originated from the chants, to which the ancient Latin hymns of the Romish Church were sung. For in this book there are translations and imi tations in German metre, of most of the hymns and proses still used in the Romish Church; such as the Stabat Mater dolorosa; the Te Deum laudamus; 0 Lux beata Trinitatis; Pange lingua gloriosi, &c.

About the year 1540 Clement Marót, a French poet, versified and dedicated to Francis I. thirty of David's Psalms, which were sung, in defiance of the censures of the Sorbonne, by the King and Queen, and by the principal personages of the kingdom, to the favourite airs of the times.

Having fled to Geneva, to avoid persecution, Marot versified other twenty of the psalms. These, with the thirty formerly published at Paris, were printed at Geneva in 1543, without music, but with a preface written by Calvin. Marot dying the next year, Beza versified the rest of the psalms in the same manner; and the whole book of psalms, in French rhyme, was published at Strasburg in 1545. These psalms were instantly in so great demand, that they could not be printed fast enough, and were sung to common song-tunes, by the Lutherans and Calvinists from a principle of piety, and by the Romanists in frolic and burlesque.*

* Florimond de Rem. de la Naissance et Progres, de l'Heresie

1

As yet, these psalms had not found admission into any of the conventieles, and therefore were not taken notice of publicly by the Romish Church; but in the year 1553, when they appeared in the same book with the catechism of Calvin, and the Genevan Liturgy, the Romanists took the alarm, and prohibited the farther public use of them. After the promulgation of this prohibition, a metre psalmodist became another name for Reformer, Hugonot, and Calvinist. And the purposes to which this lamentable music was often applied, during the struggles and growth of Calvinism, seem to have been worse than the music itself; as, according to writers of the opposite party, it was made the signal of tumult, sedition, sacrilege and rebellion.*

Of the music to which Marot and Beza's French rhyme psalms were sung in the Calvinistic char ́ches, we have the following account in Bayle's Dictionary, under the word Marot:—“ A professor in the university of Lausanne has informed me, that a certificate, under Beza's own hand, in the name of the ecclesiastical society, still sub*sists, dated 1552, declaring that Guillaume Franc first set music to the translation of the psalms, as they are sung in churches.”

The same person is likewise acknowledged to be the author of that music, in a Geneva edition

of 1564. After this composer of music for Maret and Beza's psalms, a variety of composers have succeeded one another to the present time, so that the tunes are innumerable, and of all sorts of merit and demerit.

Having thus traced metre psalmody, from its minute beginning in Germany, France, and Switzerland, it is next in order to relate its arrival and progress in England.

During the reign of Henry VIII. several of the Psalms of David were turned into English rhyme, by Sir Thomas Wyatt, and published in 1549. Indeed, almost all the English poets, good, bad, and indifferent, during that and the subsequent reign, attempted to versify more or less of that divine book.*

All the performances of those gentlemen have long been buried in oblivion ; and the most ancient display of poetical talent in turning the Psalms of David into English rhyme, records the labours of a fraternity, whose names are, Sternhold, Hopkins, Cox, Whittingham, Norton, and Wisdome.t

* See a long list of the English versifiers, whom Pope has honoured with nitches in his Dunciad.

Bishop Corbett's Epigram, addressed to the ghost of Robert Wisdome. (W. was buried at Corfax Church, Oxford.)

Thou once a body, now but ayre,
Arch-botcher of a psalm or prayer,

From Corfax come

And patch us up a zealous lay,
With an old ever and for ay,
Or all and some.

Sternhold, who was groom of the robes to Henry VIII. and afterwards of the bed-chamber to Edward VI. versified only 51 of the psalms; Hopkins, who was a clergyman and schoolmaster in Suffolk, versified 58; and the rest of the company, each according to the initials of his name set over his particular versification. These metre psalms were at first published in detached numbers, and sung to common song-airs. An entire collection of them was not published until 1562, when it was tacked, for the first time, to the Book of Common Prayer, under the following title; "The whole Book of Psalms, collected into English metre, by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others, conferred with the Ebrue; with apt notes to sing them withal. Imprinted by John Day."

In this edition there was no bass, nor upper parts, only the tunes, and these, as appears by collation, the same as those of Guillaume Franc, Gaudimel, and Claude Le Jeune, in the Psalm Books of the Calvinists.

These are the apt notes*-the tunes used in churches, to which the psalms of Sternhold and

Or such a spirit lend me,
As may a hymn down send me,

To purge my brain.

But, Robert, look behind thee,

Lest Turk or Pope should find thee,

And go to bed again.

Poems, London, 1647, p. 49.

These apt notes were first imported from Geneva into England

by Norton, one of the rhyming fraternity.

Co. were professedly fitted; and to which, as a prototype for future imitations, the psalms of Brady and Co. were professedly fitted also.

"The Authorities on which Metre Psalmody stands, exhibited in a retrograde View.

The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, holden in Philadelphia, thus allowed the use of the Psalms of David in metre.

"By the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Convention, this 13th day of October, in the year of our Lord 1789..

66 This translation of the whole Book of Psalms into metre, with Hymns, is set forth, and allowed to be sung in all Congregations of the said Church, before and after morning and evening prayer, and also before and after sermons, at the discretion of the minister."

This allowance, for the use of metre psalms, is predicated upon a recommendation of the Bishop of London, dated May 23, 1698, in these words:

His Majesty having allowed and permitted the use of a new version of the Psalms of David, by Dr. Brady and Mr. Tate, in all churches