Description
Fashions in hymn-writing have fluctuated widely since Issac Watts, as a young man in the 17th century, pioneered the art. Until then, churches only sang psalms, later paraphrases, to be followed by the vast output of thousands of hymns by Watts and then by Charles Wesley. Both men became poets in their own right. Later, Victorians took up hymn-writing on a huge scale and in recent times excellent new hymns have been written, often referred to as songs although, sadly, some strong in devotion and sentiment, have been weak in poetry. The contention of this book, the authors second on the subject, is that hymnody should always be sound in poetic construction and that as, Wesley declared, it should reflect the strength and purity of the English language.
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