Tender-hearted Wither! This hymn, which in his gentleness he offers to the lips and heart of a prisoner as a devout mode of beguiling his solitary hours, was doubtless the very song of his own soul, under the

rigours of his unalleviated confinement, and in the damp and gloomy atmosphere of his comfortless dungeon. His were hard times; and those who got the upper hand sometimes forgot their own sufferings in the joy of inflicting suffering in their turn. It was not easy, however, to clip or singe the wings of Wither's muse. Some of his best verses were made in the Marshalsea; and we cannot but pay honourable tribute to the memory of the man who, while he helped those who had less genius and fewer resources than himself to sing with him, cheered on his own muse in a style

like this

If thy verse do bravely tower,

As she makes wing she gets power;
Yet the higher she doth soar,
She's affronted still the more;
Till she to the high'st hath past,
Then she rests with fame at last :
Let naught, therefore, thee affright,
But make forward in thy flight;
For, if I could match thy rhyme,
To the very stars I'd climb;
There begin again, and fly
Till I reach'd eternity.
But, alas! my muse is slow;
For thy page she flags too low:
Yea, the more's her hapless fate,
Her short wings were clipt of late;
And poor I, her fortune rueing,
Am myself put up a-mewing;
But if I my cage can rid,

I'll fly where I never did;

And though for her sake I'm crost,
Though my best hopes I have lost,
And knew she would make me trouble
Ten times more than ten times double :
I should love and keep her too,
Spite of all the world could do.

For, though banish'd from my flocks,
And confin'd within these rocks,
Here I waste away the light,
And consume the sullen night,
She doth for my comfort stay,
And keeps many cares away.

*

She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss,
Her divine skill taught me this,
That, from every thing I saw,
I could some invention draw;
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sight:
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustleing;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.

By her help I also now

Make this churlish place allow

Some things that may sweeten gladness,

In the very gall of sadness.

The dull loneness, the black shade,

That these hanging vaults have made;

The strange music of the waves,

Beating in these hollow caves;

This black den which rocks emboss,

Overgrown with eldest moss;

The rude portals that give light

More to terror than delight;

Well sung, Wither! He has broken his prison; he has reached the home of freedom, and now drinks at its very source the inspiration which still gives life to his best hymns. Let his name be wreathed with peace!

.

Chapter X.

PSALMS IN ENGLISH METRE.

"As through thy temple now the deep strains peal,
And choral minstrelsy is heard to swell,
Devotion wakes within us, and we feel

All that the Psalmist hath expressed so well."

OW few among the legion of modern versifiers have ever caught either the spirit or the

manner of the sacred old hymns, which they have tried to throw into English metre. With few exceptions, those who have aimed at a literal version of the Psalms in metre are tame, and have lost the soul of the original; while many of the paraphrasers are lacking in dignity, and excite any feeling but that of devotion, by calling their neighbours to sing their psalms "done into metre." Sternhold and Hopkins must be venerated as we revere antiquity even in its dotage. Brady and Tate are always associated with our early impressions of old Church psalmody, when the parish-clerk used to act as head singer, and give the key-note on a doleful instrument that they called a pitch-pipe. As to the music of the Scotch version, it is enough that it is admired most by those who