The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Quarterly Review. April.
The county of Dorset, with its history, antiqui-
ties, agriculture, and dialect, forms the topic of the
opening paper in this number, and some curious in-
_

formation is afforded on these points. Deriving
its name from " Thorn-scetta" (the meaning of which
is, it seems, obscure), the county has become notori

ous in more recent times as the scene of Judge Jef-
frey's " bloody assize," eighty persons beip.g sen-
tenced to death in one day at Dorchester, and for
the revelations concerning the condition of the

Dorsetshire labourers in 1846. Since then, however,
things seem to have changed for the better. Large
tracts of waste lands and sheep downs have been
broken up, machinery has been brought into
use on all sides, and thoroughly good systems
of farming have been naturalised, especially on
the hill districts." The farmers of Dorset are said
now to spend upwards of forty thousand a year on
artificial manures, whilst better cottages for the
labourers have been built and wages have risen;
but one of the most remarkable Dorsetshire fea-

tures is the dialect, which in the poems of Z.
Barnes will preserve, when the original shall have
been swept away by that foe to patois, " the
schoolmaster." Mr. Barnes' poems, however,
judging from the specimens given here, are not
merely valuable as curiosities, but for their humour
and pathos—they are heartily enjoyed, the writer
says, by theDorset poor themselves, and are worthy
a place in any poetic collection. " Hymnology;
as a careful dissertation on sacred songs, Hebrew
and Christian, is called, recognises the necessity
for "an approved and authorised hymn-book,"
and the writer calls attention to the rich store
of materials for which a selection may be made,
remarks on the confusion of styles at present exist-
ing, and shows the absurdities and inconsistencies
in many specimens in use. Thus " hymns," the
writer says, "should be addressed to God," yet we
find Bishop Heber's " Brightest and best of the sons
of the morning," Pope's " Vital spark of heavenly
flame !" Toplady's "Deathless principle arise !" &c.,
are received and approved by the pious, whilst, in
other examples, we are offended by expressions of
vulgar familiarity, or nauseated with " puerilities"
and " prettyistns. ' Having commented on these
defects, the writer turns to the Hebrew hymns,
which he divides into three classes—" 1. The oc
crizional piecce scattered up and down the Books of
the Old Testament; 2. The authorised collection
of the Jews themselves, known as the Psalms
of David, gathered together, probably out
of a vast number, of which the rest,
being rejected as uninspired, have been
lost; and 3. The hymns of the New Testament,
the Magnificat, the Nunc Diminitus, and the Bene-
dictus." These are characterised by a complete
system of rhythmical arrangement, guided not by
sound, but by sense—thought answering to thought,
and sentence to sentence, instead of line to line, and
ending to ending." A feature which had been ad-
mirably preserved in our authorised version, and
one which in any future revision will, we hope, re-
ceive special attention. Speaking of the metrical
Psalms (Tate and Brady), the writer says
But we cannot dismiss the metrical Psalms without
calling them to account for the objectionable supremacy
which the organ has established for itself over the choir
and congregation : we are convinced that if the words of our
old metrical Psalmody had been at all worthy of their sub-
ject, they would have coerced the music to adapt itself
accordingly; and we should have been spared the incon-
gruity of the poorest and most prosaic, as well as the most
bombastic lines of psalms and hymns being made a convey-
ance for such tunes as Cambridge New, Devizes, Ports-
m@uth, &c. ; if indeed such tunes would ever have come
into existence.

Who could endure to hear and sing hymns, the meaning
and force of which he really felt—set, as they frequently
have been, to the melodies from the opera, and even worse,
or massacred by the repetition of the end of each stanza, no
matter whether or not the grammar and sense were consis-
tent with it F—not to mention the memorable cases of

" —My poor pol—
My poor pol—
My poor polluted heart;'

" —Our Great Sal—
Our Great Salvation comes 1"
Syriac hymns are next discussed, the literature of
that country being very rich in these productions,
and the language possessing peculiar interest, as
being that of " the chosen people at the time
of our Lord's appearing." Translations of seve-
ral specimens are given, which convey a very
favourable idea of the quality of these works, the
best of which were produced about the fourth cen-
tury. Of the Greek hymns most abundant in the
eighth century, length is a striking feature, " The
Great Mid-Lent Canon of St. Andrew of Crete,"
consisting of no fewer than 300 stanzas. The Latin
Churches also possess a boundless store of hymns,
but some of the most vigorous specimens are to be
found among the Germans, whilst we rejoice in
Sternhold and Hopkins and Tate and Brady. The
writer thus concludes :

But let the English Church appreciate her position in
this matter—a position such as no Church ever held before
for undertaking this work; let her lay the whole world
under tribute ; let her rejoice in being able to take as she
will of the soft utterances of Asia, and the deep teaching of
the Greek odes, the terse diction and subdued fire of the
Latins, and the bold energy of the Germans, and to weld
them together with the fervent raptures of those at home
who have wandered from her fold, and the chastened devo-
tion of her more dutiful children. It is a great work; it is
a great opportunity; we cannot but long for its accomplish-
ment; yet we dread a failure. There is just so much
already at hand as to tempt us into action; there is just
that amount of half-preparedness to make us act in haste,
and repent at leisure. There is a proverb—and we would
write it over this subject —" Wait a little, and make an end
the sooner." It is unbecoming the dignity and high cha-
racter cf our Church to be ever making and unmaking her
formulas ; let her bishops and doctors then begin, if they
will, at once, but with the determination to spare neither
labour nor time, even if years pass away before they can
with confidence lay before us a ' Hymnariura" worthy of
our history and our language ; thoroughly consonant with
the tone and teaching of our Prayer-book ; and such that
the Church of our time may set to it her seal, and hand it
down to posterity, a Kr/Am as ad to future genera-
tions, and a lasting monument of the present.
Among the other articles we may mention one of
extreme bitterness on that curious specimen of
modern book-making, " Thornbury's Life of Tur-
ner," the errors, plagiarisms, and impertinences of
which are dilated on with infinite gusto. In the
" State and Prospects of Turkey," a somewhat hope-
ful view is taken of the change of affairs in that
country; but the writer on the "Training of the
Clergy" thus gives vent to gloomy forebodings :
Failures of harvests, blights on the food of Ireland, em-
bargoes upon cotton, the want of crews to man our ships,
and of soldiers to guard our coasts, the dearth of noble
minds to elevate the mind of the nation, and of statesmen
to guide its counsels—one loss, perhaps, in its possible re-
sults the saddest of all, of that domestic support and com-
fort so needed by a beloved and widowed. Queen in her deep
anxieties—with all these various forms of national distress
England of late years has been familiar. We are now
warned, by voices not likely to be mistaken, of another
approaching dearth and failure, and one most formidable,
which assuredly requires our attention—a failure in the
supply of our clergy. More than one Bishop has signalled
the approaching dearth, and even without their practical
experience no prophet is required to foretell it.
"The Eastern Archipelago," " The Latter Years of