HYMNOLOGY.
[To THE EDITOR OF TUE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Your discussion of this subject in your review of Mr.. Julian's work (the extent of which is frightful to think of). will, I am sure, have been read with much interest by many of your readers. It is a subject of very general interest, yet I suppose there is none upon which opinion is more diverse,. or in respect to which there is stronger prejudice exhibited.
I have had considerable opportunity lately for observation on this subject, having been a member of a committee which for three years has been engaged in revising a Church hymnal.. Passing by the partisanship arising from an admiration for hymns which spring from the particular school of thought to which the admirer belongs, I have been astonished/ to see the devoted attachment or violent antipathy which is sometimes displayed towards particular hymns. This. strong feeling is very frequently the result of association, happy or painful. A friend of mine, for example, delights in: some of the very old-fashioned Evangelical hymns, not that they represent his religions views, but because they are asso- ciated with the dear memory of a happy childhood and loving parents long since gone to their rest. And how many hymns are abhorred by some people because they are associated with• a drawling, dreary performance of them, perhaps by a parish clerk and village schoolchildren. I myself have an aversion to a particular hymn, " Lo He comes, in clouds descending," sung to a tune called " Helmsley," because in my childhood it used to be sung, on wet days only, by a street beggar, in the street in which I lived, and is associated, therefore, in my mind with gloomy weather and umbrellas. But what seems to me the important question in the *election of hymns, is how far the poetic principle is to -dominate such selection. Are no hymns to be admissible into our collections that are not good poetry? On this ques- tion two classes are to be considered, by both of whom the hymns are to be used,—namely, the cultured and the nu- -cultured. This consideration should, it seems to me, very much moderate criticism of the contents of our hymns, which I am bound to say, according to my judgment, contain very little real poetry. But it should be remembered that they -contain another element, which I think is much more im- portant—i.e., devotional feeling. It may be said, why should we not give the best poetry as well as the best music to the praise of God? Yes, but are we never to approach Him in praise, unless we have such gifts to offer P This would be to narrow praise to a very limited sphere, in which, I fear, art would greatly overbalance devotion.
At the same time, I desire to say that I entirely go with the writer in objecting to the high-flown sentiment and extrava- gant metaphors which disfigure so many of our hymns, and which are neither poetry nor common-sense. Still, we should not be too critical in judging of the words of " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." Criticism makes a poor hand- maid to devotion.—I am, Sir, &c., ZENAS.
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