494 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[gna S. VI. 155., Deo. 18. '68. 



void of taste, will go in adopting the horrible, 



through mistake for the religious : — 

 " Till then my Faith shall view 

 Th3' Ej'e-streaks black and blue, 

 The Clam on Mouth and Tongue, 

 Thy Corpse with Torture wrung. 

 As in the holy Hj'mn 

 Described from Limb to Limb." 



Another piece from the German, though entire 

 in itself, consists but of two lines : — 



" Where men the Spear in his side drove. 

 There sit I like a little Dove." 



The Moravian Church has since learnt better 

 taste and truer devotion. Its last Hymn-book 

 was edited by, and contains many of the composi- 

 tions of, the late James Montgomery, a member 

 of the Society. The Methodists adopted several 

 hymns from the German ; but the poetic taste of 

 Charles Wesley prevented them from retaining 

 anything disgusting. Some of these are still in 

 general use. 



It was the custom of many of our earlier poets 

 to pay what they termed their devotions to the 

 Sacred Muse : hence some of them, as Pope and 

 Addison, have left us one or two hymns fitted for 

 public worship. But the writers generally known 

 as Sacred Poets — Donne, Crashaw, Davies, Her- 

 bert, Jeremy Taylor, Wither, Quarles, Vaughan, 

 &c. — afford us little or nothing fitted for devo- 

 tional singing. We have to go to writers of far 

 less genius, principally the clergy of the various 

 denominations. The seventeenth century has be- 

 queathed us but little, and of this little a very 

 small quantity is now in circulation. A piece or 

 two by Sandys, Baxter, Mason, Ken, and a few 

 others, are all our better selections contain. Drum- 

 mond of Hawthornden, Wither, and Flavel, are 

 entirely omitted. John Mason's Spiritual Songs, 

 though now almost forgotten, passed through 

 nearly twenty editions, and we must consider him 

 the greatest hymnist of the century. 



The hymns of the eighteenth century begin with 

 AVatts. He was followed by the Wesleys, Dod- 

 dridge, Oliver, Hart, Toplady, Haweis, Cowper, 

 Newton, and many lesser writers. With these 

 modern English hymnology may be said to have 

 commenced. Hymns gradually took the place of 

 the metrical psalms. The smooth verses of Brady 

 and Tate were found insufficient to express the 

 feelings awakened by the enthusiastic preachers in 

 fashion, and hymns good and bad, tasteful and 

 inelegant, became the household words of large 

 numbers of the people. 



The present century has given us abundance of 

 this literature. The greater part of our most 

 beautiful hymns is the tribute of living authors, or 

 writers lately dead. But still a want is felt. No 

 good collection of sacred song has yet appeared. 

 The catholic portion of most compilations is de- 

 based by the sectarian. We want a hymn-book 



that shall include imitations of some of the ancient 

 hymns, the best pieces of the best writers since 

 the Reformation, without respect to their church- 

 government divisions, and the contributions of the 

 present day. Could not a selection be made that 

 might be regarded as permanent and universal, 

 and a supplement be added that would include 

 the works of writers of the time? The supple- 

 ment might be occasionally altered without intro- 

 ducing much confusion or disarrangement ; and 

 perhaps many sections of the church-catholic could 

 agree at least in their hymns of prayer and songs 

 of praise. At any rate, the subject deserves 



Hubert Bower. 



thought 



SHAKSPEARE S WILL. 



Among the historical and literary curiosities of 

 manuscripts and printed books now so admirably 

 arranged and exhibited to the public in the li- 

 braries of the British Museum, there are few 

 which attract more attention than the recently- 

 acquired autograph of Shakspeare. It suggested 

 to my recollection the Original Will of Shak- 

 speare, and inspired the wish that so invaluable 

 a relic could be rescued from its present con- 

 cealment in that dingy den called the Preroga- 

 tive Office in Doctors' Commons, and its custody 

 transferred to the officers of the British Museum, 

 by whom it would be carefully and properly 

 exhibited, and, instead of being almost unknown 

 and unseen, it would become an object of the 

 greatest interest, I might almost say of venera- 

 tion, to thousands. 



What may be its present condition I know not : 

 it had suffered much from frequent manipulation 

 when I last saw it, thirty years ago. It was then 

 kept, folded, in a small box, with the will and 

 codicils of the Emperor Napoleon, and a few other 

 similar curiosities which were occasionally shown 

 to visitors. 



It would be very desirable that & facsimile copy 

 of the entire document should be made, either by 

 means of photography or by the lithographic skill 

 of Mr. Netherclift. 



• In the year 1828 I obtained permission from 

 the late Sir Herbert Jenner-Fust to copy the 

 whole or any part of the will, and for that pur- 

 pose it was entrusted to my possession for several 

 hours on three successive days, under the surveil- 

 lance of the clerks in the Prerogative Office, and 

 I took the greatest pains, by tracing and drawing, 

 to produce as perfect a copy of the signatures as 

 eye and hand could make. These signatures were 

 immediately afterwards engraved with equal ac- 

 curacy, and published in the collection now known 

 as Nichols's Autographs of Royal, Nolle, and Il- 

 lustrious Persons, fol. 1829; and I may here men- 

 tion that all the autographs in that collection were 

 selected, traced, and copied \n facsimile by myself 



