_MUSIC._
_To the Editor of The Times, London._
Sir,--Whilst admitting the all-importance and the austere role of
circumstance weighted with interest, and fused to an all-volatile
point sufficient to write to you concerning, and always entering,
freed from _schism_, the moot point, I beg leave to advance the
suggestion that (with correct apposition of sentiment, already said)
the moment has arrived for an improvement to be effected in the
Hymnal, in the public offices of St. Paul's Cathedral employed.
For the furtherance of this important item of diocesan and divine
service, "Hymns, Ancient and Modern," be it well known, has stood
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.