[93]This small witticism was repeated by Romaine in the preface to his _Treatise on Psalmody_, though he had the good sense to strike it out of his second edition, at the request, it is said, of Lady Huntingdon. [94]Preface to _Christian Psalmist_. [95]_Treasury of Sacred Song_, p. 349. [96]Watts has been unfortunate in his biographers. Mr. Paxton Hood’s book is lively and interesting, but its style is amazingly slovenly. Here is a curious sentence: ‘His daughter and sole heiress, Margaret, married Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, so the estate descended to the Howard family, and became the Duke’s place; he lost his head; passing to his eldest son, he sold it in 1592 to the mayor, corporation, and citizens of London.’ The writer adds, naïvely, ‘This is a singular piece of history’ (p. 55). [97]Julian, Article: ‘Congregational Hymnody.’ [98]Preface to _Psalms_. Dr. Martineau justified his own editing of Watts’s hymns by this sentence. ‘Every adaptation of a Jewish psalm to Christian worship affords an instance of theological adaptation; and the same rule which is applied to Dr. Watts’s hymns when their Trinitarianism is expelled, Watts himself has systematically applied to David’s writings, in reforming and spiritualizing their Judaism.’—Preface to _Hymns for the Christian Church and Home_. [99]_Lives of the Poets._ [100]One of Wesley’s Communion hymns begins— Come to the supper, come, Sinners, there still is room. [101]The hymn has seven verses. It is given with slight alterations, and the omission of one verse in Barrett’s _Congregational Church Hymnal_, 497. [102]Henry Ward Beecher included this song in his _Plymouth Collection_. [103]Julian, p. 831. [104]_The Training of the Twelve_, p. 24. [105]‘Joseph Hart,’ by the late Rev. B. A. Gregory, M.A., _City Road Magazine_, December 1876. [106]_Poems_ by Theodosia, vol. ii. (1780). [107]Often begins in hymn-books with the third verse, ‘And O [Father] whate’er of earthly bliss.’ [108]Julian, p. 332. [109]Telford’s _Charles Wesley_, p. 245. [110]Cf. Lightfoot’s _Colossians_, i. 27, iii. 16. [111]Green’s _History of the English People_. [112]_Short Hymns_, 2 Tim. i. 7. [113]_Hymns and Sacred Poems_ (1739). [114]_Church Hymns_ (1903), Preface. [115]This verse is from the ‘hymn on my conversion,’ mentioned by C. Wesley in his _Journal_, May 23, 1738. It was written at Mr. Bray’s, Little Britain. Five verses are in the _Methodist Hymn-book_, 358. [116]Watts wrote ‘very.’ ‘Every’ is Wesley’s emendation. [117]I quote the following verse as an illustration: in doing so there is no risk of spoiling a hymn dear to anybody:— Exempted from the general doom, The death which all are born to know; Enoch obtained his heavenly home By faith, and disappeared below. [118]Reprinted by Pickering in 1868 as ‘Bishop Ken’s _Christian Year_.’