תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

Le Laboureur a sa charruë,
Le Charretier parmy le ruë,
Et l'Artifan a en fa boutique,

Avecques un PSEAUME OU CANTIQUE,
En fon labour fe foulager.
Heureux qui orra le Berger
Et la Begere au bois estans,
Fair que rochers et eftangs,
Apres eux chantant la hauteur
Du fainct nom de createur".

Marot's Pfalms foon eclipfed the brilliancy of his madrigals and fonnets. Not fufpecting how prejudicial the predominant rage of pfalm-finging might prove to the antient religion of Europe, the catholics themselves adopted these facred fongs as serious ballads, and as a more rational species of domestic merriment. Thy were the common accompaniments of the fiddle. They were fold fo rapidly, that the printers could not fupply the public with copies. In the festive and splendid court of Francis the first, of a sudden nothing was heard but the pfalms of Clement Marot. By each of the royal family and the principal nobility of the court a pfalm was chofen, and fitted to the ballad-tune which each liked beft. The dauphin prince Henry, who delighted in hunting, was fond of Ainfi qu'on oit le cerf bruire, or, Like as the Hart defireth the water-brooks, which he conftantly fung in going out to the chase. Madame de Valentinois, between whom and the young prince there was an attachment, took Du fond de ma pensée, or, From the depth of my heart, O Lord. The queen's favorite was, Ne vueilles pas, O Sire, that is, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation, which she fung to a fashionable jig. Antony king of Navarre fung, Revenge moy, pren le querelle, or, Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel, to

a Les OEVVRES de Clement Marot de Cahors, valet de chambre du roy, &c. A

Lyon, 1551. 12mo. See ad calc. TRA-
DUCTIONS, &c. p. 192.

the

the air of a dance of Poitou". It was on very different principles that pfalmody flourished in the gloomy court of Cromwell. This fashion does not feem in the leaft to have diminished the gaiety and good humour of the court of Francis.

At this period John Calvin, in oppofition to the discipline and doctrines of Rome, was framing his novel church at Geneva: in which the whole substance and form of divine worship was reduced to praying, preaching, and finging. In the last of these three, he chose to depart widely from the catholic usage: and, either because he thought that novelty was sure to succeed, that the practice of antiphonal chanting was fuperftitious, or that the people were excluded from bearing a part in the more folemn and elaborate performance of ecclefiaftical mufic, or that the old papistic hymns were unedifying, or that verse was better remembered than profe, he projected, with the advice of Luther, a fpecies of religious fong, confifting of portions of the pfalms intelligibly tranflated into the vernacular language, and adapted to plain and easy melodies, which all might learn, and in which all might join. This scheme, either by design or accident, was luckily feconded by the publication of Marot's metrical pfalms at Paris, which Calvin immediately introduced into his congregation at Geneva. Being fet to fimple and almost monotonous notes by Guillaume de Franc, they were foon established as the principal branch in that reformer's new devotion, and became a characteristical mark or badge of the Calvinistic worship and profeffion. Nor were they fung only in his churches. They exhilarated the convivial affemblies of the Calvinifts, were commonly heard in the streets, and accompanied the labours of the artificer. The weavers and woollen manufacturers of Flanders, many of whom left the loom and entered into the miniftry, are faid to have been the capital performers into this science. length Marot's pfalms formed an appendix to the catechism of Geneva, and were interdicted to the catholics under the most

See Bayle's DICT. V. MAROT.

At

severe penalties. In the language of the orthodox, pfalm-singing and herefy were fynonimous terms.

It was Calvin's fyftem of reformation, not only to strip religion of its fuperftitious and oftenfible pageantries, of crucifixes, images, tapers, fuperb vestments, and fplendid proceffions, but of all that was eftimable in the fight of the people, and even of every fimple ornament, every fignificant fymbol, and decent ceremony; in a word, to banish every thing from his church which attracted or employed the fenfes, or which might tend to mar the purity of an abstracted adoration, and of a mental intercourse with the deity. It is hard to determine, how Calvin could reconcile the use of finging, even when purged from the corruptions and abuses of popery, to fo philofophical a plan of worship. On a parallel principle, and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at leaft have retained the ufe of pictures in the church. But a new fect always draws its converts from the multitude and the meanest of the people, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals. Calvin well knew that the manufacturers of Germany were no judges of pictures. At the fame time it was neceffary that his congregation fhould be kept in good humour by fome kind of pleasurable gratification and allurement, which might qualify and enliven the attendance on the more rigid duties of praying and preaching. Calvin therefore, intent as he was to form a new church on a fevere model, had yet too much fagacity to exclude every auxiliary to devotion. Under this idea, he permitted an exercise,, which might engage the affections, without violating the fimplicity of his worship: and fenfible that his chief refources were in the rabble of a republic, and availing himself of that natural propensity which prompts even vulgar minds to express their more animated feelings in rhyme and mufic, he conceived a mode of univerfal pfalmody, not too refined for common capacities, and fitted to please the populace. The rapid propagation of Calvin's religion, and his numerous profelytes, are a ftrong proof of his address in planning such a sort of service. France

