FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY ^5on in*u& Oft Ireet, London, E.C. 4 Blew (W. J.) Hymns and Hymn-Books. " A letter to Rev. W. U. Richards, 8vo - T 8 cX sewed, 112 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS : A LETTER REV. WILLIAM UPTON RICHARDS, M.A. William john blew. P LONDON: ONS, WATERLOO PLACE 3 858. \ I LONDON : gilbert and riv1nut0n, printers, st. john's square. LETTER, 4c. My dear Richards, I have done as you desired me. I have procured the book you named, and with the purpose for which you mentioned it to me. I have since looked it carefully through, and must acknowledge that it has in some — nay, in no small — degree dis- appointed me, and baulked my expectation of a prize. Perhaps, owing to the prestige of its great title, that expectation was extreme and exaggerated ; and therefore rightly served by having to experience a rebuff. Be that as it may, with visions of St. Osmund before my eye, and with thoughts of him and of his authority in matters ecclesiastical full in my mind, I could scarcely help feeling that, so far as this particular Hymn-book is concerned, the great work is yet to be done ; and the man, or men, to do it, still to be looked for. a 2 4 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Thus influenced by my primary inspection of the work you recommended me, and bearing in remem- brance your desire that I would give you a some- what explicit statement of my opinion, such as it is, of its contents as to scope, arrangement, and execution, with the view to the production of another, by yourself, for your own immediate use and service, I turned the matter over, and came to the conclusion that the better course for me to take would be, leaving almost all special criticism of men and books alone, to express to you the con- siderations which have heretofore passed through my own mind when following out similar trains of thought for myself. On the threshold, then, we are met with this in- quiry : — Are Hymn-books for churches necessary ? The reply to which question is neither yours nor mine, taken severally, but the universal suffrage of the Church, in favour of such books and their use, witnessed by the multitudes which do exist, and have existed, many of them for a very considerable period, in well nigh every diocese in England. The whole Church has been unanimous on this point (with those few exceptions which do but prove the rule) : the Church of the Fathers, e. g. St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory; the Church Medieval, of Venerable Bede and others, and the Church of the later days. The ante-Re- formation Church inherited her Hymn-books from the Fathers and Doctors of her great communion; WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 5 the post-Reformation Church has for the most part created hers. The question, therefore, which at once presents itself as to the necessity of Hymn- books generally, has been settled and set at rest by the concurrent voice of the Church herself in all her ages and stages. But a second query, which arises under the head of necessity, whether, spe- cially considered, another and a new Hymn-book be requisite, must be left to the individual judg- ment of every one who takes any interest whatever in this important item of Divine Worship. Of course a Cathedral-man's opinion — if he were only a Cathedral-man and nothing more — would be that no Hymns were ever needed for worship, and that consequent!)' no books, old or new, can now be required for the purpose of singing them. And, at the same time, many, wont for years and years to worship in their parish church or chapel, may be disposed, though from a different notion, almost to echo the dictum of the Cathedral oracle, and to say : " Surely, with all this array of Hymn-books before us and around us; on all sides, and of all shapes, sizes, prices, and pretensions ; we have Hymn-books more than enough. None other can be called for, either to gratify men's morbid fancies, or to satisfy a sincerely devotional requirement." With this, as matter of taste and criticism, I have little or no concern. The Church, by her acts and deeds, her cravings, and doings to satisfy those cravings of her nature and very self, has affirmed HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Hymn-books to be necessary : and you, allowing that necessity, avow your belief that another is ne- cessary still — necessary, as an advance upon those already existing; necessary for the adequate filling up of that vacancy in the temple worship among ourselves, which still seems to you imperfectly cared for, and, for the most part, insufficiently supplied. And, so believing, you are certainly quite right in acting on your belief, and seeking to produce one Hymn-book more, which may possibly, by approval of competent authority, supersede all others in every other congregation, or, at the very least, be more serviceable than any other could be in meeting the wants of your own. So, indeed, arose the first Hymn-books of the Churches, and their use in the earlier time. Particular bishops, pastors, fathers, or brethren made hymns and their music for the benefit of particular churches, congregations, and societies, in which they were for a while exclusively used ; until the time came when this particular hymn and melody from this quarter, and that from another, won each its way into some fresh congregation, and came at length to acquire a church, and indeed a world-wide reputation. One more step upward and it became incorporated into the body of the Hymns and Tunes of the Church, and stereotyped as an integral portion of its services. No doubt the multiplication of Hymn-books is in itself an inconvenience. It is one, however, which the Church has, in all ages after the very first, had WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 7 to submit to, in a greater or less degree, from the days of St. Hilary and of the fourth Council of Toledo, and of our own St. Osmund, to those of the all but universal French reforms in the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries; and so down to our days among ourselves. And this, in our own case, be it specially remarked, by our Church's own license and allowance. But where, it may be asked, is that allowance of the Church of England to be found, by availing themselves of which English Churchmen have been already so prompt in supplying the supposed defi- ciency of Hymn-books, or rather the patent defect of an authorized Hymn-book, for their services and use in the congregation ? Where stands that leave, liberty, and license expressed, which is even now opening the door to so many, and is encouraging yourself, among that number of willing labourers, to work on in the same direction along the same fruitful field ? Simply, but indisputably, in that Rubric after the third collects at Morning and Evening Prayer, which says, on the authority of the revisers of a.d. 1662, "In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem." What "Anthem?" By what particular rule to be taken out of what particular " Anthem" or other " Book?" Did the first translators and orderers of our English Service, — by whom, however, be it remembered that "Anthem "-Rubric was not inserted in the book of Matins and Evensong, which services, indeed, in 8 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, their time closed with their respective third collect, — did they put forth and publish any such volume or table of Anthems ; other, that is, than the order of Introits for each Sunday and other Holy-day throughout the year, with which their first book of 1549 was enriched; which Anthems, however, being Introits, were of course set forth and assigned for one special portion of the service, and appointed to be sung in Introit-place and fashion ? Did they, in 1552, as reviewers of their former work of '49 ? Did their successors in the days of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. ? Did Archbishop Laud in the kindred Book for Scotland of 1637 ? That would, at the very least, have been some guide and of some assistance to an English Churchman in. re- gulating his course of Anthem song. Did, in fine, the revisers at the Restoration, who first ap- pended that Anthem-Rubric to the collects of the ancient daily service, did they supply us with the Authoritative Volume, the accompanying " Sealed Book " of " Anthems," whereby their rule might fitly and fully be observed ? Not at all. No doubt, as I have said a few lines above, in the book of 1549 you find a course of Introits prescribed for the several Sundays and other Holy-days throughout the year; a series maintained, I believe, for the most part, with very trifling alteration, in some private, .parish, and cathedral churches, where the " Sanctus " is not used, as it otight never to be; for an Introit, down to our own time. Carlisle I have WITH A FEW WOKDS ON ANTHEMS. 9 heard, and your own I remember among the number. In all the books too, from 1549 to 1662, you find an Easter " Anthem," just as in the Latin Prayer Book of 1560 you find " Antiphona," " Sal- vator mundi, salva nos," &c, in the Office for the Visitation of the Sick; and in the Ordinals of 3 549 a choice of three " Introits" for the Holy Commu- nion, and the Hymn, " Come, Holy Ghost," which last is repeated in that of 1552, and preceded in the Ordinal of 1662 by the Hymn, " Veni, Creator Spiritus;" but then these Anthems, Introits, and Hymns have their special days, offices, and places in their several services appointed them, and for which they are expressly themselves appointed to serve. These places may slightly differ, as is the case with the Easter Anthem of the first Book 1549, and the Ordination Hymn, " Come, Holy Ghost," of that and 1552, from those which they respectively occupy in the Revise of 1662. Still the set purpose of their appointment is the same in all from the beginning, consequently it is but a mere truism to say that neither of the Easter-day " Anthems," nor the "Antiphona," nor the Hymns for Ordination could have been in any sense excepting in that of occasional choice and adaptation "The Anthem" of the Rubric after the third collects of Matins and Evensong throughout the year. I say, ex- cepting by way of occasional choice and adaptation, because I am, of course, very far from denying that 10 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, any or all of these can be lawfully and most appro- priately adopted and employed as occasion may serve for such a purpose ; only in that case it is by way of selection and adaptation, just as any other verse or verses of Holy Writ or Church Hymn might be made choice of; and it therefore leaves the question of the " Anthem " very much in the position where it stood before, of being to be sup- plied by the authority and discretion of him, who has the chief authority given him of ministering in Divine things, in the congregation over which he is set in the Lord. This, beyond a doubt, is a great pri- vilege, and requiring perhaps for its successful and effective exercise a larger amount of care, know- ledge, and discretion, than we usually see brought to bear upon the point of application in this par- ticular, and manifested in the choice of Anthems for our services. Yet the Church did not con- sider that there could arise any difficulty in carry- ing out the Anthem-Rubric properly. Certainly, in 1662, she did not foresee the amount of inde- corum and impropriety which it is our misfortune so constantly and painfully to witness, without hope of correction, in the choice and appliance of An- thems "in quires and places where they sing." She gave her superior clergy and dignitaries more credit, I fear, for perception and preparation, on this point at least, than their practice seems to have warranted her doing," or their aptness of Hitual selection shows them, generally speaking, to WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 11 have deserved. She believed that they would have known sufficiently well the ancient course and cus- tom of Anthem singing, to be trusted with regu- lating the decent, yet most simple order of Anthems in their respective churches and services. They have proved that her trust was a vain one. If this seem to you an ungracious charge, let Cava- lieri's words be my words, and plead my apology for so presuming to speak : " Utinam hsec saperent et intelligerent plurimi de clero, qui sui status prorsus immemores suum pessundant officium et in divinorum legibus, quas, ex munere, scire manent adstricti, rudes penitus sunt, et ignorantiam usque gloriantxir habere." (Cavalierus, Joannes Michae- lis, " Liturgica seu Commentaria," &c, 1764, prsef. torn. i. p. viii.) And if you think me to use a somewhat too great plainness of speech on this point, respecting the indifference of those in stalls and other high places of authority and dignity in our churches, let me shelter myself under the words of the same great ecclesiastical authority further on : " Argumentum itaque hoc nostrum cum sit in materie, quae politiorem non exposcit sermonem, et aliunde per omnium indifferenter de clero, cujus plurimi (proh dolor!) minus sapiunt, manus debeat devenire, publicse utilitati magis consulendum esse statuimus, quam nonnullorum voluptati esse, Divi Parentis Augustini vestigia sequentes," &c. (Prsef. p. x.) Pardon me this digression into the domain of a learned Cavalier, and permit me to 12 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, return with you to the place where " folio weth the Anthem." Now what is this Anthem ? Generally speaking it is a piece of rhythmical prose ; and so, no doubt, in the popular and cathedral sense, not an Hymn. But by looking at the matter a little more closely, we come to discover that, as some non-Scripture Hymns, e. g. " Te Deum," " Gloria in Excelsis," "Owe IXapov" &c, are in prose, so very many Anthems of the ancient English, and indeed many other, Churches are in verse. Take up, for instance, the most famous of our old Church Service-books, the Portiforium of Sarum, and turn to one of its most special services, the Translation of St. Osmund. The Antiphons or Anthems for the proper Psalms at the first Evensong are as in the order following : — 1. An. Suscipe cum gaudio mater filiorum In Osmundi jubilo preces famulorum. 2. An. Confessoris Dominum gens collaudet tota, Et in Sancti gloriam reddat pia vota. 3. An. Exit ejus spiritus terrain miserorum, Et intrat pro meritis regnum beatorum. 4. An. Iste domum Domini sacratus fabricavit, Et dispersos clericos simul congregavit. 5. An. Lauda Syon Dominum magni confessoris, Lauda pium prassulem cujus est laboris Quicquid tuas januas bene comfortavit : Quicquid tuos famulos jam laestificavit. And of a like description, metrical according to accent and rhymed withal, are the Antiphons for the proper Psalms at the three Nocturns, as well as at WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 13 Lauds, and throughout the lesser Hours, and for the Ferial Psalms and Canticle at the second Evensong. For the Canticles at the first Evensong and Lauds, and for the Invitatory Psalm at Matins, they are Hexameter unrhymed, and therefore still metrical after both the classical and middle-age fashion of metre. Take, for an example, that for the Benedic- tus at the service of Lauds : — An. Prudentem servum te constat et esse fidelein, Quern Deus in plebein praefecit jure regendam. Tunc tritico verbi vacuas animas satiasti, Nunc hominern toturn ne cesses reddere sanurn. Here, then, we have two kinds of Anthems, both metrical, out of a single proper Service in the Salis- bury Book. Did space and your patience permit, I would furnish you with other specimens out of Services of St. Edmund the King and St. Cecilia, in that of York, and of both kinds also from the Anthems for St. Kentigern in the Service-book of Aberdeen. But, as it is, I must satisfy you and content myself with the above instances of old English, and, if Aberdeen were quoted, Scottish Anthems, here cited and referred to, as being Anthems not simply rhythmical, but metrical, and in very many cases rhymed. Thus much, then, for our Island Churches' practice before the reconstruc- tion of their books, in the matter of Anthems at the Daily Service. Let us, if you please, look next into the Anthem-books of the several cathedral 14 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, and collegiate churches of England since the Re- formation, and we shall find metrical Anthems more or less comprised among their number also. Some will occur to you at once as being contained in well nigh every collection of Cathedral and Chapel Royal Anthems, e. g. 1, " O Lord, the Maker of all thing," from Compline in the Primer of 1545 (which hymn, by the bye, it pleases my lords the printers, who modernize the spelling of the Psalms, other Scriptures, and Hymns in their Anthem- books, to retain, repeat, and reproduce, as they suppose, in its original cast of orthography) ; 2, the Old Hundredth ; 3, Veni, Creator ; and 4, the Hymn for Evensong in the same Primer (1545), "OLord, the worlde's Saviour," set to music by William Mundy, and printed in Barnard's collection of Anthems (1641). Of the later alterations in the Cathedral Books I need say but little. Since the fashion of Chorales has come into vogue with the quires, under the Germanizing influences in music as in other things so rife of late years among our people, the number of metrical Stanzas and Hymns admitted among the Anthems has multiplied greatly, all tending to show that, in the estimation of the Cathedral-men, metre, when it touched their fancy and served their turn, was really no disqualifying ingredient in an An- them, no bar to its reception among them; that rhythm, with or without metre, was a matter of mere indifference in the composition of an Anthem ; WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 15 that in fact Hymns were as much Anthems in our Church sense of the word, as are the prose Anthems themselves, whether those prose Anthems be verses from the Psalms, passages of other Scriptures, Church collects, or like Farrant's well-known "Lord, for Thy tender mercies' sake," a petition privately " conceited," like any metrical hymn, by some good Churchman, and framed for public sing- ing in rhythmical or measured prose. Looking, indeed, at our only Ritual Hymn, the " Veni, Cre- ator," under its twofold form in the Ordina- tion Service, I should say that from its special rubric and line-by-line mode of printing for alter- nate singing, it is in a far higher degree an Anthem, Antiphona, a contre-chant or counter- song, than are the vast majority of even the verse Anthems in our quire-books, and than all the so- called full Anthems of those books put together. I here am taking the word " Antiphona " in our common sense and acceptation, as marked by our mode of using and applying the word " Antiphonal." And this opinion, formed from an impartial review of our own books, and indeed in a manner forced upon one by the mind and practice of our Church, we find to be remarkably corroborated, and vested with a much wider application, by the words of defini- tion in Arevalo's admirable " Dissertatio de Hymnis Ecclesiasticis " (§ii. 7, p. 6, Romae, 1786), wherein he says, " Hymnus est canticum in laudem Dei, sanc- torumve, sive metro, sive rhythmo, sive oratione, 16 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, incisis quibusdam distincta ac non omnino soluta." I will not in this place adduce the practice of poets, of Crashaw, for example, in forming the " Anti- phons " of their sweet hour-services, as well as the hour-services themselves, in verse, because all such, however beautiful, are to be regarded as rather in the light of what the late great Duke would have called " fancy prayers and services," than as true expositions of the mind and practice of the Church. But still how clearly identified, even in royal as well as popular minds, if not in strictest ecclesiasti- cal opinion, Anthem and Hymn were, in the early post-Eeformation times, we possess, I think, very evident proof, in the description of the two little " Anthems," or " things