Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1925. FAMOUS HYMNS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 124, 21 November 1925, Page 6

Evening Post. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1925. FAMOUS HYMNS

" Watta's devotional poetry," said Johnson, " is, like that of others, unsatisfactory." Johnson's normal'attitude towards all efforts of this kind was that of cold approbation or fierce disapprobation, but Mrs. Piozzi records one striking exception :—

When lie would try to repeat the celebrated "Prosa Ecclesiastica pro Mortuis," as it is called, beginning Dies irae, Dies ilia," he could never pass the staiwa ending thus, "Tantus labor non sit cassus," without bursting into a Hood of tears; which sonsihility I used to quote- against him when ho would inveigh against devotional poetry, and protest that nil religious verses were cold and feeble, and unworthy the subject, which ought to be treated with higher reverence, he said, than either poets or painters could presume to excite or bestow. The stanza of the "Dies Irae "on which the great man always broke down — Quaerrens me sodisti iassus. , Kederaisti crucem passus : Tantus labor non sit cassus! is rendered as follows by the Rev. W. J. Irons in the version which appears in " Hymns Ancient and Modern " : — > I'umt und weary Thou hast sought On the Cross of suffering bought me; . •, i „ Shall such grace be vainly brought me?

Though Mr. Irong's version hps been . praised by a high authority | as " one of the finest of modern renderings of'the grandest of medieval hymns," it leaves ample voom for'regret, that the freer paraphrase which Sir Walter Scott introduced at the end of "The Lay ,J of the Last Minstrel" was not carried beyond three stanzas. * In this passage the simplicity and force ot the Latin are hopelessly diluted and sophisticated, and the tremendous climax in the last word of the last line—" May all this suffering not be vain!—entirely missed. It is, indeed, safe to say that, had thi3 great hymn come .before Dr. Johnson even in .the best of modern versions, it would not only have moved him to tears, but might even have supplied fresh fuel for his next denunciation of all devotional verse as " cold and feeble." But when the heart of Thomas of Celano, the friend and biographer of St. Francis of Assisi, spoke in its own language to his heart across the centuries, the massage was irresistible. That seems, indeed, to be of the essence of a true hymn. It is a matter not of eloquence or imagery or doctrine, but of heart speaking to heart. Whether or not Neander was right "when he said that it is the heart that makes the theologian, it is surely the heart that makes the hymn-writer. ' It is the lack of ht-aj;fc even more than the lack of bruins that has resulted in the ansoinaiian of our " holiest feelings with detestable doggerel and insincere sentiuientality." But, ve-r verting to Johnson,, one is compel' led to wonder how so pjous a man aqd tso loyal a, churchman had failed to see the immense advance that the hymn had made in his own day. It was the biographer of Watts, the contemporary and friend of theWesleys and Toplady, that anathematised the hymn aa, frigid, formal, and irreverent. It was of " the father of the English hymn," the author of " When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," of "0 God, Our Help in Ages Past," and of " Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun," that Johnsonwrote : It is sufficient for Watts to have dono better than others what no man has done well. • If ever there was a hymn which came straight from the heart and goes straight to the heart, it is the great hymn of which we were discussing the history a week ago. We mentioned in that article that in the " Sunday at Home " cony petition, which was held in 1887, " Abide With Me " came second — and a bad second—to the " Rock of Ages." The next places were taken by " Jesu, Lover of My Soul," and "Just as I Am." It is interesting to compare these results with those of a similar competition held by another Church magazine twenty yours later. The votes of sonic 1200 readers of the "Treasury" placed the first, six of flip " Best Fifty Hymns with Their Turn us " iw fpllowij;-«" Abide. With Me," 700 vftLes j " Lead, Kiudly

Light," 570; "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," 560; "Holy, Holy, Holy," 049; " The Church's One Foundation," Mi; "Rock of Age 3," 525. It is to be noted that the competitors in this case were hymns " with their tunes." But who is competent to dissolve the partnership and assess the partners separately? Even the literary beauty of "Lead, Kindly Light" is not easily dissociated from its familiar music. " Hark, the Herald Angels Sing " waited a hundred and twenty years before it got a tune of its own, but the partnership is not to be broken now. In the letter which wo published on Tuesday, Mr. Robert Parker showed that the tune of a hymn may have just as much interest and pathos as the hymn itself. Sunset and sorrow are equally associated with the music and the words of "Abide With Me." This tune, suya Mrs. Monk,, the composer's ■wife, was written at a time of great sorrow, when together we watched, us we did daily, the glories of the setting sun. As the last golden ray faded, he took up some paper and, pencilled that tuno which has gone over ail the earth.

Of one of Charles Wesley's great hymns which runs " Abide With Me" very close in popularity a curiously similar story is told. Hollingside was the name of the cottage in which Dykes, the composer, lived, and one of his sisters thus describes the composing of the tune while she was staying with him:

Some scenes during that visit will live for ever in my memory. As, for instance, one calm Sunday evening when I sat in the deepening twilight and heard through the open window my brother composing and playing over tha tune' " Hollingside " to the words, " Jesu, Lover of My Soul."

With the origins of other hymns we have left ourselves no space to deal. Sometimes they are obviously mythical, as when a geological foundation is sought for the " Rock bf Ages " in a cliff near the writer's residence, or a hawk or a sea-bird flying in for shelter is said to have supplied the inspiration for " Jesu, Lover of My Soul.", That "Lead, Kindly Light" was written on. an orange boat in which the writer was becalmed between Palermo and Marseilles we have from Newman himself. But the doubt which some matter-of-fact souls have felt about the meaning of the " angel faces " in the last couplet is a mystery which ho refused to regolve. He pleaded a poet's right to decline oross-examination on the transient states of mind which come upon one when homesick or sea-sick, or in any other way sensitive or excited. The suggestion of aea-sicknesa was a, masterpiece of irony which recalls a story of Baptist piety that greatly pleased Sydney Smith: Brother Carey, .said a, colleague's report, while vary sea-aick and' leaning over the ship to relieve his stomach from that Very oppressive complaint,, said his stomach waa even then filled with consolation in contemplating the wonderful goodness of God. Brother Carey's poetry under such trying conditions produced, no immortal hymn, but Newman has left us free to believe 1 that " Lead, Kindly Light" was evolved in this painful fashion.