expression, far from conveying the meaning of the Royal Psalmist, not
only marred devotion, but turned what was excellent in the original
into downright burlesque; he tried that evening if he could not
easily, and with plainness suitable to the lowest understanding,
deliver it from that garb which rendered it ridiculous. He finished
one psalm, and then another, and found the work so agreeable and
pleasing, that all the psalms were in a short time compleated; and
having shewn the version to some friends of whose judgment he had a
high opinion, he could not resist their importunity (says Wood) of
putting it to the press, or rather he was glad their sollicitations
coincided with his desire to be thought a poet.

He was the more discouraged, says the antiquary, as Mr. George
Sandys's version and another by a reformer had failed in two different
extremes; the first too elegant for the vulgar use, changing both
metre and tunes, wherewith they had been long acquainted; the other as
flat and poor, and as lamely executed as the old one. He therefore
ventured in a middle way, as he himself in one of his letters
expresses it, without affectation of words, and endeavouring to leave
them not disfigured in the sense. This version soon after was
published with this title;

The Psalms of David from the New Translation of the Bible, turned into
Metre, to be sung after the old tunes used in churches, Lond. 1651, in
12mo.

There is nothing more ridiculous than this notion of the vulgar of not
parting with their old versions of the psalms, as if there were a
merit in singing hymns of nonsense. Tate and Brady's version is by far
the most elegant, and best calculated to inspire devotion, because the