in metre," which were written by Queen Elizabeth, and by her licensed to her printer in 1578. In the year 1585 a metrical Hymn, styled " an Anthem," in two parts, was com- posed for the 17th of November. (Strype, Ann. Reform., Append, to b. i., No. 62.) The same record adds " an Anthem, or metrical Prayer, to be sung after Evening Prayer at all times." At the consecration of the Bishops after the Restoration, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, a metrical Hymn, called " an Anthem," was sung. This is the note of Mr. Stephens, " Book of Common Prayer of the United Church," vol. i. p. 457, who appends as his authorities " Mason's Hibernia," p. 194, and " Jebb on the Church ServiCe," p. 370. A simple reference to the well-known Anthem, " Alma Re- WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 17 demptoris," which is metrical, to " Ave Regina," which is regularly rhymed, to " Regina Cceli," which is rhyme cadenced, and to the " Salve Regina," which is rhythmical prose, is all that is needed to assure us of the view taken by the Latin Church from Urban's day to the present, of the point which I have been busying myself in clinching. And this I repeat here in part confirmation of my view of the same point adverted to and insisted upon above, and indeed corroborated to a great extent by the citation from Arevalo, which goes to show that what you say of the Anthem you may in great measure apply to the Hymn. And why do I seem to reiterate — I fear you may think so needlessly — this point of identity, for all practical purposes, of Hymn with Anthem in the service and practice of our Church, and, as I may say, from the citation of Arevalo above, in that of Spain likewise, and indeed of the Church at large, and from the very beginning ? To make sure of the ground on which you can use Hymns at all. Needless, no doubt, to you, and therefore superflu- ous, as far as you are simply yourself concerned, that endless iteration is ; but then you must recol- lect that if a late or present Cardinal of an English cathedral of our own day (and such dignified officers as Cardinals there were and still are amongst us, unless the besom of those awful Church Commis- sioners has swept them into the depths of their own Dead Sea for ever), — if such an one, I say, other than 18 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, perhaps the present worthy Vicar of Tottenham, were to ask of you, By what authority doest thou this thing, after what precedent are you now about to put forth another Book of Hymns ? it might he useful to reply to his query in the terms and with the arguments that would probably be most convincing to him, though not perhaps of greatest weight with us. What to his thinking would be the validity of an appeal to the pattern of St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory, to the labours of Sedulius (Shiel) and our Venerable Bede, or the rest of that great bro- therhood of holy song, that in the grand old times of the Church wrote Hymns for the joy and comfort of their fellows in the several churches where they ministered and worshipped: and for which good service done they have earned and received the apparent and patent thanks of Christendom ever since in the every where varying, perhaps, but still uninterrupted adoption of their Hymns, in place almost universally, and in time from their days to these, without indeed any greater let or exception than that afforded by the French Churches during their thirst for innovation in the course of the by- gone century and a half ? This, I repeat, which might be conclusive, in spirit, principle, and theory, to you and to me, who recognize in Hymns an in- gredient of Divine Worship, not only not forbidden, but permitted by the practice of our Church, — what would it all be to the Cathedral-man, who scoffs at Hymns, unless called "Anthems," and abjures their WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 19 use as unchurchlike unless comprised in his own particular quire-book and music-score ? what, but a series of unintelligible sounds beyond the compass of his musical ear to discriminate, and therefore past the comprehension of his peculiarly musical mind to entertain ? Equally worthless as a weight in the balance of his sanctuary would be your pos- sibly additional argument, in itself so well deserv- ing the intelligent consideration of all unprejudiced Churchmen, that what the French Churches above referred to carried to the extent of a total and entire change and abandonment of old for new, with but the most singular and partial exceptions, — of old Anthem for new Anthem, of old Hymn for new Hymn, and indeed of old Office generally for new Office, — in their case, be it recollected, without reference had to the sacred congregation of Rites, and apparently against the highest authority of the Latin Church of their day, — you at least are war- ranted in attempting, to the extent of a few Hymns, by the practice and permission, I may add the assured tradition of your own, in its several particulars of rule, rubric, and custom. Nay, it is not with yourself, as an English Churchman, so much as even that. For while the French Bishops and Chapters unceremoniously expelled from their books the long-existing Anthems and Hymns of the Church, to make way for fresh forms of their own arranging and composing, you do but supply a vacuum left open by the Church with an invitation B 2 20 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, to her members to fill it ; you do but fill with a form and shape of song Divine that niche which the Church has kept fitted for its reception. The French- man was Frenchman like, all bustle and quicksilver, all " diruit, sedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis ;" with you it is simply and reverently, " Of Thine own give I unto Thee." Interesting, then, as to an English Churchman, in the matter of Hymns, this procedure of the French Churches undoubtedly is, and deserving of special note, as bearing upon, and applying to our past acts, in the reform of our Service-book, and present need on the score of metrical " Anthems " for the congregation, I must nevertheless pass it by with the foregoing simple reference to the fact, as a point though fully apprehended by you, yet of no great weight in the way of argument with your interrogator, the Cathedral-man. To him, far more prompt and to the purpose — than any appeal to De Vintimille, of Paris, and to D'Orleans de la Motte, of Amiens, with their new Hymns; to De Lavergne de Tressan, of Rouen, with his old Hymns refashioned; to the Roman Book of Beauvais (1830), with its double Hymns, in their original and reformed state, printed the one immediately following the other, or, in a word, than any reference to Santeul, and Coffin, and their Archiepiscopal and Episcopal em- ployers — is the reply: Our right to use Hymns is identical with yours to use Anthems ; our right WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 21 to adopt fresh Hymns is the same as yours to insert fresh Anthems; and, in proof that there is nothing unchurch like in their introduction and use, we will not plead the names of St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory, but the license, authority, and permission of the Bishops, for ex- ample, of London, Lincoln, and Salisbury, who, together with almost every Bishop on the Bench, have either themselves authorized, so far as a Bishop can authorize, or have continued to permit, where their predecessors had already authorized, new Hymn-books, sometimes for churches in their several dioceses, and sometimes for the dioceses themselves. Neither need I instance the American Bishops of the past age, nor the Scottish of the pre- sent, who have engaged themselves upon this very work, and who, if their absolute authority therein was no more than that of a private clergy- man, though this would apply to the English rather than to the American and Scottish Pre- lates, have nevertheless taken off from the under- taking its imputation of being uncanonical, as against the dictum at Braga, and unchurchlike, as contrary to the mind of St. Agobard. Surely among ourselves the Mitre Hymn-book is worth a host of witnesses, nay, is in itself the witness, — the one metropolitan witness, — the testis instar omnium. And what Cathedral-man, little as he may like Hymns, will venture a throw with the Mitre ? 22 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, When I speak, as I have frequently spoken, of Cathedral-men, you will bear in mind that I do not mean only Cathedral-men, in the strictest sense of the word, as members of purely cathedral quires, but the members likewise of those minster, collegiate, and even parish churches and chapels, which follow exclusively cathedral practice, when plainly unfitted in several important particulars for the public and congregational use of the Church, and the requirements of the persons wor- shipping there. I say public, in contradistinction to that private use, which is the theory at least of a minster and collegiate, if not so wholly of a cathedral church; in all which cases, however, I believe the staff and members of the house, the chapter, clerks, and, at most, the other clergy of the diocese, to be the only contemplated and recognized, and, if I may so speak, legitimate con- gregation. In the cathedral and minster church, the people of the precinct; in the parish church, the people of the parish, or of the Church at large, are the assistants, and to them, in their several character and capacity, the service of each should be adapted. And by the points and particulars of Cathedral Service, unfitted for use in the con- gregation of the people at large, I mean the em- ployment of high-pitched and very peculiar chants or tunes for the Psalms of the day, of figured services for the Canticles, of what is called Festal form for the versicles and suffrages (throughout which the WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 23 genuine congregational and marts tune is almost at the present day unheard), and of quire Anthems, to the total exclusion of the people's Hymn ; though I would not be understood to imply by this last remark any prejudice or feeling in my own mind against the use of an Anthem, proper, in the service of a parish church. On the contrary, as a sermon in song to be listened to and dwelt upon by the assembled people, it has its mighty uses, and is always to me most acceptable. Only care should be taken that it is ever of that wor- shipful tone, and written in that musical language, which, though not perhaps to be joined in, can always be " understanded " of the people who are assisting at the parochial service of their Church. And to my mind the same rule holds good, whether the Anthem be a rhythmical one of Gibbons, for example, or of Purcell or Croft; a metrical by Tye or Tallis, Croft or Mendelssohn; or mixed, like the " Praise the Lord " of Webbe. The privilege, therefore, of having metrical as well as simply rhythmical Anthems for use in church being assumed, the next point that sug- gests itself *to a mind wishing to judge aright in this matter is, Whence should those metrical Anthems come, and how should they be com- posed ? We know that in the first Council of Braga, glanced at above, (post Canon, xvii. prop, xii. Bruns', vol. i. part 2, p. 35, Berlin, 1839,) these words stand : " Item placuit, ut extra Psalmos 24 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, vel canonicarum Scripturarum novi et veteris testament! nihil poetica compositum in ecclesia psallatur, sicut et sancti praecipiunt canones:" words which, if held to be of paramount authority, and evermore binding on the Church, would, strictly interpreted, have shut out from the service the "Te Deum," the Athanasian Creed, the " Gloria in Excelsis," the " Gloria Patri," and a mere Pro- testant might add the " Benedicite," or " Song of the Three Children," as being found written neither in the Greek of the New, nor in the Hebrew or Chaldaic of the Old Testament of the Church, strictly speaking. And, of course, with all metrical Hymns whatsoever, it would exclude a majority of the old Antiphons of the Church Universal, as well as all such more modern Anthems of our own, whether rhythmical or metrical, as are not simply versions of passages in Holy Writ, but composed words, like Farrant's "Lord, for Thy tender mercies' sake," Tallis's prayers, " O Lord, give Thy Holy Spirit," "I call and cry to Thee, O Lord," and Gibbons' " Almighty and everlasting God," the Collect for the Third Sunday of the Epiphany; together with that multitude of other Collects set by Mason, Elvey, Tomkins, Sir Frederick Ousely, Marsh, and others, which, side by side, with adaptations to Mendelssohn, throng the quire- books of the " places where tljey sing." As, how- ever, in practice we have found no difficulty in employing the words of men to praise God in the WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 25 great congregation, so in sober truth need we feel none. The Council of Toledo (iv. Can. xiii. Bruns' edition, vol. i. part 1, p. 227, Berlin, 1839), with an evident allusion to the foregoing Canon of Braga, after affirming as follows : " Non- nulli hymni humano studio in laudem, atque Apostolorum et Martyrum triumphos compositi esse noscuntur;" after, too, elaborately combating the opinion of those supposed to be hostile to the use of non- Scriptural Psalms and Hymns, con- cludes a canon with this sentence : " Sicut igitur orationes ita et hymnos, in laudem Dei compositos, nullus nostrum ulterius improbet, sed pari modo Gallia et Hispaniaque celebret, excommunicatione plectendi, qui hymnos rejicere fuerint ami." What Braga, taken literally, forbade, Toledo as emphatically enjoined, and in accordance with this latter judgment seems ever to have run the prac- tice of the Church at large. If I turn to the Antiphonary of St. Gregory the Great, which to- day (March the 12th) I seem specially prompted to do, and open the book almost at hazard, I find the freeness of conception and the original writing of the Church Anthems every where exemplified as a fact. To take, for instance, one as a sample, — the "Antiphona," "De Terribili Judicio." " Terribile est, Christe, Judicium Tuum ; ubi Che- rubim et Seraphim contremiscunt ; ubi Angeli tremunt, qui non peccaverunt; ubi justi terrentur qui placuerunt coram Te, Domine ; illi splendorem 26 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Tuum satiantur. Libera, Salvator, libera populum Tuum a malis omnibus." A magnificent Anthem, " Christe Qui regnas," on the next page of the Antiphonary (Thomasius, torn. v. p. 235, col. 1, ed. Rom. 1750), tells the same great truth, that with free, unfettered, yet chastened voice, the Church has ever ventured in Prayer, Collect, Hymn and Anthem, to approach her Lord, to bless His holy name, to praise and magnify Him for ever. And this, indeed, would seem the perfect theory of worship, if theory may be named in such a matter, at one time, as in Psalm and Canticle, to use His words in reverence to Himself, who spake them; and at another, as in Hymn, and Anthem, and Collect, and Suffrage, and Litany, to come meekly into His presence with words of our own, as taught and tuned by His. Nor do I recollect an instance of this principle of free service being dis- puted in any Church from the days of the Braga Council downward, until towards the close of the seventeenth century, when the spirit of making all things in Church-book and Service new began so to spring and spread through the dioceses and provinces of France, that at the end of the eighteenth but few of the Gallican Churches, comparatively speaking, had retained their ancient Offices, and with them the words or tunes of their former Graduals, Hymns, and Anthems. The very syllables of Scripture were almost every where substituted for the freer readings and renderings of the Church, and were WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 27 sometimes, though, it must be confessed, with wondrous ingenuity and cleverness, subjected to applications as novel as they seem constrained. Yet even in this point of Biblical Service the voice of the French Churches gives an uncertain sound; for, notwithstanding their innovation on the score of Scripture Anthems, and Scripture Anthems only, they did not merely not leave their old Hymns in their books, which, on account of their hoar and almost Scriptural simplicity, they might have done without any very flagrant violation of their new or newly-revived and adopted Canon, but absolutely went out of their way to make and pro- cure fresh ones to be made, after the newest of French fashions, for Sunday, Week-day, Feast and Fast, which, beautiful as they are, viewed as spe- cimens of Lyric Latinity, are little of a piece, and sometimes even apparently at variance, I mean in taste and tone, with the staid and sober majesty of Scripture. Of course I make no reference here to the case of that Church, which, nearly sixty years after its sister Church, Vienne, proceeded to revise its Office-book : having, however, in this un- like the rest, but like Vienne, no Hymn in its service, except the last night-hymns, for Compline. I allude to the Church of Lyons, at its revise of 1735, — a Church which remained, until its after-revise of 1780, yet more austere in the matter of Hymns than was even the stern Carthusian Brotherhood itself. 28 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Vienne, too, which in Grancolas' time had no more Hymns than Lyons, yielded at length its tra- dition on that point, and received them a year or two after Lyons, with the newly-introduced book of Le Franc de Pompignan, in the year 1783. How closely trenching on the eve of that Revolution which was destined to sweep away Hymn and Anthem, Church and Chapter, for a while into the dust of things that are not ! While speaking of this reformation or innovation in the substance of Church Hymns and Anthems, I have made no mention of Quignon's book, because without any scruple as to the words and matter of the Anthem, he simply excluded it from his first edition : in which strong proceeding, by the bye, he would appear to be more than countenanced by the great authority of Cardinal Tommasi (Thomasii Opera, torn. i. p. 2, Blanchini) : restoring it, indeed, in his second and subsequent issues only where he was obliged, and then in its original form. With the Hymn too he dealt subtilly, somewhat as he had afterwards to deal with the Anthem; where ex- cision was possible, as he contrived it should be at Matin Lauds, he performed the operation, by calling the double service one, and cutting out one Hymn to supply its place with another, taken away for that purpose from its proper and anciently assigned position in the service. Still, so far as he had to do with Hymn and Anthem, and in the case of the WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 29 former he is thrifty rather than niggardly, he retains them for the most part in their original form. Some few, indeed, of the old Hymns — those, for example, in honour of the most Holy Trinity — were, through the intervention, it is said, of one Stephen, of Liege, omitted, or rather exchanged for others. But, as a rule, Quignon, though, according to his principle and purpose, he omitted much, yet was minded to change but little for changing or mere fashion's sake. Ferreri and his graces had evidently no charms for him. He was too genuine an utilitarian to waste a thought on mere shape and elegance. Perhaps his better taste and judgment, and I trust that Guyet, Raynaud, and Arevalo (to say nothing of the Medicean princes, Leo X. and Clement VII. ; of Urban VIII. and those French Hymn writers, of what may be called their Classico- Ecclesiastical Renaissance) will pardon me this remark, led him to leave well alone. If his rigid rule of compression and contraction drove him to part without compunction from a long array of time-honoured and noble Hymns — the daily Matin Hymns, and, as we have seen, those to the most Lloly Trinity among the number — as well as from Anthems past account in multitude and un- paralleled for beauty, still it must be remembered, I am bold enough to think and say, in his favour, that those he did retain he took to himself, and kept, mainly, if not entirely, without tricking them 30 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, out, trimming, or tampering with them. Perhaps he was in the first instance scared from the attempt at correcting the Hymns by the difficulty, nay, hopelessness of that ungracious task, in particular ; and afterwards had his impulse in that direction yet further chilled and dulled by the vast opposition raised to his whole work on the part of those for whose behoof he had projected it, and by the evident lack of success which from all sides threat- ened to attend upon it. Perhaps the Cardinal of Holy Cross had withal a sense of veneration about him for whatever was plain and simply majestic. Perhaps, therefore, he really worshipped those holy Hymns' antiquity. In Quignon's case, as in that of other great ritualists within the Latin Church (for Quignon was after all a great ritualist), the distinction maintained of a difference between the recitation of a public and private Office, which led to the exclusion of Responsories and Antiphons, must never be lost sight of, because it strengthens a thousandfold the principle by which, in that service, even in its ostensibly private form, the ancient Hymns of the Church were retained; re- tained for private recitation, when Antiphons and quire-service were not; and retained of course for common celebration wherever, as in some churches of Spain and elsewhere, the chapter, chaplain, or officiating priest, seems needlessly to have adopted the new Breviary, for public as well as private WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTIIEMS. 