An American newspaper says: ‘The enthusiastic choir-master who adopted _Hold the Fort_ as a processional hymn, has been dismissed by the minister, who considered it personal when the choir burst forth:
See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!
A similar objection might have been raised to the Maine county commissioners quoting Watts’s lines:
Ye sinners round, come view the ground Where you will shortly lie,
when inviting certain lawyers to inspect the new court-house; although they had less reason to complain than Lord Kenyon and Justice Rooke, who while on circuit, came one Sunday to a little village just as the good folks were going to church; an example the two judges followed. Anxious to shew his appreciation of the unexpected honour, the parish clerk searched for a suitable psalm to sing before the service; and at the proper time gave out the first two verses of the fifty-eighth psalm, and the congregation sang:
Speak, O ye judges of the earth, If just your sentence be; Or must not innocence appeal To heaven from your decree. Your wicked hearts and judgments are Alike by malice swayed; Your griping hands, by mighty bribes, To violence betrayed.
Here the congregation awoke to the meaning of what they were singing, and left the clerk and the children to offend the ears of the legal dignitaries with:
To virtue, strangers from the womb, Their infant steps went wrong; They prattled slander, and in lies Employed their lisping tongue. No serpent of parched Afric’s breed Does ranker poison bear; The drowsy adder will as soon Unlock his sullen ear.
The performance unlocked the tongues of the astonished judges at any rate; and the churchwardens had some difficulty in convincing them that the apparent insult arose out of the stupidity of the well-meaning clerk.
‘The poor world is almost six thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, namely, in a love-cause.’
I cannot help recalling Rosalind’s words as I look at the photograph before me; the history of its original so completely disproves her saucy speech. In my hand I hold the likeness of a man of forty or thereabouts, with a noble square forehead arching above deep thoughtful eyes, a large beardless face surrounded by a heavy growth of long hair, and a thickset form denoting great personal strength. A superficial observer might call the homely portrait commonplace, and turn to gaze on the more aristocratic faces of his fellow-artists in the photographic album; but a careful scrutiny of the coarse irregular features and the broad brow impresses one with the feeling that this was no ordinary man; that a spirit dwelt within these steady eyes purer and mightier than usually falls to the lot of mortal man. But the closest inspection would still leave much untold. The indomitable energy, the heaven-sent genius, may be traced in his strong features and deep eyes; but the exquisite sensibility, the single-heartedness, the uncomplaining patience, would never be guessed.