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

seems to us the best reading of this verse, we cannot say but it is quite as characteristic of him as any. It is this:

Teach me to live, that I may dread

The grave as little as my bed:
To die, that this vile body may

Rise glorious at the awful day."

Worse yet, and inexcusable, is the change in the 62d Hymn, from simple sublimity in the words, " Or thorns compose so rich a crown," to the ineffectual common-place of these; "Or thorns compose a Savior's crown." In another Hymn, (147,) "hellish darts" is very unnecessarily changed to "fiery darts," and the nautical correctness of the last verse,

"There, anchored safe, my weary soul

Shall find eternal rest,"

is no good exchange for the pictured beauty of the original, "There shall I bathe my weary soul

In seas of heavenly rest."

A precision against Puritans has erased 'Sabbath,' a word used in Holy Scripture, with its derivatives, to imply a holy rest, from the second line of the Hymn beginning, "Another six days work is done," and put into its place (would any but a Churchman, who knows the Prayer Book, believe it?) "Lord's Day."

What prudery led to the cutting out of the word "lover," which made the force of the first line, and more than one line, of that glowing sacred song, the 143d of our Hymns? In the cutting off of several verses less harm has been done. Our 124th Hymn (which we will not allow ourselves to censure, ast it stands, because so many tender tears of mourning men and women have washed its words) is, we believe, made of two, which are much better, separate, and is changed, also, from both, we believe; and if so, not for the better, but for the worse, decidedly.

"Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims

For all the pious dead:

Sweet is the savor of their names,

And soft their sleeping bed;"

is the first verse of one; and in the others are several beautiful

verses; as this;

66

Why should we tremble to convey

Their bodies to the tomb?

There the dear flesh of Jesus lay

And left a long perfume."

The slight variation, in the accenting of the last word, from our usual way of pronouncing, must never spoil to us such a verse as that.

The second of our Baptismal Hymns is, apparently, a wreck of an incomparably better one, of Doddridge, of which the first verse, alone, would consecrate many less beautiful and expressive ones :

"See Israel's gentle Shepherd stand,

With all-engaging charms:

Hark! for He calls the tender lambs,

To fold them in His arms."*

Our version seems to have been tattered and soiled, in being fumbled with fleshy fingers of some reverend Committee-man, who had no idea that words had a right to be lovely, or that life and beauty were any properties of them. So it has been with many a fair set of sacred verses, handled over for our use. Bare rhymes were, doubtless, to his practical eye, wings good enough for their purpose, without the down and velvet and bright hues; nor did it disconcert him when he rubbed off a rhyme or two, for he deliberately supplied the wants with paste and scissors, and was more than satisfied. The Church and her faithful are tied up, for generations, to outrageous things of this sort. In writing this, we are in happy ignorance of all names of Committee-men in particular, and Committees in general but their works stand before our eyes and are thrust upon our tongues, and we are not at liberty to spit them out. Men, reverend and honorable, appointed to such doing feel as much obliged to show the latent gift in them, which fitted them for the office, as boys armed with syringes or pop-guns.

* We have ventured a very slight difference of words from either of several copies before us.