31 use. To which new Breviary, be it observed, en passant, evidently with an eye to its permanent public uses and celebration, a new Missal-book was shortly afterwards fitted ; one precious copy of which most precious book Dr. Bandinel has had the good fortune to secure and add to the treasures of his rich Bodleian Library. He glories in his prize ; I wish I could have forestalled him of his prey. Whether the Churches of Saragossa, Tarazona (not Tarragon, in Catalonia, as Gueranger writes it), Palentia, and Albarracin, succeeded, the first in face of the people's opposition, and the last despite the protest of its Bishop, Gaspar Borsa, of Segorbe, in following up their use of the new Bre- viary, with the introduction of the new Missal, one can scarcely hope now to discover. If not, the officiators must have often felt themselves cruelly crossed and inconvenienced during their celebration of Divine Service by the differences of daily office existing between the books of the quire and those of the altar. To us, however, in the question now immediately before us, this inquiry is only so far interesting, in that the adoption of the new Missal as a supplement to the new Breviary would have entailed upon the Church so adopting it a loss of sequence in the Mass, in addition to that of Matin and other Hymn in the daily office of the Quire. Further reference to the state of the Latin Hymns under Clement VIII. and Paul V., and to 32 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, their very tender treatment of them in the way of correction, omission, or introduction of new matter, I may well omit, as I will likewise all remark upon the vernacular Italian Hymn-book of Seraphin Razzi, a Dominican, and upon the sacred Latin Poems of Arias Montanus, upon the Hymns com- posed by Muretus at the instance of the Doge of Mantua, and upon the great correction of old work and large introduction of novelties in the sweeping revise of Urban VII L, the crowning labour of the whole. All that I would here advert to is this con- stant tendency towards and hankering after reforma- tion of Offices in the Latin Church ; and that,curiously enough, the greatest Churchmen of the West seem to have been the greatest reformers themselves, and the chiefest upholders and defenders of the principle of such Church-reformation in others. Respecting ourselves under the head of reformers, all that one can gather from custom and tradition is, that the whole matter was left open, and, as is generally the case with open questions, liberty and license in Hymn and Anthem were taken, and were permitted to be taken, by all churches, cathedral, collegiate, and parochial, according to the taste and inclination of each ; a license that, in accordance with an esta- blished custom and canon of England, would seem to be readily allowed in every but the right di- rection. Still, admitting the open question of Hymn and Anthem, among ourselves, as plain matter of fact, a WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 33 second query may arise as to the extent of authority had, and designed to be had, by the Old Version of the Psalms : that, namely, which goes under the style of " Sternhold and Hopkins." My own impression is, that from the year 1549 to the present day the authority of that version in its several stages of incompleteness has been but permissive. That edition, if indeed there was an edition of 1549, contained but thirty-seven out of the one hundred and fifty Psalms in the Psalter, and these were ver- sified by Sternhold himself. In 1551 came out another edition, with seven additional Psalms by Hopkins. Both these impressions were without music. In 1556, seven more Psalms, done into English by Whittingham, were published by him at Geneva, and in 1562 the whole fifty-one Psalms were printed " with apt notes to sing them withal," and announced as set forth and allowed to be sung in all churches before and after morning prayer, and also before and after sermons; it would seem, from this particular expression, when no morning or evening prayer immediately went before or fol- lowed. Of course, neither the Act of Uniformity nor the Rubrics about Anthems were existent as yet, but Elizabeth's injunctions were, which directed that there should be " a modest and distinct song- used in all parts of the Common Prayer of the Church; yet, nevertheless, for the comforting of such as delight in music, it may be permitted that in the beginning or the end of common prayer, C 34 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, either at morning or evening, there may be sung an Hymn or such like song to the praise of Almighty God." I need follow this point no further than just to say, that the simple allowance and permission indicated above seem to put the Old Version Psalms and Hymns and such like songs on one and the same footing, that of an authority of sufferance. And this appears corroborated by the circumstance that from time to time, as opportunity might offer or occasion serve, other books of Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs were recommended, or allowed for use in the Church. George Wither's " Hymns and Songs of the Church," for instance, published in 1623 (something less than two years after his citation before the Council of Whitehall touching his "Motto"), and set to music by Orlando Gibbons ; George Sandys' Psalms, with music by Henry Lawes (" Comus " Lawes), in 1636 ; John Patrick's Book of Psalms ; the new version of Tate and Brady, and the myriad collections, and compilations, and selections of Psalms or Hymns, or " Psalms and Hymns," which have been issued and adopted at the mere motion of the framers and accepters, sufficiently attest this, that, while the two versions of the Psalms are allowed in our churches, the adoption of Hymns is more than permitted ; just as Anthems, a species of which they are, are themselves not merely permitted but provided for, in having an appointed place in the service Expressly reserved for them. WITH A FEW WOEDS ON ANTHEMS. 35 Allowable, then, as the Old and New Versions of the Psalms undoubtedly are, the question arises, " Is it well to use them ? " They may be lawful ; are they therefore expedient ? They are admissible ; but is it wise to hail their entrance into new con- gregations, and instal them in seats of autho- rity within the quires and singing-places of our churches ? Let us see what may be said about their use, not exclusive nor authoritative, but occa- sional. It is well known that the Church of England, before the translation and alteration of the Service- book, had more proper Psalms appointed for special days and occasions than she has at present. The retention therefore of a Metrical Psalter, either in whole or in part, would still allow men, of observant mind and catholic spirit, to substitute, by selection, for the loss of those proper Psalms, others from the Metrical Psalter. For instance, Twelfth Day has no longer in the English Book proper Psalms ap- pointed: — out of the Metrical Psalter, then, such could be very opportunely supplied, and sung to that quick and unflagging tune, (once so popular at old Margaret Chapel in the good old days,) which used to be called " the Rhythm ; " a tune, by the bye, which I think to have found in one of Mr. Curzon's books, almost exactly noted down as still in use with some congregation in the East: if I recollect aright with the Latin brethren of St. Salvador at Jerusalem. So, too, in the case of c 2 36 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, many other celebrations, Feasts of our Lord and of His Apostles, as well as of many worthies either of our own Church, or very closely connected with us, e. g. St. Gregory the Great himself, perhaps — and I write this with the recollection of Mr. Gold- smid's smart saying full in mind — the first President of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, who specially set on foot our con- version or reconversion to the faith; St. Augustine, Archbishop of Canterbury, his first appointed mis- sionary and our apostle, as he has been rightly called; St. David, the apostle of the Welshmen; Venerable Bede, restored to his English place in our Calendar at the Restoration of the Church of England; and many others, men rightly famous in the congregation ; men of renown in their own time, and still held worthy, at least of express com- memoration, if not of full celebration, among our- selves up to the present day. For all these, the adoption of a Metrical Psalter, employed by way of supplement, might afford a very seasonable book of remembrance. And, indeed, that metrical Psalms have not been held altogether alien from our service, even in its most medieval form, is apparent from the fact of a versified Latin Psalm, the 117th, finding place in the Latin College Service in the Cathedral of Christ Church, Oxford. So, at least, I find it in my edition (Oxonise, 1726) of the " Liber Precum Ecclesiss Cathedralis Christi, Oxon. Litania, Ordo administrandse Coenae Domini, WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 37 Catechism us," &c. This Psalm was, I believe, sung to a melody called " York Tune " by Milton, or Milton's father. And now, without adverting, individually or col- lectively, to the versions of the Psalter in verse — whether blank, heroic, ballad, or lyrical — for of all these descriptions specimens and complete trans- lations exist, and their name is legion — commencing from that of Sternhold, Hopkins, and the rest ; and coming down to Mr. Keble's, the Cleveland, and Mr. Bowring's, which it would now be beside my mark to review; the present purpose being to dis- cuss, not the authority or excellence of particular versions, but the principle and possible advantage, under our peculiar circumstances, of metrical ver- sions of the Psalter generally — I may fairly hope to have given that ecclesiastical and ritual use of the Metrical Psalter as candid and faithful a recom- mendation to persons of thoughtful mind as such a plan and proceeding would readily or possibly admit of. But I anticipate, and at once by acquiescence in your view, forestall your reply. If the Metrical Psalter, used in whole or in part, would confer on us the great privilege of singing at certain times, by means of bold and flowing, or at least unhalt- ing and free tunes, in substance if not in very form exact, those identical Psalms which our great forefathers used on those self-same days of com- memoration — and who will dare question the duti- fulness of such a principle, or the real enjoyment of 38 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, so great a privilege ? — why would not the Church's Prayer Book Psalter, rhythmical but not metrical, translated indeed, but not transposed, answer the same good purpose in a higher and better degree ? There you might get not the substance only, but the form and fashion also. And, in fact, an English Vulgate, or Prayer Book, Psalm, used in the proper place, and by way of Anthem, in a congregation of people, is as effective as it is correct and rubrical. The manner, vigorous and hearty, in which the people sing it is a sure test of the popular nature of the practice. So I have heard it at St. George's Church, Ramsgate, and at some others, where a praiseworthy attempt has been made to have a true and laudable service — a service faithful to every instinct of the Church, and praiseworthy from its genuine adaptation to the wants and capabilities of the people. And this practice of using a Psalm for Anthem, and as an Anthem proper, we have the highest authority for holding to be not merely convenient, but in the highest degree correct. Car- dinal John Bona, a melior than whom in his own line will not easily be found, says distinctly, in his "Divina Psalmodia" (chap. xvi. § x. p. 841, ed. Antw. 1677), " Ipsi quoque Psalmi cum a pluribus alternatim recitantur Antiphonae dici possunt :" and Zaccaria, in his " Onomasticon Rituale Selectum " (sub initio vocis "Antiphonaj" p. 24, ed. 1787), defines Antiphona, Antiphon, or Anthem, to be " cantus Ecclesiasticus alternus, quum a duobus WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 39 choris Psalmi et Hymni alternis vocibus concinun- tur." Independently of the really popular character of the tune and words, the general correctness of the selection may do much towards recommending and approving the Anthem in such churches, to the mind and feelings of the people. They see its point, they discern its spirit, and, knowing it to be right, they sing it lustily and with a good courage, with the spirit, and with the understanding also; the only spirit meet for Divine offices and for the celebration of a reasonable service. And this carefulness in choosing appropriate Psalm-Anthems (or Hymns indeed, as the case may be) is no doubt the reason why in parish churches and chapels, and in the many congregations of the people, other than those which simply copy the cathedral, such Anthem or Hymn is generally, and as a rule, so much more effective than is the An- them in cathedral or minster, or mere minster- copying churches ; in congregations, that is, than in quires; though in the latter, as an artificial piece of music, it is usually so much more elaborate in character and ambitious of execution and display. Were " quires " indeed, I mean " quires proper," to favour us sometimes with a proper Psalm, or part of a Psalm, properly set to music for declamation and verse singing of the most striking and appro- priate character, something, I should say, after the noble fashion of Dr. Gauntlett's specimens of the 40 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, " Quire and Cathedral Psalter," a great point would be gained in getting people to see the use and power of Anthems ; of which, except so far as re- garding them in the light of pretty pieces of ope- ratic music introduced at random as to matter, to break the supposed monotony and tediousness of the service, they seem very much in the dark at present. Besides which, by such exercise in de- clamation, quires themselves would profit much, by acquiring what they are now so deficient in, — dis- tinctness of enunciation, and a clear rule of voice and utterance. But the great cause of difference in effect, be- tween the Congregational Psalm-Anthem or Hymn, and the Full or Verse Anthem of the cathedral, would appear for the most part to be this : that while in the former case the clergyman, as a rule, selects the Psalm or Hymn for the Anthem ; in the latter, too frequently the organist is allowed to take it out of the book (and that Anthem- book commonly a mere non-arranged, undigested farrago of masses of Scriptures thrown heed- lessly together), without selection or discrimi- nation of any kind. Left in the absence of pre- centor, or canon, or canonical quire-master, to his or the lay-clerk's and singing men's disposal, the An- them is simply pitched upon, not chosen discreetly; or chosen at best but as a standing favourite with the singers, or as an occasional convenience for its show, or shortness, or easiness, or from mere whim and WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 41 fancy, if, as I have doubted above, it can be said to be really chosen at all. How many a time has this lack of power and point come home to all of us. How often within the carved quire and under the bowery roof of the high and mother church, have we not been doomed to have the music of our thoughts jangled out of tune, and the sweet bells of memory and feeling rung backward by an Anthem, perversely in its spirit, and emphatically in its very wording con- tradictory of the time and proper purpose of its performance; performed, too, to make the griev- ance more glaring, with a perversity of skill, to be matched only by the wantonness or perverseness of its mal-adroit and supercilious choosers. I will not go on to specify the churches, cathedral or cathedral-like, most amenable to this stricture, for that were invidious ; nor the Anthem-books, for that were impossible. Where all are nearly alike, in every particular; where each is a specimen of the other, and none but themselves can be their parallel, to single out were simply to insult — to insult, I mean, the remainder who are passed over in silence, as unworthy of mention, for the non- classification of their book, and the mal-appropri- ateness of their Anthem-singing; on which license of theirs no doubt as signs of independence they are greatly prone to plume and pride themselves. We, as poor exoterics who have felt the jar, may have liberty to protest against the infliction, which we timidly presume to do, and then to pocket our 42 protest, which is as much as we can hope will be permitted us. Possibly, however, good may come out of evil, and benefit to the Church may issue even from a Cathedral Close. The present unseemly squabble at Carlisle, in whatever way it may be de- cided by the Visitor, will no doubt read its lesson to other Church authorities, and have its due effect upon the dignity of many a less Hyperborean Dean. From the foregoing suggestion which I have ven- tured to make as to the use of the rhythmical Psalms in the Prayer Book for proper Anthems in parish churches, and places where they sing, and where more artistic strains would be clearly out of tune, owing to the popular character of the con- gregation, you will gather my notion of the non- advisableness of a metrical Psalm, as a substitute for Hymn or Anthem. What would be better and really well done by a better instrument had best be so left to be done well. I say nothing about lawful or unlawful, authorized or unauthorized, rubrical or unrubrical, canonical or uncanonical, churchlike or unchurchlike, for all these are debateable points, and all admit of question. A metrical Psalter may be all these by turns, according to the judgments or prejudices of those who have as much liberty allowed them to judge in the Church as their bre- thren, and no more. As, however, the words of the Psalms and of Holy Writ*generally supplied at least the staple of most of the old Anthems and even hymns of the early Latin Church, and indeed WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 43 the very Anthem text of the later Church in France, there can of course be no impropriety in the incor- poration of specially adapted portions of the Psalms into Hymns for particular occasions, either of