We hear the expression of a book being "worth its weight in gold." "The Bay Psalm-Book," in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society, weighs nine ounces, hence Mr. Vanderbilt paid at least seven times its weight in gold for his precious book. Lowndes's "Bibliographers' Manual" says, "This volume, which is extremely rare and would at an auction in America produce from four to six thousand dollars, is familiarly termed 'The Bay Psalm Book.'" This must have been intended to be printed four to six hundred dollars, and is about as correct as the remainder of the description in that manual.
The copy which is spoken of by Mr. Stevens as being in the Bodleian Library at Oxford was once the property of Bishop Tanner, the famous antiquary. Thus it is seen that there are seven copies at least of the first edition of "The Bay Psalm-Book" now in existence in America, instead of "five or at the most six," as a recent writer in "The Magazine of American History" states.
And of all the manifold later editions of the New England Psalm-Book comparatively few copies now remain. Occasionally one is discovered in an old church library or seen in the collection of an antiquary. It is usually found to bear on its titlepage the name of its early owner, and often, also, in a different handwriting, the simple record and date of his death. Tender little memorial postils are frequently written on the margins of the pages: "Sung this the day Betty was baptized"--"This Psalm was sung at Mothers Funeral" "Gods Grace help me to heed this word." Sometimes we see on the blank pages, in a fine, cramped handwriting, the record of the births and deaths of an entire family. More frequently still we find the familiar and hackneyed verses of ancient titlepage lore, such as are usually seen on the blank leaves of old Bibles. This script was written in a "Bay Psalm-Book" of the sixteenth edition, and with the characteristic indifference of our New England forefathers for tiresome repetition, or possibly with their disdain of novelty, was seen on each and every blank page of the book:--
"Israel Balch, His Book,
God give him Grace theirin to look
And when the Bell for him doth toal
May God have mearcy on his Sole."
What the diction lacked in variety is quite made up, however, in the spelling, which was painstakingly different on each page.
Another Psalm-Book bore, inscribed in an elegant, minute handwriting, these lines, which were probably intended for verse, since the first word of each line commenced with a capital letter:--
"Abednego Prime His Book
When he withein these pages looks
May he find Grace to sing therein
Seventeen hundred and forty-seven."
This is certainly pretty bad poetry,--bad enough to be worthy a place in "The Bay Psalm Book,"--but is also a most noble, laudable, and necessary aspiration; for power of Grace was plainly needed to enable Abednego or any one else to sing from those pages; and our pious New England forefathers must have been under special covenant of grace when they persevered against such obstacles and under such overwhelming disadvantages in having singing in their meetings.
Another copy of the old New England Psalm-Book was thus inscribed:--
"Elam Noyes His Book
You children of the name of Noyes
Make Jesus Christ your only choyse."
The early members of the Noyes family all seemed to be exceedingly and properly proud of this rhyming couplet; it formed a sort of patent of nobility. They wrote the pious injunction to their descendants in their Psalm-Books and their Bibles, in their wills, their letters; and they, with the greatest unanimity of feeling, had it cut upon their several tombstones. It was their own family motto,--their totem, so to speak.
In a New England Psalm-Book in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society there is written in the distinct handwriting of Isaiah Thomas these explanatory words:--
"This was the Pocket Psalm-book of John Symmons who died at Salem at 100 years. He was born at North Salem went a-fishing in his youth was a prisoner with the Indians in Nova Scotia afterwards followed his labours in a Shipyard and till great old age laboured upon his lands and died without pain Aet 100. 31 October, 1791. He was a worthy conscientious and well-informed man and agreeable until the last hour of his life."
I can think of no pleasanter tribute to be given to the character of any one than the simple words, "He was agreeable until the last hour of his life." What share in the production and maintenance of that amiable and enviable condition of disposition may be attributed to the ever-present influence of the Pocket Psalm-Book cannot be known; but the constant study of the holy though clumsy verses may have largely caused that sweet agreeability which so characterized John Symmons.
There lies now before me a copy of one of the early editions of "The Bay Psalm-Book." As I open the little dingy octavo volume, with its worn and torn edges, I am conscious of that distinctive, penetrating, old-booky smell,--that ancient, that fairly obsolete odor that never is exhaled save from some old, infrequently opened, leather-bound volume, which has once in years far past been much used and handled. A book which has never been familiarly used and loved cannot have quite the same antique perfume. The mouldering, rusty, flaky leather comes off in a yellow-brown powder on my fingers as I take up the book; and the cover nearly breaks off as I open it, though with tender, book-loving usage. The leather, though strong and honest, has rotted or disintegrated until it has almost fallen into dust. Across the yellow, ill-printed pages there runs, zig-zagging sideways and backwards crab-fashion on his crooked brown legs, one of those pigmy book-spiders,--those ugly little bibliophiles that seem flatter even than the close-pressed pages that form their home.
