exchanges the idioms of David for more prosaic idioms, his editors are accused of trespassing on vested rights, when they reinstate the inspired phrases in the place of Dr. Watts's acknowledged innovations. They are accused of injustice when they substitute the biblical phrase "Within the tents of sin," for Watts's drawling line, " In pleasurable sin." Although many of his departures from the sacred text are needed, yet some of them are unwarrantable. What and where would be the end of the obloquy poured on a modern editor, who should interpolate into one of Watts's hymns, such stanzas as the following, which he has thrust into the old Hebrew lyric? In that magnificent eighth Psalm, which begins: "O Lord, our God, how wondrous great, Is thine exalted name," we find the sixth stanza devoted to one of our Lord's miracles: The waves lay spread beneath his feet; And fish at his command, Bring their large shoals to Peter's net, As the prince of English psalmists has changed not barely the words, but also the images and the ideas of the text which he versified, so have succeeding lyrists modified the style of the hymns transfused by them from the Greek, Latin, German, French, and Welch tongues. Luther's imitation of the old "Media in Vita," and his looser imitation of the "Veni Sancte Spiritus;" the versions of the hymns of Gregory, Ambrose, Bernard, Thomas von Caelano; Wesley's translations from Gerhard and other German lyrists, abound with deviations from the original text. The favorite lyric, "Guide me, O thou great Jehovah," is rather more distant from the old Welsh, than Walter Scott's lines, "That day of wrath, that dreadful day," are different from the old "Dies Irae." All the English translations of Gerhard's passion hymn, "O sacred head, now wounded," differ from the original German, as that, in its turn, is diverse from the Latin ode on which it is founded. In fact a literal translation of any, and especially an ancient, poem, must be too artificial and frigid for an English or American worshipper. As our versions of foreign lyrics are necessarily accommodated to our Anglo-Saxon tastes, so we have several favorite songs founded on antique English poems. They disagree unnecessarily, sometimes, with the stanzas from which they are derived; but even this disagreement illustrates the truth that our hymnody, as well as psalmody, has adopted the fundamental principle of departing from the original text. The hymn extracted from Milton's poem on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, is a signal example of this free accommcdation. At least four highly acceptable hymns have been culled from an old English poem, the MS. of which is now in the British Museum, and begins with the well-known words: "Jerusalem, my happy home." There is no question that, in several particulars, the original of these hymns is better than either and all of the abridgments and imitations; yet, for various reasons, the original cannot be introduced into our hymn books. Not only private hymns, but also the standard psalms of the English church, began to be altered very soon after they were printed. The first edition of the entire Psalter versified, and authorized to be sung in the church of England, was published in 1562, and contains in the very first stanza of the first psalm, a variation from Sternhold's original text, printed in 1549, and 1552. The edition of 1696 exhibits numerous variations from that of 1562, and the edition of 1726 adds yet more and greater amendments. The version by Tate and Brady supplanted that by Sternhold and Hopkins; but this new version never maintained a uniform text. What is true of the hymns, is also true of the tunes; they have all been varied to meet the real or the imagined wants of various ages. Some of the amendments have been illadvised; but the practice and the theory of the church has been in favor of some innovations adapted to new exigencies. § 8. The principle of deviating from another's text, is substantially the principle of quoting another's words. When we make a quotation from a writer, we need not quote everything which that writer has affirmed. We may cite one-half, or one-eighth, or one verse, or one clause of the one hundred and nineteenth psalm, without imposing on ourselves an obligation to repeat the whole. We may quote the entire fifteen stanzas of Tate and Brady's lyric: "Let all the land with shouts of joy," etc., or we may quote only four of them, or only four couplets, or four phrases, or four words. If the substance of the psalm be thus derived from those veteran hymnologists, the whole may, in an undiscriminating style, be ascribed to them, while it is understood that, in stricter speech, there must be some exceptions and abatements. We often pay honor to Watts, as the