[19]This fact is of course generally recognized. The explanation in the text is one which was elaborately illustrated by the Slade Professor at Oxford, in his last course of lectures on painting. [20]There is one point which I cannot pass over. It has become the practice in modern books to put marks of musical expression to the words, directing the congregation when to sing loud or soft. This implies a habit of congregational performance the description of which would make a companion picture to the organ gallery of 1830. It seems to me a practice of inconceivable degradation: one asks in trembling if it is to be extended to the Psalms. It is just as if the congregation were school-children singing to please a musical inspector, and he a stupid one. [21]It must be due to unwillingness that comparatively so few of our clergy can take their part in the service when it is musical. Village schoolmasters tell me that two hours a week is sufficient in a few months to bring all the children up to a standard of time and tune and reading at sight that would suffice a minor canon. PREFACE TO THE YATTENDON HYMNAL Among the old melodies which it is the chief object of this book to restore to use, some will be found which will be quite new to the public, while others will be familiar though in a somewhat different form; and since the sources whence all the tunes are taken are well known, and have been already largely drawn upon by the compilers of Psalters and Hymnals, any melody which is new in this book may be considered as having been hitherto overlooked or rejected, while in the alternative case it is to be understood that the original cast of the melody has at some former time been altered (frequently to suit the English common metre to which it was not at first conformable), and is now restored. The plain-song tunes, of which an account is given in the preface to the notes, and the few other old tunes which do not fall into either of the two above-mentioned classes, were included for the sake of their settings. With respect to the vocal settings in four parts it may be said that, in the numerous cases in which such settings were not added by the composer of the melody, the editors have done their best to supply the want in a suitable manner, and with some attempt towards the particular qualities of workmanship upon which much of the beauty of the old vocal counterpoint depends; and this latter aim has also governed the composition of the six tunes not derived from old sources which have been included in the work.