psalms, or portions of Psalms, are well enough rendered to entitle them to a permanent place in our hymn-books,— especially the 8th, and parts of the 18th Psalm, by Sternhold; the 57th, 84th, and 100th, by Hopkins; the 23d, 34th, and 36th, and part of the 148th, by Tate and Brady.
The judgment which a fastidious critic might be disposed to pass upon both these books may perhaps be considerably mitigated by comparing them with the works of other labourers in the same field, of whom Mr Holland, in his interesting volumes entitled Psalmists of Great Britain, enumerates above 150. Some of them have been real poets—the celebrated earl of Surrey, Sir Philip Sidney and his sister the countess of Pembroke, George Sandys, George Wither, John Milton, and John Keble. In their versions, as might be expected, there are occasional gleams of power and beauty, exceeding anything to be found in Sternhold and Hopkins, or Tate and Brady; but even in the best these are rare, and chiefly occur where the strict idea of translation has been most widely departed from. In all of them, as a rule, the life and spirit, which in prose versions of the Psalms are so wonderfully preserved, have disappeared. The conclusion practically suggested by so many failures is that the difficulties of metrical transla-tion, always great, are in this case insuperable; and that, while the Psalms (like other parts of Scripture) are abund-antly suggestive of motive and material for hymnographers, it is by assimilation and adaptation, and not by any attempt to transform their exact sense into modern poetry, that they may be best used for this purpose.
The order in council of 1703 is the latest act of any public autho-rity by which an express sanction has been given to the use of psalms or hymns in the Church of England. At the end, indeed, of many modern Prayer-books, there will be found, besides some of the hymns sanctioned by that order in council, or of those contained in the book of 1562, a Sacramental and a Christmas hymn by Dod-dridge ; a Christmas hymn (varied by Martin Madan) from Charles Wesley ; an Easter hymn of the 18th century, beginning " Jesus Christ has risen to day ;" and abridgments of Bishop Ken's Morn-ing and Evening Hymns. These additions first began to be made in or about 1791, in London editions of the Brayer-book and Psalter, at the mere will and pleasure (so far as appears) of the printers. They have no sort of authority.
English In the state of authority, opinion, and practice disclosed congre- by the preceding narrative may be found the true explana-gational (.jon 0£ J-^Q fac(; tnat) m the country of Chaucer, Spenser, 0Jy ' Shakespeare, and Milton, and notwithstanding the example of Germany, no native congregational hymnody worthy of the name arose till after the commencement of the 18th century. Yet there was no want of appreciation of the power and value of congregational church music. Milton could write, before 1645,—
" There let the pealing organ blow To the full-voiced quire below In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring aU Heaven before mine eyes."
Thomas Mace, in his Music's Monument (1676), thus described the effect of psalm-singing before sermons, by the congregation in York Minster on Sundays, during the siege of 1644 : "When that vast concording unity of the whole congregational chorus came thundering in, even so as it made the very ground shake under us, oh, the unutterable ravishing soul's delight! in the which I was so transported and wrapt up in high contemplations that there was no room left in my whole man, body, soul, and spirit, for any-thing below divine and heavenly raptures; nor could there possibly be anything to which that very singing might be truly compared, except the right apprehension or conceiving of that glorious and miraculous quire, recorded in the Scriptures at the dedication of the Temple." Nor was there any want of men well-qualified, and by the turn of their minds predisposed, to shine in this branch of litera-ture. Some (like Sandys, Boyd, and Barton) devoted them-selves altogether to paraphrases of other Scriptures as well as the Psalms. Others (like George Herbert, and Francis and John Quarles) moralized, meditated, soliloquized, and allegorized in verse. Without reckoning these, there were a few, even before the Bestoration, who came very near to the ideal of hymnody. Wedder- First in time is the Scottish poet John Wedderburn, who ^um- translated several of Luther's hymns, and in his Compendi-ous Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs added others of his own (or his brothers') composition. Some of these poems, published before 1560, are of uncommon excellence, uniting ease and melody of rhythm, and structural skill, with grace of expression, and simplicity, warmth, and reality of religious feeling. Those entitled "Give me thy heart," "Go, heart,"and "Leave me not" (which will be found in a collection of 1860 called Sacred Songs of Scotland), require little, beyond the change of some archaisms of language, to adapt them for church or domestic use at the present day.
