Still they may be very absurd and laughable from an English point of view.
So superior was Cotton Mather's version to the miserable verses given in
"The Bay Psalm-Book" that one wonders it was not eagerly accepted by the
New England churches. Doubtless they preferred rhyme--even the atrocious
rhyme of "The Bay Psalm Book." And the fact that the "Psalterium
Americanum" contained no musical notes or directions also militated against
its use.
Other American clergymen prepared metrical versions of the psalms that were
much loved and loudly sung by the respective congregations of the writers.
The work of those worthy, painstaking saints we will neither quote nor
criticise,--saying only of each reverend versifier, "Truly, I would
the gods had made thee poetical." Rev. John Barnard, who preached for
fifty-four years in Marblehead, published at the age of seventy years a
psalm-book for his people. Though it appeared in 1752, a time when "The Bay
Psalm Book" was being shoved out of the New England churches, Barnard's
Version of the Psalms was never used outside of Marblehead. Rev. Abijah
Davis published another book of psalms in which he copied whole pages from
Watts without a word of thanks or of due credit, which was apparently
neither Christian, clerical nor manly behavior.
Watts's monosyllabic Hymns, which were not universally used in America
until after the Revolution, are too well known and are still too frequently
seen to need more than mention.
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