How hymns have been serviceable to man in the service of his Creator who needs to be told? The words et hymno dicto resound in the memory . . speaking to one another in psalms and hymns. . . The Liturgy has used more hymns in the past than it does to-day. Those who know Dreves’ Analecta Hymnica must conceive hymns as in tens of thousands. The many of what have been are no longer wanted; yet the Dreves collection may serve the divine worship at some later day.

Hymns and spiritual songs are needed too for private and semi-private use. What have we for those of English speech? It is better to let this rhetorical question hang without its pendant. To ask why there is no English hymn in this or that authorized collection which a Christian could without blushing sing, for example, before the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, equals a more direct question : Whose office is it to write English hymns? Suggested answer: Dryden, Crashaw, Southwell, Coventry Patmore, Michael Feld, Lionel Johnson, Gerard Hopkins. Lengthen the list to fancy.

I choose great and reputable names of poets who could make some defence against the charge of neglect to perform an obvious duty. Can living men and women who have inherited the charge return even so supportable an apology as their predecessors?

In this meagre collection it would seem as if the stones had cried out. ‘If those wont, some one must’ is almost legible in Mr. Sainsbury’s brilliantly printed and ornamented pages.