THEIE AUTHOBS AND ORIGIN. 71
One omitted verse is of great beauty. It is as follows :
" Thy mercy sweeten d every soil,
Made every region please ; The hoary Alpine hills it wartn tl, And smooth d the Tyrrhene seas."
" When all thy mercies, my God." No. 290,
is appended to an article on " Praise to God " in the " Spectator," No. 453, August 9, 1712. There are four more verses in the original. Addison commenced, but did not complete a version of the Psalms.
" When rising from the bed of death." No. 739.
This is given with an article in No. 513 of the " Spectator," Saturday, Oct. 18, 1712, with two verses that are omitted in the "New Congregational." The article contains these words "Among all the reflections which usually arise in the mind of a sick man , who has time and inclination to consider his approaching end, there is none more natural than that of his going to appear naked and unbodied before Him who made him." Addison s hymns have been found fault with for their omission of evangelical doctrine. This charge does not hold against this hymn. Every Christian heart will rejoice in the testimony borne in the fourth verse. If indeed the way in which Addison has prefaced the letter of which the article consists does not make it uncertain whether he wrote it, he says: "The following letter has come to me from that excellent man in holy orders, whom I have mentioned more than once as one of that society who assist me in my speculations." It may be that Addison only wrote the hymn.
The claim to two of Addison s hymns for Andrew Marvell, put forth by Captain Thompson, in an edition of Marvell s works, in 1776, cannot be sustained.
SIMON BROWNE.
1680-1732.
THIS early hymn-writer, a contemporary with Dr. Watts, was
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