MOORSOM'S "HISTORICAL COMPANION TO HYMNS ANCIENT AND MODERN."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—While acknowledging on Mr. Moorsom's behalf your favourable notice of his "very interesting book" (Mr. Moor- soul's blindness makes its extreme accuracy all the more remarkable), will you allow me to point out a slight error into which you have fallen ? If you will kindly refer to p. 9, you will see that Psalm cxxxvii., "By the waters of Babylon," is not, as you suppose, attributed by him to King David, but is merely included among the "Psalms from the Old Testa- ment," so that the heading, "Perhaps written during the seventy years' captivity," implies nothing incongruous as regards authorship. You say of the Psalms: "One might question the Mosaic and the Davidic authorship." Surely there are the strongest reasons for attributing Psalm xc. (Donbine, refugium) to Moses, in accordance with all ancient tradition ; and of the others, Psalm xxiii. (Dominus regit me), and Psalm xlii. (Qu,emadmodum) are the only ones Widen verbis ascribed by Mr. Moorsom to David, though I presume few would doubt the authorship of Psalm Ii. The heading throughout is "Psalms from the Old Testament." With regard to the "Psalm of Moses the man of God," Dr. Kay points out many verbal coincidences between it and the Pentateuch.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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