Fair Puritan hands once held this dingy little book, honest Puritan eyes studied its ill-expressed words, and sweet Puritan lips sang haltingly but lovingly from its pages. This was "Cicely Morse Her Book" in the year 1710, and bears on many a page her name and the simple little couplet:--
"In youth I praise
And walk thy ways."
And pretty it were to see Cicely in her praiseful and godly-walking youth, as she stood primly clad in her sad-colored gown and long apron, with a quoif or ciffer covering her smooth hair, and a red whittle on her slender shoulders, a-singing in the old New England meeting-house through the long, tedious psalms, which were made longer and more tedious still by the drawling singing and the deacons' "lining." Truly that were a pretty sight for our eyes, and for other eyes than ours, without doubt. Staid Puritan youth may have glanced soberly across the old meeting-house at the fair girl as she sung the Song of Solomon, with its ardent wording, without any very deep thought of its symbolic meaning:--
"Let him with kisses of his mouth
be pleased me to kiss,
Because much better than the wine
thy loving-kindness is.
To troops of horse in Pharoahs coach,
my love, I thee compare,
Thy neck with chains, with jewels new,
thy cheeks full comely are.
Borders of gold with silver studs
for thee make up we will,
Whilst that the king at's table sits
my spikenard yields her smell.
Like as of myrrh a bundle is
my well-belov'd to be,
Through all the night betwixt my breasts
his lodging-place shall be;
My love as in Engedis vines
like camphire-bunch to me,
So fair, my love, thou fair thou art
thine eyes as doves eyes be."
Love and music were ever close companions; and the singing-school--that safety-valve of young New England life--had not then been established or even thought of, and I doubt not many a warm and far from Puritanical love-glance was cast from the "doves-eyes" across the "alley" of the old meeting-house at Cicely as she sung.
But Cicely vas not young when she last used the old psalm-book. She may have been stately and prosperous and seated in the dignified "foreseat;" she may have been feeble and infirm in her place in the "Deaf Pue;" and she may have been careworn and sad, tired of fighting against poverty, worn with dread of fierce Indians, weary of the howls of the wolves in the dense forests so near, and home-sick and longing for the yonderland, her "faire Englishe home;" but were she sad or careworn or heartsick, in her treasured psalm-book she found comfort,--comfort in the halting verses as well as in the noble thoughts of the Psalmist. And the glamour of eternal, sweet-voiced youth hangs around the gentle Cicely, through the power of the inscription in the old psalm-book,--
"In youth I praise
And walk thy ways,"--
the romance of the time when Cicely, the Puritan commonwealth, the whole New World was young.
XIII
Sternhold and Hopkins' Version of the Psalms.
The metrical translation of the Psalms known as Sternhold and Hopkins' Version was doubtless used in the public worship of God in many of the early New England settlements, especially those of the Connecticut River Valley, though the old register of the town of Ipswich is the only local record that gives positive proof of its use in the Puritan church. In 1693 an edition of Sternhold and Hopkins was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was not a day nor a land where a whole edition of such a book would be printed for reference or comparison only; and to thus publish the work of the English psalmists in the very teeth of the popularity of "The Bay Psalm Book" is to me a proof that Sternhold and Hopkins' Version was employed far more extensively in the colonial churches and homes than we now have records of, and than many of our church historians now fancy. Certainly the familiar English psalm-books must have been brought across the ocean and used temporarily until the newly landed colonists could acquire the version of Ainsworth or of the New England divines.
An everlasting interest attaches to this metrical arrangement of the Psalms, to Americans as well as to Englishmen, because it was the earliest to be adopted in public worship in England. According to Strype, in his Memorial, the singing of psalms was allowed in England as early as 1548, but it was not until 1562 that the versified psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins were appended to the Book of Common Prayer. Sternhold and Hopkins' Version was also the first to give all the psalms of David in English verse to the English public.
Very little is known of the authors of this version. Sternhold was educated at Oxford; was Groom of the Robes to Henry VIII. and Edward VI., was a "bold and busy Calvinist," and died in 1549. The little of interest told of John Hopkins is that he was a minister and schoolmaster, and that he assisted the work of Sternhold.
The full reason for Sternhold's pious work is thus given by an old English author, Wood: "Being a most zealous reformer and a very strict liver he became so scandalyzed at the loose amorous songs used in the court that he forsooth turned into English metre fifty-one of Davids Psalms, and caused musical notes to be set to them, thinking thereby that the courtiers would sing them instead of their sonnets; but they did not, only some few excepted." The preface printed in the book stated Sternhold's wish and intention that the verses should be sung by Englishmen, not only in church, but "moreover in private houses for their godly solace and comfort; laying apart all ungodly Songs & Ballads which tend only to the nourishment of vice & corrupting of youth."
