[1]“To get behind the hymnbook to the men and women who wrote its
contents, and to the events, whether personal or public, out of
which it sprang and which it so graciously mirrors, is to enter a
world palpitating with human interest. For a hymnbook is a
transcript of real life, a poetical accompaniment to real events
and real experiences. Like all literature that counts, it rises
directly out of life.” (Frederick J. Gillman, in _The Evolution of
the English Hymn_. [New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927.] Used by
permission.)
[2]J. Balcom Reeves, _The Hymn in History and Literature_. (New York:
D. Appleton-Century Co., 1924). Used by permission.
[3]“There is an inclination to fence in what are called ‘literary
lyrics,’ as if to fence out singing lyrics! Now there is, of
course, a distinction between poems meant to be sung and poems
written in the pattern of lyrical poetry, but never meant to be
sung; but the terminology which classes one kind as literary,
thereby implying that the other kind is not of the realm of
literature, is inaccurate and unhappy.” _Ibid._
[4]“In his volume, _The English Lyric_, Professor Felix E. Schelling
virtually disposes of the hymn with the remark that ‘we may or may
not “accept” certain hymns, but we do not have to read them.’ That
is readily granted—unless, of course, one wishes to know them or
to write just criticism about them.” _Ibid._
[5]“Frequently a hymn is a prayer; and it is a rule for the structure
of prayers that they exclude all those recondite figures, dazzling
comparisons, flashing metaphors, which, while grateful to certain
minds of poetic excitability, are offensive to more sober and
staid natures, and are not congenial with the lowly spirit of a
suppliant at the throne of grace. A simile may be shining, but it
may not be exactly chaste; and a hymn prefers pure beauty to
bedizening ornament.” (Dr. Edwards A. Park, in _Hymns and
Choirs_.)
[6]These numbers, of course, refer to the number of syllables in a
line.