Next come the two hymns of " The New Jerusalem," by an English Roman Catholic priest signing himself F. B. P. (supposed by the late Mr Sedgwick to be " Francis Baker, Presbyter "), and by another Scottish poet, David Dickson, Dickson, of which the history is given by Dr Bonar in his edition of Dickson's work. This (Dickson's), which begins " 0 mother dear, Jerusalem," and has long been popular in Scotland, is a variation and amplification (by the addition of a large number of new stanzas) of the English original, beginning " Jerusalem, my happy home," written in Queen Elizabeth's time, and printed (as appears by a copy in the British Museum) about 1616, when Dickson was still young. Both have an easy natural flow, and a simple happy render-ing of the beautiful Scriptural imagery upon the subject, with a spirit of primitive devotion uncorrupted by mediaeval peculiarities. The English hymn (of which some stanzas are now often sung in churches) is the true parent of the several shorter forms,—all of more than common merit,— which, in modern hymn-books, begin with the same first line, but afterwards deviate from the original. Kindred to these is the very fine and faithful translation, by Drummond of Hawthornden (who was Dickson's contem-porary), of the ancient " Urbs beata Hierusalem " (" Jeru-salem, that place divine"). Other ancient hymns (two of Thomas Aquinas, and the " Dies Irae") were also well translated, in 1646, by Crashaw, after he had become a Roman Catholic, and had been deprived by the parliament of his fellowship at Cambridge.
Conspicuous among the sacred poets of the first two Wither. Stuart reigns in England is the name of George Wither, an accomplished layman, of strong church principles, whose fate it was to be opposed and slighted while he was a staunch churchman and Boyalist, and afterwards to be driven into the parliamentary and Puritan ranks; for which cause, probably, recognition was denied to his genius as a poet by Dryden, Swift, and Pope. He had almost fallen into oblivion, when attention was recalled to his merits by the more discerning criticisms of Charles Lamb and Southey ; and, when his Hallelujah was republished in 1857 by Mr Farr, only two copies of it were known to exist, one in the British Museum, and another which had been in Mr Heber's library. His Hymns and Songs of the Church appeared in 1622-1623, under a patent of King James I., by which they were declared " worthy and profitable to be inserted, in convenient manner and due place, into every English Psalm-book to metre." This patent was opposed, as inconsistent with their privilege to print the " singing-psalms," by the Stationers' Company, to Wither's great mortification and loss. His Hallelujah (in which some of the former Hymns and Songs were repeated) followed, after several intermediate publications of a different kind, in 1641. The Hymns and Songs were set to music by Orlando Gibbons, and those in both books were written to be sung, though for the most part privately, there being no evidence that the author contemplated the use of any of them in churches. They included, however, hymns for every day in the week (founded, as those contributed nearly a century afterwards by Coffin to the Parisian Breviary also were, upon the successive works of the days of creation); hymns for all the church seasons and festivals, including saints' days; hymns for various public occasions; and hymns of prayer, meditation, and instruction, for a great number of different sorts and conditions of men and women, in a variety of the circumstances incident to human life,—being at once a "Christian Year" and a manual of practical piety. Many of them rise to a very high point of excellence,—particularly the "general invitation to praise God" ("Come, O come, in pious lays "), with which Hallelujah opens ; the Thanks-givings for Peace and for Victory, the Coronation Hymn, a Christmas, an Epiphany, and an Easter Hymn, and one for St Bartholomew's day (Hymns 1, 74, 75, and 84 in part i., and 26, 29, 36, and 54 in part ii., of Hallelujah). All these are properly entitled to the designation of hymns, which can hardly be conceded to some others, of singular beauty, viz., the Cradle-song ("Sleep, baby, sleep, what ails my dear"), the Anniversary Marriage Song ("Lord, living here are we"), the Perambulation Song ("Lord, it hath pleased Thee to say "), the Song for Lovers (" Come, sweet heart, come, let us prove "), the Song for the Happily Married ("Since they in singing take delight"), and that for a Shepherd ("Renowned men their herds to keep")— (Nos. 50 in the first part, 17 and 24 in the second, and 20, 21, and 41 in the third). There is also in the second part a fine song (No 59), full of historical as well as poetical interest, upon the evil times in which the poet lived, beginning—
'' Now are the times, these are the days,
Which will those men approve Who take delight in honest ways
And pious courses love; Now to the world it will appear
That innocence of heart Will keep us far more free from fear
Than helmet, shield, or dart."
