favorite, from whom he received ordination. So pure was his faith, that he was thought worthy to fucceed to the congregation of Geneva, fuperintended by Knox, the Scotch reformer; who, from a deteftation of idols, proceeded to demolish the churches in which they were contained. It was one of the natural confequences of Whyttingham's translation from Knox's paftorship at Geneva to an English deanery, that he destroyed or removed many beautiful and harmless monuments of antient art in his cathedral. To a man, who had fo highly spiritualised his religious conceptions, as to be convinced that a field, a street, or a barn, were fully fufficient for all the operations of chriftian worship, the venerable structures raised by the magnificent piety of our ancestors could convey no ideas of folemnity, and had no other charms than their ample endowments. Befide the pfalms he tranflated, all which bear his initials, by way of innovating ftill further on our established formularly, he verfified the Decalogue, the Nicene, Apoftolic, and Athanafian Creeds, the Lord's Prayer, the TE DEUM, the Song of the three Children, with other hymns which follow the book of pfalmody. How the Ten Commandments and the Athanafian Creed, to fay nothing of fome of the rest, should become more edifying and better fuited to common ufe, or how they could receive improvement in any refpect or degree, by being reduced into rhyme, it is not eafy to perceive. But the real defign was, to render that more tolerable which could not be entirely removed, to accommodate every part of the service to the pfalmodic tone, and to clothe our whole liturgy in the garb of Geneva. All thefe, for he was a lover of mufic, were fung in Whyttingham's church of Durham under his own directions. Heylin fays, that from vicinity of fituation, he was enabled to lend confiderable affiftance to his friend Knox in the introduction of the prefbyterian hierarchy into Scotland. I muft indulge the reader: with a stanza or two of this dignified fanatic's divine poetry Among them is the hundreth, and the hundred and nineteenth. from from his Creeds and the Decalogue. From the Athanafian Creed. The Father God is, God the Son, God Holy Ghost also, Yet are there not three Gods in all From the Apoftolic Creed.. From thence hall he come for to judge, The Ten Commandments are thus clofed. Nor his man-fervant, nor his maid, Nor any other thing that to These were also versified by Clement Marot. Twenty-feven of the pfalms were turned into metre by Thomas Norton, who perhaps was better employed, at least as a poet, in writing the tragedy of GORDOBUCKE in conjunction with lord Buckhurst. It is certain that in Norton's pfalms we see none of those fublime ftrokes which fir Philip Sydney difcovered in that venerable drama. He was of Sharpenhoe in Bedfordshire, a barrister, and in the opinion and phraseology of the Oxford biographer, a bold and busy Calvinist about the beginning of the reign of queen Elifabeth. He was patronised by the Protector Somerset; at whofe defire he tranflated an epiftle addreffed by Peter Martyr to Somerfet, into English, in 1550. Under the fame patronage he probably tranдated alfo Calvin's Institutes. Robert Wisdome, a proteftant fugitive in the calamitous reign of queen Mary, afterwards archdeacon of Ely, and who had been nominated to an Irish bishoprick by king Edward the fixth, rendered the twenty-fifth pfalm of this version'. But he is chiefly memorable for his metrical prayer, intended to be fung in the church, against the Pope and the Turk, of whom he seems to have conceived the most alarming apprehenfions. It is probable, that he thought popery and mahometanism were equally dangerous to christianity, at least the most powerful and the fole enemies of our religion. This is the first stanza. Preferve us, Lord, by thy dear word, From POPE and TURK defend us, Lord! Happily we have hitherto furvived these two formidable evils! Among other orthodox wits, the facetious bishop Corbet has ridiculed these lines. He fuppofes himself seized with a sudden impulse to hear or to pen a puritanical hymn, and invokes the ghoft of Robert Wisdome, as the most skilful poet in this mode of compofition, to come and affist. But he advises Wisdome to fteal back again to his tomb, which was in Carfax church at Oxford, filent and unperceived, for fear of being detected and intercepted by the Pope or the Turk. But I will produce Corbet's epigram, more especially as it contains a criticifm written in the reign of Charles the first, on the style of this fort of poetry. TO THE GHOST OF ROBERT WISDOME. Thou once a body, now but ayre, * See Strype's CRANMER, p. 274. 276. 377. PSALMS 70, 104, 112, 122, 125, and 134, are marked with W. K. PSALM 136, with T. C. It is not known to whom thefe initials belong. From The entire verfion of the pfalter was at length published by John Day, in 1562, attached for the first time to the common prayer, and entitled, "The whole Booke of Pfalmes collected "into English metre by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others, " conferred with the Ebrue, with apt Notes to fing them withall." Calvin's mufic was intended to correspond with the general parfimonious fpirit of his worship: not to captivate the paffions, and feduce the mind, by a levity, a variety, or a richness of modulation, but to infufe the more fober and unravishing ecftafies. The mufic he permitted, although fometimes it had wonderful effects, was to be without grace, elegance, or elevation. These apt notes were about forty tunes, of one part only, and in one unifonous key; remarkable for a certain uniform strain of fombrous gravity, and applicable to all the pfalms in their turns, as the stanza and sense might allow. They also appear in the subsequent impreffions, particularly of 1564, and 1577. They are believed to contain fome of the original melodies, composed by French and German muficians. Many of them, particularly the celebrated one of the hundredth pfalm, are the tunes of Goudimel and Le Jeune, who are among the first compofers of Marot's French pfalms". Not a few were probably. POEMS, Lond. 1647. duod. p. 49. and accuracy by Hawkins, HIST. Mus. iii. 518. importedi imported by the protestant manufacturers of cloth, of Flanders, and the Low Countries, who fled into England from the perfecution of the Duke de Alva, and settled in thofe counties where their art now chiefly flourishes. It is not however unlikely, that some of our own muficians, who lived about the year 1562, and who could always tune their harps to the religion of the times, fuch as Marbeck, Tallis, Tye, Parfons, and Munday, were employed on this occafion; yet under the reftriction of conforming to the jejune and unadorned movements of the foreign compofers. I prefume much of the primitive harmony of all these antient tunes is now loft, by additions, variations, and tranfpofitions. This verfion is faid to be conferred with the Ebrue. But I am inclined to think, that the tranflation was altogether made from the vulgate text, either in Latin or English. It is evident that the profe pfalms of our liturgy were chiefly confulted and copied, by the perpetual affumption of their words and combinations: many of the ftanzas are literally nothing more than the profe-verfes put into rhyme. As thus, Thus were they stained with the workes Of their owne filthie way; And with their owne inventions did Whyttingham however, who had travelled to acquire the literature then taught in the foreign univerfities, and who joined in the tranflation of Coverdale's Bible, was undoubtedly a scholar, and an adept in the Hebrew language. It is certain that every attempt to clothe the facred Scripture in verse, will have the effect of mifrepresenting and debafing the dignity of the original. But this general inconvenience, arifing from the nature of things, was not the only difficulty which our verfifiers of the pfalter had to encounter, in common PSALM cvi. 38. |