For the discussion is uncritical and unfair. One could hardly write three pages and call it, without straining the meaning of words, "history" of American hymnody; the hymn is too prevalent and too important. It is as Edmund Clarence Stedman said, in his "Poets of America," the "kind of verse which is, of all, most common and indispensable." But even the historian's three pages are not devoted to hymnody; they are given over to a strident discussion of what is not hymnody at all, but doggerel about which few persons would need instruction, or about which thoughtful persons would hardly need to argue. Scattered through the pages are such terms as "bathos," "mortuary muse," "banalities of evangelistic song," "sentimental ornateness,' "tawdry sentimentalism." This is indeed fair invective against the tawdry sentimentalism and the like which disfigure many compositions that pass as hymns, but beside the point entirely as regards the true hymn. The things attacked are not American hymnody. We do not condemn all love-songs because there are inane and silly ones. There are good and beautiful love-songs quite different from current trash. There are plenty of medieval religious songs unspeakably maudlin and ridiculous. But that does not condemn medieval hymnody. One must distinguish. These lines from an anonymous hymn of the Middle Ages, O esca vermorum! O missa pulveris! are not gracious and elevating poetry; nor are the following lines from old English times: Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John, I beg, Two for the robbers and one for Christ Jesus. The famous Latin hymn "Gloria, Laus et Honor" has a stanza translated by John Mason Neale: Be thou, Lord, the rider, That to God's holy city Together we may pass. It would hardly be fair to condemn the hymnody of the past by setting up these as fair examples of the hymnody, and hurling indiscriminate expletives at the whole. One must of course admit that there has been published very solemnly much weak and ridiculous hymnic verse; the appeal of a great hymn is so general, and its clarity and simplicity make it appear so easy to do, that many persons attempt to write hymns who cannot write well at all, much less write in this very difficult form. The failures are so many and so obvious that these critics forget the splendidly successful efforts that make up the hymn-book. There is to be distinguished from all banalities a volume of true elect American hymns-poems of impeccable taste and undeniable power. The standard set by such hymnists as Timothy Dwight, John Quincy Adams, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Phoebe Cary, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sidney Lanier, Phillips Brooks, Richard Watson Gilder, and John Hay is high. And though the standard is high, it is reached by a sufficient number to make a book of rich and beautiful religious song. In his "English Lyrical Poetry," for further example of thoughtless criticisms, Professor Edward Bliss Reed adopts a sportive attitude when he comes to consider the hymn-if it may be called considering this important province of poetry merely to poke irrelevant fun at Isaac Watts by quoting Dr. Johnson's remark about Watts's innocence of life. Isaac Watts was in fact a courageous, noble man, a classical scholar, and a lyrical poet of frequent loftiness and delicacy. Dr. Johnson says in his short "Life of Watts," "Happy will be the reader whose mind is disposed by his verse or his prose to imitate him in all but his Non-Conformity." And further these are the Great Lexicographer's words for the modern critic "Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the man. "" Isaac Watts's hymns have stood severer tests than that of light ridicule. Watts displays at the same time the gentleness of a saint with the rugged strength of a trailblazing pioneer. In the age of conformity he as 1 Yale University Press, New Haven, 1912; p. 369. serted a stanch intellectual and religious independence. Professor Saintsbury calls him "a belated metaphysical." But rather, instead of being a drowsy follower to bed of Donne and Herrick, he was up early in a new morning, kindling fires for Cowper and Wesley, Burke and Adams, Burns and Wordsworth. Watts is an important figure in English literary history. He helped to make possible the political, social, and religious advance of the age following his, and the romantic movement in English literature owes him no uncertain debt. In his volume, "The English Lyric," Professor Felix E. Schelling virtually disposes of the hymn with the remark that we may or may not "accept" certain hymns, but we do not have to read them. That is readily granted-unless of course one wishes to know them or to write just criticism about them. If, however, more people do read them and value them than read any other kind of poetry; if noble thinking in seemly diction and ringing cadence finds a lasting and general favor, so much so that, for whatever reason they may have, people get it by heart and sing it from one generation to another; it would seem to be literature. Although the hymn, of all forms of verse, comes most readily to the apprehension and affection of people, it seems in the main to come most reluctantly from the pen of poets. Even the genius of William Cowper-his deep religious fervor, his exquisite good taste, his patience, and his extraordinary poet ical gift-did not avail to bring forth more than fifty lines of what the hymn-book to-day pronounces great hymnody. One is especially impressed with the difficulty of writing good hymns when one considers that Charles Wesley, whom Julian in his great Dictionary calls "perhaps the greatest hymnist of all ages," and who wrote about sixty-five hundred hymns, is represented in the hymn-book by an average of only twenty songs. Time and the hymn-books seem to be lessening this figure to about ten, including "Jesus, Lover of My Soul"; "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing"; "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne"; "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing"; "Christ, Whose Glory Fills the Skies"; "Love Divine, All Love Excelling"; "Soldiers of Christ, Arise"; and "Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown." To have written ten hymns, or even two, that are borne near to the heart of English-speaking peoples throughout the world is of course to be still a power; yet for the greatest hymn-writer of the world to have reached the standard, say, only fifty times out of sixty-five hundred, indicates an exacting test. Isaac Watts, if only as the author of "O God Our Help in Ages Past" alone, would be no inglorious poet; yet the hymn-book seems very severe in choosing but eight or ten of the more than six hundred published by "the great Doctor Watts." Samuel Medley is remembered by "O Could I Speak the Matchless Worth," though he published 229 other hymns; George Matheson, by "O Love |