It is a square quarto of three hundred and forty-eight closely printed
pages, bound in time-stained but well-preserved parchment, and even the
parchment itself is interesting, and lovely to the touch. The titlepage is
missing, but I know that this is the edition printed, as was Priscilla's,
in Amsterdam in 1612 (not "in England in 1600" as a note written in the
last blank page states). The full title was "The Book of Psalms. Englished
both in Prose and Metre. With annotations opening the words and sentences
by conference with other Scriptures. Eph. v: 18,19. Bee yee filled with
the Spirit speaking to yourselves in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual-Songs
singing and making melodie in your hearts to the Lord." The book contains
besides the Psalms and Annotations, on its first pages, a "Preface
declaring the reason and use of the Book;" and at the last pages a "Table
directing to some principal things observed in the Annotations of the
Psalms," a list of "Hebrew phrases observed which are somewhat hard and
figurative," and also some "General Observations touching the Psalms."
I can well imagine what a pious delight this book was to our Pilgrim
Fathers; and what a still greater delight it was to our Pilgrim Mothers,
in that day and country of few books. They possessed in it, not only a
wonderful new metrical version of the Psalms for singing, but a prose
version for comparison as well; and the deeply learned and profoundly
worded annotations placed at the end of each Psalm were doubtless of
special interest to such "scripturists with all their hearts" as they were.
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