men, but there are rules by which they ought to go, and bounds beyond which they ought not to be allowed the certi denique fines of common right applied to Hymns. These rules are easy to be learned: the limits easy to be seen and kept in sight; and both ought to be insisted on, for the good of literature, of the Church, and of the worship of God.

In the first place, Hymns, more than all other verse, ought to be poetry: this is the law of abstract truth about them. The simplest, purest spirit, the highest and clearest thought, the most undoubted truth, the warmest love, the finest taste, the best and noblest language, ought all to go to the making of them, for God's sake; and, for the sake of men, they ought to be instinct with melody that blends with music and is blended with, by music, so that there comes another life and beauty to what already had a life and beauty of its own.

Now we have said, already, more than once, what, without our saying it, was ten times true, that most Hymns are not poetry, nor good verse. With a book of Hymns in hand, all men of taste and judgment lay by their taste and judgment before they turn a leaf; because devout men, after the time of David, have for the most part had and freely exercised the privilege of writing without inspiration. Shall we, then, keep up our rule and hope to bring up to it Hymn-making,—and Hymn-taking, too? The chasm is monstrous and appalling, and long habit has established it in men's minds as impassable; but, more than this-there is good reason why we should not absolutely enforce as without exception the rule, that Hymns, which are to be sung by men of all sorts and conditions, should be made up of the best spirit, the best thought, the best doctrine, the best love, the best taste and the best language, all together. There are too many men with honest hearts, and with most melodious voices coming out of them, and yet with ill-furnished heads just kept in balance over them,-and devout ignorant men and devout stupid men must sing; and Hymns must be provided for their singing.

It is true that a heart can often relieve itself, and can often comfort itself with mere sound of the mouth, without sense; and by the same means, very likely, a pious and godly state

may be established: we have known the deep bass voice of a sturdy striker upon the anvil leap suddenly into the circle in which a few trebles and a tenor or two were, in a staid way, holding up the tune like a rope, and, in turn jumping over and running under, and snatching it up somewhere, in the middle or by the end, go off gamboling with it, heartily, but without intelligent articulation. "Bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo"-was the only language which it took, and yet that bass voice was the utterance of a zealous and apparently devout heart. Still the ignorant and stupid (this man was a quick-witted one and not very ignorant) must have their worded Hymns, such as they can understand and appreciate, and they will sing, with these, much more to their own comfort, of course, than they can do either inarticulately, or in the words of Hymns too high for them.

Is it necessary, then, or is it proper, to have Hymns especially fitted for the rude and ignorant? We think so, as far as may be conveniently done; as we would, farther, have Hymns for large classes, such as sailors, fishermen, farmers, married people, and the like: that is, we would have no large class, with special essential character, and peculiar circumstances and relations and habits, left unprovided with Hymns that are fitted specially to interest them. Here, then, is a rule to limit our former rule: now let us adjust and reconcile the two.

There is, after all, only one point, where the second limits the first, and that is in requiring, that unlearned and unknowing people shall have such Hymns as they can understand thoroughly, and feel heartily. How are compilers to comply with this requirement? Such men (not the compilers, but the others) speak in bad English, cannot readily take in strange thoughts, cannot easily follow swift changes of thought, cannot keep themselves thinking long, at once. How are these conditions to be provided for? Bad English is not to be furnished to them, surely. False English is a kind of lying to those who have been taught better; and, in any event, is not to be thought of. It would not even be acceptable; for if one speak in it, by way of condescending to an illiterate person, he will be answered in something made as nearly like his own natural VOL. XIV.-NO. 1.

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style of expression, as the other can make it: precisely as a Frenchman, living here, will talk to us in broken American, if we assail him with broken French. But if bad English be intolerable and not to be thought of, for a purpose, it is still more intolerable and still less to be thought of, when there is no purpose to be answered by it except indulgence to a writer unable or unwilling to finish his work. The Church may dispense with a rubric, it cannot meddle or make with the laws of Grammar.

