In comparatively modern times both authors and compilers are implicated. The Wesleys altered George Herbert and some of the elder hymnologists, as well as Watts, who, however, had taken an equal liberty with the psalter. In their turn the Wesleys themselves fell a prey to the ubiquitous literary manipulator; for we find John Wesley, in a preface to his "Methodist's Hymn-book," bitterly complaining of the collectors of his time, and begging the gentlemen who had done his brother Charles and himself the honor of reproducing their verses without their consent, henceforth to put the true reading in the margin, so that neither he nor his brother should be "any longer accountable for the nonsense or the doggerel of other men." A certain retributive Nemesis seems always to have dogged the heels of the successful writer of hymns, who has also lent himself to the lower business of collector. The warning has been as plain as whisper in the ear, He that compileth shall be compiled, but it has passed unheeded. James Montgomery complains of the same treatment of his verses - - the same "cross," as he called it -in a preface to his collected hymns, although he too, in his "Christian Psalmist," had freely compiled the works of other people. More than twenty years ago Lord Selborne (then Sir Roundell Palmer) vigorously renewed the protest in the preface to his "Book of Praise," but with no appreciable effect. Things have gone from bad to worse, until it has been left to our own day to develop in its fullest activity the energies of this destructive literary parasite. hymn, as regards the purity of its original | ern politician, especially if he be a patriot, text, is no other than the hymn-compiler. implies an amount of childlike confidence The besetting sin of the collector of hymns which is every day becoming more rare. is old enough almost to have acquired a And lastly, we have that significant politikind of privilege; and to follow up the cal factor, the publican, engaged in a callliterary history of some of our oldest and ing perhaps more discredited than all. best compositions through their succes- And yet each of these avocations, looked sive versions would occupy a volume. upon askance by what no doubt appears to them a censorious and hypercritical public, is guarded by restrictions from which the hymn-collector is absolutely free. We can insist upon an audit of our lawyer's charges; and from those gentlemen who are always ready to dispose of a perfectly sound animal" to a friend" at little more than half its value, we can demand a warranty. The politician again, besides being, as we all know, a fit and proper person, is kept in proper restraint by his constituents, or ought to be — although in this instance it must be admitted that cases do exist where any weak-minded departure in the direction of honor or uprightness might endanger his seat in Parliament. As for the publican, he is guarded all round by guarantee upon guarantee. He is almost a sacred institution. The Church upholds him on one side, and the law on the other. He must not only be such a man as may be trusted with a license, but must have a certificate from his clergyman, and another from a justice of peace, before he can ply his trade. It may be here objected that this species of ordination and laying on of hands to which he has been submitted has not as yet, in any conspicuous degree, brought down from heaven that amount of sweetness and light upon his vocation which all right-minded people had a right to expect from the performance. Again, looking at his occupation by the somewhat lurid light thrown upon it by the police reports, it may be gravely questioned whether even the certificate of the justice of peace has had the effect of making his calling either more just or more peaceable. Disreputable as some of these vocations may appear, let us fairly compare the collector and trader in hymns with any of them, and ask in what respect is he better? None of the above-mentioned traders offers in the open market property as their own which does not belong to them. None of them adulterates their merchandise more shamelessly than he does. great part of his work is carried on in flagrant defiance of the law of the landthe law of copyright. Plagiarism is no word for him. The ordinary plagiarist is a fool beside him. One's attention is frequently called to the piratical "mote There are certain universally discredited occupations to which that of the hymn-compiler is rapidly conforming, and by which it may be useful to test and measure it, even if the inquiry have no more important result than a mere exercise in comparative morality. There is, in the first place, the old outstanding distrust of the lawyer; but that, we all know, is only a vulgar superstition. The suspicion against the entire uprightness of the dealer in horse-flesh is more difficult to get rid of, and will probably die hard. Again, an absolute belief in the sincerity of the mod A in the eye of our American cousin ; but | hand, and the only qualification, if it in this particular the hymn-compiler's may be called one, is a bottle of dilute home-grown "beam" leaves him far be- gum-arabic. For any further coherence, hind. He not only appropriates the work continuity, or connection, such volumes of others without the consent, and fre- possess, the credit belongs exclusively to quently without the knowledge, of the the binder. Against such collections rightful owner; but he adds and alters it, there is nothing to be said. Their speedy deducts and defaces, cuts and carves it removal into time's wallet of oblivion — into conformity with his own theological that universal dust-bin of all the futilities fad, and then, with an effrontery that disarms criticism. It is not to these almost takes one's breath away, tacks to nor to any variations of text these may the title-page of his stolen and mutilated contain that attention need be drawn, goods, the words, "all rights reserved"! but to the unscrupulous treatment of our choicest hymns by educated and responsible editors, in collections not only having the authority and recommendation of men of the highest standing in the Church, but which, by all but a small minority of professing Christians, are accepted without a word of protest or disapproval. Before proceeding further, however, with so grave a charge, it is necessary to point out that all the alterations in our hymnals are divisible into two distinct classes. To the first class belong all such restorations in English and orthography as are necessary, in our oldest hymns, to make them intelligible to the average church-goer; all such changes as are necessary to fit certain compositions to the requirements of music, and such alterations, abridgments, and adaptations of poems as will render them more suitable to a service for which many of them were not originally written. A large proportion of these changes, unimportant as regards the integrity of the text, have been made with the ready consent of the author, and not infrequently by the author himself. No one could, in reason, find fault with such alterations as these; and it is not with these we have to do. Again, if this serious indictment had reference only to those obscure hymn - collectors whose short-lived efforts fail to secure anything like recognition, except in the most limited sense, the protest would not have been worth making. Amongst the crowds who have employed themselves in this kind of work there are many who, of course, possess no aptitude whatever for what they attempt. Such persons and their performances are to be reckoned amongst the hostages we pay to civilization the inevitable character of an age, by which an overcrowded and complacent mediocrity becomes the ordinary and every-day curse of all the arts. Who is not well aware to take an illustration from one of the arts most commonly exercised that there is probably not more than one musician in a thousand of those so-called performers, who, on one instrument or another, daily afflict their long suffering fellow-creatures? The collector of hymns, in like manner, exercises in many instances no higher faculty than the collector of autographs or postage-stamps. In each case the material lies ready to It is time, however, to illustrate and define this general charge by reference to particular examples; and in order to keep the examination on the broadest basis, we shall call into the witness-box such hymns only as are to be found in every good collection, and which, without regard to sect or party, are universally used, in one shape or another, by all the Churches, and that not in this alone, but in every country where the English language is spoken. Let us take, as our first example, that hymn of Milman's, known and esteemed by every one, the solemn and beautiful litany beginning, "When our heads are bowed with woe," and see what kind of treatment it has had at the hands of responsible editors, both outside and inside the Church. Outside the Church, then, there is perhaps no more complete or more widely known anthology than the "Hymns of Praise and Prayer" collected and edited by Dr. Martineau. In speaking of a hymnal outside the orthodox pale, inevitable deductions may of course be made on theological grounds; these, however, have no place in our argument. Suffice it to say, that with these allowances Dr. Martineau's collection is in many respects one of the best in the English language. But it becomes all the more incomprehensible how such an utter travesty of Milman's exquisite poem could possibly find a place in a collection edited by any one possessing a tithe either of the gifts or the culture of Dr. Martineau. Yet there the poem stands, garbled in every stanza; while the whole of the concluding verse is no alteration in the ordinary sense, but a gratuitous and unwarranted substitution, in which the sense of the original totally disappears. The editor of this collection has not only given both of text and sense, surely the honest in many cases the original source of the and obvious course is to let it alone. In hymn he selects, but when there has been the Church of England's versions of the any alteration made, furnishes us with the same hymn one would expect to find more date, and the name of the person who is reverence for the text of a brother churchaccountable for the change-in such a man, but here again one occasionally encase, for example, as Bishop Horne's counters the same reprehensible practice. adaptation of George Herbert's "Sweet In "Hymns Ancient and Modern," as well day! so cool, so calm, so bright!" or as the popular collection issued by the Samuel Longfellow's alteration of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowlverses taken from the "Sorrow of Te-edge, the hymn conforms to the original, resa." Even in cases where the person- except in one unimportant and generally ality of the versifier is a matter of doubt, accepted particular in the refrain; but he gives the probable name, as in the in the widely circulated "Hymnal Comparaphrase of that memorable burst of panion to the Book of Common Prayer," eloquence at the close of the " Organic the old offence reappears. In this collecFilaments" in