I need not say that I have written innumerable other, translated pieces, from earliest days of school exercises to these present. There is scarcely a classic I have not so tampered with: and (though a poor modern linguist) I have touched--with dictionary and other help, a few bits of Petrarch, Dante, &c.; examples whereof may be seen in my "Modern Pyramid," as already mentioned.
My several publications in pamphlet shape may ask for a page or two,--the chief perhaps (and therefore I begin with it) being my "Hymn for All Nations" in thirty languages, issued at the time of the first great exhibition in 1851, due to a letter I wrote to the Bishop of London on November 22, 1850, urging such a universal psalm. Mr. Brettell, a printer, issued this curiosity of typography: for it has all the strange types which the Bible Society could lend; and several other, versions than the fifty published (some being duplicated) are in a great volume before me, unprinted because neither England, nor Germany, nor America could supply types for sundry out-of-the-way languages contributed by missionaries in the four quarters of the world. My hymn was "a simple psalm, so constructed as scarcely to exclude a truth, or to offend a prejudice; with special reference to the great event of this year, and yet so ordered that it can never be out of season." "This polyglot hymn at the lowest estimate is a philological curiosity: so many minds, with such diversity in similitude rendering literally into all the languages of the earth one plain psalm, a world-wide call to man to render thanks to God." Dr. Wesley and several others contributed the music, and the best scholars of all lands did the literature: the mere printing of so many languages was pronounced a marvel in its way; and I have a bookful of notices, of course laudatory, where it was not possible to find fault with so small a piece of literature. It may be well to give the hymn admission here, as the booklet is excessively scarce.
The title goes--"A Hymn for all Nations," 1851, translated into thirty languages (upwards of fifty versions).
"Glorious God! on Thee we call, Father, Friend, and Judge of all; Holy Saviour, heavenly King, Homage to Thy throne we bring!