The punctuation was horrible. A few commas and periods and
a larger number of colons were "pepered and salted" _a la_ Timothy
Dexter, apparently quite by chance, among the words. Periods were placed
in the middle of sentences; words of one syllable were divided by hyphens;
capitals and italics were used after the fashion of the time, apparently
quite at random; and inverted letters were common enough. The pages were
unnumbered, and on every left-hand page the word "Psalm" in the title was
spelled correctly, while on the right-hand page it is uniformly spelled
"Psalme." But after all, these typographical blemishes might be forgiven if
the substance, the psalms themselves, were worthy; but the versification
was certainly the most villainous of all the many defects, though the
sense was so confused that many portions were unintelligible save with
the friendly aid of the prose version of the Bible; and the grammatical
construction, especially in the use of pronouns, was also far from correct.
Such amazing verses as these may be found:--
"And sayd He would not them waste: had not
Moses stood (whom He chose)
'fore him i' th' breach; to turne his wrath
lest that he should waste those."
Cotton Mather, in his "Magnalia," gives thus the full story of the
production of "The Bay Psalm-book":--
"About the year 1639, the New-English reformers, considering that their
churches enjoyed the other ordinances of Heaven in their scriptural
purity were willing that the 'The singing of Psalms' should be restored
among them unto a share of that _purity_.
Pages:
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152