The first edition contained nineteen psalms only, which were all versified by Sternhold. It was published in 1548 or 1549, under this title, "Certayn Psalmes chosen out of the Psalter of Daid and drawen into English Metre by Thomas Sternhold Groom of ye Kynges Maiesties Roobes." I believe no copy of this edition is now known to exist.
The praise which Sternhold received for his pious rhymes had the same effect upon him as did similar encomiums upon his predecessor, the French psalm-writer Marot,--it encouraged him to write more psalm-verses.
The second edition was printed in 1549, and contained thirty-seven psalms by Sternhold and seven by Hopkins. It bore this title, "Al such Psalmes of David as Thomas Sternehold late grome of his maiesties robes did in his lyfe tyme drawe into English metre." It was a well-printed book and copies are still preserved in the British Museum and the Public Library of Cambridge, England. This second and enlarged edition was dedicated, in a four-page preface, to King Edward VI., and a pretty story is told of the young king's interest in the verses. The delicate and gentle boy of twelve heard Sternhold when "singing them to his organ" as Strype says, and wandered in to hear the music and listen to the words. So great was his awakened interest in the sacred songs that Sternhold resolved to write in verse for him still further of the psalms. The dedication reads: "Seeing that your tender and godly zeale dooth more delight in the holye songs of veritie than in any fayncd rymes of vanytie, I am encouraged to travayle further in the said booke of Psalmes." This young king restored to the English people the free reading of the Bible, which his wicked father, Henry VIII., had forbidden them, and he was of a sincerely religious nature. He also was a music-lover, and encouraged the art as much as his short life and troubled reign permitted.
Hopkins also wrote a preface for his share of the work, in which he spoke with much modesty of himself and much praise of Sternhold. He said his own verses were not "in any parte to bee compared with his [Sternhold's] most exquisite dooynges." He thinks, however, that his owne are "fruitfull though they bee not fyne."
The third edition, in 1556, contained fifty-one psalms; the fourth, in 1560, had sixty-seven psalms; the fifth, in 1561, increased the number to eighty-seven; and in 1562 or 1563 the whole book of psalms appeared. Other authors had some share in this work: Norton, Whyttyngham (a Puritan divine who married Calvin's sister), Kethe, who wrote the 100th Psalm, "All people that on earth do dwell," which is still seen in some of our hymn-books. Of all these men, sly old Thomas Fuller truthfully and quaintly said, "They were men whose piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more of Jordan than of Helicon."
For over one hundred years from the first publication there was a steady outpour of editions of these Psalms. Before the year 1600 there were seventy-four editions,--a most astonishing number for the times; and from 1600 to 1700 two hundred and thirty-five editions. In 1868 six hundred and one editions were known, including twenty-one in this nineteenth century and doubtless there were still others uncatalogued and forgotten. Among other editions this version had in the time of Charles II. two in shorthand, one printed by "Thos. Cockerill at the Three Legs and Bible in the Poultry." Two copies of these editions are in the British Museum. They are tiny little 64mos, of which half a dozen could be laid side by side on the palm of the hand. Sternhold and Hopkins' Version had also in 1694 the honor of having arranged for it a Concordance.
Upon no production of the religious Muse in the English tongue has greater diversity of criticism been displayed or more extraordinary or varied judgment been rendered than upon Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms. A world of testimony could be adduced to fortify any view which one chose to take of them. At the time of their early publication they induced a swarm of stinging lampoons and sneering comments, that often evince most plainly that a difference in religious belief or scorn for an opposing sect brought them forth. The poetry of that and the succeeding century abounds in allusions to them. Phillips wrote:--
"Singing with woful noise
Like a crack'd saints bell jarring in the steeple,
Tom Sternhold's wretched prick-song for the people."
Another poet, a courtier, wrote:--
"Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms
When they translated David's psalms."
But I see no signs of qualmishness; they show to me rather a healthy sturdiness as one of their strongest characteristics.
Pope at a later day wrote:--
"Not but there are who merit other palms
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms.
The boys and girls whom charity maintains
Implore your help in these pathetic strains.
How could devotion touch the country pews
Unless the gods bestowed a proper muse."
Wesley sneered at this version, saying, "When it is seasonable to sing praises to God we do it, not in the scandalous doggrel of Hopkins and Sternhold, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such as would provoke a critic to turn Christian rather than a Christian to turn critic."
The edition of 1562 was printed with the notes of melodies that were then called Church Tunes. They formed the basis of all future collections of psalm-music for over a century. They soon were published in harmony in four parts, "which may be sung to all musical instrumentes set forth for the encrease of vertue and abolyshing of other vayne and tryfling ballads." In 1592 a very important collection of psalm-tunes was published to use with Sternhold and Hopkins' words. It is called "The Whole Booke of Psalmes: with their wonted tunes as they are sung in Churches composed into four parts." This book is noteworthy because in it the tunes are for the first time named after places, as is still the custom. The music contained square or oblong notes and also lozenge-shaped notes. The square note was a "semy-brave," the lozenge-shaped note was a "prycke" or a "mynymme," and "when there is a prycke by the square note, that prycke is half as much as the note that goeth before."
