ART. II.-HYMNS FROM COMPILERS' HANDS.

Hymns for Church and Home, compiled by Members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as a contribution to any additions that may be made to the Hymns now attached to the Prayer Book. Philadelphia: 1861. 18mo. pp. 376.

ALL verse ought to be poetry, (or very nearly,) or else it ought to lose its ornamental distinctions of a marshalled front and commanding capitals and music in its rear: it ought to be disbanded and discharged into promiscuous prose, or dispersed to the dictionaries. This is strict wisdom. Yet, in safe times, when literature is in no danger of being overrun, we do not deal so strictly; and there is many a set of verses read and read again, printed and re-printed, which, though it has never got the unhappy stigma of popularity in some American schoolseries, yet, to the eye of practised criticism, or, still better, to the quick, fine taste, is very poor stuff; and there are producers of such stuff, who avail themselves, deliberately, of the deliberate sea and snow and liberty, which Homer, Hesiod, Horace, and some others, used to better purpose, and who are indulged in thus wasting time and words. Nay, there are prosy pieces by true poets, of which their writers never thought anything better, than that they would make a sort of packing for their better things, and be passed over by the worthiest readers with a short, indulgent comment, which presently are set in the chief places in some literary journals, with the certificate of the editor, that none but one author could have written them. Pegasus has his four legs, as well as his two wings, and when, half-fed and not inclined to fly, he wanders, munching, in a doze, or is pitted in a scrub-race, he, at least, gives many an honest fellow a chance to feel of him and pat him, that would never make him out if he were always in the upper air.

In common times, then, let it be so.

Now Hymns are verse, and ought to be poetry. Indeed they ought to be the highest poetry that men have, for reasons that

we need not give; and yet there is a settled feeling, that they are such poor things, that we must take down all our bars of criticism when they are standing there, and help them through. False rhymes, false quantity, false grammar, false figures, and false taste of every sort, we are to pass, as surely as certain false things about the persons of our women. In the schoolseries before mentioned, and in the literary journals, and there only, almost, will you find such gatherings-together of verses as in the Hymn-books. Anything seems to be thought good enough by the compilers, if it have, once before, got bound between two leathern covers. It is most wonderful, for the compilers have, for the most part, been committee-men, appointed for their supposed poetic taste and known education; and though the supposed poetic taste is not to be much accounted of, yet the known education was a reasonable guarantee, before trial. The wonder is to be explained only by our established axiom, that before Hymns all bars are taken down.

It is the fact also, that, unless this is done, there is but a thin book; and the compilers have but come to the melancholy resource of lecturers and other audience-wanting people, against their better pride, in giving out free tickets, freely. The outermost fact we will not count a greater wonder than the fact, that men not only bravely trifle with the time of fellow-men, and with their language, but choose to send up to the ear of the Great Author of all might and thought and harmony, such Hymns as have been printed, sung, and set to music. Perhaps the wonder, here, is not so great: indeed, we will allow that it is not; because a poetic sense is rare, and only not so rare as the true fire and power of poetry. Still, while we bring ourselves to pardon the misdoings and mistakes of writers, which would be harmless, if not taken up by others, we cannot think that the compilers should be let off easily. They earn a place of influence over the taste and devotion of multitudes, perhaps of generations, at a very cheap rate, always, and quite too cheaply, when they have not used taste and judgment and conscience-inborn or learned or borrowed, and the best that could be had—in their opportunity. Allowances may be made for them, in fairness,-all men must make allowances for all other

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 espe-. cially 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.