with all other writers employed in a fimilar tafk. Allowing for the state of our language in the middle of the fixteenth century, they appear to have been but little qualified either by genius or accomplishments for poetical compofition. It is for this reafon that they have produced a translation entirely deftitute of elegance, fpirit, and propriety. The truth is, that they undertook this work, not fo much from an ambition of literary fame, or a consciousness of abilities, as from motives of piety, and in compliance with the caft of the times. I prefume I am communicating no very new criticism when I obferve, that in every part of this translation we are disgusted with a languor of verfification, and a want of common profody. The most exalted effusions of thanksgiving, and the most fublime imageries of the divine majesty, are lowered by a coldness of conception, weakened by frigid interpolations, and disfigured by a poverty of phrafeology. Thomas Hopkins expoftulates with the deity in thefe ludicrous, at leaft trivial, expreffions.

Why dooft withdrawe thy hand aback,

And hide it in thy lappe?

O plucke it out, and be not flack

To give thy foes a rappe* !

What writer who wished to diminish the might of the fupreme Being, and to expose the style and fentiments of Scrip

* Ps. lxxiv. 12. Perhaps this verse is not much improved in the translation of king James the firft, who feems to have rested entirely on the image of why withdraweft thou not thine hand, which he has expreffed in Hopkins's manner.

Why doft thou thus withdraw thy hand,
Even thy right hand reftraine?
Out of thy bofom, for our good,

Drawe backe the fame againe !
In another ftanza he has preferved Hop-
kins's rhymes and expletives, and, if pof

fible, lowered his language and cadences. Ps. lxxiv. 1.

Oh why, our God, for evermore Haft thou neglected us? Why Smoaks thy wrath against the sheep Of thine owne pasture thus ? Here he has chiefly difplayed the Smoking of God's wrath, which kindles in Hopkins. The particle thus was never fo diftinguished and dignified. And it is hard to fay, why his majefty fhould chuse to make the divine indignation Smoke, rather than burn, which is fuggefted by the original.

ture,

ture, could have done it more fkilfully, than by making David call upon God, not to confume his enemies by an irrefiftible blow, but to give them a rap? Although fome fhadow of an apology may be suggested for the word rap, that it had not then acquired its prefent burlesque acceptation, or the idea of a petty stroke, the vulgarity of the following phrafe, in which the practice or profeffion of religion, or more particularly God's covenant with the Jews, is degraded to a trade, cannot easily be vindicated on any confideration of the fluctuating sense of words,

For why, their hearts were nothing bent

To him, nor to his trade'.

Nor is there greater delicacy or confiftency in the following stanza.

The pfalmift says, that God has placed the fun in the heavens, "which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber.' Here is a comparison of the fun rifing, to a bridegroom; who, according to the Jewish cuftom, was ushered from his chamber at midnight, with great ftate, preceded by torches and mufic, Sternhold has thus metrified the paffage ".

In them the Lord made for the fun,
A place of great renown,
Who like a bridegroom ready trimm'd

Doth from his chamber come.

The tranflator had better have fpared his epithet to the bridegroom; which, even in the sense of ready-dressed, is derogatory to

Ps. Ixviii. 37.

m Ps. 1xx. 3.

a Ps. xix. 4.

the

the idea of the comparison. But ready-trimm'd, in the language of that time, was nothing more than fresh-fhaved. Sternhold as often impairs a fplendid description by an impotent redundancy, as by an omiffion or contraction of the most important circumftances.

The miraculous march of Jehovah before the Ifraelites through the wilderness in their departure from Egypt, with other marks of his omnipotence, is thus imaged by the inspired pfalmift. "O God, when thou wentest forth before the people, "when thou wenteft through the wilderness: the earth shook, " and the heavens dropped at the prefence of God; even as "Sinai alfo was moved at the presence of God, who is the God "of Ifrael. Thou, O God, fentedst a gracious rain upon thine "inheritance, and refreshedft it when it was weary. The "chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of an"gels; and the Lord is among them, as in the holy place of Sinai." Sternhold has thus represented these great ideas.

When thou didst march before thy folk
The Egyptians from among,

And brought them from the wildernes,
Which was both wide and long:

The earth did quake, the raine pourde downe,
Heard were great claps of thunder;

The mount Sinai fhooke in fuch forte,
As it would cleave in funder.

God's army is two millions,

Of warriours good and ftrong,

The Lord alfo in Sinai

Is present them among*.

If there be here any merit, it arifes folely from preferving the expreffions of the profe verfion. And the tranflator would have done better had he preferved more, and had given us no feeble or foreign enlargements of his own. He has fhewn no independent skill or energy. When once he attempts to add or dilate, his weakness appears. It is this circumftance alone, which fupports the two following well-known stanzas ".

The Lord defcended from above,
And bowde the heavens high;

And underneath his feet he cast
The darkneffe of the fkie.

On Cherubs and on Cherubims
Full roiallie he rode;

And on the winges of all the windes
Came flying all abrode.

Almost the entire contexture of the profe is here literally transferred, unbroken and without tranfpofition, allowing for the small deviations neceffarily occafioned by the metre and rhyme. It may be faid, that the tranflator has teftified his judgment in retaining fo much of the original, and proved he was fenfible the paffage needed not any adventitious ornament. But what may seem here to be judgment or even taste, I fear, was want of expreffion in himself. He only adopted what was almost ready done to his hand.

To the difgrace of facred mufic, established worship, these pfalms ftill

• Ps. lxviii. 7. feq.

facred poetry, and our continue to be fung in

the church of England. It is certain, had they been more poetically tranflated, they would not have been acceptable to the common people. Yet however they may be allowed to ferve the purposes of private edification, in adminiftering fpiritual confolation to the manufacturer and mechanic, as they are extrinfic to the frame of our liturgy, and incompatible with the genius of our fervice, there is perhaps no impropriety in wifhing, that they were remitted and restrained to that church in which they fprung, and with whofe character and conftitution they feem fo aptly to correfpond. Whatever estimation in point of compofition they might have attracted at their first appearance in a ruder age, and however inftrumental they might have been at the infancy of the reformation in weaning the minds of men from the papistic ritual, all these confiderations can now no longer fupport even a specious argument for their being retained. From the circumstances of the times, and the growing refinements of literature, of course they become obfolete and contemptible. A work grave, ferious, and even refpectable for its poetry, in the reign of Edward the fixth, at length in a cultivated age, has contracted the air of an abfolute traveftie. Voltaire obferves, that in proportion as good tafte improved, the pfalms of Clement Marot infpired only difguft: and that although they charmed the court of Francis the first, they feemed only to be calculated for the populace in the reign of Lewis the fourteenth '.

To obviate these objections, attempts have been made from time to time to modernife this antient metrical verfion, and to render it more tolerable and intelligible by the substitution of more familiar modes of diction. But, to fay nothing of the unskilfulness with which these arbitrary corrections have been conducted, by changing obfolete for known words, the texture and integrity of the original ftyle, fuch as it was, has been deftroyed and many ftanzas, before too naked and weak, like a