IM 



I'HYTANKI M 



I'SAL.MS 



1689. ' Voluminous l'i> nne \\ ood calls liim : ami 

 the continuous stream of writing mi tin- jx-riloiu 

 topics of the day, which was always bringing him 

 into trouble, represents but a fnu-timi of his literary 

 activity. Hi- wits a great compiler of constitutional 

 history, his moot valuable works in this Held being 

 the ('itlfiiilur /' J'tirlimneiitury Writs ami his 

 Record*, both of wliich contain much that is useful 

 anil important. 



See vol. iii. of Howell's Stale Trial* ; Document* relat- 

 ti/ to I'miine, edited by a R Gardiner ( Cauiden Society, 

 1*77 ) ; an.l c.tli.-r works cited at CHAKLES 1. ami LAUD. 



l*r> taur inn. the town-hall of a Greek city, 

 where' tin- lire was kept |>er|>etually burning', where 

 ambassador were received, where citi/cns who had 

 deserved especially well of the state were sometimes 

 allowed to live at the public expense; it was in 

 fact the headquarters of the executive of the state. 

 In Athens this body, the j>ri/liii<i-i.i, fitly in number, 

 were chosen from 'the 500 members of the great 

 council, live for each of the ten trilies. The live 

 representatives of each tribe held office in rotation, 

 one month at a time. 



Przeinysl, n town of Austrian Galicia, on an 

 allliient of the Vistula, 61 miles \V. of Lemberg 

 by rail. It is the seat of a Koman Catholic ami a 

 United Greek bishop, carries on a considerable 

 trade, and has manufactures of machinery, spirits, 

 wooden wares,. &c. Since 1874 it has been strongly 

 fortilie.l. Top. ( 1890) 35,209, fully one-third Jews. 



INaliiiaiia/.ar. GKOHCE, 'the Formosan,' was 

 IICH-II probably in Lunguedoc, between 1679 and 

 16H5. Educated by monks and Jesuits at Avignon 

 and elsewhere, he at sixteen turned vagaltond, and 

 for two or three years wandered through France, 

 Germany, and the Low Countries, by turns an 

 'Irish pilgrim,' a 'Japanese convert," a waiter, a 

 'heathen Formosan,' and a soldier. At last at 

 Sluys he found a ready accomplice in one Innes, 

 chaplain to a Scottish regiment, who baptised him 

 'George Lander' after the governor, brought him 

 over to London, and introduced him to Bishop 

 ( minion. For that credulous prelate he trans- 

 ited the Church Catechism into the 'Formosan' 

 language ; and to him he dedicated his Historical 

 and OeoffrofUeat Description of Formosa (1704), 

 wliich found many believers in spite of its patent 

 absurdities, such as that Formosa belonged, nut to 

 China, but Japan, and that the hearts of 18,000 

 boys were sacrificed every new year. The bishop 

 sent him for six months to Oxford, and for a while 

 he was lionised by the highest in the land. In 

 spite, however, of his eating raw meat and enor- 

 mous quantities of pepper ami opium (an opium 

 eater he continued to the last), people gradually 

 lost faith in him, or the novelty wore off, or by 

 Law's Serious Call (1729) he was converted to a 

 sense of the error of his ways. Anyhow, we find 

 him the alleged importer of a white ' Formosan 

 enamel, a tutor, a regimental clerk (1716-17), a 

 fan-painter, and lastly, for years a diligent hack- 

 writer for the publishers. The Universal History 

 was largely of his compiling; and his, too, a 



{xipular Essay on Miracles. But in all his strange 

 ife there is nothing stranger than the esteem 

 expressed for him by Samuel Johnson. He was 

 the man he 'sought after most,' 'the best man he 

 ever knew,' a man whom ' he would as soon think 

 of contradicting as a bishop,' and whose 'piety, 

 penitence, and virtue exceeded almost what we 

 read of as wonderful even in the lives of the saints.' 

 An old man of fourscore years, he died in London 

 on 3d May 1763. 