Music at that time was said to be pricked, not printed,--the word being derived from the prick or dot which formed the head of the note. Any song which was printed in various parts was called a prick-song, to distinguish it from one sung extemporaneously or by ear. The word prick-song occurs not only in all the musical books, but in the literature of the time, and in Shakespeare. "Tom Sternhold's" songs were entitled to be called prick-songs because they had notes of music printed with them. Many of the tunes in this collection were taken from the Genevan Psalter and Luther's Psalm-Book, or from Marot and Beza's French Book of Psalms. Hence they were irreverently called "Genevan Jiggs," and "Beza's Ballets."
There is much difference shown in the wording of these various editions of Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms. The earlier ones were printed as Sternhold wrote them; but with the Genevan editions began great and astonishing alterations. Warton, who was no lover of Sternhold and Hopkins' verses, calling them "the disgrace of sacred poetry," said of these attempted improvements, with vehemence, that "many stanzas already too naked and weak like a plain old Gothic edifice stripped of its signatures of antiquity, have lost that little and almost only strength and support which they derived from ancient phrases." Other old critics thought that Sternhold, could he return to life, would hardly know his own verses.
This is Sternhold's rendering of the Psalm in the edition of 1549:--
1. The heavens & the fyrmamente
do wondersly declare
The glory of God omnipotent
his workes and what they are.
2. Ech daye declareth by his course
an other daye to come
And By the night we know lykwise
a nightly course to run.
3. There is no laguage tong or speche
where theyr sound is not heard,
In al the earth and coastes thereof
theyr knowledge is conferd.
4. In them the lord made royally
a settle for the sunne
Where lyke a Gyant joyfully
he myght his iourney runne.
5. And all the skye from ende to ende
he compast round about
No man can hyde hym from his heate
but he wll fynd hym out
In order to show the liberties taken with the text we can compare with it the Genevan edition printed in 1556. The second verse of that presumptuous rendering reads,--
"The wonderous works of God appears
by every days success
The nyghts which likewise their race runne
the selfe same thinges expresse."
The fourth,--
"In them the lorde made for the sunne
a place of great renoune
Who like a bridegrome rady-trimed
doth from his chamber come."
The expression "rady-trimed," meaning close-shaven, is often instanced as one of the inelegancies of Sternhold, but he surely ought not to be held responsible for the "improvements" of the Genevan edition published after his death.
The Genevan editors also invented and inserted an extra verse:--
"And as a valiant champion
who for to get a prize
With joye doth hast to take in hande
some noble enterprise."
The fifth verse is thus altered:--
"And al the skye from ende to ende
he compasseth about,
Nothing can hyde it from his heate
but he wil finde it out."
I cannot express the indignation with which I read these belittling and weakening alterations and interpolations; they are so unjust and so degrading to the reputation of Sternhold. It seems worse than forgery--worse than piracy; for instead of stealing from the defenceless dead poet, it foists upon him a spurious and degrading progeny; there is no word to express this tinkering libellous literary crime.
Cromwell had a prime favorite among these psalms; it was the one hundred and ninth and is known as the "cursing psalm." Here are a few lines from it:--
"As he did cursing love, it shall
betide unto him so,
And as he did not blessing love
it shall be farre him fro,
As he with cursing clad himselfe
so it like water shall
Into his bowels and like oyl
Into his bones befall.
As garments let it be to him
to cover him for aye
And as a girdle wherewith he
may girded be alway."
Another authority gives the "cursing psalm" as the nineteenth of King James's version; but there is nothing in "The heavens declare the glory of God," &c. to justify the nickname of "cursing."
It is said when the tyrannical ruler Andros visited New Haven and attended church there that (Sternhold and Hopkins' Version being used) the fearless minister very inhospitably gave out the fifty-second psalm to be sung. The angry governor, who took it as a direct insult, had to listen to the lining and singing of these words, and I have no doubt they were roared out with a lusty will:--
1. Why dost thou tyrant boast thyself
thy wicked deeds to praise
Dost thou not know there is a God
whose mercies last alwaies?
2. Why doth thy mind yet still deuise
such wisked wiles to warp?
Thy tongue untrue, in forging lies
is like a razer sharp.
4. Thou dost delight in fraude & guilt
in mischief bloude and wrong:
Thy lips have learned the flattering stile
O false deceitful tongue.
5. Therefore shall God for eye confounde
and pluck thee from thy place.
Thy seed and root from out the grounde
and so shall thee deface;
6. The just when they behold thy fall
with feare will praise the Lord:
And in reproach of thee withall
cry out with one accord.
