SCR, —Dr. J. B. Broadbent's amiably argumentative reply to my
letter confirms my suspicion that he does not know what a hymn is. He persists in judging it simply, or primarily, as poetry. It would be as absurd to judge an aria in an Italian opera only by the English translation of its words (and, to avoid misunderstanding, I had better say that I do not think that a hymn is an aria and that I do not prefer bad translations to good):
Of course I agree that the art used in liturgy should be 'good art.' In practice, it is impossible to ensure that it is always of the highest quality, and I doubt whether 'the people, especially children,' for whom Dr. Broadbent claims to speak are as firmly on his side as he might like to think. If he attended morning or evening service in King's chapel last Sunday, he will have been exposed to several hymns—e.g., Sir H. W. Baker's 'The King of love' . . to Dykes's sugary tune—which seem to me to fall at least as far as Neale below Dr. Broadbent's rigorous critical standard. I don't know what he can do about it, except compile his own hymnal: it will be a thin one.
Meanwhile, since he is a Cambridge man, I Would respectfully commend to him a work that he should know—the late Bernard Manning's Hymns of Wesley and Watts in which occurs this Passage A hymn—a good hymn—is not necessarily poetry of any sort, good or bad : just as poetry, good or bad, is not necessarily a • hymn . . . Hymns do not form a subdivision of poetry. They are a distinct kind of com- position . . . A hymn may be poetry as it may be theology. It is not, of necessity, either.
London
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