Sartor Resartus "all tion the poem is doubly defaced, and it of which annotations are both interesting would be difficult to determine whether and edifying. subtraction or addition has done it the greater injustice. In order to show the injury which has been done it is necessary to examine the original hymn, both as regards its argument and construction. The poem, then, is in form a kyrielle, in subject and effect an antiphonal miserere, consisting of twenty-four lines as a whole; but distinctly divisible into three separate poems of eight lines each, on the three distinct subjects of sorrow, death, and sin. For the sake of illustration it may be tab To the garbled version, however, of Milman's beautiful hymn, not a word of explanation is added — nothing but the bare signature-although the person who is accountable for the mutilation must have well known that to put the name of Henry Hart Milman " to the foot of these verses as they stand, was neither more nor less than a misrepresentation of the fact. If an editor cannot utilize a poem for the purpose aimed at in his collection without such an inexcusable violationulated thus:When our heads are bowed with woe, When our bitter tears o'erflow, When we mourn the lost, the dear, Jesus, Son of Mary, hear! (For) Thou our throbbing flesh hast worn, Sorrow. It will be seen that each of the three or antiphonal pendant, to the stanza immethemes treated in the poem proceeds upon diately preceding it; the two verses being identical lines, the second stanza of each interlinked and interwoven with such massubject forming a responsive counterpart, | terful art, that one may arrange the eight lines almost in any order without injuring their general effect. The lines may be read alternately, with no perceptible diminution of either their force or beauty, thus: When our hearts are bowed with woe, It may seem unnecessary to add that it would be quite impossible to separate the two verses required to complete each theme, in a poem so perfectly welded together as this, without positive fracture and consequent ruin to the entire hymn; but this is exactly what has been done by the editors of the "Hymnal Companion." They have removed bodily the first four lines which treat of death, creating thereby a complete hiatus, and leaving its companion verse a broken fragment, responsive to nothing, and attached to nothing. Any reader who has been accustomed to use the hymn in the original must be shocked at being suddenly brought face to face with such a strange breach of continuity. There is no getting over the barbarous dislocation. A conductor may as well abstract four bars from a symphony of Mozart, and expect an intelligent orchestra to go on as if nothing had happened. There are hymns no doubt which are much indebted to the pruning-knife, but there is no question of curtailment here. It is not a case of abridgment, but a case of mutilation. An additional verse is offered at the end of the poem, by an unknown imitator, to make up, we suppose, for the loss of the one that has been purloined from the middle of it, and Dr. Bickersteth has the temerity to recommend the lines of this anonymous person. ator, as a "solemn climax" to the hymn. It commits, in fact, the identical offence against the construction of the poem already noticed. The added verse has no real homogeneity with the rest of the poem. Unlike every other part of the original, it has no allied stanza, it subtends no other verse and responds to none, and the author of it has no more merit than what is reflected from the verses he attempts to imitate - namely, the merit we allow to an indifferent mimic. Standing where it does, it is an entirely irrelevant and supernumerary appendage, and if we must admit its solemnity a solemn excrescence. But, more than this, it is not Milman's, and therefore has no right to be there at all. The expression "Son of Mary" in the supplicatory refrain of this beautiful litany has been one that has greatly exercised the mind of the professional hymn-cobbler. It has been altered in many different ways "Man of Sorrows," “Šon of David,” "Loving Saviour," etc. and although the original phrase has been, with one exception, retained in our best collections, including the "Scottish Hymnal," it is a pity that this exception should again be the "Hymnal Companion." The Bishop of Exeter tells us, in the annotated edition of his hymnal, that although the original phrase expresses "the great truth of our Lord's humanity," it has been objected to by many, and that in short, rather than give offence, he has substituted another. What kind of men or women they can possibly be who object to the great truth of our Lord's humanity it is not easy to conceive; and that a bishop of the Church of England should, through dread of giv. ing offence, submit to be ruled by "the many" who hold such an irrational and heretical prejudice, is equally difficult to understand. The right reverend doctor might have called to his aid the record that the son of Mary himself proved a rock of offence to perhaps much the same kind of multitude as he has been tempted to propitiate and accommodate. In his amiable apprehensiveness of giving of fence, and thereby lending his authority and countenance to the groundless and puerile objections of those who, for reasons only known to themselves, affect to be scandalized at the employment of language which expresses the great truth of our Lord's humanity, has he not been unwittingly betrayed into an offence much more grave? The apostolic injunction to live peaceably with all men as much as lieth in us