Wither wrote, generally, in a pure nervous English idiom, and preferred the reputation of "rusticity" (an epithet applied to him even by Baxter) to the tricks and artifices of poetical style which were then in favour. It may be partly on that account that he has been better appreciated by posterity than by his contemporaries. Cosin. Cosin, afterwards bishop of Durham, published in 1627 a volume of " Private Devotions," for the canonical hours and other occasions. In this there are seven or eight hymns of considerable merit,—among them a very good version of the Ambrosian " Jam lucis orto sidere," and the shorter version of the " Veni Creator," which was introduced after the Restoration into the consecration and ordination services of the Church of England. Milton. The hymns of Milton (on the Nativity, Passion, Circum-cision, and " at a Solemn Music"), written about 1629, in his early manhood, were probably not intended for singing; but they are odes full of characteristic beauty and power. Jeremy During the Commonwealth, in 1654, Jeremy Taylor pub-Taylor, ijghed, at the end of his Golden Grove, twenty-one hymns, described by himself as " celebrating the mysteries and chief festivals of the year, according to the manner of the ancient church, fitted to the fancy and devotion of the younger and pious persons, apt for memory, and to be joined to their other prayers." Of these, his accomplished editor, Bishop Heber, justly says :—
'' They are in themselves, and on their own account, very inter-esting compositions. Their metre, indeed, which is that species of spurious Pindaric which was fashionable with his contemporaries, is an obstacle, and must always have been one, to their introduction into public or private psalmody ; and the mixture of that alloy of conceits and quibbles which was an equally frequent and still greater defilement of some of the finest poetry of the 17th century will materially diminish their effect as devotional or descriptive odes. Yet, with all these faults, they are powerful, affecting, and often harmonious ; there are many passages of which Cowdey need not have been ashamed, and some which remind us, not disadvantage-ously, of the corresponding productions of Milton."
He mentions particularly the Advent hymn (" Lord, come away"), part of the hymn "On Heaven," and (as "more regular in metre, and in words more applicable to public devotion ") the " Prayer for Charity " (" Full of mercy, full of love ").
The epoch of the Restoration produced in 1664 Samuel Restora-Crossman's Young Man's Calling, with a few " Divinetio1? Meditations" in verse attached to it; in 1668 Johnperlod' Austin's Devotions in the Ancient Way of Offices, with psalms, hymns, and prayers for every day in the week and every holy day in the year; and in 1681 Richard Baxter's Poetical Fragments, In these books there are altogether seven or eight hymns, the whole or parts of which are extremely good:—Grossman's "New; Jerusalem" ("Sweet place, sweet place alone "), one of the best of that class, and " My life's a shade, my days ;" Austin's " Hark, my soul, how everything," " Fain would my thoughts fly up to Thee," "Lord, now the time returns," "Wake all my hopes, lift up your eyes;" and Baxter's " My whole, though broken heart, 0 Lord.," and "Ye holy angels bright." Austin's Offices (he was a Boman Catholic) seem to have attracted much attention. Theophilus Dorrington, in 1686, and afterwards Hickes, the non-juror, published variations of them under the title of Reformed Devotions; and the Wesleys, in their earliest hymn-book, adopted hymns from them, with little alteration. These writers were followed by John Mason in 1683, and Thomas Shepherd in 1692,— the former, a country clergyman, much esteemed by Baxter and other Nonconformists; the latter himself a Nonconfor-mist, who finally emigrated to America. Between these two men there was a close alliance, Shepherd's Penitential Cries being published as an addition to the Spiritual Songs of Mason. Their hymns came into early use in several Nonconformist congregations; but, with the exception of one by Mason ("There is a stream which issues forth"), they are not suitable for public singing. In those of Mason there is often a very fine vein of poetry; and later authors have, by extracts or centoes from different parts of his works (where they were not disfigured by his general quaintness), constructed several hymns of more than average excellence.
Three other eminent names of the 17th century remain to be mentioned, John Dryden, Bishop Ken, and Bishop Simon Patrick; with which may be associated that of Addison, though he wrote in the 18th century.
Dryden's translation of "Veni Creator" (a cold and Dryden, laboured performance) is to be met with in many hymn-books. Abridgments of Ken's Morning and Evening Ken. Hymns are in all. These, with the Midnight Hymn (not inferior to them), first appeared in 1697, appended to the third edition of the author's Manual of Prayers for Winchester Scholars. Between these and a large number of other hymns (on the Attributes of God, and for the Festivals of the Church) published by Bishop Ken after 1703 the contrast is remarkable. The universal acceptance of the Morning and Evening Hymns is due to their transparent simplicity, warm but not overstrained devotion, and extremely popular style. Those afterwards published have no such qualities. They are mystical, florid, stiff, didactic, and seldom poetical, and deserve the neglect into which they have fallen. Bishop Patrick's Patrick, hymns were chiefly translations from the Latin, most of them from Prudentius. The best is a version of "Alleluia dulce carmen." Of the five attributed to Addison, not Addison, more than three are adapted to public singing; one (" The spacious firmament on high ") is a very perfect and finished composition, taking rank among the best hymns in the English language.
