residue of the chapel shall have a Masse of our Ladie bifore noon, and on Sondaies and holidaies, masse of the day besides our Lady-masse, and an anthempne in the afternoone: for which purpose, no great carriage of either vestiments or bookes shall requiret." Henry never seems to have been so truly happy, as when he was engaged in one of these progresses; in other words, moving from one seat to another, and enjoying his ease and amusements in a state of royal relaxation. This we may collect from a curious passage in Hollinshed; who had pleased and perhaps informed us less, had he never deserted the dignity of the historian. "From thence the whole court remooved to Windsor, then beginning his progresse, and exercising himself dailie in shooting, singing, dansing, wrestling, casting of the barre, plaieing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songes, and making of ballades.-And when he came to Oking", there were kept both justes turneies"." I make no apology for these seeming digressions. The manners and the poetry of a country are so nearly connected, that they mutually throw light on each other. The same connection subsists between the state of poetry and of the arts; to which we may now recall the reader's attention with as little violation of our general subject. We are taught in the mythology of the ancients, that the three Graces were produced at a birth. The meaning of the fable is, that the three most beautiful imitative arts were born and grew up together. Our poetry now beginning to be divested of its monastic barbarism, and to advance towards elegance, was accompanied by proportionable improvements in Painting and Music. Henry employed many capital painters, and endeavoured to invite Raphael and Titian into England. Instead of allegorical tapestry, many of the royal apartments were adorned with historical pictures. Our familiarity with the manners of Italy, and affectation of Italian accomplishments, influenced the tones and enriched the modulation of our musical composition. Those who could read the sonnets of Petrarch must have relished the airs of Palestrina. At the same time, Architecture, like Milton's lion pawing to get free, made frequent efforts to disentangle itself from the massy incumbrances of the Gothic manner; and began to catch the correct graces, and to copy the true magnificence, of the Grecian and Roman models. Henry was himself a great builder; and his numerous edifices, although constructed altogether on the ancient system, are sometimes interspersed with chaste ornaments and graceful mouldings, and often marked with a legitimacy of proportion, and a purity of design, before unattempted. It was among the literary plans of Leland, one of the most classical scholars of this age, to write an account of Henry's palaces, in imitation of t" ORDENAUNCES made for the kinges household and chambres." Bibl. Bodl. MSS. Laud, K. 48. fol. It is the original on vellum. In it, Sir Thomas More is mentioned as Chancellour of the Duchie of Lancaster. u Woking in Surrey, near Guildford, a royal seat. Chron. iii. 806. W Procopius, who is said to have described the palaces of the emperor Justinian. Frequent symptoms appeared, that perfection in every work of taste was at no great distance. Those clouds of ignorance which yet remained began now to be illuminated by the approach of the dawn of truth. SECTION XLV. Effects of the Reformation on our poetry. Clement Marot's Psalms. Why adopted by Calvin. Version of the Psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins. Defects of this version, which is patronised by the Puritans in opposition to the Choral Service. THE reformation of our church produced an alteration for a time in the general system of study, and changed the character and subjects of our poetry. Every mind, both learned and unlearned, was busied in religious speculation; and every pen was employed in recommending, illustrating, and familiarising the Bible, which was now laid open to the people. The poetical annals of king Edward the Sixth, who removed those chains of bigotry which his father Henry had only loosened, are marked with metrical translations of various parts of the sacred scripture. Of these the chief is the versification of the Psalter by Sternhold and Hopkins; a performance, which has acquired an importance, and consequently claims a place in our series, not so much from any merit of its own, as from the circumstances with which it is connected. It is extraordinary, that the protestant churches should be indebted to a country in which the reformation had never begun to make any progress, and even to the indulgence of a society which remains to this day the grand bulwark of the catholic theology, for a very distinguishing and essential part of their ritual. About the year 1540, Clement Marot, a valet of the bedchamber to king Francis the First, was the favorite poet of France. This writer, having attained an unusual elegance and facility of style, added many new embellishments to the rude state of the French poetry. It is not the least of his praises, that La Fontaine used to call him his master. He was the inventor of the rondeau, and the restorer of the madrigal; but he became chiefly eminent for his pastorals, ballads, fables, elegies, epigrams, and translations from Ovid and Petrarch*. At length, being *[Hence was it observed in a poem before quoted, at p. 44. In Fraunce did Marot rayne, And neighbour thearunto Was Petrark murthing full with Dante, PARK.] tired of the vanities of profane poetry, or rather privately tinctured with the principles of Lutheranism, he attempted, with the assistance of his friend Theodore Beza, and by the encouragement of the professor of Hebrew in the university of Paris, a version of David's Psalms into French rhymes. This translation, which did not aim at any innovation in the public worship, and which received the sanction of the Sorbonne as containing nothing contrary to sound doctrine, he dedicated to his master Francis the First, and to the Ladies of France. In the dedication to the Ladies or les Dames de France, whom he had often before addressed in the tenderest strains of passion or compliment, he seems anxious to deprecate the raillery which the new tone of his versification was likely to incur, and is embarrassed how to find an apology for turning saint. Conscious of his apostasy from the levities of life, in a spirit of religious gallantry he declares that his design is to add to the happiness of his fair readers, by substituting divine hymns in the place of chansons d'amour, 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, not of the little god, but of the true Jehovah. E voz doigts sur les espinettes Pour dire SAINCTES CHANSONETTES. He adds, that the golden age would now be restored, when we should see the peasant at his plough, the carman in the streets, and the mechanic in his shop, solacing their toils with psalms and canticles; and the shepherd and shepherdess, reposing in the shade, and teaching the rocks to echo the name of the Creator. Le Laboureur a sa charruë, Le Charretier parmy le ruë, Du sainct nom de Createura. Marot's Psalms soon eclipsed the brilliancy of his madrigals and sonnets. Not suspecting how prejudicial the predominant rage of psalmsinging might prove to the ancient religion of Europe, the catholics themselves adopted these sacred songs as serious ballads, and as a more rational species of domestic merriment. They were the common accompaniments of the fiddle. They were sold so rapidly, that the printers a Les Oevvres de Clement Marot de Cahors, valet de chambre du roy, &c. A Lyon, 1551. 