"Not but there are who merit other palms
Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms.
The boys and girls whom charity maintains
Implore your help in these pathetic strains.
How could devotion touch the country pews
Unless the gods bestowed a proper muse."
Wesley sneered at this version, saying, "When it is seasonable to sing
praises to God we do it, not in the scandalous doggrel of Hopkins and
Sternhold, but in psalms and hymns which are both sense and poetry, such
as would provoke a _critic_ to turn _Christian_ rather than a
_Christian_ to turn _critic_."
The edition of 1562 was printed with the notes of melodies that were then
called Church Tunes. They formed the basis of all future collections of
psalm-music for over a century. They soon were published in harmony in four
parts, "which may be sung to all musical instrumentes set forth for the
encrease of vertue and abolyshing of other vayne and tryfling ballads." In
1592 a very important collection of psalm-tunes was published to use with
Sternhold and Hopkins' words. It is called "The Whole Booke of Psalmes:
with their wonted tunes as they are sung in Churches composed into four
parts." This book is noteworthy because in it the tunes are for the first
time named after places, as is still the custom. The music contained square
or oblong notes and also lozenge-shaped notes. The square note was a
"semy-brave," the lozenge-shaped note was a "prycke" or a "mynymme," and
"when there is a prycke by the square note, that prycke is half as much as
the note that goeth before."
Music at that time was said to be pricked, not printed,--the word being
derived from the prick or dot which formed the head of the note. Any song
which was printed in various parts was called a prick-song, to distinguish
it from one sung extemporaneously or by ear. The word prick-song occurs not
only in all the musical books, but in the literature of the time, and in
Shakespeare. "Tom Sternhold's" songs were entitled to be called prick-songs
because they had notes of music printed with them. Many of the tunes
in this collection were taken from the Genevan Psalter and Luther's
Psalm-Book, or from Marot and Beza's French Book of Psalms. Hence they were
irreverently called "Genevan Jiggs," and "Beza's Ballets."
There is much difference shown in the wording of these various editions of
Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalms. The earlier ones were printed as Sternhold
wrote them; but with the Genevan editions began great and astonishing
alterations. Warton, who was no lover of Sternhold and Hopkins' verses,
calling them "the disgrace of sacred poetry," said of these attempted
improvements, with vehemence, that "many stanzas already too naked and weak
like a plain old Gothic edifice stripped of its signatures of antiquity,
have lost that little and almost only strength and support which they
derived from ancient phrases." Other old critics thought that Sternhold,
could he return to life, would hardly know his own verses.