New England -- Religious life and customs; New England -- Social life and customs -- To 1775; Sunday
Great diversity too of type did the Pilgrims find in their Psalm-book:
Roman type, Italics, black-letter, all were used; the verse was printed in
Italics, the prose in Roman type, and the annotation in black-letter and
small Roman text with close-spaced lines. This variety though picturesque
makes the text rather difficult to read; for while one can decipher
black-letter readily enough when reading whole pages of it, when it is
interspersed with other type it makes the print somewhat confusing to the
unaccustomed eye.
One curious characteristic of the typography is the frequent use of the
hyphen, compound words or rather compound phrases being formed apparently
without English rule or reason. Such combinations as these are given as
instances: "highly-him-preferre," "renowned-name," "repose-me-quietlie,"
"in-mind-uplay," "turn-to-ashes," "my-alonely-soul," "beat-them-final,"
"pouring-out-them-hard," "inveyers-mak-streight," and
"condemn-thou-them-as-guilty,"--which certainly would make fit verses to
be sung to the accompaniment of Master Mace's
"excellent-large-plump-lusty-fullspeaking-organ."
Ainsworth's Version when read proves to be a scholarly book, exhibiting far
better grammar and punctuation and more uniformity of spelling than "The
New England Psalm-book," which at a later date displaced Ainsworth in the
affections and religious services of the New England Puritans and Pilgrims.
Both versions are somewhat confused in sense, and of uncouth and grotesque
versification; though the metre of Ainsworth is better than the rhyme. It
is all written in "common metre," nearly all in lines of eight and six
syllables alternately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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