hymn are often no less vivid and appealing because they are brief. Descriptions of one or two lines stamp themselves strangely on the memory. The curious critical notion that the hymn must be duncolored and tame of spirit can be traced back to Dr. Johnson's famous and false pronouncement about devotional poetry. "The paucity of its topics," he said, "enforces perpetual repetition, and the sanctity of its matter rejects the ornaments of figurative diction." The English hymn was not then so strong to refute this as it is now, but the Hebrew was, and the Latin. Still this charge was met by Watts, in the preface to his "Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707, long before Johnson made it. "Have they forgot, or were they never told that many parts of the Old Testament were verse? and the figures are stronger and the metaphors bolder and the images more surprising and strange than ever I read in any profane writer?” Indeed the best hymns are boldest in figure. So far from being undesirable, poetic vigor and color are necessary to great hymns; only this liveliness must not be what Herrick called "unbaptized." The hymn that figured night as That Ethiop queen with jewels in her hair did not long survive. A hymn might conceivably point a moral by a Cleopatra or more easily by a Queen of Sheba, but it may not ask the saints to celebrate her charms, or to give her more than passing note. The hymn-book is not unreasonable in these restrictions. It merely makes the demand of good art that the figures be congruous. It is but true to good art and good sense in excluding ideas and modes of expression alien to its spirit and purpose. These restrictions, though reasonable, are severely narrow. The popular nature of the hymn demands a peculiar simplicity of form; its artistic nature demands the proper harmony and intensity of lyric emotion; its religious nature demands of it, as an act of public worship, an inflexible directness and dignity of style. For example, Herrick's "Litany to the Holy Spirit" ignores the last rule and thus fails to keep its opening promise of being an immortal hymn. The touching picture of the dying Christian is marred by the line, When the house doth sigh and weep in the wind. Aside from its "pathetic fallacy," the line goes too far in particularization. The hymn has no interest in the peculiarities of a poet's house, or in the sounds about it, unless by some means these rise into the range of general grave concern. But even if there were some relation that would draw the assembly to sing of Herrick's house, there is yet a worse fault with the poem, which precludes any possibility of its being in the hymn-book. In the houre of my distresse, Sweet Spirit comfort me! When I lie within my bed, Sick in heart, and sick in head, Sweet Spirit comfort me! When the house doth sigh and weep, And the world is drown'd in sleep, Yet mine eyes the watch do keep; Sweet Spirit comfort me! When the artlesse Doctor sees When his potion and his Pill, When the passing-bell doth tole, Come to fright a parting soule, When the tapers now burne blew, And the number more than true; When the Priest his last hath praid, And I nod to what is said, 'Cause my speech is now decaid; Sweet Spirit comfort me! When (God knows) I'm tost about, Yet before the glasse be out, When the tempter me pursu'th When the flames and hellish cries Sweet Spirit comfort me! When the judgment is reveal'd, Sweet Spirit comfort me! The very effective first three stanzas would doubtless have been accepted and Herrick forgiven, if they were not logically incomplete without the impossible fourth and following stanzas. Objection to a doctor's potions would be no subject for the assembled faithful to incorporate into song. The hymn-book has no time for the incongruous or trifling. It is straightaway and brief in manner, for it must be about its earnest business. "A truly spiritual taste," said John Billinsby in his edition of D. Burgess's "Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs," London, 1714, "will keep well disposed minds so intent upon the weight and serious ness of the matter as not to leave them at Leisure for little Impertinences of Criticism upon the Phrase and Dress; or the exactness of Measure and Rhyme in these sacred composures." True enough; but the poet or poetaster must not presume upon any selfimposed title of sacredness. The truly spiritual taste and the well disposed minds that after all decide what shall make up the hymn-book have no use for little impertinences of criticism; but this constant critical judgment knows, given time enough, precisely what is fitting in a hymn and what is not; and it will brook no departure from its standard. There is an Avernus for hymns, and the descent thereto is easy. The hymn-book has its standard and is very strict in upholding it. While there are notable differences of style and idea in the hymn-books of different periods, the variations from the standard are naturally much less than the variations of some other kinds of poetry from their standards. But it is interesting to find what a motley poetry has knocked at the door of the hymnal and once in a while, under the guise of "sacred composure," has found admittance-though not for long. Here are some lines, little better or worse than many of the translations that gained admittance for a time, from "The Bay Psalm Book": For thence he shall come for to judge |