original versifier of the psalms and hymns ascribed to him. But he has frequently and frankly confessed his obligation to preceding writers. His versions of the 6th and 63d psalms are in great degree borrowed from those of Dr. Patrick; his imitations of the 21st, 112th and 139th psalms are largely taken from those of Tate and Brady. Many of his admirable "first lines," are transferred from the Psalter of Sir John Denham. Some of these psalms cannot properly be ascribed to the sole authorship of Dr. Watts, as they are by Dr. Worcester and others. If they be attributed to any versifiers, they should be referred in a general way to Watts and Tate and Brady, or Dr. Patrick or Sir John Denham, from whom the characteristic features of them were borrowed. It is further evident that these altered forms of the psalms must have "confused" the minds of worshippers in 1719, as much as other quotations have "created disturbance and confusion" in the nineteenth century. The old forms of these psalms were inwrought into the fond associations of thousands. The "new version" of Tate and Brady was an authorized part of the English church service. The dissenting poet of Southampton "dislocated" the favorite stanzas of men, "inverted" the order of long-cherished phrases, impaired the "uniformity" of worship, etc. These were real evils. Were they not counterbalanced by superior advantages? It is also evident, that the charge of "plagiarism," wrongly made against recent poets who have borrowed lines from their predecessors, may, with equal propriety, and, we prefer to say, with equal impropriety, be made against the very prince of our sacred lyrists. From the days of Homer down to those of Shakspeare, from Shakspeare to Longfellow, men have blended with their own verses the phrases, the metaphors, the prevailing air and tone of other poems. The principle on which these and other poets have incorporated the words of preceding writers with their own words, is the very principle on which the lyrists of the sanctuary have constructed hymns embodying entire stanzas from their predecessors. They have borrowed sometimes more, sometimes less, from lyrics in which they discovered elements too precious to be lost; but whether more or less, they esteemed the borrowed words as substantially a quotation, and equally justifiable with every other quotation. In all our more popular hymn books, there are what may be termed composite lyrics, which are made up of extracts from other songs, and which fuse into one hymn the better portions of two or three. In the Presbyterian Old School Collection, the 14th, 21st, 33d, 66th, 75th, and 124th Psalms; the 129th, 139th, 169th, 174th, 381st, 559th, 601st hymns, are either "composite lyrics," or else contain new interpolated lines or stanzas; so in the Presbyterian New School collection, are psalm 21; hymns, 6, 137, 1 When we begin to insist on entire originality in a hymn, we know not where we can end. Pope writes: He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, Dr. Doddridge was no plagiarist, and still wrote: He comes from thickest films of vice To clear the mental ray, And on the eye-balls of the blind 205, 350, 533, 553, 624, 661, and others; likewise in the Connecticut Collection, are the 152d, 220th, 393d, 373d, 699th, and other hymns; also in Mr. Beecher's Plymouth Collection, are the 75th, 215th, 264th, 273rd, 545th, 688th, 813th, 1113th, 1158th, 1256th, 1291st, 1317th, 1318th, and other hymns. § 9. Difficulty of Ascertaining the Original Text of some Hymns. "If four persons have used four different selections [of lyrics], it will be found on comparison that many a verse has four different readings, while perhaps the original differs from them all; in coming, therefore, to the use of one book, three of them at least must find a different reading from that with which they are familiar. In some popular hymns, the various readings are so numerous that identity is almost lost, and the original cannot now be ascertained."1 This fact suggests the reason why it has become so common to condemn certain 'phrases as departures from the original, when in fact they are returns to it. The author's own words have been stigmatized as innovations, even in a lyric so celebrated as: Lo! on a narrow neck of land, Secure, insensible! etc. O God, my inmost soul convert, The Village Hymns of Dr. Nettleton, the manual commonly known as Worcester's Watts, the Presbyterian N. S. Collection, the Reformed Dutch Hymn Book, and more than one Episcopal Selection, substitute for the second and fifth of the preceding lines: "Yet how insensible," " And deeply on my thoughtless heart." These latter readings have been P. vi. Preface to the fifty-third edition of the English Baptist Selection of Hymns, 2 See Sabbath Hymn Book, Hymn 495. |