and

and Germany were instantly infatuated with a love of psalmfinging: which being admirably calculated to kindle and diffuse the flame of fanaticifm, was peculiarly ferviceable to the purposes of faction, and frequently ferved as the trumpet to rebellion. These energetic hymns of Geneva, under the conduct of the Calvinistic preachers, excited and supported a variety of popular infurrections; they filled the most flourishing cities of the Low-countries with fedition and tumult, and fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beautiful and venerable churches of Flanders.

This infectious frenzy of sacred song foon reached England, at the very critical point of time, when it had just embraced the reformation: and the new pfalmody was obtruded on the new English liturgy by fome few officious zealots, who favoured the discipline of Geneva, and who wished to abolish, not only the choral mode of worship in general, but more particularly to fupprefs the TE DEUM, BENEDICTUS, MAGNIFICAT, JUBILATE, NUNC DIMITTIS, and the rest of the liturgic hymns, which were fuppofed to be contaminated by their long and antient-connection with the Roman miffal, or at least in their profaic form, to be unfuitable to the new fyftem of worship.

Although Wyat and Surrey had before made translations of the Pfalms into metre, Thomas Sternhold was the first whose metrical verfion of the Pfalms was used in the church of England. Sternhold was a native of Hampshire, and probably educated at Winchester college. Having passed some time at Oxford, he became groom of the robes to king Henry the eighth. In this department, either his diligent fervices or his knack at rhyming so pleased the king, that his majesty bequeathed him a legacy of one hundred marks. He continued in the fame office under Edward the fixth, and is faid to have acquired fome degree of reputation about the court for his poetry. Being of a serious difpofition, and an enthufiaft to reformation, he was much offended at the lascivious ballads which prevailed among the courtiers: and, with a laudable design to check these indecencies, un

dertook

dertook a metrical verfion of the Pfalter, " thinking thereby, " fays Antony Wood, that the courtiers would fing them instead "of their fonnets, but did not, only fome few excepted." Here was the zeal, if not the fuccefs, of his fellow labourer Clement Marot. A fingular coincidence of circumftances is, notwithstanding, to be remarked on this occafion. Vernacular verfions for general use of the Pfalter were first published both in France and England, by laymen, by court-poets, and by fervants of the court. Nor were the respective tranflations entirely completed by themselves and yet they tranflated nearly an equal number of pfalms, Marot having verfified fifty, and Sternhold fifty-one. Sternhold died in the year 1549. His fifty-one pfalms were printed the fame year by Edward Whitchurch, under the following title. "All fuch Pfalms of David as Thomas Stern"holde late grome of the kinges Maieftyes robes did in his lyfe "tyme drawe into Englysfhe metre." They are without the mufical notes, as is the fecond edition in 1552. He probably lived to prepare the first edition for the prefs, as it is dedicated by himself to king Edward the sixth.

Cotemporary with Sternhold, and his coadjutor, was John Hopkins of whofe life nothing more is known, than that he was a clergyman and a schoolmafter of Suffolk, and perhaps a graduate at Oxford about the year 1544. Of his abilities as a teacher of the claffics, he has left a fpecimen in fome Latin stanzas prefixed to Fox's MARTYROLOGY. He is rather a better English poet than Sternhold; and tranflated fifty eight of the pfalms, distinguished by the initials of his name.

Of the rest of the contributors to this undertaking, the chief, at least in point of rank and learning, was William Whyttingham, promoted by Robert earl of Leicester to the deanery of Durham, yet not without a strong reluctance to comply with the use of the canonical habiliments. Among our religious exiles in the reign of Mary, he was Calvin's principal

VOL. III.

CATн. Oxon. i. 76.
Y

favorite,

« הקודםהמשך »