From the preface to Simon Browne's hymns, published in 1720, we learn that down to the time of Dr Watts the only hymns known to be " in common use, either in private families or in Christian assemblies," were those of Barton, Mason, and Shepherd, together with " an attempt to turn some of Mr Herbert's poems into common metre," and a few sacramental hymns by authors now forgotten, named Vincent, Boyse, and (Joseph) Stennett. Of the 1410 authors of original British hymns enumerated in Mr Sedgwick's catalogue, published in 1863, 1213 are of later date than 1707; and, if any correct enumeration could be made of the total number of hymns of all kinds published in Great Britain before and after that date, the proportion subse-quent to 1707 would be very much larger.
for Andrew Marvell (who died in 1678), in the preface to Captain Thomson's edition (1776) of Marvell's Works. But this claim does not appear to he substantiated. The editor did not give his readers the means of judging as to the real age, character, or value of a manuscript to which he referred ; he did not say that these portions of it were in Marvell's handwriting ; he did not even himself include them among Marvell's poems, as published in the body of his edition ; and he advanced a like claim on like grounds to two other poems, in very different styles, which had been published as their own by Tickell and Mallet. It is certain that all the five hymns wTere first made public in 1712, in papers contributed by Addison to the Spectator (Nos. 441, 453, 465, 489, 513), in which they were introduced in a way which might have been expected if they were by the hand which wrote those papers, but which would have been improbable, and unworthy of Addison, if they were unpublished works of a writer of so much genius, and such note in his day, as Marvell. They are all printed as Addison's in Dr Johnson's edition of the British Poets.
The English Independents, as represented by Dr Watts, have a just claim to be considered the real founders of modern English hymnody. Watts was the first to under-stand the nature of the want, and, by the publication of his Hymns in 1707-1709, and Psalms (not translations, but _ hymns founded on psalms) in 1719, he led the way in pro-viding for it. His immediate followers were Simon Browne i\nd Doddridge. Later in the 18th century, Hart, Gibbons, Grigg, and Mrs Barbauld (the two first Independents, the two last Presbyterians), and Miss Steele, Medley, Samuel Stennett, Byland, Beddome, and Swaine (all Baptists), succeeded to them. Watts. Among these writers (most of whom produced some hymns of merit, and several are extremely voluminous), Watts and Doddridge are pre-eminent. It has been the fashion with some to disparage Watts, as if he* had never risen above the level of his Hymns for Little Children. No doubt his taste is often faulty, and his style very unequal, but, looking to the good, and disregarding the large quantity of inferior matter, it is probable that more hymns which approach to a very high standard of excellence, and are at the same time suitable for congregational use, may be found in his works than in those of any other English writer. Such are " When I survey the wondrous cross," " Jesus shall reign where'er the sun" (and also another adapta-tion of the same 72d Psalm), " Before Jehovah's awful throne " (which first line, however, is not his, but Wesley's), " Joy to the world, the Lord is come," " My soul, repeat His praise," " Why do we mourn departing friends," " There is a land of pure delight." " Our God, our help in ages past," " Up to the hills I lift mine eyes," and many more. It is true that in some of these cases dross is found in the original poems mixed with gold; but the process of separation, by selection without change, is not difficult. As long as pure nervous English, unaffected fervour, strong simplicity, and liquid yet manly sweetness are admitted to be characteristics of a good hymn, works such as these must command admiration. Dodd- Doddridge is, generally, much more laboured and arti-ridge. ficial; but his place also as a hymn-writer ought to be determined, not by his failures, but by his successes, of which the number is not inconsiderable. In his better works he is distinguished by a graceful and pointed, some-times even a noble style. His " Hark, the glad sound, the Saviour comes " (which is, indeed, his masterpiece), is as sweet, vigorous, and perfect a composition as can any-where be found. Two other hymns, " How gentle God's commands," and that which, in a form slightly varied, became the " O God of Bethel, by whose hand," of the Scottish " Paraphrases," well represent his softer manner.
Miss Steele.
Of the other followers in the school of Watts, Miss Steele (1780) is the most popular and perhaps the best. Her hymn beginning " Far from these narrow scenes of night " deserves high praise, even by the side of other good perfor-mances on the same subject.
