But it was not only the blight of a narrow bibliolatry that prevented the development of the English religious lyric. English poetry had lost its spontaneity and its gracious simplicity in a self-conscious devotion to false literary ideals. The conception of a congregational hymn did not exist among the literary men of the Reformation and later. Indeed, that Reformation among the cultured and intellectual classes was not so much a religious transformation as a political and cultural repudiation of clerical bonds, and an enjoyment of new liberties. There was some religious feeling, of course, but it was expressed in elaborate forms, not in spontaneous simple lyrics that the people could sing. The technic of the singing hymn had not been developed, nor its limitations recognized. It took nearly a century before even an approximation could be reached to the practicability of the Lutheran hymns, which were written, not by literary connoisseurs, but by men in close touch with the people, men who had with singleness of mind striven to win and edify them. As we study the English lyrics, written, not to be sung, but simply to express the personal feelings of the writer in the current style and in complicated measures, we see how far English poets had to go before a practicable singing hymn could be written. The conceptions of poetry, the prevalent grandioseness of style, the studied phrasemaking, the excessive Latinity of vocabulary among distinctively literary men, made the simplicity needed in a congregational hymn impossible. Despite Mr. Horder’s enthusiasm over the possible use Luther would have made of John Milton, the German hymnody creator could have done nothing with the ponderous large-planning author of _Paradise Lost_, with his wealth of classical allusions and mythology, and his phrasing rich with preciosity. Milton’s Psalm versions, fine as they are, were simply not singable by the commonalty of his time who were to be depended on to do the singing. He was a writer of odes, not of singing hymns. Here is a literary hymn—balancing phrases, piling up antitheses, consciously seeking striking and euphonious combinations of words: “I praise Him most, I love Him best, all praise and love is His; While Him I love, in Him I live, and cannot live amiss. Love’s sweetest mark, laud’s highest theme, man’s most desired Light, To love Him life, to leave Him death, to live in Him delight.” The writer of the foregoing, Robert Southwell, a Romanist martyr, writing in prison, could write simple lyrics out of the fullness and genuineness of his religious experience, but it was not in the accepted fashion. What Protestant dare refuse to sing this simple hymn of his? “Yet God’s must I remain, By death, by wrong, by shame; I cannot blot out of my heart That grace wrought in his name.” IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIC OF WRITING SINGING HYMNS