THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 91
other collections, he rendered eminent service to sacred song. His hymns are singularly musical and chaste in thought and style. The third verse of this hymn, Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, was the last word that his friends heard the author whisper on his death-bed. Dr. Julian says, This tender sadness, brightened by a soft, calm peace, was an epitome of his poetical life.
Dr. Dykes wrote for the hymn his lovely melody Dominus regit me, and one of Gounod s most successful sacred songs was a setting of this hymn. The Vulgate Version of Psalm xxiii. begins Dominus regit me.
Hymn 73. Let all that breathe Jehovah praise.
CHARLES WESLEY (i).
Hymns for Children, 1763, No. 95. Works, vi. 458.
Hymn 74. Far as creation s bounds extend.
JAMES MERRICK, M.A.
Psalm cxlv., from his Psalms of David translated or paraphrased in English Verse, 1765.
Merrick was born at Reading in 1720, educated at its Grammar School, and died in the town in 1769. He became Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, 1744, and took holy orders, but his health would not bear the strain of a clergyman s life. He published his Messiah, a divine essay, humbly dedicated to the Reverend the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and the Visitors of the Free School in Reading, when he was only fourteen. His fable of The Chameleon is still well known. His paraphrases of the Psalms were much used a century ago, both in Anglican and in Nonconformist circles, but they are somewhat weak and verbose. He announced them as not calculated for the uses of public worship, but rather for purposes of private devotion. The translator knew not how, without neglecting the poetry, to write in such language as the common sort of people would be likely to understand. Dr. W. B. Collyer included more than fifty of his psalms and hymns in his col lection, and Bishop Lowth, who helped him in his Annotations on the Psalms, described him as one of the best of men and most eminent of scholars. Archbishop Seeker was also one of his helpers in this work.
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