may be carried too far; and Dr. Bickersteth might have reflected that St. Paul himself, in his anxiety to become all things to all men, probably drew the line at old women. In such matters, it is not the many, but the fit and the few, who should take courage to decide; a mere plebiscitum of noses in such a case, without further qualification, is of no avail. Great is Demos of these days, no doubt, but we trust that the time is yet far off when he will be invested with the power of putting in our mouths what we have to say either in our praises or our prayers. It would be a curious consummation of our boasted progress if a day should arrive, when not only the parliaments of men but the temples of God are handed so beautiful as this, just one of those over to the enlightened manipulation of touches of nature that binds in one the the delegates of Demos, who, regardless hearts of every congregation "Who has of any qualification, should be trusted with not lost a friend?' and put in its place the power to direct and control us in the this vapid generality, this forcible-feeble exercise of the highest employment of pleonasm, may be taken as an illustration which our natures are capable. In mak- of what the hymn-patcher is capable of at ing concessions against one's better judg- his worst. ment, to the prejudices of the many, on One of the most reprehensible practices subjects upon which they have not taken of this variety of literary intruder, and one the trouble to inform themselves, it is not that from the point of view of literary ethics only the first step that counts. In sup- shows a very miserable ambition on the porting the substitution of the phrase part of the writer who stoops to it, is the "Son of David "for that of "Son of Mary very common attempt to tack on, by way in the original, by the argument that "Son of continuation, an additional verse or two of David is an epithet recorded in the in imitation of a poem which has already Gospel, the editor only gets deeper in the achieved an almost universal fame. The mire; as if it were not also recorded in most flagrant example of this species of the Gospel that Jesus was the son of sacred parody is the wholly unnecessary Mary. But he does not even stop here, addition to Cardinal Newman's worldfor in order that his error may be "nailed famous poem "Lead, kindly Light," as it wi' Scripture he has been tempted to stands in the "Hymnal Companion.” We choose a text as title to the poem in which shall not speak evil of dignities, because the phrase occurs, but which in other re-it is impossible to conceive that Dr. Bickspects is curiously infelicitous and misleading. Every stanza of this pathetic litany turns upon the great truth of our Lord's humanity, and therefore lends a peculiar appropriateness to the phrase "Son of Mary." The title-text for such a hymn is beyond question that of Isaiah, Surely He hath borne our griefs; " or its equally suggestive New Testament equivalent, adopted by the editors of the "Scottish Hymnal," "For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." We have spoken of this poem of Dean Milman's at some length, not only on account of its intrinsic excellence, but because the liberties that have been taken with it represent almost every variety of tinkering to which a hymn is liable; and before parting with it, attention may be directed to what may be called almost a curiosity in text-corruption, occurring in the first stanza of the otherwise genuine transcript given in the "Scottish Hymnal." In that version, the line "When we mourn the lost, the dear," is altered to "When we mourn in sorrow drear," for what reason it is impossible to conjecture. Not for euphony, surely, nor to challenge a tour de force in singing the letter r five times in five syllables. Nor, surely, can there be any question as to the propriety of mourning a lost friend; for in the responding line in the companion stanza, “Thou | hast shed the human tear," we have a direct reference to the sanction and example of our Lord in this very particular. To set aside a line at once so simple and ersteth could have been led so far out of the path of ordinary propriety, except under a strong and conscientious sense of the virtue and necessity of what he was doing. In any other department of literature such a thing would not be tolerated for a moment. The fact that the liberty has been taken with the work of an author still living only aggravates the offence, and the author himself in this case leaves no doubt as to how he regards it. In answer to a correspondent on the subject, Cardinal Newman has declared that his poem consists of three stanzas only, and that the fourth and final one published in the "Hymnal Companion" is not authentic, but the unwarranted addendum of another pen. Instances of well-meant meddling and muddling with other men's work in a similar manner are to be met with in every compilation; and the fact that the patchwork is seldom done with so accomplished a pen as that of the Bishop of Exeter, does not justify him in lending his influential example to a practice so readily capable of abuse. Lord Selborne has long ago pointed out how easily a hymn may be spoiled in this way, and that, with the very best intentions, "the most exemplary soundness of doctrine cannot atone for doggerel." Besides all this, mimicry of the accepted work of a true poet, judged by the ordinary standards of literary propriety, is not a creditable thing. Except in the hands of writers whose genial facility amounts almost to genius, as in the case of the authors of "Rejected Addresses," or that |