When the unhappy King Charles fled from Oxford to a camp of troops he also was insulted by having the same psalm given out in his presence by the boorish chaplain of the troops. After the cruel words were ended the heartsick king rose and asked the soldiers to sing the fifty-sixth psalm. Whenever I read the beautiful and pathetic words, as peculiarly appropriate as if they had been written for that occasion only, I can see it all before me,--the great camp, the angry minister, the wretched but truly royal king; and I can hear the simple and noble song as it pours from the lips of hundreds of rude soldiers:
1. Have mercy Lord on mee I pray
for man would mee devour.
He fighteth with me day by day
and troubleth me each hour.
2. Mine enemies daily enterprise
to swallow mee outright
To fight against me many rise
O thou most high of might
5. What things I either did or spake
they wrest them at thier wil:
And all the councel that they take
is how to work me il.
6. They all consent themselves to hide
close watch for me to lay:
They spie my pathes, and snares have layd
to take my life away.
7. Shall they thus scape on mischief set,
thou God on them wilt frowne:
For in his wrath he will not let
to throw whole kingdomes downe.
It would perhaps be neither just nor conducive to proper judgment to gather only a florilege of noble verses from Sternhold and Hopkins' Version and point out none of the "weedy-trophies," the quaint and even uncouth lines which disfigure the work. We must, however, in considering and judging them, remember that many words and even phrases which at present seem rather ludicrous or undignified had, in the sixteenth century, significations which have now become obsolete, and which were then neither vulgar nor unpoetical. I also have been forced to take my selections from a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins printed in 1599, and bound up with a "Breeches Bible;" for I have access to no earlier edition. Sternhold and Hopkins themselves may not be in truth responsible for many of the crudities. Hopkins, in his rendition of the 12th verse of the seventy-fourth Psalm, thus addresses the Deity:--
"Why doost withdraw thy hand abacke
and hide it in thy lappe?
O pluck it out and bee not slacke
to give thy foes a rap."
"Rap" may have meant a heavier, a mightier blow then than it does now-a-days.
Here is another curious verse from the seventieth psalm,--
"Confounde them that apply
and seeke to make my shame
And at my harme doe laugh & crye
So So there goeth the game."
The sixth verse of the fifty-eighth psalm is rendered thus:--
"O God breake thou thier teeth at once
within thier mouthes throughout;
The tuskes that in thier great jawbones
like Lions whelpes hang out."
Another verse reads thus:--
"The earth did quake, the raine pourde down
Heard men great claps of thunder
And Mount Sinai shooke in such state
As it would cleeve in sunder."
One verse of the thirty-fifth psalm reads thus:--
"The belly-gods and flattering traine
that all good things deride
At me doe grin with greate disdaine
and pluck thier mouths aside.
Lord when wilt thou amend this geare
why dost thou stay & pause?
O rid my soul, my onely deare,
out of these Lions clawes."
The word tush occurs frequently and quaintly: "Tush I an sure to fail;" "Tush God forgetteth this."
"And with a blast doth puff against
such as would him correct
Tush Tush saith he I have no dread."
Here are some of the curious expressions used:--
"Though gripes of grief and pangs full sore
shall lodge with us all night."
"For why their hearts were nothing lent
to Him nor to His trade."
"Our soul in God hath joy and game."
"They are so fed that even for fat
thier eyes oft-times out start."
"They grin they mow they nod thier heads."
"While they have war within thier hearts."
as butter are thier words."
"Divide them Lord & from them pul
thier devilish double-tongue."
"My silly soul uptake."
"And rained down Manna for them to eat
a food of mickle-wonder."
"For joy I have both gaped & breathed."
But it is useless to multiply these selections, which, viewed individually, are certainly absurd and inelegant. They often indicate, however, the exact thought of the Psalmist, and are as well expressed as the desire to be literal as well as poetic will permit them to be. Sternhold's verses compare quite favorably, when looked at either as a whole or with regard to individual lines, with those of other poets of his day, for Chaucer was the only great poet who preceded him.
I must acknowledge quite frankly in the face of critics of both this and the past century that I always read Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms with a delight, a satisfaction that I can hardly give reasons for. Many of the renderings, though unmelodious and uneven, have a rough vigor and a sweeping swing that is to me wonderfully impressive, far more so than many of the elegant and polished methods of modern versifiers. And they are so thoroughly antique, so devoid of any resemblance to modern poems, that I love them for their penetrating savor of the olden times; and they seem no more to be compared and contrasted with modern verses than should an old castle tower be compared with a fine new city house. We prefer the latter for a habitation, it is infinitely better in every way, but we can admire also the rough grandeur of the old ruin.
XIV
Other Old Psalm-Books.
