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HISTORY OF PRINTING.
Aux Damei de France, " to the ladies of France," in which he declares, in a spirit of religious gallantrT, that his design is to add to the happi- ness of his fair readers, by subsitituting divine hymns in the place of amorous ditties, to inspire their susceptible hearts with a passion in which there is no torment, to banish that fickle and fantastic deity Cupid from the world, and to fill their apartments with the praises of the true Jehorah.
The universal reception of Marot's psalms in- duced Theodore Baza to conclude the collec- tion, and, according to Bayle, ten thousand copies were immediately dispersed. But these had the advantage of being set to music, for we are told they were " admiiably fitted to the violin and other musical instruments." And who was the man who had thus adroitly taken hold of the
?ublic feeling to give it this strong direction ? t was the ascetic Calvin, by the advice it is said of Luther,* who, from the depth of his closet at Geneva, had engaged the finest musical compo- sers, who were, no doubt, warmed by the zeal of propagating his faith, to form these simple and beautiful airs to assist the psalm-singers, and in which all persons might jom, and which would serve as a substitute tor the antiphonal chanting of the Romish services, in the public service of God. At first this was not discovered, and catho- lics as well as Hugonotsf were solacing them- selves on all occasions with this new music. But when Calvin appointed these psalms, as set to music by Guillaum de Franc and others, to be sung at his meeting, and Marot's formed an appendix to the catechism of Geneva, this put an end to all psalm-singing for the catholics. Marot himself was forced to fly to Geneva from the ful- minations of the Sorbonne, and psalm-singing became an open declaration of what the French called Lutheranitm, when it became with the reformed a regular part of their religious dis- cipline. At length, the repeated remonstrances of the clergy to the king, against Marot's version, caused it to be prohibited. But the prohibition only increased the desire to possess the psalms
- Luther's fondneu for music it nnlveraally known, and
the Old Hundredth Psahn tune, which tradition attribates to him, remains a sin^ar instance of bis sliiU in that science. Lather notes in his Table Book that he Invited the singers and musicians to sapper, December 17, 1938. "I always loved music, whoso has skin in this art the same is of good kind, fitted forall things." The following testtmony of Handel to the excellence of Lutbefa mnsical compostUons, is given in a letter of Sir John Prlngle's to J. D. HichaeUs, dated 1709. "The late Mr. Bandd, that celebrated musician, told me, that Luther had even com. poeed the music of the Psalms and Hymns, and which he said was so excellent in its way, that he had often borrowed from it, and inserted whole passages in his oratorios."
t Hugo Anbiiet, who by merit hsd gained the esteem of Charles V. of Fiance, was invested with the dignity of provost of Paris, when Charles VI. mounted the throne: by the care he took for the maintenance of good order, and smipresalng the scandalous enormities of the mem- bers of the nniveraity of Paris, they caused him to be committed by false witnesses as an heritlc, and would have been burnt alive If the court luul not interfered. He was, however, imprisoned, and compelled publicly to ask pardon on his knees. It is from this worthy provost of Paris that the Protestants have been called Hugonots, to signify the enemies of the church.
thus interdicted, and the printers reaped a rich harvest by the endeavour to suppress them. The psalms exhilarated their social assemblies, were commonly heard in the streets, and accompanied the labour of the artificer, so that the weavers of Flanders became noted for Uiatfcill in the science of psalmody. " This infectious frenzy of psalm- singing," as Warton describes it, under the Cal- vanistic preachers had rapidly propagated itself through Germany as well as France. " It was admirably calculated," says IVIsraeli, " to kindle the flame of fanaticism, and frequently served as the trumpet of rebellion." A variety of popular insurrections in the most flourishing cities of the Low Countries, were excited and supported by these energetic hymns of Geneva ; and fomented the fury which defaced many of the most beauti- ful and venerable churches of Flanders and the Low Countries.
Psalm -singing reached England at that critical moment it had first embraced the reformation ; and here its domestic history was parallel with its foreign, except, perhaps, in the splendour of its success. — See Stemhold and Hopkins, under the year 1560.
1542. The noble institution bv which the reign of Francis I. was distinguished, was the Imprimerie Royale, together with its appendage of Typographi Regii ; an arrangement then alto- gether novel and unprecedented in the annals of literature. It reflects therefore, the greater honour upon the memory of Francis I. as having apparently emanated from his own enligbtenra views. No expedient could have been better calculated to give efiect to those liberal inten- tions, with which the Royal College had been instituted. By an apparatus which nothing less than princelv munificence could have pro- vided, the admirable productions of classic genius and taste, and those of Greece more par- ticularly, were now to be given to the public with a beauty of characters, and an exquisite- ness of technical perfection, to which no typo- grapher had ever yet attaineid, or even in imagpi- natiou aspired.
The king's first care being to procure a new cast of types, worthy of the institution which he meditated, Claude Garamond, one of the ablest French artists of the time, was enjoined to en- grave the poingons, and prepare the matrices or moulds, for three (or more) descriptions or sizes of Greek: an undertaking which was accom- plished with distinguished skill and success: and these were the same, which have subsequently been so well known by the denomination of Characteres Regii. They were followed, in pro-
- Francis I. died in the month of March, 1M7, in the
fifty-third year of his age, and had reigned tUrty-two years and eight months. It has been remarked that Charles V. and Francis I. were opposite in ^everythinp. The first began with being rigorous against Protestants, and ended with being indulgent; the second, originally indulgent, thought it expefient at length to become severe; for npon one occasion his leal became so animate as to draw from him that memorable declaration, " that even if one of his own members were Infected with heresy, he would not hesitate to cut It off."
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