of warm and sincere piety. He complains that while psalmody has been much cultivated in all the Reformed Churches it has been neglected in ours, and he attributes the decay into which it has fallen very much to the apathy "of our quality and gentry." "You may hear them," he says, "in the responses and reading psalms; but the giving out a singing psalm, seems to strike 'em dumb." He next extols Praise in occupying a devotional rank higher than Prayer, and supports his view by some beautiful lines from the "Gondibert" of his Laureate predecessor Davenant.
"For Prayer the Ocean is, where diversely
Men steer their course, each to a different coast,
Where oft our interests so discordant be,
That half beg winds by which the rest are lost.
"Praise is devotion fit for mighty minds,
The diff'ring World's agreeing sacrifice."
These raptures about the superior nature of Praise from one who had written a version of the Psalms, remind us forcibly of the clerk of a small country church in Wales, who, inasmuch as by playing a violoncello and singing lustily, he produced what is called in the 100th psalm "awful mirth," was so gratified with the success of his musical efforts, that he informed the rector one Sunday with an air of cheerful confidence, that although prayer and preaching were perhaps necessary, praise was the noblest part of divine worship. The rector's reply is an answer to Tate and to the rural musician, and is a good comment on the lines of Davenant: "If your prayers are not accepted, your praises will never be heard."
Tate then proceeds, in his treatise, to show what were the faults of the old version, and to lament the prejudices which obstruct the attempt to produce one better fitted for purposes of devotion. "You must," he writes,
