The next class of tunes[15] is that of the Reformation hymns, English, French, and German, dating from about 1550 to some way on in the seventeenth century. The chief English group is known as _Sternhold and Hopkins' Psalter_, which was mostly of eight-line tunes. This book was virtually put together in Geneva about 1560, and antiquarians make much of it. If stripped, however, of its stolen plumes and later additions it is really an almost worthless affair, the true history of it being as follows. A French musician named Louis Bourgeois, whom Calvin brought with him to Geneva in 1541, turned out to be an extraordinary genius in melody; he remained at Geneva about fifteen years, and in that time compiled a Psalter of eighty-five tunes, almost all of which are of great merit, and many of the very highest excellence. The splendour of his work, which was merely appreciated as useful at the time, was soon obscured, for immediately on his leaving Geneva, the French Psalter was completed by inferior hands, whose work, being mixed in with his, lowered the average of the whole book enormously, and Bourgeois' work was never distinguished until, quite lately, the period of his office was investigated and compared with the succeeding editions of his book. Now the English refugees compiled their 'Sternhold and Hopkins' at Geneva, in imitation of the French, during the time of Bourgeois' residence, and took over a number of the French tunes; though they _mauled these most unmercifully_ to bring them down to the measure of their doggerel psalms, yet even after this barbarous treatment Bourgeois' spoilt tunes were still far better than what they made for themselves, and sufficient not only to float their book into credit, but to kindle the confused enthusiasm of subsequent English antiquarians, whose blind leadership has had some half-hearted following. But if these French tunes, and those which are pieced in imitation of Bourgeois, be extracted from this English Psalter, then, with one or two exceptions, there will remain hardly anything of value[16]. To leave the English tunes for a moment and continue the subject, we shall practically exhaust the French branch of this class by saying that our duty by them is to use a great number of Bourgeois' tunes, _restoring their original form_. They are masterpieces which have remained popular on the continent from the first; thoroughly congenial to our national taste, and the best that can be imagined for solemn congregational singing of the kind which we might expect in England. The difficulty is the same that beset the old original psalter-makers, i.e. to find words to suit their varied measures. But this must be done[17]. These tunes in dignity, solemnity, pathos, and melodic solidity leave nothing to desire.