The influence of Watts was felt in Scotland, and among Ralph the first whom it reached there was Ralph Erskine. This Erskine. seems to have been after the publication of Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, which appeared in 1732, five years before he joined his brother Ebenezer in the Secession Church. The Gospel Sonnets became (as some have said) a " people's classic "; but there is in them very little which belongs to the category of hymnody. More than nineteen-twentieths of this very curious book are occupied with what are, in fact, theological treatises and catechisms, mystical meditations on Christ as a Bridegroom or Husband, and spiritual enigmas, paradoxes, and antithetical conceits, versified, it is true, but of a quality of which such lines as—
" Faith's certain by fiducial acts, Sense by its evidential facts,"
may be taken as a sample. The grains of poetry scattered through this large mass of Calvinistic divinity are very few; yet in one short passage of seven stanzas (" O send me down a draught of love "), the fire burns with a bright-ness so remarkable as to justify a strong feeling of regret that the gift which this writer evidently had in him was not more often cultivated. Another passage, not so well sustained, but of considerable beauty (part of the last piece under the title " The Believer's Soliloquy "), became after-wards, in the hands of Berridge, the foundation of a very striking hymn (" O happy saints, who walk in light").
After his secession, Ralph Erskine published two para-phrases of the " Song of Solomon," and a number of other " Scripture songs," paraphrased, in like manner, from the Old and New Testaments. In these the influence of Watts became very apparent, not only by a change in the writer's general style, but by the direct appropriation of no small quantity of matter from Dr Watts's hymns, with variations which were not always improvements. His paraphrases of 1 Cor. i. 24, Gal. vi. 14, Heb. vi. 17-19, Rev. v. 11, 12, vii. 10-17, and xii. 7-12 are little else than Watts transformed. One of these (Rev. vii. 10-17) is interesting as a variation and improvement, intermediate between the original and the form which it ultimately assumed as the CGth "Baraphrase" of the Church of Scotland, of Watts's " What happy men or angels these," and " These glorious minds, how bright they shine." No one can compare it with its ultimate product, "How bright these glorious spirits shine," without perceiving that Cameron followed Erskine, and only added finish and grace to his work,,— both excelling Watts, in this instance, in simplicity as well as in conciseness.
Scottish Paraphases.
Of the contributions to the authorized " Paraphrases " (with the settlement of which committees of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland were occupied from 1745 or earlier till 1781), the most noteworthy (besides the two already mentioned) were those of John Morrison and those claimed for Michael Bruce. The obligations of these " Paraphrases " to English hymnody, already traced in some instances (to which may be added the adoption from Addison of three out of the five " hymns " appended to them), are perceptible in the vividness and force with which these writers, while adhering with a severe simplicity to the sense of the passages of Scripture which they under-took to render, fulfilled the conception of a good original hymn. Morrison's " The race that long in darkness pined " and "Come, let us to the Lord our God," and Bruce's "Where high the heavenly temple stands " (if this was really his), are well entitled to that praise. The advocates of Bruce in the controversy, not yet closed, as to the poems said to have been entrusted by him to John Logan, and published by Logan in his own name, also claim for him the credit of having varied the paraphrase " Behold, the moun-tain of the Lord," from its original form, as printed by the committee of the General Assembly in 1745, by some excel-lent touches.
Methodist hymns.
Attention must now be directed to the hymns produced by the "Methodist" movement, which began about 1738, and which afterwards became divided, between those esteemed Arminian, under John Wesley, those who adhered to the Moravians, when the original alliance between that body and the founders of Methodism was dissolved, and the Calvinists, of whom Whitfield (himself no poet) was the leader, and Selina, countess of Huntingdon, the patroness. Each of these sections had its own hymn-writers, some of whom did, and others did not, secede from the Church of England. The Wesleyans had Charles Wesley, Seagrave, Olivers, and Bake well; the Moravians, Cennick and Ham-mond (with whom, perhaps, may be classed John Byrom, who imbibed the mystical ideas of some of the German schools); the Calvinists, Toplady, Berridge, William Williams, Madan, Batty, Haweis, Bowland Hill, John Newton, and Cowper. Charles Among all these writers, the palm undoubtedly belongs Wesley, to Charles Wesley. In the first volume of hymns published by the two brothers are several good translations from the German, believed to be by John Wesley, who, although he translated and adapted, is not supposed to have written any original hymns ; and the influence of German hymnody, particularly of the works of Paul Gerhardt, Schefner, Tersteegen, and Zinzendorf, may be traced in a large pro-portion of Charles Wesley's works. He is more subjective and meditative than Watts and his school; there is a didactic turn, even in his most objective pieces (as, for example, in his Christmas and Easter hymns); most of his works are supplicatory, and his faults are connected with the same habit of mind. He is apt to repeat the same thoughts, and to lose force by redundancy—he runs some-times even to a tedious length ; his hymns are not always symmetrically constructed, or well balanced and finished off. But he has great truth, depth, and variety of feeling; his diction is manly, and always to the point; never florid, though sometimes passionate and not free from exaggera-tion ; often vivid and picturesque. Of his spirited style there are few better examples than " 0 for a thousand tongues to sing," " Blow ye the trumpet, blow," " Rejoice, the Lord is King," and " Come, let us join our friends above;" of his more tender vein, " Happy soul, thy days are ended ;" and of his fervid contemplative style (without going beyond hymns fit for general use), " 0 Thou who earnest from above," " Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go," and "Eternal Beam of Light Divine." With those whose taste is for hymns in which warm religious feelings are warmly and demonstratively expressed, " Jesus, lover of my soul," is as popular as any of these. Olivers. Of the other Wesleyan hymn-writers, Olivers (originally a Welsh shoemaker, afterwards a preacher) is the most remarkable. He is the author of only two works, both odes, in a stately metre, and from their length unfit for congregational singing, but one of them, " The God of Abraham praise," an ode of singular power and beauty.