If, now, the Church, and by implication or inclusion any committee of it, be limited to good English, is this the whole of the limitation? and where is it to fit its chosen Hymns to the lower and lesser capacities? The limitation to good English goes, certainly, a great way. It forbids, absolutely and forever, such words and phrases as we may give examples of, by and by, for which no part of the English or even the American Grammar will lend the slightest explanation or excuse, and for which even the lay Lexicographer of Connecticut has no sanction or example in any Easy Method of vulgarizing the Mother Tongue, or Specimens of spoiled English :* and it forbids, farther, low and mean, and weak, and unmeaning expressions. Good English may be strong and stirring, or tender and affecting; but it will always be simple. Still, something more is wanted for the case; and what else is to be done to bring Hymns within the reach and grasp of such people as we have supposed, and to make the Hymns, moreover, such as they will like? If we require, within the language, simple thought, (it may be great and high, but must be simple,) we shall have provided for all needs. The other properties of Hymns we need not meddle with, except to insist, that, if they shall not all be present, at least they shall not all be wanting. One of these,-sound doctrine,—is a thing to be handled wisely and fitly; and it is not expedient, that the Catechism or the Preface to the Ordinal should be squeezed into rhymes for the devotion of the Congregation. If any man or woman or pre

*The reader is to understand that the Editor of this Review does not know whom we mean here, and would, moreover, smile blandly over any puny fling of ours at the great Dictionary-man.

mature child should fancy making the closet or the nursery vocal with an outburst of rapturous strains like the following, who shall repress the spirit?

"Hence sprang the Apostles' honored name

Sacred beyond heroic fame;" &c.

This is capable of being sung, certainly, and in Long Metre ; but the great congregation, worshipping God, should make better use of breath. The doctrine, also, is pretty sound: but Hymns are not proper vehicles of doctrine, and even the doctrine, here, might be more strongly put, if, instead of the second line, which, as it stands, is rather perfunctory, we had one supplying a new piece of information, somewhat thus: (in a parenthesis, so as to break, as little as may be, the flow of thought :)

From hence the Apostles' order came;

(Our Bishops are the very same,) &c.

The truth is, that it ought only to be required of Hymns, that they should not falsify doctrine, not that they should teach it. Good taste, however, is a thing that should be absolutely insisted on, always; and a great many Hymns that we know of would be wofully changed from their first shape and substance, if they were compelled to satisfy this rule. Sometimes change of a word or two, or a single phrase, will spoil a whole Hymn. Our Dutch Reformed neighbors sing (on Fast Days, we may suppose,)

"Substantial comforts will not grow

In nature's barren soil;"

which version of Newton's verses would seem to have passed under the censorship of a taste for good things rather than good taste. Sometimes an exercise in Grammar, as diverting as any of the Diversions of Purley, is prepared for congregational practice, as follows:

"When I lived without the Lord,

(If I could be said to live.")

Sometimes the devout and melodious company are to remind themselves and one another "That tribulations, more or less," beset the way of faith. In what the English call the

New Version of the Psalms, and in one of our Selections from it, we are furnished with the following provision for the four vocal parts, (Air, Second Treble, Tenor and Bass, if we remember rightly,) among the many-voiced multitude:

"And what his charity impairs

He saves, by prudence in affairs."

If well and sufficiently sung, with, perhaps, a solo or two, and repeats, during the reading of the Offertory-sentences, there are those, doubtless, who would find this more eloquent than Poor Richard: but we cannot like it. In the Old Version, a part of the fishes of the mighty deep were invoked in this way:

"Up from the sands ye codlings creep,

And wag your tails and sing."

To these devout practices even the St. Anthony of the old marvel-mongers had never been fabled to have brought his finny flock. Whatever moves us to any other mirth than that " awful" emotion, in which we may rightfully pay our homage, is to be banished from the sanctuary, with no return.

Even an innocent line of prose, with a rhyme at the end, sometimes conveys concealed matter for a smile, after it has passed through critical and practised fingers: as, for example, in the second of the two following lines from a Hymn of Watts in the book edited by the Committee of our General Convention :

"With what divine and vast delight

The good old man was filled :"

and in another collection,

"Lo! what an entertaining sight,

Are brethren that agree."

In the variations approved by a former Committee and thrust upon the Evening Hymn, there is something more than inadvertence; as, for instance, in the line, "Triumphing rise at the last day," is a very sorry substitution for, "Rise glorious at the awful day."

Bishop Ken, it has been said, varied the expressions in his own Hymns. Whether we have his own authority for what