sea- son, person, or place. The 121st Psalm, for in- stance, with others of like complexion, has formed the burden of many a daily Hymn of prayer and praise in the church, while a portion of the 24th Psalm, with its more special theme of celebration, moulds itself, and becomes embodied very fittingly into a Hymn for the first Evensong and Matins of the Ascension. At the second Evensong it would clash with one of the proper Psalms, that is, with itself, in another form, sung plenarily and in ex- tenso as part and parcel of the service. I might add the aptitude of the 72nd Psalm for the Epi- phany, the &th for Holy Innocents, and portions of many others equally appropriate for such Hymn- incorporation on other occasions besides these. But enough has probably been suggested on this score ; for, after all, the question is not that of proper Psalms, but of fitting and appropriate Hymns. How, then, should one set about procuring these Hymns, and making this Hymn-book ? Not, I would humbly affirm, as some so-called or self- styled English Churchmen would rule it, by merely collecting together all sorts of English Hymn-books, and picking out a certain number of Hymns there- from to be sung to the " fine old English Psalm tunes" of Eglon (which at least is no saint's name), 44 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Praise, Derby, Calcutta, and Leach; Macedonia, Chard, Esher, and Essex ; Weston Favell, Antigua, and Norwood ; Doncaster, Perth, and Peru ; not to mention those mellifluous and church-sounding names, Fulham, Friendship, Adelphi, and Hens- bury; America, Burnham, and Job: for what is there, after all, in a name sweetly Christian even as that favoured one " Trichinopoly ?" A tune by any name would sound as sweet, and a hymn of any manufacture would sing as soundly. What an Hymn-book so constructed is, we may learn from that beacon to all Hymn-compilers, the American Hymns appended to the American Book of Com- mon Prayer. No. The plain and rightful course to be pursued would seem to be the natural one, that which would first present itself for acceptance to any man, or body of men, intent on supplying the service with that ingredient of worship in which it would appear to be, nay, is felt to be, defective. All is to be of a piece, the old and new, the original and the sup- plied, the part existent and portion supplementary. And how can that be better done, and the desired result of oneness more surely effected, than by going for the new to the treasure-house, I should rather say the treasure-cities, which furnished the old, — Salisbury, York, and, it may be, Hereford? To these it would seem to me that any thoughtful English Churchman in search of Hymns would turn his attention, just as naturally as did the re- WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 45 constructors of our Common Prayer Book to the services of those cities generally when intent on the reformation of that book. Versicle, canticle, psalm, suffrage, collect, gospel, and epistle, not to speak of Litany and occasional service, were sought for in the old books. Why, then, should the Hymn not be sought there likewise, or, rather, where otherwise can it be looked for, at least principally and prima- rily, and as matter of right and duty ? Yes, and not of duty only, but of strict artistic propriety also; for unless the first of the new draughts be re-en- listed from the body of the old corps, and be allowed to give a tone and spirit to the whole, you will find your work characterless and un-uniform. First of all, then, I should say that the books and Hymns of the ancient English Churches should be looked to for the supply of that which we have ever lacked since the older English Church Service was exchanged for a newer, — the Latin for the English rite. And to this general proposition I should require no qualification other than that of common sense. It would not be every Hymn of Salisbury, York, or Hereford, of Canterbury, Worcester, or Gloucester, comprised, for instance, in Mr. Norman's book, that would now be required, or indeed admissible. No one Church ever had them all. Our one Church could not now hold them all. As did the Praver- revisers, so must the Hymn-revisers in this — turn eclectics and choose ; choose, in the first place, and before all other, from the quires of their own old 46 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Churches for Hymns for the people's use in those divers places where now the people sing. And here, I hope from something sounder than mere archaic taste or antiquarian feeling, I am advocating this first application to the genuine old stores of our own Church, just as it is evident that our revisers went to the same authority for their collects in preference to the slightly varying forms in other Churches. I need instance but the third collect at Morning Prayer, and the second post-Commu- nion Service or concluding collect, in proof of their line of procedure in this case. At the same time I am free to allow that taste or prejudice may have something to do with the matter. As, for example, I should prefer the older Chaucer of Dan Geoffry to the newer Chaucer of Messrs. Ogle, Betterton, Lipscombe, and others, not to do more than men- tion, which must nevertheless be done with all honour, those of Lord Thurlow and of Mr. R. H. Home, or even the yet more famous essays towards the same end of the glorious trio, Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth themselves; — as one might in- cline to Boiardo for a basis of translation of the " Orlando Innamorato " in preference to Berni's rifacimento, and lean to the old "Life and Death of Hector" by Lidgate, "the monke of Berry," ra- ther than to the new of 1614; so would I on the whole, and for the same reason of special love for fountain-heads and well-springs untampered with and undefiled, as reasonably prefer the free old WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 47 rhythmical metres of the ancient Church before the more modern and more exactly metrical Hymns of the new, — prefer, that is, the old Paris (of 1557) and the old Salisbury and the old York, with all their assumed roughnesses, to the present " urbane " Latin version or the more modern classical creations of the French. And here I am proud to fortify this modest expression of my individual feeling and opinion on the matter of the ante-Urban, Urban, and sub-Urban Hymns, with the recorded judgment of one whose very name is a tower of strength and honour to the Hymnologists and Ecclesiologists of England, and whom, methinks, the men "that ride on snow-white asses, and sit to judge on rich divans," would have done better to have cherished than condemned. Mr. Neale, speaking of Mr. New- man's little Roman, Salisbury, and York Hymn- book, says, in the preface to his "Hymni Ecclesise" (you will remember the passage), and they are words worth weighing by all Hymn critics and compilers, " Id tantum erat dolendum ut Hymni Romani ex Reformatione (sive, ut verius dicam, deformatione) Urbani Papse VIII. potius quam ex incorruptis et suavioribus Liturgiarum antiqui- orum fontibus desumerentur." I am careful not to commit you to my opinion of men and things, but I think that we should both of us like to have heard Mr. Neale discussing this point of the refor- mation or deformation, of the conformity to good 48 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, taste or defection from right principle, of the old Church Hymns through that " urbane " revise, with Guyet, Azevedo, Arevalo, and perhaps Benedict XIV. himself, in the course of a quiet stroll up and down the pleasant cloister- walks of that homely old South Saxon cathedral, of which, under other circumstances, the learned Warden of Sackville College should have been, as under different regi- men he certainly would have been, the life, the chosen ornament and stay. I feel convinced that, every thing considered, they would have unani- mously come to this conclusion, that tried excel- lence had better be left alone, that " To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume ou the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess." Thus, clearly, in the parallel case of the service generally, felt and acted our revisers. Where they could they took the collects as they stood, retain- ing their very peculiarity of phrase, and that order, moreover, for which, even in the estimation of great Latin liturgicists, they stand contrasted favourably with the reformers of some of the famous Latin Churches in France. While, however, I would advocate this dutiful WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 49 unlocking of our own old stores, as the first step to be taken in the right construction of an English Hymn-book, I should be far from wishing to re- strict all admission of ancient Church Hymns to those only proceeding from the closes of Salisbury and York. Gladly as I hail their accession to our books, nay, proudly as I regard them, not as the mere accessories, but as forming the very body and soul of those books, the substance of our Hymnody, I yet would not do other than suggest their use and employment in our service as portions, not sums-total of the whole. The English Church is now more than three hundred years older than she was when the work of those grubs, the inquisitors, first begrimed the fair pages of her Prayer Books. More than three centuries have tried her strength and tested her endurance, since the wash of Geneva was suffered to water down the pure wine of our English Book of 1549. And those three hundred years have told their tale in the ear, and left their mark upon the mind, not of ourselves only, but of Christendom. Other Churches, then, there are beside our own, — Latin and French, old and new, old Spanish, and even Greek, — which well can minister their portion of sacred song, in Hymns, it may be, better adapted to some of our present ends and requirements, wants and services, than certain even of those of Salisbury and York. I am now adventuring to do no more than in- D 50 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, dicate the sources whence, in my judgment, the older Hymns for a new English Hymn-book should be drawn. The drawing them forth from their books is the special province of the compiler, and must necessarily, as it may very safely, be left to his judgment and discretion. I would say, however, that before finally making up his mind what to choose, and which to refuse, he can scarcely take too wide a range over, or institute too close a search through the existent volumes and books of ser- vice that remain to us. As a compiler of right mould would scarcely be satisfied with himself until he had made friendly yet strict inquisition through the great old books of the West generally, and of Milan, and Spain (Mosarabic and other), as well as of England more particularly, so I should think that the several newer French books, in their respective families of provinces, dioceses, and churches, would supply a needful, and not unprofitable field of study. It may not be that they are all exactly uniformly or supremely orthodox, at least the orthodoxy of some of the productions of our brilliant Latin Church neighbours, in the way of Hymn-writing, has been impugned by many among themselves; it may be that the taste of not a few of Santeul's Hymns may be as questionable on the side of affected lan- guage, as were those of Leo X.'s Hymn-reformer, Ferreri ; it may be that they seem sometimes petit- maitre-ish by the side of the "robuster Hymns of the older Churches of Europe, or even of those of WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 51 Urban VIIT.'s revise. Still there they stand, no inconsiderable part of the ecclesiastical literature of France, and of the Church, the work of superior men, the delight of a multitude of holy ones. To pass them by, unexamined and uncared for, would argue, methinks, the superciliousness of a mere song-writer, or the captiousness of a soi-disant English Churchman. No good man, nor fair and upright Christian would grudge an adventurer into the land of Hymns, and a willing labourer on its soil, any opportunity, the free use of which might tend to the advancement of his good purpose. Still to an English Churchman England is the fairest land of promise, the first object of his labour, as of his love. From the mines of that rich realm the fine gold of the service has been dug; from the pearls of its many waters let the chaplet of its Hymns be strung. Yet perhaps not exclusively. This was surely the spirit of the great Gregory's familiar direction to our own St. Augustine, of Canterbury. And this I hold to be the spirit which prompted in earlier years Guyet, and afterwards Azevedo, Arevalo, and those other great liturgical followers of that prince of Church- men, Benedict XIV., in their thoughtful, though not altogether convincing criticisms on the old Hymns, and their temperate approval of the new. Old Churchmen, High Churchmen, strict Church- men, and most learned Churchmen as they were, d 2 52 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, and naturally, a priori, attached to the authority of prescription, order, and even antiquity, almost for its own sake, they yet at the very hint and bare sug- gestion of that unimpeachable authority of right hesitated not one moment to throw themselves into the ranks of the renewers, or reformers of Church service in general, and of the Hymns of the Church in particular. As, indeed, in days long anterior to their own, and those of Benedict XIV., had felt and acted the Franciscan Haymo, Ferreri, the Cardinals Quignon, Bernardin Scotti, Sirletus, Bellarmin, and Silvius Antonianus, our own Bishop, Thomas Goldwell, of St. Asaph, and the learned Julius Poggio, beside Famianus Strada, Tarquin Galluzzi, and Geronimo Petrucci, three choice men, more skilled in metres than any of their age; with very many others, who from time to time had taken important part in those several reforming move- ments in the Church in their days, at the instance respectively of Gregory VII., Leo X., Clement VII., Paul III. and IV., Pius IV. and V., and, to close up the long catalogue with the crowning name of all, Urban VIII., before his accession known as the elegant Mappheius Barberinus (Maffeo Bar- berini). To these, indeed, and to their list should in all honesty be added the names of those other great men, the admirable writers and commentators on the offices, or, as we should more commonly and correctly call them, the services, rites, and canons WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 53 of the Church, whom I have had on so many former occasions to mention and refer to on the matter of such correction, including the canonist, Van Espen, and, of course, not omitting those three grave elders, Gavanti; his annotator, Merati; and his (Merati's) critical persecutor, Cavalieri; nor by any means passing by without notice the liberal Grancolas, and the successor of these worthies, the liturgicist of our own day, par excellence, the amusing, but somewhat fierce-spirited Gueranger, Abbe of Solesmes. The learned Abbe and his books are honours to the age we live in; but I confess I never think of the one, or read the other, without being reminded of Lord Byron's judgment upon Mitford's "History of Greece." Certainly the author of the "Institutions" is in things eccle- siastical what the editor of the England-hating "Univers"is in matters of religion and politics. Churchmen " pronounced," and very like-minded the one to the other, they seem to have but little love to waste upon us poor strangers. To judge, indeed, from the writings and talk of most of the great Catholic Doctors and champions of the present day, always excepting the admirable Dr. Russell, of Maynooth, it would look as though it were a thing impossible with man to love God thoroughly, with- out hating one's brother also : " Tantane relligio potuit suadere malorum!" With respect, however, to the great men of the former ages, alluded to above, who with varying 54 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, shades of approval gave in their adhesion to the Church-reforming principles of those who bore rule in their days, no qualifying phrase is necessary. To their consummate critical qualities, and noble Christian spirit, their soundness of learning, and right direction of feeling, I bear my willing, though most unworthy testimony, at the same time that I, for my part, do not shrink back from avowing, with reference to the Urban emendations, my in- dividual judgment, — prejudice you may call it, if you will, — to lie, not so much on the commendatory side of Theophile Raynaud, Charles Guyet, and Faustin Arevalo, as on that of Louis Cavalli, Jean Baptiste Thiers, and, a greater than either, Henry Valois, or Valesius. Without laying very much stress on the opinion of that clerical curiosity, Thiers, and his equally curious book of " Observa- tions " (and I never think of him and his works, but my mind turns involuntarily to our late dear friend, Dr. Wm. Wright, and to our still living and amusing Dr. Doran, for a brace of parallels), one cannot but incline to the practical conclusion on the subject come to by the ordinaries of the great patriarchal Church, St. John Lateran, and by those of St. Mary Major, and St. Peter, in pre- ferring, and retaining for the several services of their quires, the grand Church Hymns in their ancient and holy dress. At the same time you must not suppose me to be a fautour or advo- cate of that queer kind of versification, if verse WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 55 it may be called, parodied so mercilessly by Ulric von Hutten, in the " Carmen Rithmicale " of his Epistles. (" Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum," p. 152, ed. Lond. 1710.) While thus adverting to the Hymns of the Church, and the several quarters from which a new book for ourselves might be worthily com- piled and supplied, it may not be amiss to do more- than merely indicate the sources whence that supply may have to be drawn, as I have already done above, by proceeding to specify a few of the most prominent among those collections which lie ready to the compiler's hands, and have a first claim upon his notice and study. A score, or indeed a dozen years ago, such an enumeration as this, as it would have been even more brief, so would it have proved far more useful than it can presume to be at present, when volumes and their contents, then known to the comparative few, are now understood and ap- preciated by the many, who take interest in these matters. For the old Hymns, in their original state, you have Clichtoveus (Josse Clichtoue) in his " Elucidatorium " (Basilese, 1519; Paris: 1566, which latter is by far the most copious edition), Cassander's " Hymni Ecclesiastici," in the folio volume of his works (Parisiis, 1616); "Hymni et Collectae" (Colonise, 1566), a small, but very curious volume, and another "Hymni Ecclesiastici, novo cultu adornati" (Paris: 1673). It comes under the same head as Ferrcri's publication, mentioned above, and the books of the Urban 53 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, revise ; but I allude to it here, not simply on that account, nor for the sake of its insertion in its chronological order, but because of a disserta- tion, with which Martin Claire, the author, intro- duces his newly polished Hymns, intituled, " De Vera et Propria Hymnorum Ecclesiasticorum Ratione," to which Arevalo makes constant refer- ence, and of which he makes as constant use, in many pages of his treatise " De Hymnis Ecclesias- ticis." The next important work presenting itself is Cardinal Tommasi's "Hymnarium," in the second volume of his collected works, p. 356 (Romse, 1747); then coming down to our own time, the well-known publications of Daniel ("Thesaurus," 1841—1856), and Mohne (1853—1855), to say nothing of the smaller tomes of John Newman (Oxford, 1838), of Mr. Marriott (1850), of Dean Trench (1849), of Mr. Neale (1851, 1852), and those many papers in the "Ecclesiologist," supplied from original quarters, and containing old Hymns and sequences, not