Ancient & Modern

The Voice That Breathed o'er Eden was gone; so were Once to Every Man and Nation, and 328 others. But the newly revised edition of Hymns Ancient & Modern, published last week, had 167 new hymns.

First published (with music) in 1861, Hymns Ancient & Modern included about 160 hymns selected by a group of Church of England clergymen from various Anglican and other hymnbooks then in use. Through a series of revisions and supplements the original compilation waxed increasingly fat, until the current Standard Edition, dating from 1922, bulged with 779 hymns--good, bad, and virtually unsung.

Prominent among the newcomers for which the anonymous compilers made way are Christina Rossetti's sentimental Christmas poem In the Bleak Midwinter,

Cardinal Newman's measured Firmly I Believe and Truly, and Poet William Blake's impassioned cry: "Bring me my bow of burning gold! bring me my arrows of desire!" But the editors' work was not merely a matter of selection and rejection. On the classic All Things Bright and Beautiful, for instance, only a minor pruning job seemed indicated to make it suitable for modern church singers: elimination of the third stanza:

The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate.

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