All these writers, and many others that might be mentioned, had not acquired the technic of congregational hymn writing. They either did not recognize the limitations of the singing hymn, or refused to be hampered by its restraints. But presently the idea of the singing hymn defined itself. Thomas Campion in 1613 issued a number of lyrics that combined spiritual insight, literary grace, and practical availability to a hitherto unattained degree. Dr. Benson characterizes his “Never weather-beaten sail More willing beat to shore,” as “among the loveliest of the lyrics expressing the heavenly homesickness.” Campion was a musician as well as a poet, which partly accounts for the singability of his hymns. In 1623 George Withers issued a complete hymnbook for the Established Church. It was made up of Scriptural paraphrases and hymns for special occasions. The hymns are superior to previous attempts in structure and method, in their simple piety and practical purpose, and in their availability for actual congregational singing. But in the midst of admirable lines there were strange lapses in taste. The hymn whose first verse began so auspiciously, “Come, oh, come, in pious lays Sound we God Almighty’s praise; Hither bring in one consent Heart and voice and instrument,” makes the singing congregation a conductor directing a vast chorus: “From earth’s vast and hollow womb Music’s deepest bass may come; Seas and floods, from shore to shore, Shall their counter-tenors roar,” etc. Clever in a way, but hardly devotional! Withers’ “Musicians’ Hymn” has a very practical hint to the “singers’ gallery,” as well as to the congregation: “He sings and plays The songs which best Thou lovest, Who does and says The things which Thou approvest.” What Withers’ influence on subsequent English hymnody might have been we can only conjecture: the Company of Stationers boycotted his book because he had secured the king’s order to bind it up with the Psalter and shut it out from the regular channels of trade. His second collection, “Hallelujah,” was even more practicable and candidly didactic in style. But Withers had but a slight, if any, influence, for Sternhold and Hopkins still ruled the worship of the churches. His immediate successors in hymn writing, Herbert, Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan, were not influenced by his practical spirit and sang to please themselves, not to lead the congregation. George Herbert (1593-1633) was a devout soul, full of a usually charming fantasy and fertile in imagery; but antithesis was still an allurement to poets in his generation. His “Antiphon” makes an effective hymn, but the inevitable contrast is still there: “The heavens are not too high, His praise may thither fly; The earth is not too low, His praises there may grow.” Donne, Crashaw, and Vaughan all share in the quaintness of Herbert and also in his general hymnic impracticability.