more new to us than valuable to all students in Hymnology. Perhaps to this brief list of the old Western Church Hymns, col- lected together, I might not improperly append the names of some few of those service-books that, like the Cistercian (1739), put all the year or half-year Hymns together after the Psalter, or which, like the Beauvais reprint of the Roman (1830), add the old Hymn to that revised by Ur- ban, and generally received and used in the service ; but I prefer keeping apart as much as possible the WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 57 reference to, and use of the Breviaries themselves. No doubt the effect of the Hymn and its application is much more striking when taken with its context of service, and contemplated by the mellowing light of its attendant antiphon lesson, or little chapter, than when it is presenter to us simply as a de- tached and independent sacred song. And he who would prepare a Hymn-book as a handmaid to a Prayer-book, must needs inform his mind with the spirit of the service-books, and acquaint him- self with the places in those books, out of which the Hymns are chosen, and in which the originals are found. He must understand fully the occasion and purpose of those Hymns, if he would rightly comprehend his own work, or do justice to his own design. This I quite allow, but to insist on this with you is no part of my mission now. With respect, however, to the use of Breviaries, as collections of Hymns, for the Churches of Europe, I may mention that the Mosarabic folio, printed at Madrid (1775), is not unuseful, though not entirely but only in part a collection. Of course, Arevalo ("Hymnodia Hispanica," 1786) on this point presents himself at once and is paramount ; as is the case likewise with Guyet in the matter of the old French Church Hymns revised, and metrically corrected, not supplanted by fresh new-fangled compositions, in his most va- luable appendix to the "Heortologia" (Venice, 1727). For the purely English Uses, beside that of Mr. Marriott, named above (1850), which is little 58 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, more than Sarum Use, and might have been more cor- rectly printed, and the ancient Salisbury Hymnarium itself, with its explanation of the several Hymns, a volume, known to all, but used by few — one must again make special mention of that beautiful collection of Mr. Norman, in part published (1851), as alluded to above, and never, alas ! completed. A little "Officium," printed at Milan (1832), gives a very fair and handy collection of the Ambrosian Service-Hymns, and it is right here to mention it, as from its unpretending character and modest size it might very easily be overlooked. For the more modern French Church Hymns it is enough if I specify the " Hymni Sacri" of San- teul (Amsterdam, 1 760), the other tiny Paris col- lection of Mr. Newman (1838), that beautiful com- panion, with its English Preface, to its sister vo- lume of Roman and English Church Hymns, with its Latin prolegomena; and, lastly, the "Hymni Ecclesiae" of Mr. Neale (1851). I think that among the stores of a rather copious collection of infra-classical Latin poetry, amassed by Dr. Kennedy, and of which I some years since became the possessor, there were one or two volumes of French Church Hymns, other than the " Hymni" of Martin Claire and Santeul. But lent, or mislaid, and consequently lost, I cannot lay my hand upon them now to indicate their name and date: I fancied that among the missing was a volume of Coffin's, the coadjutor of Santeul. However, that is of little moment, upon the ground that I have not, WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 59 when mentioning the great Church collections, thought it at all requisite to enumerate the several editions of Prudentius, for example, of St. Hilars, of St. Ambrose, of the Gregories (Greek and Latin), or Sedulius. This would, indeed, have been but to have gone, with prolix exactitude, into the enu- meration of the several editions of the " Poetic Fathers," Latin and Greek ; and, further, into a repetition of the contents of those of the "Poetse Christiani," collectively, one edition of which noble collection, and this, perhaps, the most useful and beautiful of all, I will here mention ; that, namely, of Rome (by Arevalo, 1786 — 1794). Before con- cluding the Hymn-book list, with which I am troubling you rather more lengthily than I at first intended, I will stay just to name the Latin Hymns and Sequences (pp. 1 — 37), in the "Deutsche Kir- chenlied" (Stuttgard, 1841), Ivor igsfeld's "Latein. Hymnen und Gesange " (Bonn, 1847), and the "Lauda Sion" (Cologne, 1850), containing, in a compendious shape, ninety-two Latin Hymns, &c, with a German version of each on the opposite page. Mention of this one continental version reminds me that among others, and beside the translation of a few well-known Hymns by Racine, and of all, in that French translation of the Roman Breviary, in four volumes, which was published at Paris in 1688, there is a single volume, containing " the Hymns of the New Paris Breviary rendered into French verse;" and published also at Paris in 1786, " avec 60 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, approbation et privilege du Roi." To some it may not be unacceptable to know of the existence of this little volume, which is, of course, not mentioned by Arevalo in his enumeration of Santeul's translators. Santeul himself, of all that he had seen, preferred, it appears, the version of his Hymns made by Le Monnoye. Arevalo gives the names of sixteen, and implies that there were more. So popular were his Hymns in France. You will charge me, I fear, with taking rather a long and heavy leaf out of the book of one or two tentative essayists and note-writers on the subject, who, within the last few weeks, or months at most, have favoured us with their opinion, dogmatically enough expressed considering the quantum of information upon which it is clearly founded, as to Hymns in general, and the authorship of certain Hymns in particular. Some twenty or twenty-five years ago, such communications of knowledge as even these papers contain, would have had their value, and have been very thankfully welcomed. Now, however, it certainly does seem a little late in the day for men to be writing set papers on purpose to prove that the " Veni, Creator" was penned by St. Gregory the Great or Charlemagne; that the old York (not Sarum) Ascension Hymn, " Hymnum canamus glorise" was the writing 1 of our own Vene- rable Bede ; that the " A solis ortu," an imitation of St. Ambrose, was the work of Cselius or Cecilius (not Caius) Sedulius (Shiel), an Irishman (not a Scotsman); that the " Jesu dulcis memoria" is a WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 61 Hymn of St. Bernard; that Prudentius wrote the " Cathemerinon " and " Salvete Flores," the Hymn for Holy Innocents, which is in fact a part of the " Cathemerinon" (Epiphania, 1. 125, ed. Areval.) ; that the "Dies Irae" is the production of Gregory the Great, or Cardinal Buonaventura, or Cardinal Fra Matteo de Aquasparte (Matthseus "Aquas- pratus," Cavalieri III. x. 8, " Aquaspartus," Are- valo), or Agostino Bulla (i.e. Augustinus Bugel- lensis), or St. Bernard, or Thomas of Celano, or they might have added of Humbert, General of the Dominicans, or Cardinal Ursini Frangipane, to whom the two Cavalieri incline ; moreover that the world-famous " Stabat" has been assigned to a Gre- gory, to John XXII., to an Innocent, to one of the Bernards, and rightly to Jacopus de Benedictis, otherwise called Jacoponus de Tuderto or da Todi. This casual introduction of Jacopone's name as the writer of the Sequence, may warrant my adding from Mr. Stoddart's delightful volumes (" Justorum Semita," part ii. p. 408), the brief notice with which he follows up his mention of him and his " Plaint of the Blessed Maiden." He tells us that Jacoponus de Tuderto, who wrote it, had spent a joyous youth in his native city of Todi, in Umbria, in the society of his wife, a lady of surpassing beauty, and whose heart, amid the gay scenes of her husband's choice, dwelt in heaven with her Redeemer. She was suddenly taken to His eternal mercy, and Jacoponus devoted himself at her tomb to the religious life, and after years of penance for 62 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, the remedy of his soul, he ended his days in peace in a convent of the Friars Minor, in the year 1306, on the Feast of our Lord's Nativity. Leaving, however, for the present at least, the "minute philosophies" of our more youthful lec- turers, which but for their donnish savour and authoritative tone, would be not inapt specimens of a fresh and amiable simplicity, I would but advert once more to the works cited above, and to the interesting papers, as valuable as interesting, of Mr. Neale, I believe, in the " Christian Remem- brancer and Ecclesiologist," as the reservoirs, whence all general knowledge, added to much special instruction on the subject, may be most compactly and comprehensively drawn. The very volumes themselves, the primordia rerum, still remain, " nocturnd versanda manu, versanda di~ urnd" by him who would fully equip himself for this adventure. And those books, I would repeat it, are necessarily the ante-Reformation books of the West ; the books used in the churches as well before our own Reformation as before the Reforma- tion of Trent; the books, moreover, to which un- varying respect was had by the reconstructors of our own service. And as our venerable forefathers showed us where to go for matter and substance, so do they teach us also how to modify and mould it for our use. Where they could they took the prayers and collects as they stood and turned them into English, not into mere English syllables, to say which would be a WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 63 bare truism, but into the sterling English of the people — here and there, it may be, in a somewhat scholarly fashion, as, for instance, in the second collects for Morning and Evening Prayer, but still into sound native and noble English, well under- stood by the people, and approved of all men; and all the better remembered by them when once mastered, for a little occasional roughness, quaint- ness, and point; in this, like the old Latin itself: roughness, yet oh, how majestically harmonious ! quaintness, yet how wondrously plain! and point, the result of the two preceding elements, as going straight home to men's hearts. This, be pleased to recollect, is no vain, presumptuous eulogy on my part, but the recorded judgment of men who have been and are the declared foes to much that we love and delight in, yet are not wilful enemies to the truth. It may possibly be held a hopeless task at the pre- sent day even to emulate in Hymns, much more to copy the grand features of the English book; and no doubt whatever, but that it is a task to which even all the wordcraft, tact, and talent of that accom- plished lover of the old Hymns, Dean Trench, would hardly prove more than sufficient. Yet a task it is that must be attempted, somewhat it would seem after the broad fashion laid down above, and in the way that the Church has pointed out in her version of the " Veni, Creator," the first Hymn in the pre- sent Ordinal, and in her previous application of the same principle in the second. Look closely at those 64 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Hymns, and you will find that they contain within a very narrow pale all the greater elements of our version of the Book of Common Prayer. I may seem somewhat exacting and urgent in my allusion to style, but I am sure not more so than you will think right and proper when you come to weigh the matter as it really is, and view it in its proper bearings. The grand defect of almost all Hymn-books, used in churches, as well those which are mainly original as those for the most part translated and compiled, appears to be this; namely, the want of oneness between the lan- guage of the Collects and Psalms of the old Com- mon Prayer, and that employed for their newer Hymns. Sometimes it almost looks and sounds like another dialect. Now against this I would earnestly reclaim. Nor am I singular in my urgency upon this point. It has been felt, and acknowledged, and in- sisted on by Hymn-writers many a long year before our time. When the man would not go to the mountain, it was in serious contemplation to force the mountain to meet the man. When new Hymns were written which ill agreed with the simplicity of the old Office-book, it was deemed a matter of duty to bring the book into accordance with the Hymns. I will transcribe for curiosity sake the title-page and colophon of a very rare and beautifully printed book, already alluded to in this letter, now lying before me; on glancing over which you will at once see the point at which I am aiming : — WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 65 ZACHAEIAE FERRERII VICENT. PONT. GARDIEN. HYMNI NOVI ECCLESIASTICI IVXTA VERAM METRI ET LAT1NITATIS NORMAM A BEATISS. PATRE CLAEMENTE VII. PONT. MAX. VT IN DIVINIS QVISQVE EIS VTI POSSIT APPROBATI ET NOVIS LVDOVICI VICENTINI AC LAVTITII PERVSINI CHARACTERIBVS IN LVCEM TRADITI. SANCTVM AC NECESSARIVM OPVS. BREVIARIVM ECCLESIASTICVM AB EODEM ZACH. PONT. LONGE BREVIVS ET FACILIVS REDDITVM, ET AB OMNI ERRORE PVRGATVM PROPEDIEM EXIBIT. Impressum hoc divinum Opus Romse in sedibus Ludovici Vicentini et Lautitii Perusini non sine Privilegio. Kal. Febru. m.d. xxv. Now, I do not parade this curious title-page be- fore your notice, in extenso, simply as being a E 66 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, specimen of the sort of trumpet sound with which the first authorized and amended Hymnarium was ushered into the Catholic world of the West, sug- gested as it was originally by Leo X., executed by Zaccaria Ferreri, of Vicenza, Bishop of La Guarda, and privileged by Clement VII. ; but for the sake of the significant six lines appended at the foot of the title: and that, too, not because the book there indicated and promised, a purged and polished Breviary, was doubtless the prompter to that of Quignon (if not the very volume itself in its first form), and so the forerunner, and in some measure the pilot of our own book ; but, as convey- ing a proof of how deep was the conviction then existing in the minds of those who were in autho- rity, that a variance of language between the Hymn and Office generally was unbearable; that the Hymns having been formed afresh, the whole book must be refashioned likewise ; that the language and diction of Hymn, Antiphon, and Lectio, not to speak of Psalm and Collect, must needs be at one; that, in short, "purpurei panni," in the shape of elegant Lyrics, could not be tolerated in the midst of the old and powerful prose of the Church. Agreeably, indeed, to which sound principle of taste and criticism, (whatever we may think of the par- ticular exhibition of it, alluded to above,) when the book itself, still with its ancient Hymns, had been reformed under Pius V., and passed through the revising hands of Clement VIII. , we find that — — WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 67 Urban VIII. considered it as a necessary finish for the great work of reconstruction to correct and amend the old Breviary Hymns, and so to make them as he supposed fit companions for the other portions of the new and perfect order of Divine Service, then sealed, stamped, and stereotyped. The same, too, was under very different circum- stances indeed the case in France. For the new Breviaries, and samples of Breviaries, in the eigh- teenth century, new Hymns were for the most part composed. Rouen in the last and Beauvais in the present century, with a few others, were exceptions indeed, but very partial exceptions. Though in the later instances it must be borne in mind that the new matter being very generally out of Holy Writ, the discrepancy between the lan- guage of old Hymn and newly appointed Lection was not so marked as to need much amending, nor indeed was assimilation on that score so imperiously required, if required at all. That, however, which was perhaps in a great degree imaginary and optional with them, is real and imperative with ourselves. The tone of the new French legendary Lectios differed indeed but very slightly as to language from those of the Roman Breviary, existing at the period of the French revisions. If there were a few affectedly classical Latinisms of the " Flamen " class in the latter, so were there likewise in the former, particularly in the Lectios of later addition or correction. e 2 68 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, I repeat, therefore, that the newness of the new portion of the reformed Gallican book was not such, neither so glaring nor offensively paraded as to demand, simply on the score of assimilation, a new series of Hymns to match it. Something, however, of more modern mode and fashion the new French books did present. Their new Hymns were accordingly not out of place altogether, nor intro- duced in absolute contrast with the whole body of the book beside. Our book, on the contrary, is al- most all old, Psalter, collect, or version of Holy Writ ; all for the most in style untouched for centuries. To introduce, therefore, into the service, "where they sing," as parts and parcels of that venerable service, Hymns written throughout in a tone and with ex- pressions of the newest vogue and most fashionable and exquisite finish, would be simply a laborious and unfortunate mistake. You know what would be the effect of a Psalm of Castellio's version stuck between two daily Psalms of the Vulgate, or an epistle as rendered by Castellio between a collect and gospel of our Latin Prayer Books of 1560 or 1574. Just such is the impression made on me by many of the Hymns out of the new books, which I have heard between the third collect and the Litany or occa- sional prayers, when sung Anthem-wise in the pro- per place. The stone does not Jaecome the setting. The setting sets not off the stone. The fineness and smartness of the one, and grave simplicity of the other, accord but indifferently well, that is, do WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 69 not agree at all. The modishness of the new does not so much disparage the dignity of the old as suffer itself from the central position which it holds, and the contrast and comparison which it provokes. At the same time it must be remem- bered, that where affected modishness would be disagreeable a lax vulgarity would be positively disgusting. I should counsel, therefore, that both in transla- tion, adaptation, or simple insertion, care should be taken that the wording of the Hymns agree in tone and texture with the wording and expression of the collects, indeed with the language of all the book. Now, plain English does not mean bald English. Witness the translation of chapter upon chapter in the prophets, and in the more poetical parts of Scripture ; and those, it must be remembered, are our more special parallels in this comparison. Words may in themselves be plain, and language downright, and real, and unaffected, the right syllables in the right place, and yet may not at the first glance of the eye, or hearing of the ear, be comprehended by a plain reader or hearer. Plain sentences may require of a plain man's mind more than a moment's consideration, before they may make themselves plain to his perfect com- prehension. I question, indeed, whether the really plainest speech be not the most figurative ; whether it be not at any rate given to deal in image, me- taphor, hint, and allusion — easily understood, in- 70 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, deed, but requiring space, however small, for per- ception — much more largely than that hard, dry tongue, neither of men nor angels, which is some- times called and accounted plain writing, only be- cause it is bald, and blank, and featureless. Plain it is, indeed, and with a vengeance, in the sense of uninviting, ill-favoured, and ugly. Now, while I think great care should be taken to incorporate into the Hymns