The Moravian Methodists produced few hymns now Cennick. available for general use, The best are Cennick's " Children of the heavenly King," and Hammond's " Awake and sing Ham-the song of Moses and the Lamb," the former of which mond. (abridged), and the latter as varied by Madan, are found in many hymn-books, and are deservedly esteemed. Byrom, Byrom-whose name we have thought it convenient to connect with these, though he did not belong to the Moravian com-munity, was the author of a Christmas hymn (" Christians awake, salute the happy morn ") which enjoys great popu-larity in the county (Lancashire) of which he was a native ; and also of a short subjective hymn, very fine both in feel-ing and in expression, " My spirit longeth for Thee within my troubled breast."
The contributions of the Calvinistic Methodists to English Toplady. hymnody are of greater extent and value. Few writers of hymns had higher gifts than Augustus Montague Top-lady, author of " Rock of Ages," by some esteemed the finest in the English language. He was a man of ardent temperament, enthusiastic zeal, strong convictions, and great energy of character. "He had," says one of his biographers, " the courage of a lion, but his frame was brittle as glass." Between him and John Wesley there was a violent opposition of opinion, and much acrimonious controversy; but the same fervour and zeal which made him an intemperate theologian gave warmth, richness, and spirituality to his hymns. In some of them (particularly those which, like " Deathless principle, arise," are medita-tions after the German manner, and not without direct obligation to German originals) the setting is somewhat too artificial; but his art is never inconsistent with a genuine flow of real feeling. Others (e.g., "When languor and disease invade," and " Your harps, ye trembling saints ") fail to sustain to the end the beauty with which they began, and would have been better for abridgment. But in all these, and in most of his other works, there is great force and sweetness, both of thought and language, and an easy and harmonious versification.
Berridge, Williams, and Rowland Hill (all men remark- Berridge, able for eccentricity, activity, and the devotion of their Williams, lives to the special work of missionary preaching), though ^g.^ not the authors of many good hymns, composed, or adapted from earlier compositions, some of great merit. One of Berridge, adapted from Erskine, has been already men-tioned ; another, adapted from Watts, is " Jesus, cast a look on me." Williams, a Welshman (who wrote "Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah "), was especially an apostle of Calvinistic Methodism in his own country, and his hymns are still much used in the principality. Rowland Hill wrote the popular hymn beginning " Exalted high at God's right hand."
