274 Lawrence Mason, 



Hon^!*' Francis North Baron of Guilford 1703." The volume is 

 a thin folio. 



There is a tempting opportinity to claim a "fourth" edition, for 

 Henry King ; but the evidence is so slight that bare possibility, and 

 not probability, is all that can be maintained. The facts are these : 

 Playford, in his "The Whole Book of the Psalms: with the usual 

 Hymns and Spiritual Songs. . . . London. . . . 1677 "^ (British 

 Museum copy, catalogued M.C. 6; Library of the Archbishop at 

 Lambeth, 75 B. 12), inserts on the last half-page of the "Table," 

 at the end, notices of five "Books of Divine Musick, lately Printed, 

 and sold by John Playford at his shop near the Temple-Church." 

 The fourth of these five "Books" is thus announced : "A New and 

 Excellent Translation of the Psalms into Metre, by the Right Reverend 

 Dr. Henry King late Lord Bishop of Chichester, according to the 

 Measures of the Common Metre, fit to be sung to all our Common 

 Tunes, designed for the Pubhck Use of the Church, and the Private 

 Use of Families. In Octavo. Price bound 2s." This announce- 

 ment does not appear in later editions of "The Whole Book of the 

 Psalms," 2 but it suffices to raise and leave unanswered the question 

 as to whether it is merely an advertisement of the Second Edition, 

 "lately printed," or the title-page of a new edition printed between 

 1671 and 1677. The only real bit of evidence in support of the latter 

 hypothesis is the word "Octavo," for while the Second Edition has 

 been described above as an octavo (on the authority of the British 

 Museum Catalogue for 1890) , the book is called a duodecimo on page 

 183 of "Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica " (1815) ; unhappily, the present 

 writer made no note on this point in his own examination of specimens 

 of the Second Edition, and there are of course two (often conflicting) 

 bibliographial methods commonly employed in this connection : 

 a book may be called 8vo, i2mo, etc., on the basis of the biblio- 



1 In his preliminarj' "Advertisement" and "Preface," Playford drew 

 freely on King and Fuller again,— with the usual lack of acknowledgment. 

 The frontispiece is the same, except that the plate has been framed with 

 the music and Latin words of the " Gloria in Excelsis," " Gloria Patri," and 

 two Psalms. King's versions of the Lord's Prayer, Creed, and Ten Com- 

 mandments are included, but the text of the Psalms is that of Sternhold 

 and Hopkins, with some emendations. 



2 E. g., a 1692 printing, wherein the Preface borrows still more from 

 King's, and a 1700 printing, which simply reproduces the 1692 volume; 

 the work was very popular, for the British Museum Catalogue includes 

 fifteen editions (or, at least, fifteen differently dated title-pages) withia 

 60 years. 