of a new Hymn-book, no fine, affected, modern phraseology, ill accordant with the language of the old Prayer Book, and with the rhythm of its composition — no expression of spurious modern religious sentiment or profession — no puling verbi- age — no verses affectedly " made easy to the lowest capacities," — I apprehend nothing of inconvenience from the adoption throughout of a genuine native English style — one in character, and subject only to those incidental varieties between part and part, of which our version of Holy Writ gives example. No ; nor yet from the occasional, where necessary, in- troduction of those few words and infrequent sen- tences which may for one instant, like so many in the Common Prayer Book, but for one instant only, seem difficult, and that for the most part to those who are really ignorant, not plain and simple; those, I mean, whose heads and minds, whose thoughts and attention, never accompany their eyes or ears. Persons there are to whom the plainest matters of common sense and feeling seem complex, and the simplest sentences difficult and obscure. WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 71 To them I fear all "speeches upon the harp or organ," whether Anthem, Psalm, or Hymn, would be but dark ; whether as they might be worded by a seraph with a coal from off the altar, or sung by the lips of psalmist or archangel. For them, therefore, the minority one would hope, but little can be done beyond furnishing them with the plain means of edification, and letting them profit, if they can, by that which may be the privilege of the ma- jority of Churchmen : an issue up to a certain point hopeful, for the less is included in the greater. In saying this I have had principally an eye to the proper method of rendering the older Hymns of our Church into appropriate language : because as Englishmen we are, first of all, prcEcipue et prce aliis, directed to those our own by inheritance ; those which are in a manner coeval with our prayers, those which for ages were the fellows that bare them company in that goodly order of Sarum, which for so long a period formed, as it were, a sample of prayer and praise to Christendom. Not, however — and I repeat my protest in these days of captiousness to avoid misapprehension or misstatement — not that I would have a homeliness of translation degenerate into barbarousness or neg- lect. I would not, for instance, admit such rhymes as — " Treason threatens, draw the sword, Drown the cradles deep in lloociy Nor would I put up with the Irish rhymes of " hairs " 72 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, and " tears," " peace " and " grace," " free " and clay," nor with the Scottish consonance of "Triune with Thee, O Holy Ghost, Long as eternity shall last." Nor would I have and hold the Spanish homoteleu- ton, which is not even an homoioteleuton with us : — " To the serpent thus opposing Schemes yet deeper than his own, Thence the remedy procuring, "Whence the fatal wound had come." Nor would I allow "e lieve" and "live;" nor yet the following couplets, which seem to have no rhymes at all : — " So shall he ne'er prevail to hurt The flock which their own blood hath bought." " The linen cloth and water bring. And humbly from the supper lean." " He marks the traitor-guest and all The deadly purpose of his soul." Or, lastly, that other, in a rhyming sense, so re- markable a quatrain : — " 'Twas then the Spirit of the Lord Fulfilled with heavenly joys the earth, His advent glories all abroad, From heaven throughout the world go forth.'' 1 When I add the terminations "power" and "poor" "course" and "cross" to be found in WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 73 the same quatrain, printed as ostensible rhymes, you will by no means think me either partial in my selection or unjust in my allusion to these great lapses in the calmly executed works of some of the great men of our own day; great and deservedly so held in these particular matters of Church verse or version, by those who would gladly sit at their Gamaliels' feet, and tune them with the sweet echo of their rhymes. But if, in the rendering of our own early Hymns, this coarse workmanship ought by all means to be eschewed, the same sound canon of " simplex munditiis" the same good rule of truthful- ness and true taste, will hold good with respect to all the Hymns to be selected and adapted for insertion. For that other Hymns, besides those of Salisbury, York, Hereford, Worcester, and it may be Aberdeen, and the more ancient Latin Hymns generally, would be requisite, no one who regards present time and circumstances could doubt. No; as I have written before, so now say I again, these last three hun- dred years have not gone by in vain, nor without enriching the churches, heretofore adorned by St. Osmund, with a multitude of sacred songs by the sweetest of singers. With respect to their selection and adaptation, much must of course depend on the temperament of the compiler, guided by knowledge and taste. The very quaintness of some of the earlier post- Reformation Hymns in the vernacular, as is indeed 74 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, the case with those of the latest ante-Reformation primer Hymns of 1535, 1539, and 1545, would ne- cessarily require a certain amount of remodelling to bring them into accordance with the invariably unaffected tone of the Common Prayer Book, as well in its translated as in its original portions. Compare the older English Psalters with the present English Vulgate, and you will see at once my meaning. How far this might be requisite, with reference to any of the Hymns, if admitted, of Austin (and Hickes), of Watts, Wesley, Whitefield, and Cowper, or of other more modern writers of their several schools and companies, whether German or English, must again be left to the compiler's judg- ment to decide. In this superficial enumeration I do not mean to indicate the later English texts, which a fresh Hymn-book compiler would do well to have open before him. To some even in the number mentioned I fancy you may be disposed, at first sight, to demur. But if, from among the Hymns and Spiritual Songs of those Christian worthies, you take a few of the most striking and turn them into Latin iambics, as a writer in the " Christian Remembrancer" has already treated a specimen of that class of composition in one of those papers which have heretofore so deeply interested and so pleasantly instructed the minds of English Churchmen, I think you will agree with me. You will discover, upon reading them over in that ancient and becoming dress, which by this pro- cess they will have been made to assume, how clothed WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 75 upon they are with the bright mantle of Catholic Christianity; how they become as it were almost one, in heart, and spirit, and even expression, with those more ancient Hymns which have stood, and yet will stand, the test of ages, being marks and models for all time. The early leanings of the Wesleys are too well known to need comment. With regard, however, to Watts and Cowper, and that tone of theirs so perceptible at times, which serves to distinguish their Hymns from the bulk of those with which they are commonly massed, may it not be attributed to the possibility of Watts having loved and studied Austin, as Job Orton did Hickes ; while Cowper may have made the most of the Catholic stores in the way of Hymns, offered him by the Throgmorton Library ? It may not be amiss, nor out of place, if I here transcribe, by way of recalling it to your memory, the Hymn translated by the learned " Remem- brancer " to whom I have adverted above : — In Exaltatione Ceucis : ad vespebas. " Crucem sequentes prseviam Qua Eex pependit Gloria?, Per lucra damnum quserimus, Et temnimus superbiam. " O Crux, tuorum cordibus Tu sola sis jactatio : Pendentis ad Eegis pedes Spreta? voluptates jacont. 76 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, " Quae vana complexi sumus, Jam non placebuut amplius ; Dum per pedes, manus, caput, Auiore mixtus it cruor : " O cui nee antea cruor Talis se arnori junxerat ! O nulla Regis spineae Corona cornparabilis ! " Qui debitas victoria) Tantse rependemus vices, Ni, Qui redemit nos, Deo Fiainus ipsi victim® ? " Sit laus Patri, laus Filio, Tristi levato stipite : Cum Spiritu Paracleto In sseculorum saecula. Amen." Db. Watts. Book III. Hymn 7. " When I survey the wondrous cross On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. " Forbid it, Lobd, that I should boast, Save in the cross of Chbist my God : All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to His blood. " See from His head, His hands, His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down : Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown ? WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 77 " Were the whole range of nature mine, That were a present far too small ; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all." In enumerating the several sources, old and new, early and late, English and foreign, from which Hymns for the English Church might legitimately be drawn, I know that I am adducing what might ordinarily be an embarrassment to the w r ork. The multiplicity of springs threatens a deluge, and a deluge is not an easy thing to deal with. When, however, one considers the variety of men's tastes, the many purposes and occasions for which Hymns may be required in the service of the Church, and that every collection of Hymns not made by an absolute, plenary, and paramount authority, is, after all, but as a " tentamen," — an essay towards an end, — a compiler has no reason to be out of heart with the profusion of Hymns ready to his hand. If he designs a little work of Carthusian closeness and simplicity, some twenty-six of the early and late English Hymns would probably suf- fice and serve his turn. Apportioned with care, these would afford him one for each of the greater festivals, and one each for the greater seasons, a few for the feasts and celebrations of lesser degree than the first, classed together, and a remaining two or three for the Sunday and daily Matins and Even- song through the year. And such scant provision, as it did suffice the Carthusian brothers, so might it 78 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, be found provision enough for many a village com- munity and quiet congregation throughout the land. Upon the whole, however, such an arrangement would not satisfy the wants and wishes of the peo- ple at large, to say nothing of the many noble Hymns which in that case would necessarily be excluded, and so, perhaps, if such a contracted book came to be authorized, lost for ever to our English Church. We may come, then, to this conclu- sion, that, save for special circumstances, no collec- tion can be a very narrow one. Choice, and lati- tude of choice, must be allowed. I incline, there- fore, as most deferential to the authority under which, in the particular congregations, such books will be used, to the plan of throwing the Hymns, at least for the more general seasons and celebrations, together, classing them as under Advent, Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany and after Epiphany (fol- lowing in this the practice of the later French Churches), Septuagesima, Lent, and Passion-time, including Holy-week and Maundy Thursday, if Hymns be then to be used, Easter and its season, Ascension and its ten days, Whit- Sunday and its Ember-days serving for the other Ember-days as well, Trinity- Sunday and the Sundays after, with the several Holy-days throughout the year, marked and specified by name. Such a plan seems best adapted to give freedom of choice, at the same time that the classification prevents absolute impropriety, and guards against error and confusion. Of course the WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 79 authority in any one congregation could assign with greater exactness, if it were thought right, the par- ticular Hymn, not only to the particular service or celebration, but to an express portion of that ser- vice, whether, for instance, it be at the first or second Evensong, the Matins or, by way of Introit, before the Holy Communion. All such secondary and subordinate, though interesting and important matters could be very well left to the discretion of those who are vested with the power of ordering and sanctioning the course of Divine Worship in their respective congregations and colleges. It should be added, indeed, that the prevailing pre- judice now is decidedly in favour of multitudinous Hymn-books; books, I mean, of multitude, each with its chiliad of Hymns at least, — Hymns " Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks, In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-archt embower :" — Hymns of all sorts, sizes, and complexions, — Hymns that in number and quantity not only dwarf down the original Hymn-books of the Church into absolute insignificancy, but make the contents of even the more capacious collections sink into a something very small, and look meagre and starve- ling-like beside them. Many admirable men of our own day are inclined to advocate publications such as these, comprehensive congregational omnium- gather um books, upon the plea of their being more 80 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, taking with the masses, because opening up for them a wider field, and offering a freer choice. Personally, however, these questions very little concern you. You have no indeterminate and un- certain work before you. You propose to yourself a labour indeed ; but, as truly, a labour of love, a labour lightened in your case a thousandfold by the consciousness of their ready acceptance of your good work, for whose sake, and use, and benefit you under- take it. You know better than can any one else what your people and service require, and how best that requirement can be fulfilled. You know best how much or how little it would be better for your book to contain ; only let me remind and request of you not to keep wholly out of sight the fact, that other com- panies and congregations there may be, beside your own, who may be willing legitimately to profit by your experience and labours, in advancing the beauty of holiness among themselves. All that I will venture upon adding to the im- portant question, thus briefly touched upon, of the quantity which a Hymn-book might fairly and use- fully contain, shall simply refer to the quality, i. e. the character of the words and music. While the words and style of the Hymns should for the most part well consort with those of the collects, and indeed of the Prayer Book generally, so very spe- cially should the music with the Psalter music, and with the words of the Hymns themselves. I know how much this is a matter of taste, more WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 81 than perhaps of principle ; yet it is certainly one on which the success of the entire undertaking does in the highest degree depend. For a popular hand- book of Hymns, popular in the right sense of working God's and the people's work, intended for general use in the English Churches, the music no less than the words must be English. The book was popularized when it was put into English out of Latin, the tunes must be popularized also ; popu- larized with seemliness and reverence, yet with an open heart, and a free and liberal hand. In this case, too, especially, knowledge will prove to be power ; a knowledge of what people can do, and a care to act according to that knowledge, in having constant respect to the compass and capacity of voice which a congregation might be reckoned to possess, and, moreover, to provide for them ac- cordingly tunes that can be sung, that are worth singing, and will be sung ; this know- ledge, and this care, I say, would be all-powerful in reforming our parish worship, by unsealing the dumb lips, through the medium of the ears, and heart, and mind; and absolutely forcing our people, despite their bashfulness and backward- ness, to sing. Give them something with more elan, something more noble-toned, free, and flowing, more full of point and feeling, more simple, yet more really artistic, than those wretched modern, rickety airs of yesterday, — melodies I will not vouchsafe to call them, — which certain " English F 82 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Churchmen" cling to as the very perfection of sacred songs, and which Hymns delight, for the most part, in the pleasant names assigned them by the cobblers who cobbled them ; give our people something better than the "Winchester News" and such like, which drove our immediate fathers and grandfathers into silence at church, and then you shall see the result. Restore them to their rights of having Hymns that they can sing, and you will see how well in this, as in the enjoyment of other popular privileges, like true Englishmen they will exercise their right and profit by it. Only you must be content to banish at once and for all time, from Hymn-book and Tune-book, and Book of Airs and Melodies, for Psalms and Hymns in the Church, " all Weston Favells, Hucknells Torcard, and all such nomen- clature awkward," confining yourself, in my judg- ment, who am one of the people, and no musician, to those flowing, fervid, yet simple melodies, which bear to the old airs of the Church, before the reformation of the books, the same musical relation- ship that the earlier Psalter tunes in the English quire-books bore to the old Psalm-tunes called Gregorian and Ambrosian ; with several of the boldest of which, and those the least quaint to English ear and taste, they are, by the bye, all but identical. You see that, heartily abjuring and anathematizing, as I do, the common herd of what some are found to call " English Psalm-tunes," I am yet heretic enough, as some of our friends will say, WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 83 to think that, for Hymns translated and adapted for English people's ears and use, tunes, trans- posed, it may be, and adapted for English people's service, are necessary. It does seem to me, that change of language in the service involves the necessity, nay, compels the adoption of some change, likewise, in the medium whereby that service is to be vocalized. When I am joining in any English Hymn of eight-syllable verse (e.g. "Awake, my soul, and with the sun"), which we might call the counter- part of the common Latin iambic Hymn (e. g. " Jam lucis orto sidere"), the counterpart, I here mean, in structure, even more than in sense, if the air to which it is being sung be an old Church air, taken note for note out of an ante-Reformation, I ought rather to say an unreformed, Service-book, I always keep wishing to have the rhyme, in the English, anti- cipated in the antepenultima, in order that the great stress, to an Englishman's ear, of the rhyme-cadence may exactly accord, in time and place, with what is felt by me to be the main stress and accent of the Latin words, as well as of the Latin music then singing. So when some elegant Latin verse-writer among ourselves, the late Venerable Archdeacon Wrangham, for instance, has attempted to imitate English rhymed poems, in their octosyllabic iambic representations, by rhyming the last syllables of their Latin lines, we all feel that the rhyme is really next to nothing ; we desiderate the accustomed point and ending. The same remark, too, is sug- f 2 84 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, gested, as well by the sacred Watch-song of Wil- liam Alard, " Cum me tenent fallacia," a simple couplet-rhymed iambic, as by the sapphic stanza from Martin Claire, cited by Arevalo in pp. 187-8 de Hymn. Eccles., where the rhymes are alternate and monosyllabic; upon the faint effect of which Arevalo himself remarks. Take, for a fuller ex- ample of what I mean, two lines which suggest themselves at the instant. They are rude, but will answer the purpose : " Facem secuti praevium, Et abnuentes noxiam :" though rhyming in the last syllable, they as rhymes do not sound satisfactory to the ear. Alter them to " Facem sequentes