If, however, the number as well as the quality of good Cowpei hymns available for general use is to be regarded, theand authors of the " Olney Hymns " are entitled to be placed Newton-at the head of all the writers of this Calvinistic school. The greater number of the Olney Hymns are, no doubt, homely and didactic ; but to the best of them (and they are no inconsiderable proportion) the tenderness of Cowper and the manliness of Newton give the interest of contrast, as well as that of sustained reality. If Newton carried to some excess the sound principle laid clown by him, that "perspicuity, simplicity, and ease should be chiefly attended to, and the imagery and colouring of poetry, if admitted at all, should be indulged very sparingly and with great judgment," if he is often dry and colloquial, he rises at other times into "soul-animating strains," such as "Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God;" and sometimes (as in "Approach, my soul, the mercy seat") rivals Cowper himself in depth of feeling. Cowper's hymns in this book are, almost without exception, worthy of his name. Among them are " Hark, my soul, it is the Lord," "There,is a fountain filled with blood," "Far from the world, 0 Lord, I flee," " God moves in a mysterious way," and " Sometimes a light surprises." Some, perhaps, even of these, and others of equal excellence (such as " O for a closer walk with God"), speak the language of a special experience, which, in Cowper's case, was only too real, but which could not (without a degree of unreality not desirable in exercises of public worship) be applied to themselves by all ordinary Christians. 19th During the first quarter of the present century .there century Were not many indications of the tendency, which after-hymns. wanjg "became manifest, to enlarge the boundaries of British hymnody. A few, indeed, of Bishop Heber's hymns, and E.Grant, those of Sir Robert Grant (which, though offending rather too much against John Newton's canon, are well known and popular), appeared between 1811 and 1816, in the Christian Bowdler. Observer. In John Bowdler's Remains, published soon after his death in 1815, there are a few more of the same, perhaps too scholarlike, character. But the chief hymn-writers of that period were two clergymen of the Established Church —one in Ireland, Thomas Kelly, and the other in England, William Hurn—who both became Nonconformists, and the Moravian poet, James Montgomery, a native of Scotland. Kelly. Kelly was the son of an Irish judge, and in 1804 pub-lished a small volume of ninety-six hymns, which grew in successive editions till, in the last before his death in 1854, they amounted to 765. There is (as might be expected) in this great number a large preponderance of the didactic and commonplace. But not a few very excellent hymns may be gathered from them. Simple and natural, without the vivacity and terseness of Watts or the severity of Newton, Kelly has some points in common with both those writers, and he is less subjective than most of the " Methodist" school. His hymns beginning " Lo ! He comes, let all adore Him," and " Through the day Thy love hath spared us," have a rich melodious movement; and another, " We sing the praise of Him who died," is distinguished by a calm subdued power, rising gradually from a rather low to a very high key.
Hurn.
Hurn published in 1813 a volume of 370 hymns, which were increased after his secession to 420. There is little in them which deserves to be saved from oblivion ; but one at least, " There is a river deep and broad," may bear com-parison with the best of those which have been produced upon the same (and it is rather a favourite) theme. Mont- The Psalms and Hymns of James Montgomery were gomery. published in 1822 and 1825, though written earlier. More cultivated and artistic than Kelly, he is less simple and natural. The number of his valuable contributions to our hymnals is, upon the whole, considerable; and, though it may be doubted whether he ever attains to the first rank, all must acknowledge that he stands high in the second. His " Hail to the Lord's Anointed," " Songs of praise the angels sang," and " Mercy alone can meet my case" are among his most successful efforts. Collec- During this first quarter of the present century, the tions of collections of miscellaneous hymns for congregational use, hymils. 0f wh;c;h ^e example was set by the Wesleys, Whitfield, Toplady, and Lady Huntingdon, had greatly multiplied; and with them the practice (for which, indeed, too many precedents existed in the history of Latin and German hymnody) of every collector altering the compositions of other men without scruple, to suit his own doctrine or taste; with the effect, too generally, of patching and dis-figuring, spoiling, and emasculating the works so altered, substituting neutral tints for natural colouring, and a dead for a living sense. In the Church of England, the use of these collections had become frequent in churches and chapels (principally in cities and towns) where the senti-ments of the clergy approximated to those of the Noncon-formists. In rural parishes, when the clergy were not of the " Evangelical" school, they were generally held in disfavour; for which (even if doctrinal prepossessions had not entered into the question) the great want of taste and judgment often manifested in their compilation, and perhaps also the prevailing mediocrity of the bulk of the original compositions from which most of them were derived, would be enough to account. In addition to this, the idea that no hymns ought to be used in any services of the Church of England (except prose anthems after the third Collect), without express royal or ecclesiastical authority, continued down to that time largely to prevail among churchmen of the higher school.
Heber. Milman. Keble.
