Many attempts had been made to depose the Old Version from its supreme position as the hymn-book of the English Church, and some by men of much greater gifts than Sternhold, Hopkins, or any of their fellows. But the innate conservatism of Englishmen, and especially of English Churchmen, gave the Old Version a long life. Moreover, no version was sufficiently superior to it to win wide approval until Tate and Brady produced the New Version and secured royal ‘permission’ for its use in churches. Without this ‘permission’ it would probably never have dislodged the Old Version, though it owes something to intrinsic merit. Compared with the great hymn-writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tate and Brady are, as a rule, dull, pretentious, diffuse; but as compared with their predecessors and the vast majority of their successors, their version deserves more consideration than it usually receives. Even in our own day there are more of their psalms in our best hymn-books than there are of Keble’s. It is unfortunate that neither of the authors was a man for whom it is possible to feel any great regard, or in whom one can take an interest. To say nothing of While shepherds watched their flocks by night, what Church would willingly give up As pants the hart for cooling streams, or— Through all the changing scenes of life? There is about such songs a gracious simplicity worthy of John Newton, who might well have written— O make but trial of His love, Experience will decide. How blessed they are, and only they, Who in His truth confide. or— Extend to me that favour, Lord, Thou to Thy chosen dost afford: When Thou return’st to set them free, Let Thy salvation visit me. O may I worthy prove to see Thy saints in full prosperity; That I the joyful choir may join, And count Thy people’s triumph mine. Dr. Watts and the Wesleys did not scruple to borrow from the New Version, and Watts, with characteristic modesty, is content to yield them ‘the preference of’ their ‘poesy’ in some of their compositions. Whatever its intrinsic merit or demerit, the New Version rendered an important service in breaking the monopoly enjoyed by the Old Version, and thus preparing the way for a larger view of Christian psalmody. One condemned to tread the waste of metrical Psalters will consider it an advance on its predecessors, suffering more from its own success than comparison with them.... They asserted successfully, and with an emphasis scarcely known before, literary and poetical excellence (according to their light) as a principle of translation, and the precedent thus set was seldom ignored afterwards.[91] Tate, being Laureate, naturally considered the state occasions on which psalms were to be used. The sentiments, at least, of his version of Ps. cl., which is appointed for the day of the Sovereign’s accession, are excellent.