There are occasionally found in New England on the shelves of old libraries, in the collections of antiquaries, or in the attics of old farm-houses, hidden in ancient hair-trunks or painted sea-chests or among a pile of dusty books in a barrel,--there are found dingy, mouldy, tattered psalm-books of other versions than the ones which we know were commonly used in the New England churches. Perhaps these books were never employed in public worship in the new land; they may have been brought over by some colonist, in affectionate remembrance of the church of his youth, and sung from only with tender reminiscent longing in his own home. But when groups of settlers who were neighbors and friends in their old homes came to America and formed little segregated communities by themselves, there is no doubt that they sung for a time from the psalm-books that they brought with them.
A rare copy is sometimes seen of Marot and Beza's French Psalm-book, brought to America doubtless by French Huguenot settlers, and used by them until (and perhaps after) the owners had learned the new tongue. Some of the Huguenots became members of the Puritan churches in America, others were Episcopalians. In Boston the Fancuils, Baudoins, Boutineaus, Sigourneys, and Johannots were all Huguenots, and attended the little brick church built on School Street in 1704, which was afterwards occupied by the Twelfth Congregational Society of Boston, and in 1788 became a Roman Catholic church.
The pocket psalm-book of Gabriel Bernon, the builder of the old French Fort at Oxford, is one of Marot and Beza's Version, and is still preserved and owned by one of his descendants; other New England families of French lineage cherish as precious relics the French psalm-books of their Huguenot ancestors. There has been in France no such incessant production of new metrical versions of the psalms as in England. From the time of the publication of the first versified psalms in 1540, through nearly three centuries the psalm-book of all French Protestants has been that of Marot and Beza. This French version of the psalms is of special interest to all thoughtful students of the history of Protestantism, because it was the first metrical translation of the psalms ever sung and used by the people; and it was without doubt one of the most powerful influences that assisted in the religious awakening of the Reformation.
Clement Marot was the "Valet of the Bed-chamber to King Francis I.," and was one of the greatest French poets of his time; in fact, he gave his name to a new school of poetry,--"Marotique." He had tried his hand at an immense variety of profane verse, he had written ballades, chansons, pastourelles, vers équivoques, eclogues, laments, complaints, epitaphs, chants-royals, blasons, contreblasons, dizains, huitains, envois; he had been, Warton says, "the inventor of the rondeau and the restorer of the madrigal;" and yet, in spite of his well-known ingenuity and versatility, it occasioned much surprise and even amusement when it was known that the gay poet had written psalm-songs and proposed to substitute them for the love-songs of the French court. I doubt if Marot thought very deeply of the religious influence of his new songs, in spite of Mr. Morley's belief in the versifier's serious intent. He was doubtless interested and perhaps somewhat infected by "Lutheranisme," though perhaps he was more of a free-thinker than a Protestant. He himself said of his faith:--
"I am not a Lutherist
Nor Zuinglian and less Anabaptist,
I am of God through his son Jesus Christ.
I am one who has many works devised
From which none could extract a single line
Opposing itself to the law divine."
And again:--
"Luther did not come down from heaven for me
Luther was not nailed to the cross to be
My Saviour; for my sins to suffer shame,
And I was not baptized in Luther's name.
The name I was baptized in sounds so sweet
That at the sound of it, what we entreat
The Eternal Father gives."
In the year 1540, at the instigation of King Francis, Marot presented a manuscript copy of his thirty new psalm-songs to Charles V., king of Spain, receiving therefor two hundred gold doubloons. Francis encouraged him by further gifts, and so praised his work that the author soon published the thirty in a book which he dedicated to the king; and to which he also prefixed a metrical address to the ladies of France, bidding these fair dames to place their
"doigts sur les espinettes
Pour dire sainctes chansonnettes."
These "sainctes chansonnettes" became at once the rage; courtiers and princes, lords and ladies, ever ready for some new excitement, seized at once upon the novel psalm-songs, and having no special or serious music for them, cheerfully sang the sacred words to the ballad-tunes of the times, and to their gailliards and measures, without apparently any very deep thought of their religious meaning. Disraeli says that each of the royal family and each nobleman chose for his favorite song a psalm expressive of his own feeling or sentiments. The Dauphin, as became a brave huntsman, chose
"Ainsi qu'on vit le cerf bruyre,"
"As the hart panteth after the water-brook,"
and he gayly and noisily sang it when he went to the chase. The Queen chose
"Ne vueilles pas, ô sire,
Me reprendre en ton ire."
"Rebuke me not in thine indignation."
Antony, king of Navarre, sung
"Revenge moy prens la querelle,"
"Stand up, O Lord! to revenge my quarrel,"
to the air of a dance of Poitou. Diane de Poictiers chose
"Du fond de ma pensée."
"From the depth of my heart."