Two publications, which appeared almost simultaneously in 1827,—Bishop Heber's Hymns, with a few added by Dean Milman, and Keble's Christian Year (not a hymn-book, -but one from which several admirable hymns have been taken, and the well-spring of many streams of thought and feeling by which good hymns have since been produced), —introduced a new epoch, breaking down the barrier as to hymnody which had till then existed between the different theological schools of the Church of England. In Mant. this movement Bishop Mant was also one of the first to cooperate. It soon received a great additional impulse from the increased attention which, about the same time, began to be paid to ancient hymnody, and from the publication in 1833 of Bunsen's Gesangbuch. Among its earliest fruits was the Lyra Apostólica, containing hymns, sonnets, and other devotional poems, most of them originally contributed by some of the leading authors of the Tracts for the Times to the " British Magazine "; the finest of which is the pathetic " Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom," by John Henry (now Cardinal) Newman,-—well known, and uni- Neviman. versally admired. From that time hymns and hymn-writers rapidly multiplied in the Church of England, and in Scotland also, and their number is still on the increase. Nearly 600 authors, whose publications were later than 1827, are enumerated in Mr Sedgwick's catalogue of 1863, and many more have since appeared. Works, critical and historical, upon the subject of hymns, have also multiplied; and collections for church use have become innumerable,— several of the various religious denominations, and many of the leading ecclesiastical and religious societies, having issued hymn-books of their own, in addition to those com-piled for particular dioceses, churches, and chapels, and to books (like Hymns Ancient and Modern) which have become popular without any sanction from authority. In these more recent collections, an improved standard of taste has become generally apparent. There is a larger and more liberal admission of good hymns from all sources than might have been expected from the jealousy, so often felt by churches, parties, and denominations, of everything which does not bear their own mint-mark; a considerable (perhaps too large) use of translations, especially from the Latin; and an increased (though not as yet sufficient) scrupulousness about tampering with the text of other men's works. To mention all the authors of good hymns since the commence-ment of this new epoch would be impossible ; but probably no names could be chosen more fairly representative of its characteristic merits, and perhaps also of some of its defects, than those of Josiah Conder and James Edmeston among English Nonconformists; Henry Francis Lyte and Charlotte Elliott among evangelicals in the Church of England; John Mason Neale and Bishop Christopher Wordsworth among English churchmen of the higher school; and, in Scotland, Dr Horatius Bonar. Criticism, in this place, of the works of these and other living or recent authors, or of those of Heber and Keble, which are on everybody's lips, and- in every-body's hands, would be at once premature and superfluous.
American hymns,
What has been said of British hymnody during the last fifty years is equally true of American. The American hymn-writers belong to the same schools, and have been affected by the same influences. Some of them enjoy a just reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. Among those best known are Bishop Doane, Dr Muhlenberg, and Mr Thomas Hastings; and it is difficult to praise too highly such works as the Christmas hymn, " It came upon the midnight clear," by Mr Edmund H. Sears; the As-cension hymn, " Thou, who didst stoop below," by Mrs S. E. Miles ; and two by Dr Bay Palmer, " My faith looks up to Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary," and "Jesus, Thou joy i)f loving hearts," the latter of which is the best among several good English versions of " Jesu, dulcedo cordium."
Among the authorities of which use has been made in the fore-going account of British Hymnody are the Appendix on Scottish Psalmody in Mr Laing's edition of Baillie's Letters and Journals; Mr Holland's Psalmists of Britain (1843) ; Mr Josiah Miller's Our Hymns, their Authors and Origin (1866) ; Mr John Gadsby's Memoirs of the Principal Hymn-writers, &c. (3d ed., 1861) ; the " Annotations " of the Rev. Louis Coutier Biggs to Hymns Ancient and Modem (1867); and the late Mr Daniel Sedgwick's Compre-hensive Index of Names of original Authors of Hymns, &c. (2d ed., 1863). Mr Sedgwick's name cannot be mentioned without special honour, as one of the most painstaking, sympathetic, and accurate of all modern students of British hymns.
7. Conclusion.
The object aimed at in this article has been to trace the general history of the principal schools of ancient and modern hymnody, and especially the history of its use in the Christian church. For this purpose it has not been thought necessary to give any account of the hymns of Bacine, Madame Guyon, and others, who can hardly be classed with any school, nor of the works of Caesar Malan and other quite modern hymn-writers of the Beformed churches in Switzerland and France.
On a general view of the whole subject, hymnody is seen to have been a not inconsiderable factor in religious worship. It has been sometimes employed to dis-seminate and popularize particular views, but its spirit and influence has been Catholic, on the whole. It has embodied the faith, trust, and hope, and no small part of the inward experience, of generation after generation of men, in many different countries and climates, of many different nations, and in many varieties of circumstances and condition. Coloured, indeed, by these differences, and also by the various modes in which the same truths have been apprehended by different minds (and sometimes reflecting partial and imperfect conceptions of them, and errors with which they have been associated in particular churches, times, and places), its testimony is, nevertheless, generally the same. It has upon it a stamp of genuineness which cannot be mistaken. It bears witness to the force of a central attraction more powerful than all causes of difference, which binds together times ancient and modern, nations of various race and language, churchmen and noncon-formists, churches reformed and unreformed; to a true fun da-mental unity among good Christians; and to a substantial identity in their moral and spiritual experience. (s.)