Bee the autobiographical Memoir* M/* * * *,eommnnly 

 tuotrn bf the name of (Irorge Pmlmanatar ( 1764 ), and 

 article, in Temple Bar ( 1866) and the CornkiU (1879). 



Psalmody. See HYMN, SACKED Music. 



Psalm*. ItooK OF. This title indicates a 



collecth.il of >ong* set to music (lor use in the 

 temple and probalilv sometimes in the synagogue). 

 A more intelligible term, which like psalms' 

 is iif (. ieek origin, and is specially faMMircd by 

 I'hilo, is 'hymns;' this corrcs|K>nds exactly to th>- 

 Ilebiew t'/iilliiii, praises,' or 'songs of praise. ' The 

 eiicharistic element is in fact the most essential 

 one in the book : with the solitary exception of 

 I's. Ixxxviii. there is an undercurrent of thanks- 

 giving even in the most melancholy compositions 

 (cf. Eph. v. 19, 20). There was, however, an 

 earlier stage of psalmody, as a linguistic study 

 of the Hebrew title assures us, when the service 

 of religious song was of a very rough nature, and' 

 not under the control of guilds of singers. The 

 ancient Arabs used a term (tahltl) which corre- 

 sponds to t'iiillnli for the shouting of a short con 

 sedated formula, and the common root of both 

 names means 'to call, cry out. ' Only by degrees 

 did the Israelitish ' psalmody ' rise from a shouting 

 like that of the vintage or the bridal night to the 

 carefully trained singing of later times. Indeed, as 

 late as the fall of Jerusalem the noise, of the Baby- 

 lonian soldiers in the temple is conij.ared to that of 

 the worshippers on one of the olden feast-days 

 (Lam. ii. 7). 



The question therefore arises, Can our present 

 psalms, so spiritual in tone and in form compara- 

 tively so artistic, really be the very forms of prayer 

 and praise used by the pre-exilic Israelites? Or 

 have they literally driven out earlier and less 

 spiritual compositions ? Or lastly, have the older 

 formula' lieen greatly expanded and idealised.oreven 

 sometimes permitted to become imbedded in later 

 works? tor this last conjecture some analogies 

 might perhaps be found in the prophetic literature 

 (see, e.g., Isa. ii. 2-4, and Ewald, The Prophets, i. 

 82, 83), out it can only be admitted to a hearing on 

 proof of the existence in a psalm of really strong 

 inconsistencies of thought and language. Till thai 

 proof is given let us accept each psalm its the monu- 

 ment of s e particular age, without attempting to 



extract by analysis fragments of earlier origin than 

 the rest of the poem. To ascertain approximately 

 that age or those ages is the function of criticism. 

 True ; but have the critics the means of doing this ? 

 4 When once it is admitted, as it must lie admitted, 

 that the lilies cannot l>e absolutely relied on,' says 

 an Knglish commentator, ' we are launched upon 

 a sea of uncertainty ' ( K irk pat rick ). By no means. 

 The question of the origin of the Psalter is of 

 course a complicated one. but \vc must not say that 

 the student of complicated problems is like a mariner 

 without a compass. There are three conditions 

 upon compliance with which the disagreement of 

 critics will be reduced within very narrow limits. 

 The first is, that no critic should approach the 

 i Psalter until he has assimilated a good number of 

 the licst critical results which haveueen reached in 

 other parts of the Old Testament. The second, 

 that he should begin at the end of the Psalter- i.e. 

 with liooks iv. and v. (the date of which, as collec- 

 tions, cannot, for various reasons, be later than the 

 accession of Simon the Maccabee), and work his 

 way backwards. The third, that he should break 

 radically with the custom of looking at each psalm 

 by itself, with a view to determining its period. 

 The reason of the first is that there are numerous 

 similarities in language ami in tone between the 

 Psalms and other old Hebrew writings; many at 

 least of which afford valid evidence of the date of 

 the poems, the psalmists liriiig in a high degree imi- 

 tathc, and infinitely more prone, for instance, to 

 hono\v from the prophets than the prophets to bor- 

 row from them. The reason of the second is that, 

 the Psalter being a combination of live 'bunks' of 

 psalms, it is natural to presume that the two last 



