, had forbidden them, and he was of a sincerely religious
nature. He also was a music-lover, and encouraged the art as much as his
short life and troubled reign permitted.
Hopkins also wrote a preface for his share of the work, in which he spoke
with much modesty of himself and much praise of Sternhold. He said his own
verses were not "in any parte to bee compared with his [Sternhold's] most
exquisite dooynges." He thinks, however, that his owne are "fruitfull
though they bee not fyne."
The third edition, in 1556, contained fifty-one psalms; the fourth, in
1560, had sixty-seven psalms; the fifth, in 1561, increased the number to
eighty-seven; and in 1562 or 1563 the whole book of psalms appeared. Other
authors had some share in this work: Norton, Whyttyngham (a Puritan divine
who married Calvin's sister), Kethe, who wrote the 100th Psalm, "All people
that on earth do dwell," which is still seen in some of our hymn-books. Of
all these men, sly old Thomas Fuller truthfully and quaintly said, "They
were men whose piety was better than their poetry, and they had drunk more
of Jordan than of Helicon."
For over one hundred years from the first publication there was a steady
outpour of editions of these Psalms. Before the year 1600 there were
seventy-four editions,--a most astonishing number for the times; and from
1600 to 1700 two hundred and thirty-five editions.
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