But when from interest in her psalm-song she wished to further read and study the Bible, she was warned from the danger with horror by the Cardinal of Lorraine. This religious awakening and inquiry was of course deprecated and dreaded by the Romish Church; to the Sorbonne all this rage for psalm-singing was alarming enough. What right had the people to sing God's word, "I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall be continually in my mouth"? The new psalm-songs were soon added to the list of "Heretical Books" forbidden by the Church, and Marot fled to Geneva in 1543. He had ere this been under ban of the Church, even under condemnation of death; had been proclaimed a heretic at all the cross-ways throughout the kingdom, and had been imprisoned. But he had been too good a poet and courtier to be lost, and the king had then interested himself and obtained the release of the versatile song writer. The fickle king abandoned for a second time the psalm versifier, who never again returned to France.
The austere and far-seeing Calvin at once adopted Marot's version of the Psalms, now enlarged to the number of fifty, and added them to the Genevan Confession of Faith,--recommending however that they be sung with the grave and suitable strains written, for them by Guillaume Frane.
The collection was completed with the assistance of Theodore Beza, the great theologian, and the demand for the books was so great that the printers could not supply them quickly enough. Ten thousand copies were sold at once,--a vast number for the times.
But Marot was not happy in Geneva with Calvin and the Calvinists, as we can well understand. Beza, in his "History of the French Reformed Churches" said, "He (Marot) had always been bred up in a very bad school, and could not live in subjection to the reformation of the Gospel, and therefore went and spent the rest of his days in Piedmont, which was then in the possession of the king, where he lived in some security under the favor of the governor." He lived less than a year, however, dying in 1544.
These psalms of Marot's passed through a great number and variety of editions. In addition to the Genevan publications, an immense number were printed in England. Nearly all the early editions were elegant books; carefully printed on rich paper, beautifully bound in rich moroccos and leathers, often emblazoned with gold on the covers, and with corners and clasps of precious metals,--they show the wealth and fashion of the owners. When, however, it came to be held an infallible sign of "Lutheranisme" to be a singer of psalms, simpler and cheaper bindings appear; hence the dress of the French Psalm-Book found in New England is often dull enough, but invariably firm and substantial.
These psalms of Marot's are written in a great variety of song-measures, which seem scarcely as solemn and religious as the more dignified and even metres used by the early English writers. Some are graceful and smooth, however, and are canorous though never sonorous. They are pleasing to read with their quaint old spelling and lettering.
In the old Sigourney psalm-book the nineteenth psalm was thus rendered:--
"Les cieux en chaque lieu
La puissance de Dieu
Racourent aux humains
Ce grand entour espars
Publie en toutes parts
L'ouvrage de ses mains.
"Iour apres iour coulant
Du Saigneur va parlant
Par longue experience.
La nuict suivant la nuict,
Nous presche et nous instruicst
De sa grád sapience"
Another much-employed metre was this, of the hundred and thirty-third psalm:--
"Asais aux bors do ce superbe fleuve
Que de Babel les campagnes abreuve,
Nos tristes coeurs ne pensoient qu' à Sion.
Chacun, helas, dans cette affliction
Les yeux en pleurs la morte peinte au visage
Pendit sa harpe aux saules du rivage."
A third and favorite metre was this:--
"Mais sa montagne est un sainct lieu:
Qui viendra done au mont de Dieu?
Qui est-ce qui là tiendra place?
Le homine de mains et coeur lavé,
En vanité non éslevé
Et qui n'a juré en fallace."
Marot wrote in his preface to the psalms:--
"Thrice happy they who shall behold
And listen in that age of gold
As by the plough the laborer strays
And carman 'mid the public ways
And tradesman in his shop shall swell
The voice in psalm and canticle,
Sing to solace toil; again
From woods shall come a sweeter strain,
Shepherd and shepherdess shall vie
In many a tender Psalmody,
And the Creator's name prolong
As rock and stream return their song."
Though these words seem prophetic, the gay and volatile Marot could never have foreseen what has proved one of the most curious facts in religious history,--that from the airy and unsubstantial seed sown by the French courtier in such a careless, thoughtless manner, would spring the great-spreading and deep-rooted tree of sacred song.
Little volumes of the metrical rendering of the Psalms, known as "Tate and Brady's Version," are frequently found in New England. It was the first English collection of psalms containing any smoothly flowing verses. Many of the descendants of the Puritans clung with affection to the more literal renderings of the "New England Psalm-Book," and thought the new verses were "tasteless, bombastic, and irreverent." The authors of the new book were certainly not great poets, though Nahum Tate was an English Poet-Laureate. It is said of him that he was so extremely modest that he was never able to make his fortune or to raise himself above necessity. He was not too modest, however, to dare to make a metrical version of the Psalms, to write an improvement of King Lear, and a continuation of Absalom and Achitophel. Brady--equally modest--translated the Aeneid in rivalry of Dryden. "This translation," says Johnson, "when dragged into the world did not live long enough to cry."
Such commonplace authors could hardly compose a version that would have a stable foundation or promise of long existence. But few of Tate and Brady's hymns are now seen in our church-collections of Hymns and Psalms. To them we owe, however, these noble lines, which were written thus:--
"Be thou, O God, exalted High,
And as thy glory fills the Skie
So let it be on Earth displaid
Till thou art here as There obeyed."