prceviam, Et abnuentes deviam ;" and the rhymes on the antepenulti mates, the place of final ictus to the ear in the Latin octosyllabic iambic, do then seem to come home to one perfectly, I mean to one's sense of rhyme. I am no more speaking in special praise of such rhymings, than I am lauding the lines themselves. And this notion of mine, who am no musician, I am glad to find corroborated by Mr. Josiah Pittman, the accomplished Chapel-Master and Organist of Lincoln's Inn, in that very opportune and beautiful publication of his, " The People in Church ;" a pub- lication of which his patrons may well be proud, and by which even they may in some wise profit. At page 43 he says, " In the Latin language, the vocal pulse is rarely found with the closing syllable. But in our ballad poetry, and all the metrical Psalms in WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 85 the book of Sternhold and Hopkins, the termina- tions are pulsated, and the closing syllable bears the last stress or accent, as it is with our heroic line. But this is not the iambic line of the Latin, for that has no stress on its last syllable, the last stress being on the antepenultimate." If this be the case, then, without going deeply, or at all, into the question of the dactylic endings of the Latin and the monosyllabic endings of the English, taken as at least commonly characteristic of the respective services, it is surely not presumptuous in an English Churchman to require, that when the Latin words of (Psalm or) Hymn have been care- fully rendered into their idiomatic English equi- valent, the points, likewise, of the Latin melodies should be, with equal care, conformed to the re- quirement of the English melody, as married to the English Hymn. To whatever conclusion on this point theory and even prejudice might antecedently have inclined one's wishes; to this conclusion, experience of con- gregation after congregation, and service after service, has very certainly driven me. You must have a bold, free, uncramped (I do not mean a noisy and roistering) style of music for your Hymns, and, I may add, your Psalter too, if you would have God's praise have free course in the congregation, and His name be really hymned and glorified. Depend upon it, not all the dead dogmas of mere antiquarianism, not all the pretence of SQ HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, modern prudery and affectation, will ever succeed in upsetting the sober truth above enunciated, that there is a golden mean in Church music, as in all Church matters; a truth, in fact, referred to in one of the prefaces of the Common Prayer Book, to guard us against the opposing errors of too strict a stiffness, and too great a laxity. If you do resign your original Latin service, you need not forthwith take up with that of John Knox, or the New Jerusalemites. If you accept a newer English rite, you are not bound to repudiate the older Catholic music. No; as you conformed your ancient service to what you have been taught was a growing necessity of the age, so you seem com- pelled by the position which you have assumed to adapt and conform your ancient music also to your later service so conformed and adapted. As your service, so conformed, is still Catholic in itself, in its ancient sources and present substance, so must the music that accompanies it be essentially and substantially ancient and Catholic likewise. Your book comes by descent, so does your music. Your book is a modification of an older, — why may not your music be a modification also ? We, in the hoary chapels of our time-worn col- leges and halls, might well be content with enjoying our anciently intended privilege, of having the good old words of western Christendom, both in Psalter and Hymn-book, sung to their good old tunes, just as for the household worship of a great WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 87 archbishop, and his little company of learned clerks, a chapel, stone for stone representing some treasured gem of the olden days, might well, nay, most suitably suffice. But when the masses are to be received and raised the case is far otherwise. Then it is that the architectural genius of a great original adapter (and I use the paradoxical words designedly), like Gilbert Scott, or Mr. Butterfield, comes forth and achieves its glorious purpose. And so it is with Hymns, with building up on its broad stone of honour and sure basis of truth the struc- ture of a Church's songs. Words, line for line with the original; notes, stroke for stroke with the noted books, may indeed challenge our admi- ration as tokens of skill, and as relics for our in- dividual love and reverence; but never will they so besiege as to carry the general heart, never become the life of English worship. Perception and appliance, with Church and service, with people and worship, is every thing. This conviction, likewise, has been strongly forced upon me by the late opening of the Abbey nave for service as well as sermon. If a service was deemed an indispensable as well as a fitting precursor to the preacher's discourse, surely that service should have been, in one respect, like the sermon which was to follow, — popular. The sermon was pro- fessedly " ad populum ;" the service, though, of course, " ad Deum," should nevertheless have been " secundum populum," as it was " pro populo, in 88 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, usum plebis, et rwv 7roAAwi>." Now, what was the fact, on the occasion at least when I was there present ? The service was the ordinary quire service, only debilitated and lessened in effect by faint performance; the usual tunes for the Psalms of the evening, the common services for the can- ticles, no Anthem in its proper place, nor Hymn for Anthem, but after the prayers a well-known metre Psalm, the melody of which being simple and popular, ever seems to serve as a stock-piece on all such extraordinary occasions. A very little forecast and prearrange ment would have secured a thoroughly popular service, rightly popular in all its parts, of Versicle, Psalm, Canticle, Suffrage, Anthem, and Hymn, which, moreover, with its accompanying and accordant sermon, would now be bearing its good fruits, instead of being likely, at no very distant date, notwithstanding all its good intentions, to die the death, the disappointing death, of atrophy. Still by increasing the staff and num- bers of the quire, by bringing it more centrally into the body of the nave, by popularizing, that is, by broadening, deepening, and emboldening the music, and by scattering a few singing men here and there, up and down the church, as members of the congregation, quietly to assist the service in a private capacity, and lead unconsciously to others the singing of their several vicinities: by thus working (and whatever is worth working out at all, is worth working well ) the Dean and Canons WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 89 of St. Peter's, Westminster, might be doing great things to-day; and as they are good men, they deserve to succeed in this their good attempt, and so, by God's blessing, they will. And very sure I am of this; that, if the time shall come, and shortly come, when thousands of the people shall throng that minster nave, not as mere sight-seers, or even as sermon-hearers only, but as worshippers ; and make, as the Chapter hopes, their old roof ring again with the sound of voices sounding up through the deep arch of its length, as the voice of many waters, vocal amid the vaults and caverns of some hollow sea-shore, or as the waves that lead on their long procession, and lift their choral song among the pillars and aisles of Staffa; when these sounds shall tell the success, and when such shall be the issues, of the night-services for the people in the nave of the Abbey of St. Peter's, none, I am sure, will rejoice more than we, nor more cordially congratulate the Dean and Canons on the success of their brave experiment. And success with the men of Westminster may not be circumscribed within their immediate locality, nor bounded by the narrow limits of their neighbour- hood, nor even by the liberties of London and Westminster only, but may serve to hold up the torch, and show the way to others, until that day too shall dawn, when quire services, proper, being restricted to the quires, a fuller, broader, more 90 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, emphatic service, thoroughly sung from begin- ning to end, with Psalter tunes for the people, and Canticles for the people, and bold, and free- voiced, and flowing choral-like Hymns for the people, shall take, as it were, possession of the people's hearts, and of the great cathedral and abbey naves, in the name of God and the people, and hold them as special minsters for the people's service. Tell me why, with all our appliances and means to boot, our broad-chested, well-con- ducted, and hard-working English Churchmen should not sing their Hymns of glory as heartily, and make as joyful a noise before the Lord, their King, with verse after verse of holy song, — the Church's song, — uttered in unison, or in harmony, as the case might be, but uttered heartily and honestly, and with as good a courage, as the Church- men of a French village at vespers, and, as I am told, the choralists of a German chapel, or the conereo-ation of Mr. Allon at Islington. And why not, so soon as English organists shall learn that it is not the main purport of their appoint- ment to check, but shall come to know and feel that it is their duty to encourage, — their best and bounden duty, — to assist, in all parts of Divine Service, that lie within their province, pale, and compass, the desires of the people to join therein. Nor will any thing be found more conducive to this much wished-for consummation than the use WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 91 of good Churchlike Psalter and canticle tunes, and Hymns of free and simple character, of fresh and unfaltering melody. I fear to weary you with my reiteration of this great truth, that a service in the mother tongue is professedly a people's service. I may seem to detract too much from the artistic character of that service, to advocate, in fact, or seem to ad- vocate the paring it down too brusquely to the compass of the meanest musical capacity. Nothing can be further from my heart and wish. I would not give up one iota of its " high art," as it is the fashion now to speak. "In quires and places where they sing" I would have an Anthem ela- borated, both in composition and in execution, to excellence, even the most exquisite and pre-eminent ; if a phrase so superlative be admissible, to describe what I mean by "high," the very highest art. But then that earnest endeavour after high art must be like high art itself, not fastidious, fanciful, and full of finesse, but manly, Christianlike, and true. What art can surpass that, which, generally speaking, triumphs in the construction of a great minster or cathedral nave ? And yet what result of art, what fact of architectural combination and accomplishment can be, and is more suited for lifting the souls, and embracing the bodies of the thousands of the people round about ? And then, whatever may be the theory, abstractedly speaking, of a minster service in the quire, par excellence, 92 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, with regard to the privileges of the canons, and the claims of the people, as contradistinguished from that celebrated in a nave, which seems the people's own, very sure of this one may be, that, ere long, despite of chilly deans, in " golden galle- ries," and churlish canons, and clay-cold chapters generally, and rude quire-boys, and repulsive vergers, and non-co-operative organists, and obstructive "gentlemen," the English people will attest their own right, and achieve their own independence, and signalize their emancipation from the dead weight which has so long depressed them, by bursting into the great church naves, taking full possession of them, and of their service, and carrying matters in their own way; which, to their great honour be it spoken, is ever one of decency, and, indeed, not seldom of even so much staid decorum, and over-gentle delicacy, as to fall short of an absolute earnestness in devotion. They will soon come to regard those mighty mansions as parts and portions of their great Father's house on earth, and therefore as their own by inheritance, for use and enjoyment; they will look on them as the courts of their good King, as the chambers of His right royal presence, as the palaces of His kingdom ; and therefore into that kingdom they will press with an honest violence, and take it with a holy force. And then, whether those halls of the great King- be minster, collegiate, cathedral, or parochial naves, farewell from that day forward and from that hour WITH A FEW WOKDS ON ANTHEMS. 93 of a people's entry, to all exclusives and esoterics, all your " odi profanum vulgus" clique of canons, and curates, or your "stand-aside" class of prebendary priests, priests parochial, and preachers, all your supercilious organists, organ-blowers, and operatic quiremen, — in short, all your butt-women and beadles, with all the retinue and following of bumbledom. I have, in a former passage of this letter, referred to the Sunday Evening Sermon in an abbey nave, as professedly and ostensibly a concio ad populum, and my mention of preachers in this place as amongst those of the standing Church staff which need to be reformed, refers of course to those only who resist any reform in the services and functions of the Church ; those, in a word, over whom the spirit of what we used to call "Donnery" reigns so lord paramount, that they have no thought or kind con- sideration for any but themselves. Were they, however, teachable, if but in one part of their duty, — that of condescending to the masses in their ser- mons, — one might perhaps venture, though with all fear and trembling, to recommend to their perusal and study Mr. Christmas's book upon " Preachers and Preaching;" a book which not only reads lessons a thousand times more practical than the somewhat dry and dogmatic volumes of Claude and Robinson ; Jones, Gresley, and others, greatly valued as they may be by those who would teach the more youthful u Ecclesiastes Anglicanus " how to shoot 94 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, with his artillery at the mark, and hit the apple of men's hearts ; but the instructions and requirements of which would go far to satisfy even the preaching- drought which is evidently tormenting to the death, with a tantalizing thirst for rivers of running water, that stricken hart, the dry and dusty " Habitans- in-Sicco " himself. And I do assure you, that it is with no inconsiderable self-denial I close Mr. Christ- mas's volume without selecting from its pages a passage, the quotation of which from a sermon of Mr. Bellew would be singularly d propos to the matters I have been descanting on and the place I have been designating — the great Abbey, its songs and services, and the yet greater " dwellers in its dust" — the very dust of whose ashes is gold. As the sermon has now become an almost in- tegral part of the Sunday Service, and in the Abbey was put forth as, I believe, the most prominent of the new attractions, thus much I have presumed to hint, though clearly enough it is with the service proper — the special handmaid of devotion, and par- ticularly with the form and substance of its choral development in music and words — that I am now mainly, if not solely, concerned. Before, however, I finally quit the subject of music, I must make a passing observation or two on that of metre. From what I have said above as to the English character of the music, you will be prepared for my boldness in advocating an English variety of metre. Common Measure, which, after WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 95 all, is but an easy modification of Long Measure, Peculiar Measure, when not very peculiar, and Short Measure, should all, in my humble judgment, have place together with the orthodox octosyllabic Long Measure iambic, upon the pages of a Church's Hymn-book. The English mind delights in all. Let it enjoy its harmless delight, — in church as well as at oratorio or concert. One other particular too there is in connexion with those old Hymns of our Church, the trans- ference of which to the pages of our new books would seem simply indispensable, which I may not quite pass over; and that is their sometimes regular, sometimes occasional rhyme termination; not, be it observed, upon their accented syllables, for I am not now speaking of the regularly rhymed trochaics, like the " Pange lingua" of St. Thomas Aquinas, or the " Collaudemus Magdalense " of Sarum, but the rhyme termination of the plain iambic Long Measure Hymns, rhymed not on the accented antepenultimate, but on the final syllable or syllables, whether accented or not. Let me better instance what I mean by referring you to the old Salisbury Hymn for Christmas Eve : " Veni, Redemptor gentium ;" three verses of which will be sufficient for the purpose of illustration — the second, third, and seventh : # * # # Non ex virili semine Sed mystico sipiramine 96 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, Verbum Dei factum est caro, Fructusque ventris floruit. Alvus tumescit virginis, Claustra pudoris permanent, Vexilla virtutum micant, Versatur in templo Deus. # # # # Praesepe jam fulget Tuum, Lumen que nox spirat novum, Quod nulla nox intevpolet, Fideque jugi luceat. Whether this occasional and irregular rhyme termination might not be imitated in a version of those Hymns with good effect, and then whether that principle of rhyme imitation might not give additional freedom to Hymns so rhymed in the original without the license of altering the metre or rhythm, as in a prose or sequence, might be a question well worthy a translator's thought. In his acceptable and seasonable little volume of Salis- bury Hymns, now many years ago printed, and at the period of its execution most seasonable, Mr. Beresford Hope goes, I think, with the author of the " Psalterium Americanum," into the opposite ex- treme of discarding rhyme altogether ; which mode of treating Hymns, either original or translated, Avill not, I fancy, with at least very few exceptions indeed, and those only when and where suggested by special circumstances, consort very graciously WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 97 with the English mind, or become a feature — I mean a popular feature — of the English Hymn. I doubt whether Mr. Isaac Williams could have treated successfully in this style more of the Paris Hymns than he has so attempted ; noble and suc- cessful as those two or three attempts of his un- doubtedly are. But then Paris differs from Salis- bury, as much as London and Westminster from Rouen. Treatment, that might well befit a Gal- lican Hymn of the Louis Quatorze time and style, may not be quite so naturally applied to an old English Hymn that came in before St. Osmund and the Conqueror. Still there was, and for that early time of the revival more especially so, an ori- ginality in the conception, as there is a power in the execution of Mr. Hope's project, which redounds greatly to the credit of its amiable and highly gifted author, and would assure him as an inva- luable adviser, at the present day, on the plan and conduct of a work important as that you are at present carrying out or contemplating. And, important in the highest degree I am sure all thoughtful minds must consider the question of Church Hymns, and the work and labour of wording them; important to the Church of England, not simply in her internal relationships, and for the time present, but in respect to her position, or rather sympathies, with foreign Churches, and her hold upon the Church of the past. Upon its bearing on the services of our own Churches, and G 98 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, indeed upon its effect with regard to some of those without, something, perhaps more than enough, has been said in the course