Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes | Page 8

the
crucial test of a number of years; while its mechanical characteristics
have been demonstrated all the way along the metronome number of
decades it has served to mollify and assuage the griefs and passions,
and inspire the consciences of congregations using it habitually as a
vade mecum.
While believing in the sedate grandeur of its stereotyped orthodoxy, I
powerfully plead, and in a tone of restraint, this prerogative: that the
edition of hymns known as "The Hymnary," should upon examination
be found to contain more agreeable, versatile value and fecundity of
literary nutrition: honourably and scholastically capable of out-classing
the rival for whose displacement I plead; and competent at once to put
yet better light with wholesomer sustenance and rarer spiritual food
into the minds of its privileged students.
The ideas and principles conceived by the once editors and publishers
of the volume whose richly bestraught merits I champion, and whose
solemn rights I plead, (in the year 1871), was to place in society at once,
all electrified, au prémier coup canonized (armed at all points), a work
which should at a moment be complete in law; self-contained and
academically referable to the stringent junctures of an ecclesiastical, a
national, and a polyphonetic tribunal: a work which should loyally
attract the acclaim of co-existing literary hymnals, and ever would, it
was reverently hoped--a sentiment which I, for one, favourably concur
in--remain, the key-symbol of the Reformed, Anglican faith, with its
near, true, and ever new ally--a note as high, silvery and jurisprudential;
purified domestic co-partnership!
To further substantiate and enhance my devoutly expressed remarks, I

confidently state that the compilation of "Hymns Ancient and Modern"
was not originally in fact the outcome of an individual movement, or
yet of a moment. At periods diverse, and at stages various, it matured
its conditional purpose by repeated acts of regeneration and reform, by
keeping generally within the radius of a stereotyped policy of pruning
and paring; which consolidated by degrees and swept it on to the
confines and the platform of its national respectability.
Be it even tacitly acknowledged, in surveying the genesis of
Hymnology that the function of revision has once been, a fact, applied
to the "Hymns Ancient and Modern" since the appearance of "The
Hymnary," in my estimation under a less searching eye than that which
all impartially discriminated and directed, at one and at one time only,
the laying together and the consolidating of the "particles predelix" of
this frankincense offering of the National Church; a work of classic
intent and æsthetic outcome. Personal labour designed it purposely for
the hearts of men, but not for their _faces_; a character which,
Christian-like, it inseparably wears, like French martial music.
Herein exemplified to noble British hearts is a bulwark that at once
completely puts to rout no inconsiderable amount of the mildew mould
of "Hymns Ancient and Modern," while never so much as tarnishing or
jeopardizing the aroma of its native asceticism.
Interested bibliophiles may peruse pleasantly the trenchant remarks
launched by the editors, (of the work upheld) literary and musical; and
examine for their predilection by turning its pages the analytical merit
of its composer's names; all serious-minded men; capable lamp-bearers
in the wide arcana of classic music.
Stoical people do not know the wealth of chaste language stored up
within the covers of "The Hymnary." A rare musician-poet is needed to
resolve its pulpy flavour and discipline to the polemics of common life;
whilst one, a connoisseur, would readily congratulate the sanguine,
sensible, and all-seeing management, as regards to authors of words,
indices of composers, indices of metres, metronome marks, which
heralds and places it, in respect of completeness, ahead of all
contemporaneous editions.
J. ATWOOD.SLATER,
_Medallist & Premium Holder of the Royal Academy of Arts,
London._

4, Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol,
_Epiphany, 1903._

_LITERATURE._
To the Editor of THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE.
_March_, 1903.
Sir,--Touched by a virtuous sense that a noble writer has passed from
the central and celestial sphere of his vocation, and discharging the
offices of respect voluntarily admitted as a literary admirer, with
sympathy in a bruised state of liquefaction, I maintain that the season
for uttering a few words is clearly at hand, and should be turned to the
advantage of retrospect.
Being bred of a generation which has read, with a spirit attuned to the
pleasant influences of an Academic and a Saracenic art, the writings of
John Henry Shorthouse, and ever discovering them to contain
philosophic importance and pyschologic expression decidedly above
the astuteness and ability of average writers; and having usually in
them remarked wisdom, council and knowledge reminiscent of the
inspired logicial writers and divines of the law-given Testaments; in
point of enquiry, I am summarily induced to champion the belief that
the psychologic, emphatic style adopted