12mo. See ad calc. Traductions, &c. p. 192. could not supply the public with copies. In the festive and splendid court of Francis the First, of a sudden nothing was heard but the psalms of Clement Marot. By each of the royal family and the principal nobility of the court a psalm was chosen, and fitted to the ballad-tune which each liked best*. The dauphin prince Henry, who delighted in hunting, was fond of Ainsi qu'on oit le cerf bruire, or Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, which he constantly sung in going out to the chase. Madame de Valentinois, between whom and the young prince there was an attachment, took Du fond de ma pensée, or, From the depth of my heart, O Lord. The queen's favorite was, Ne vueilles pas, O Sire, that is, O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation, which she sung to a fashionable jigt. Antony king of Navarre sung, Revenge moy, pren le querelle, or, Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel, to the air of a dance of Poitou". It was on very different principles that psalmody flourished in the gloomy court of Cromwell. This fashion does not seem in the least to have diminished the gaiety and good humour of the court of Francis. At this period, John Calvin, in opposition to the discipline and doctrines of Rome, was framing his novel church at Geneva, in which the whole substance and form of divine worship was reduced to praying, preaching, and singing. In the last of these three, he chose to depart widely from the catholic usage; and, either because he thought that novelty was sure to succeed, that the practice of antiphonal chanting was superstitious, or that the people were excluded from bearing a part in the more solemn and elaborate performance of ecclesiastical music, or that the old papistic hymns were unedifying, or that verse was better remembered than prose, he projected, with the advice of Luther, a species of religious song, consisting of portions of the psalms intelligibly translated into the vernacular language, and adapted to plain and easy melodies, which all might learn, and in which all might join. This scheme, either by design or accident, was luckily seconded by the publication of Marot's metrical psalms at Paris, which Calvin immediately introduced into his congregation at Geneva‡. Being set to simple and almost mo [This mode of adaptation may be seen in the Godly and Spirituall Songs, &c., printed at Edinburgh in 1597, and reprinted there in 1801.—PARK.] [Jig does not here signify a dance, but a tune.-PARK.] b See Bayle's Dict. v. MAROT. [Marot's French translation of the Psalms, said the late Mr. Mason, became popular in the court where it had its origin; not, as it seems, because it was a version of the Psalms, but as being a version in rhyme, and what the taste of the time deemed good poetry. Devotion it must be believed had little to do in this matter; the version was fashionable! Calvin conceived it might be turned to a pious purpose. The verses were easy and prosaic enough to be intelligible to the meanest capacity. The melodies to which they were set rivalled the words in plainness and simplicity. They who could read the one would find little difficulty in learning to sing the other. As therefore it was the protestant father's aim to open the Scriptures entirely which had been so long shut up in a dead language, nothing would come more opportune than this version of the psalter; which, united with prayer in their own tongue, would enable his congregation to understand and join in the one, and become choristers of the other. Essays, &c. on English Church Music.-PARK.] notonous notes by Guillaume de Franc, they were soon established as the principal branch in that reformer's new devotion, and became a characteristical mark or badge of the Calvinistic worship and profession. Nor were they sung only in his churches. They exhilarated the convivial assemblies of the Calvinists, were commonly heard in the streets, and accompanied the labours of the artificer. The weavers and woollen manufacturers of Flanders, many of whom left the loom and entered into the ministry, are said to have been the capital performers in this science. At length Marot's psalms formed an appendix to the catechism of Geneva, and were interdicted to the catholics under the most severe penalties. In the language of the orthodox, psalm-singing and heresy were synonymous terms. It was Calvin's system of reformation, not only to strip religion of its superstitious and ostensible pageantries, of crucifixes, images, tapers, superb vestments, and splendid processions, but of all that was estimable in the sight of the people, and even of every simple ornament, every significant symbol, and decent ceremony; in a word, to banish every thing from his church which attracted or employed the senses, or which might tend to mar the purity of an abstracted adoration, and of a mental intercourse with the Deity. It is hard to determine how Calvin could reconcile the use of singing, even when purged from the corruptions and abuses of popery, to so philosophical a plan of worship. On a parallel principle, and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least have retained the use of pictures in the church. But a new sect always draws its converts from the multitude and the meanest of the people, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals. Calvin well knew that the manufacturers of Germany were no judges of pictures. At the same time it was necessary that his congregation should be kept in good humour by some kind of pleasurable gratification and allurement, which might qualify and enliven the attendance on the more rigid duties of praying and preaching. Calvin therefore, intent as he was to form a new church on a severe model, had yet too much sagacity to exclude every auxiliary to devotion. Under this idea, he permitted an exercise, which might engage the affections without violating the simplicity of his worship; and sensible that his chief resources were in the rabble of a republic, and availing himself of that natural propensity which prompts even vulgar minds to express their more animated feelings in rhyme and music, he conceived a mode of universal psalmody, not too refined for common capacities, and fitted to please the populace. The rapid propagation of Calvin's religion, and his numerous proselytes, are a strong proof of his address in planning such a sort of service. France and Germany were instantly infatuated with a love of psalm-singing; which being admirably calculated to kindle and diffuse the flame of fanaticism, was peculiarly serviceable to the purposes of faction, and frequently served as the trumpet to rebellion. These energetic hymns of Geneva, under the |