congregation'. His faults are 'bombast and doggerel', but to him we owe that proportion of parts and central unity which have become so marked a characteristic of our hymns. Those written before his time have little unity. The change originated probably in the slow singing, which limited the number of verses; in the clerk's habit of skipping and combining verses in the metrical psalms; and in the preacher's desire to condense into a closing hymn the substance or application of his sermon. Watts's Psalms and Hymns soon took the place of all others in Nonconformist worship, and long held undisputed possession.
The work which Watts began was carried on by the Wesleys, who are 'almost as interesting from the hymnologist's as from the Church historian's point of view'. The old Rector of Epworth—Samuel Wesley—was the author of the Good Friday hymn—
Behold the Saviour of mankind
Nailed to the shameful tree,
which was found lying singed on the grass after his parsonage had been burned down; Samuel Wesley, jun., usher at Westminster School, wrote 'The Lord of Sabbath let us praise', and other hymns of high merit; John Wesley's translations from the German relinked English hymnody to that of Germany, and his fine classic taste raised the whole tone of Methodist praise. Dr. Abel Stevens says, 'John Wesley was rigorously severe in his criticisms, and appeared to be aware that the psalmody of Methodism was to be one of its chief providential facts—at once its liturgy and psalter to millions'. 'But after all', says Canon Overton in his interesting biographical article, 'it was Charles Wesley who was the great hymn-writer of the Wesley family—perhaps, taking quantity and quality into consideration, the great hymn-writer of all ages'. His evangelical conversion opened his lips in praise, and to the end of his days he sang on with undiminished fervour. He is said to have written six thousand five hundred hymns, 'and though, of course, in so vast a number some are of unequal merit, it is perfectly marvellous how many there are which rise to the highest degree of excellence.... It would be simply impossible within our space to enumerate even those of the hymns which have become really classical. The saying that a good hymn is as rare an appearance as that of a comet