of the foregoing pages. Though, with respect to its latter feature of interest, it may not be wrong to add that the sight of Eng- land, blest already, and from the very beginning, with her old course of collects for the most part, and with her ancient order of epistles and gospels throughout the year, and now recovering and re- taining her own old service of song in Hymn, and, in great measure, in Anthem also, would be one not likely to be lost upon nor disregarded by the mem- bers and critics of those Churches, who, like that of Amiens under Louis de la Motte, have changed with their succession of collect, epistle, and gos- pel, almost every vestige of their primitive inhe- ritance in Hymn and Anthem, and the musical service of their quire. But it is not with our contemporaries, or with the Churches of the present day only, that a rightly drawn and digested system of Hymns would tend to reawaken and re-establish an instinctive rela- tionship, by touching anew a chord of fellow-feeling old almost as the Church itself. And that, too, a chord of fellowship, not only with the Church, ecclesiastically speaking, but with the world of the past — the world of mind, and power, and wisdom. This must have struck most Englishmen when, in the writings of the great men of old, they come upon allusions to things Divine, so introduced and WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 99 taken for granted in their acceptance by all men, as to presuppose in the writer's mind a touch of truth to be inherent in his word or illustration, which did not so much make as prove the whole Christian world therein to be kith and kin — one kindred family and household. Cases in point are the fre- quent introductions by Dante in the Immortal " Comedy" of words and lines of old Church Hymns, as embodying points and truths which all Christian readers would at once not simply recognize, but un- derstand and appreciate. " Words," he intended them, " to the wise, full fraught and sounding with wisdom." How evidently popular, as an appeal to the reader's or hearer's immediate knowledge, as as well as how magnificent in itself is, e. g., that introduction of the thirty-fourth canto of the " Inferno," with its dimly awful application of the first line of the famous Passion and Proces- sional Hymn, " Vexilla Regis prodeunt " [Inferni], " ' Forth fare the banners of the king' [of hell], On towards us full; therefore forewatchful be thou, Saith he, the Master mine, if that thou canst Dis- cern him." Then further on, in the Purgatorio, canto viii., we have that noble citation of the Compline Hymn, " Te lucis ante terminum," " Thee ere the drawing-in of day." And then, again, without noticing the many citations of " Te Deum " and the Psalms, as beyond our present point, we come to the Hymn, " Summse Deus dementia? " (or " Summse Parens dementia?," G 2 100 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, as it stands in the more modern books), that Hymn for Saturday Matins which the poet introduces in the twenty-fifth canto of the Purgatorio, " ' God of most high mercy,' in the heart Of that great fire I well could hear them singing." Thus was it that the words of the Church found a home, as it were, in the mind and memory of Dante, so constant as to be ever forming part of the very man him- self, issuing forth from time to time from his pen and lips to walk through the length and breadth of Christendom, which well understood those words ; and so to make the world his auditor. And why should not we again form part of his intelligent audience in that particular ? Why should we of the English Church be for ever deprived of those songs of Sion which the Church then sang, which Dante loved, and which for five centuries and more have ceased not to echo through that Duomo, the first rising of which, in its beauty, he would daily sit to watch, as rapt in contemplation, and blind for the time to all the world beside, as afterward when he sat on the stone at Sienna; where from nones to vespers, from afternoon to evensong, he remained dead to the world of life around him, its hurryings to and fro, its eatings and its drinkings, its dancings and pro- cessions, its marry ings and givings in maniage, its mirth and minstrelsy, fixed and absorbed, and un- conscious of aught beyond himself and the music of his own deep thought ? * Surely to repossess a portion of that inheritance WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 101 which Dante, the most Christian of Catholic poets, and most Catholic of Christian, so nobly enjoyed and used as the joint birthright of himself and all other his brethren in Christ, is worth the labouring and striving after ; especially when we recollect that such repossession would not only recover for us a severed link of brotherhood with the past and present, but, in a very large degree, restore to us the religious sympathies of so large a portion of our own Christian people who, without, perhaps, being sensible of, or acutely sensitive to, the uncatholic and unchurchlike character of their deprivation, do yet feel the lack of Hymns to be a damper to their devotion, a deadener of their hearts at worship. How many have complained of this at St. Andrew's, Marylebone ; a lack which Mr. Fallow was so careful to provide against ; as he was likewise to make fair provision for an orderly and due course of Introits. And it is because I felt that your present en- deavour is so eminently calculated to bring about this hope of many years, that I rejoiced when you hinted at your design. It is pleasant to think how that great and large-hearted man, Sir Walter Scott, would have rejoiced to have heard that there was a pro- bability of our Christian congregations becoming " acquainted with the simple and beautiful Hymns of the Catholic ritual, the only pieces of uninspired sacred poetry which are worthy of the purpose to which they are dedicated, those magnificent Hymns 102 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, whose discarding from the reformed worship nothing but the cogent and irresistible propriety of address- ing the Divinity in a language understood by the whole worshipping assembly could have justified." And how zealously would he have assisted the good work with his good counsel, and with contributions far more valuable than that of his own brief version of the "Dies Irse," which has already, imperfect as it is, found its way into so many collections of Hymns. Of those collections it must be confessed, that good signs as they are in themselves of a better feeling in the way of Hymns now springing up in the Church generally, a vast proportion are simply offences against good faith, and equity, and honour. A Churchman lays out scores, nay, perhaps, hun- dreds of pounds and some years of his life, the night and morning of many a busy day, in getting toge- ther his materials, in arranging, translating, em- bodying, and accompanying them with the best and truest melodies he can originate, adapt from the old books, or procure ; and, lo ! some brother of the craft, when his weary work of yet delightsome duty, when his long and costly labour of love is done and launched, steps in, and in the six vacant days of one week pirates the chiefest of his toils, in the next week prints his piracy, and before the month is out stands prepared, like the ticket-drapers of the day, to sell for only 3frf. the vitals of a volume for which twelve times the amount in money would WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 103 not, so far as cash was concerned, repay the volun- tary outlay of the original workman, or remunerate the self-denying author. But it has become a rule of equity with the compilers of cheap Hymns and Hymn-books that there neither is, nor ought to be, any right of property or claim of proprietorship in the airs, melodies, and words of Hymn-books com- posed for the Church of England. "Last come best served " is the motto. " Airs free as the air of heaven " is the toast, the favourite toast, at those feasts of freedom where our Hymn-pirates love to carouse, where these freebooters in sacred song meet and revel. But what grounds have I to make this appeal against the now recognized principle of pick- ing and stealing in these music matters ? Person- ally none whatever : " cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator." Besides, I am not so much defending the cause of the already injured as I am protesting against a system which must, if persevered in, for ever preclude any future attempt to advance the Hymn-singing of the Church in any thing like a right direction. Most men who know the difficul- ties, and have counted the cost, will not lay them- selves out for a work which, when brought to a comparatively successful conclusion, — if but the success of an essay towards a desirable end, — will entail upon them wholesale systems of plunder, pre- ceded by the jeers and sneers of their plunderers. While they would shrink from nothing, from no lion that lay in the fair way of their voluntarily 104 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, assumed duty, they may yet decline encountering the attacks of organized conspirators against their property, their motives, and their work. Men may love to climb the rocky heights of honour and use- fulness, from that mere spirit of adventure, to speak of no nobler purpose, which seems inherent in Englishmen; but they may seriously object to have their heads and shoulders made stepping-stones for aspiring yet helpless busybodies, who have no legs of their own to lift them, no wings of wit to mount with. Still, notwithstanding these drawbacks from the unprincipled, the work is even yet freely open to good men undertaking it in a right spirit, and setting about it honestly, heartily, and disinter- estedly. And many, very many good Churchmen of the day might, no doubt, with reasonable prospect of success have taken the good work in hand. Few, however, would have brought to that work the accomplish- ments and qualification for its just accomplishment, which you so happily possess. You must permit me to say thus much, because I am now looking beyond the fold of your own fair flock into the field of the Church at large. Known for your long, long-tried and ever unfaltering attachment to the Church of your fathers ; an attachment tested by the sorest of all sore tempta- tions, coldness where you might have looked for sym- pathy, and defection where your sympathies rested ; you have, indeed, a claim upon men's confidence, far wider than your hold upon the hearts of your own WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 105 children. This, however, though to me a source of signal satisfaction, I do but presume to mention by the way. Your own individual purpose, the only one, I will venture to say, which has ever presented itself to your own mind in the matter of a new Hymn-book, has been, and is like every thing that emanates from you, as simple and modest as it is sound. You — not in a selfish, I do not mean that, but in a straightforward, unofficious manner — have thought of your own people, and of your own people only ; not, that is, from an exclusive feeling, but in an unpretending spirit. And very glad I am, and I repeat my congratulation very honestly and heartily, that the work contemplated for their use, and un- dertaken for their sake, will be perfected by you, who, knowing their wants and powers so well, can best supply their needs, and suit them with such entire sufficiency. Not that even you, with all your judgment, worth, and prestige, will be able to complete your good work, and make voc. \ your fair Eden without having some Satan at hand, 'ome accuser of the brethren, to befoul it and arraign both you and your motives. This has been the case, the hard case, even with me, in my little attempts heretofore in the same line. Though idly fancying myself to be living, moving, and still retaining a sort of existence, I am told that I am at this moment an unresisting sufferer, slaughtered week by week by an exultant Highlandman at the altar — I beg his pardon, on the 106 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, table of his duty. Weighed by his weights, and measured by his standard, I am found wanting, it seems, and duly knocked into nothingness. I am as though I were not; severed, like a worm, into minutiae too small for perception beneath the share of his merciless claymore. Left, unconscious of my misery, to writhe and twist about at my leisure, my very fragments, it is said, are the unoffending objects of his wrath. Thrice slain by the slashings of that sharp blade, twice " kilt" with his broadsword, thrust through, and hacked to pieces, and utterly annihilate, I am still, it would appear, from my own faint conciousness of existence, permitted the privilege of a prolonged conversation in the dust, if but to shudder when the sound of "the Campbells are coming" strikes my ear, my sole remaining ear, or "the lifting of the Standard" ap- pals my sight, the sight of, alas ! my single and fast- closing eye ; the only one, I am assured, that is left me by my stout assailant, and that, out of a sort of contemptuous compassion for my sad estate, to assist me in gratifying my not unnatural curiosity of wit- nessing the last of myself, of seeing what is to become of me. And what is ? Alas ! I know not. All, indeed, that I do know is this, that you see before you at the present moment, — if you are deign- ing to regard, with your mind's eye, a thing which is not, which cannot be, — the remains of one who once was corporeal and human, an hearty, though humble day-labourer in the field of sacred song, WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 107 but is now, if the chief and his clansmen are to be credited, the lifeless remnant of what once he was, the shadow of a shade, the torn and wasted victim of an unfelt, unseen, unknown, and till now unheard- of destroyer. Let my unfortunate case be a warning to you to prepare yourself for the worst, to provide, in the conduct and issue of your noble under- taking, for a doom, worse, far worse, than mine, — destruction at the blade of my braw Highlander, — worse than that of Marsyas at the scalping-knife of his Phoebus Apollo; worse than that of the Welsh Bards and singing men of Britain at the hands of Edward the First and the "Times;" worse, far worse, than even the worst of those recorded in legend, history, or romance ; a doom, my dear Richards, worse than that of Devorgoil. So totally does the terrible phantom of my ruthless Highland homicide possess me, that I can but sum up my sorites sort of sentence with an overpowering climax from Scotland — Scotland, the land of Wallace and Bruce — Scotland, the nest of Burns, the fair field for the industrial labours of Burke, the second and greater of the name — and Scotland, the great original of that yet greater house, which boasts of so marvellous a chieftain among its members, that while his broadsword is sharper and more shapely than Excalibur, he himself is rougher than rude Caliban. But no ; a change has come suddenly over the spirit of my fearful dream. The comet, with his fiery brand, fierce almost as that basket- 108 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, hilted broadsword, has swept away, not us, but himself, and departed. Now I have no fear that henceforth any such weapon wielded against you or yours will prosper. Not all "the Campbells coming," going, or to come and go, will ever, I am sure, be suffered to turn your foot out of the way, or harm a hair of your head. Nor am I singular in my hopes, happy auguries, and best wishes. For none, surely, can be insensible to your solemn and sacred, and, I may add, dutiful desire of perfecting, as far as may be, not merely the draught but detail of your service, and so fitting it, as it were, for admission with its Lord into your new gate of beauty and of holiness. En- tering in its Master's train, it will do its part towards glorifying that house of His glory. And, certainly, when the later house shall have put on its glorious apparel ; without, of raiments of builders' work, and goldsmiths' work, and needlework, for all adornments visible, however holy, of things and places, however sacred and solemn, are but to be numbered as things outward; and, within, of decency, grace, reverence, and devotion ; few, me- thinks, will there be found to lift up the voice and weep at the recollection of the surpassing glories of that former house, which has now and long since passed away. Some, however, there may be, rem- nants of a former generation, who, in the midst of your swelling song and in the pauses of your " Urbs Ccelestis," may turn aside to brush away a tear of WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. 109 faithful remembrance and fond regret for that dear old dark and dingy home of all that was in earlier days dearest to us, the home of heart, and soul, and strength, and, for its constant round of service, almost of body also. But dark as was, perhaps, that little cell, the predecessor of your future glorious sanctuary, it was nevertheless to many an earnest Christian heart, in those old unpolemic days of work and prayer, both life and light in the Lord; days when — with much that was admirable on the score of orderly arrangement, and a sweet and reverential execution of Divine Service generally, — in the matter of metrical Psalmody or Hymnody the bravest and most brilliant attempts ever ventured on, I believe (except perhaps on some of the very highest Holy- day celebrations, when the special Hymn or a piece of Handel came in as a special luxury, provided for us by our then beloved pastor, the good man of that humble house, the purveyor of that hearty feast), were the Old Hundredth with its now stereotyped national melody, and the twenty-fourth Psalm with its " London New." And as in those two constantly recurring selec- tions from the then Church means of Metre Psalm and Hymn Tune, your two selves, the selectors, ap- pointers, and administrators of all that went on in those honoured walls, showed at once your great taste and discernment, and gave to others a lesson then much needed by all, and which it must delight you both to feel has been a lesson, however variously 110 HYMNS AND HYMN-BOOKS, applied in particular instances, yet in no degree thrown away or forgotten ; so now do I hope and augur that the new shoot from the old stem will be equally vigorous and health-giving ; that the boughs thereof having light and air, and all the dews of blessing, may so spread abroad and nourish, like the goodly cedar-tree of the Psalmist, that all the fowls of the air, and song-birds from under the whole heaven, may come and nestle in its leafy bower, and sit and sing together among its branches, summer- ing there and wintering there, in the daytime, with sound of song and voice of melody, with " Te Deum," " Ter Sanctus," and " Gloria in Excelsis," and, when the night cometh, still continuing their peaceful sojourn in the home of peace, there resting them thankfully and in a calm and silent sweetness, singing " Nunc Dimittis " under its outstretching arms. And if, on the coming of that yet deeper and longer night, when princely-hearted layman and patient priest alike shall cease from work and rest from their labour of life, no tomb within the walls they reared and loved be accorded them, or other than at best a cenotaph (and surely a state secretary, even in the plenitude of his potency, would scarce dream of withholding that — if he could — ), yet what matters it ? What need for the departed of other remembrances among the living, than the daily welcome of the " Venite," which they insti- tuted, than the frequent " Jubilate " of Psalm, and WITH A FEW WORDS ON ANTHEMS. Ill Anthem, and Hymn, there first raised by them; what more touching monument "sere perennius,", what more speaking " Hie Jacent," than the sight of the walls themselves, and their plain though unwritten " Circumspice ?" I am, my dear Richards, Always and in all sincerity, Yours, William John Blew. the END. GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SUUARE, LONDON.