The hymn commencing,--
"My soul for help on God relies,
From him alone my safety flows,"
is also of their composition.
The first edition of these psalms was printed in 1696, and bore this title, "The Book of Psalms, a new version in metre fitted to the tunes used in Churches. By N. Tate and N. Brady." It was dedicated to King William, and though its use was permitted in English churches, it never supplanted Sternhold and Hopkins' Version. In New England Tate and Brady's Psalms became more universally popular,--not, however, without fierce opposing struggles from the older church-members at giving up the venerated "Bay Psalm-Book."
Another version of Psalms which is occasionally found in New England is known as "Patrick's Version." The title is "The Psalms of David in Metre Fitted to the Tunes used in Parish Churches by John Patrick, D.D. Precentor to the Charter House London." A curious feature of this octavo edition of 1701, which I have, is, "An Explication of Some Words of less Common Use For the Benefit of the Common People." Here are a few of the "explications:"--
"Celebrate--Make renown'd.
Climes--Countries differing in length of days.
Detracting--Lessening one's credit.
Fluid--Yielding.
Infest--Annoy.
Theam--Matter of Discourse.
Uncessant--Never ceasing.
Stupemlious--Astonishing."
Baxter said of Patrick, "His holy affection and harmony hath so far reconciled the Nonconformists that diverse of them use his Psalms in their congregation." I doubt if the version were used in New England Nonconformist congregations. Some of his verses read thus:--
"Lord hear the pray'rs and mournfull cries
Of mine afflicted estate,
And with thy Comforts chear my soul,
Before it is too late.
"My days consume away like Smoak
Mine anguish is so great,
My bones are not unlike a hearth
Parched & dry with heat.
"Such is my grief I little else
Can do but sigh and groan.
So wasted is my flesh I'm left
Nothing but skin and bone.
"Like th' Owl and Pelican that dwell
In desarts out of sight,
I sadly do bemoan myself,
In solitude delight.
"The wakeful bird that on Housetops
Sits without company
And spends the night in mournful cries
Leads such a life as I.
"The Ashes I rowl in when I eat
Are tasted with my bread,
And with my Drink are mixed the tears
I plentifully shed."
A version of the Psalms which seems to have demanded and deserved more attention than it received was written by Cotton Mather. He was doomed to disappointment in seeing his version adopted by the New England churches just as his ambitions and hopes were disappointed in many other ways. This book was published in 1718. It was called "Psalterium Americanum. A Book of Psalms in a translation exactly conformed unto the Original; but all in blank verse. Fitted unto the tunes commonly used in the Church." By a curious arrangement of brackets and the use of two kinds of print these psalms could be divided into two separate metres and could be sung to tunes of either long or short metre. After each psalm were introduced explanations written in Mather's characteristic manner,--a manner both scholarly and bombastic. I have read the "Psalterium Americanum" with care, and am impressed with its elegance, finish, and dignity. It is so popular, however, even now-a-days, to jibe at poor Cotton Mather, that his Psalter does not escape the thrusts of laughing critics. Mr. Glass, the English critic, holds up these lines as "one of the rich things:"--
"As the Hart makes a panting cry
For cooling streams of water,
So my soul makes a panting cry
For thee--O Mighty God."
I have read these lines over and over again, and fail to see anything very ludicrous in them, though they might be slightly altered to advantage. Still they may be very absurd and laughable from an English point of view.
So superior was Cotton Mather's version to the miserable verses given in "The Bay Psalm-Book" that one wonders it was not eagerly accepted by the New England churches. Doubtless they preferred rhyme--even the atrocious rhyme of "The Bay Psalm Book." And the fact that the "Psalterium Americanum" contained no musical notes or directions also militated against its use.
Other American clergymen prepared metrical versions of the psalms that were much loved and loudly sung by the respective congregations of the writers. The work of those worthy, painstaking saints we will neither quote nor criticise,--saying only of each reverend versifier, "Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical." Rev. John Barnard, who preached for fifty-four years in Marblehead, published at the age of seventy years a psalm-book for his people. Though it appeared in 1752, a time when "The Bay Psalm Book" was being shoved out of the New England churches, Barnard's Version of the Psalms was never used outside of Marblehead. Rev. Abijah Davis published another book of psalms in which he copied whole pages from Watts without a word of thanks or of due credit, which was apparently neither Christian, clerical nor manly behavior.
Watts's monosyllabic Hymns, which were not universally used in America until after the Revolution, are too well known and are still too frequently seen to need more than mention. Within the last century a flood of new books of psalms of varying merit and existence has poured out upon the New England churches, and filled the church libraries and church, pews, the second-hand book shops, the missionary boxes, and the paper-mills.