short metre, brought out another fourth line in still more questionable taste, sung first by the women and then by the men, "And learn to kiss-And learn to kiss-the rod !" Another tune, called Bath Chapel, a common metre and a lively one, three times divided in the third line, elicited the great chorus, "Upon a poor pol-Upon a poor pol-Upon a poor pol-luted worm." I remember (as an instance of the more ancient style) being taken when quite a child to a chapel in a remote country village, where there were three little boards kept, marked C.M., L.M., S.M., and which were hung up on the pulpit by the clerk to mark the three solitary tunes which would be ventured upon by the congregation. This clerk, who was a character, used a huge square mahogany pitch pipe, the notes on the slide being engraved on a piece of lead, and to be quite sure he had got a clear conception of the key, he murmured softly to himself the descending first, fourth, sixth, and eighth, to the words Ca-leb-and Josh-u-a. This same man had an ingenious way of perfecting a faulty rhyme of Dr. Watts by singing gravely and slowly,

The contention about Psalmody may not inaptly be thus entitled. It began about the middle of the seventeenth century, and was not ended till past the middle of the eighteenth. It was complicated by a number of conflicting opinions, which it is very difficult clearly to understand, and still more difficult, in a brief notice, to explain. Some of the disputants clearly sided with the Quakers and maintained that singing in Divine Service was an obsolete usage, and inconsistent with the spirituality of the new dispensation: others seemed to hold views and opinions similar to some of the Irvingites, that singing could only be lawful to an individual and to one inspired to sing-inspired both in the hymn and in the tune-the practical result of this theory, of course, as with that of the Quakers, was no singing at all.

A third party who held to psalms, absolutely inspired,

would use no metrical version, but contended for the prose translation in the Bible. There was a further confusion arising from the effects of persecution. At one time the people were afraid to sing, lest they should be heard, and so discover their place of meeting; at another time they resorted to singing because it was held to be no violation of the law, and they could not be arrested for it. In one point I differ from Mr. Curwen, in his interesting article in the British Quarterly (October, 1879). I feel confident the people did sing the Psalms out of the Bible; they did not chant them in the narrow sense in which the word chant is now used. They sung them in plain song: that is, on one note, falling perhaps to the third or to the fifth at the end of the sentence; just as the Psalms, and sometimes the Lessons, were read or sung from immemorial times in the churches. I have no doubt in my own mind that the conventional modulated tone of reading, which we now universally adopt, is comparatively a modern practice. I fancy I can myself recollect a time when it was very different,-when not only prayers and psalms and lessons in churches, but even extempore prayers in chapels were uttered in a monotonous tone on a high key, with a kind of wailing sound, very different from the soft and modulated voice which among educated people is everywhere now to be heard. It seems to me that these good people, who, "so they said," could not sing a metrical psalm, could easily sing in a monotone the Psalms in the Bible, following the lead of the minister, or one who could from practice regulate the music.

This use, however, whatever was its nature, was not what those who advocated singing demanded. They wanted to sing metrical psalms to a psalm tune, especially at the Lord's Supper. They thought the Scripture clearly taught them, in the example of our Lord and His disciples, at this service, to "sing a hymn." It was extremely difficult to find any psalm adapted to the service. The 23rd Psalm, and about twenty or thirty verses selected from the whole psalter, were used over and over in a way which even then did not commend itself to the popular taste. A further attempt to sing a psalm at the close of the service was met as the psalm at the Lord's Supper had been,— with very determined hostility: the men put on their hats as a silent protest, or they left the place before the singing began. It is still more difficult to understand the objection to the use of books, as an improvement upon the practice of "lining out." as it was called. In the Baptist general assembly, held at Taunton in the year 1699, a resolution was passed: "We humbly think that those who are not for the practice of singing at the

Lord's Supper, may, without wrong to their consciences, leave those to their liberty, who are for singing, to stay and sing in the same places where the Supper is administered after those who are not for singing are gone; and this, we think, will be much more honourable to the name of God, and our holy profession, than to send away dissatisfied members by recommendation."-Ivimey, History of the Baptists, p. 540.

This, then, was the furthest advance in Congregational Psalmody in the year 1700. The metrical version of Sternhold and Hopkins was used in the churches: the verses were lined out, and the tune led by the clerk. Among the Presbyterians and Independents selected metrical psalms were sung either during the service or at the end of it; but with the Baptists the practice of singing had been adopted only in a very few places : even where it was adopted it was stipulated that the service should be wholly concluded, and, at the Lord's Supper, the collection made before the Psalm was sung. At one of the principal chapels in London (Devonshire Square), singing was commenced with these limitations in 1710. In Maze Pond Chapel, which had separated from its parent church to avoid the singing, it was not begun till 1735. No one, I should think, with such evidence before him will accept the assertion without separate proof in every case, that Dr. Watts' Psalms and Hymns were 'every where welcomed with delight, and eagerly adopted by Nonconformists in public worship." Dr. Watts tells us that on the Sunday after his ordination, March 29th, 1702, they sung a Gospel hymn, from Rev. i. 5, 6, 7, at the Lord's Supper; probably the first English hymn that had been sung in Divine Service in London. No doubt this was the famous Southampton hymn, No. 271, in this collection. We are told further, in the records of this congregation, that in the year 1723 they sung two psalms and hymns at every service: it is not mentioned what they were, but I have no doubt that in his own meeting his own Psalms and Hymns are intended.-Rippon's Register, last vol., pp. 558, 593.

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There was one odd exception to the rejection of "human compositions." A hymn was sung on a week-day on the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, and perhaps on some other occasions of national thanksgiving. I remember, about 1820, hearing a very aged man tell a story which a boy would not be likely to forget. He said that forty years ago he had heard the parish clerk of Bildeston, in Suffolk, on the 5th of November

give out, "A hymn of my own composing" (a hume of my own composin'). He then gravely read the first verse :

"That was a wicked thing
Which sinners did conspire,
To blow up the Par-li-a-ment
With gunn-á-powder fire."

I have never heard the story since, or seen it in print; but I have no doubt it is an old legend which has its locality in many other places besides Bildeston, and has been attested in each place by eye and ear witnesses.

(See page xxxvi.)

Glorious

In tune 313, there is an unpleasant reminder of Apollo," very slowly sung; in tune 197, of Calcott's Glee, "Harold the Valiant;" in tune 24, of Signor Contino's song, "Si voul ballara," in Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro."

ERRATA.

On page xxviii for two read too.

On page xxii for superceded read superseded.