O Jesus, King most wonderful

Devotion and doctrine are, as so often, beautifully blended in Edward Caswall’s rendering of the 12th-c Lat Jesu, rex admirabilis. These stzs follow the even more celebrated lines beginning Jesu dulcis memoria (see 741), a poem of 46 stzs which many take to be the work of an English author which then passed to the continent. Edward Caswall at least was English, and his translations of various parts appeared first in Lyra Catholica, 1849. He added further lines to complete the work 9 years later. The version made for HTC, but for a small change from ‘themselves’ at 4.3, is adopted here; 2.1 was formerly ‘When once thou visitest the heart’, 4.2 had ‘wondrous love’, and the stz order also varies. The scheme here corresponds to that of the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and GH; CH is similar but adds a 6th stz.

The tune ST BOTOLPH by Gordon Slater was first published in the 1929 Songs of Praise for Boys and Girls, to Dear Father, keep me through this day. As this text has been set to several different tunes, so this tune has been used with many texts; EH first linked it to the translation of another part of the Lat hymn, to which it was also sung at Lincoln Cathedral where the composer was organist. Earlier (1919–27) he had been organist at St Botolph’s Boston (‘Boston Stump’), which gave the tune its name. The melody is heard on the bells of St Botolph’s Aldgate, London, after the striking of each hour. It is set in D at 737.

b Yateley, Hants 1814, d Edgbaston (nr Birmingham), Warwicks 1878. 4th son of the Vicar of Yateley; Chigwell Grammar Sch, Essex; Marlborough Coll, Wilts; Brasenose Coll Oxford (BA 1836, MA). As a student he issued a witty academic pamphlet ‘after the fashion of Aristotle’. He was ordained (CofE) in 1838; served in the parishes of Bishop’s Norton nr Gloucester; Milverton nr Warwick; and from 1840 at Stratford-sub-Castle, nr Salisbury. But in 1846, in his early 30s, he resigned his living, and a few months later became a Roman Catholic, Jan 1847. From then on his work of translating Lat hymns, already well advanced, gathered momentum; he published nearly 200 in Lyra Catholica (etc) in 1848, and ten years later The Masque of Mary and other poems. Other books of verse and drama followed. Widowed in 1849, he moved to J H Newman’s ‘Oratory’ in Birmingham, where in 1852 he was ordained as an RC. He remained there for the rest of his life; his collected hymns and poems were published posthumously, with a biographical preface, in 1908. He became one of those Roman converts of whom Ellerton, possibly a little biased, judged that ‘it can scarcely be said that they contributed much to the strength of the church of their adoption’. Of the 250 English hymn texts in The Westminster Hymnal of 1912, more than 50 are by Caswall, mostly translations. He is often the best-represented RC author in protestant hymn-books (5 in CH2004, 12 in The BBC Hymn Book of 1951, 9 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 13 in Common Praise 2000). As a Victorian hymntranslator he has been praised for the ‘great spirit and facility’ of his work; he ranks second only to the masterly and generally more accurate J M Neale, qv. Nos.217, 337, 347, 376, 421, 741.