Through all the changing scenes of life

For some years ‘Tate and Brady’ reigned supreme as the scriptwriters for singing in church. Nahum and Nicholas respectively were the main architects of and contributors to the New Version of the Psalms of David of 1696, itself revised in 1698, which superseded ‘Sternhold and Hopkins’ (The Old Version), not without opposition, and preceded the eventual avalanche and victory of hymns not based on Psalmody. Though it might have featured as a Psalm version here (cf 34), it stands with the hymns as the one joint text of the authors that has outlasted all the rest. Even As pants the hart for cooling streams (Psalm.42) no longer commands general recognition or approval. But this one is a ‘fragment’ (Routley) of the original semi-official text of 18 stzs; the 6 used here, further reduced in some hymnals to 5 or less, represent 1–4 and 7–9 of T&B. Among the forgotten lines are ‘Behold (say they) behold the man/ whom providence relieved:/ so dang’rously with woes beset,/ so wondrously retrieved’. In this Praise! version, with some borrowing from Jubilate, stz 2 retains the traditional ‘magnify’ which some editors have altered both here and in ‘Mary’s song’ or Magnificat—eg 185. Stz 3 (originally 2, and often now omitted) had ‘… from my example comfort take/ and charm their griefs to rest.’ Stz 4 has ‘provides … mercy’ for ‘affords … succour’; 5.1 was formerly ‘O make but trial of his love’; and the final lines read ‘make you his service your delight,/ he’ll make your wants his care.’ Frank Colquhoun calls it ‘poetical … an excellent hymn of praise.’ Routley adds that ‘By making the selection [of stzs], editors have focused the message of the psalm to a single point—the providence and protection of God’. To which we might add, ‘and the desire for our friends to know this too.’ The final stz here goes beyond the Psalm to echo such Scriptures as Isaiah 8:12–13, which like Psalm 34 is quoted in 1 Peter 3. The 1st line of this paraphrase, resonating 3 centuries later with our recent experience of accelerating change and ‘future-shock’, has been used for at least one booktitle and featured in countless sermons. Commentators on hymns from the academic to the popular rarely omit this one from their lists or surveys. J R Watson comments on the frequent doubling of words, from trouble and joy onwards, and the authors’ faithfulness to the parallelism of the Hebrew verses they were handling.

The words have been sung to George T Smart’s 1795 tune WILTSHIRE (see notes at 127) since 1863. We can never claim that a tune is ‘universal’; but the syncopation of Lancelot Hankey’s 1960 CMD tune COLLARD frequently proved too much even for congregations used to the changing scenes of life.

b Bandon, Co. Cork, Ireland, 1659; d Richmond, Surrey 1726. Westminster School, Christ Ch Coll Oxford and Trinity Coll, Dublin (DD). After ordination, he was an incumbent in Co Cork and Prebendary of Cork Cathedral; he supported William III in 1688, more than once saved his home town from fire in the Irish war, and became a royal chaplain. In 1691 he became a London incumbent at St Katharine Cree in Leadenhall St, then served at Richmond, Surrey, from 1696 where he also ran a school (probably to offset his debts), holding other posts in plurality. He rendered Virgil’s Aeneid into English verse, but most significantly co-authored the 1696 ‘New Version’ of the Psalms, ‘Fitted to the Tunes used in Churches’, with Nahum Tate, dedicated to William III. The 1698 2nd edn was ‘allowed’ by the king in council, and ‘permitted to be used in all churches as shall think fit to receive it’. Various theories suggest how the work was divided between its authors; none can be proved. In Julian’s extensive listing of ‘Psalters, English’, the work is assessed as partly ornate and vigorous, partly poor and spiritless Common Metre, and ‘a few examples of sweet and simple verse’. It was intended to be an improvement on the generally cruder (but accurate) ‘Old Version’ of Sternhold and Hopkins, but many congregations clung to what was more familiar. Often (like its predecessor) printed and bound with the BCP, ‘Tate and Brady’ lasted for perhaps 2 centuries and was once in fairly general use; but by around 1890 it had disappeared from London churches and from almost everywhere else. Curiously, the book enjoyed greater success in N America than in England. However, several metrical Psalms from this historic work were still in use in the 20th c; eg the 12 included in The Oxford Hymn Book of 1908. Nos.33*, 768*.

(formerly TEATE), b Dublin 1652, d Southwark, London 1715. Trinity Coll Dublin. When he reported a revolutionary plot to the authorities, his Dublin home was burned down and 3 of his children were killed. He then settled in England, published Poems on Several Occasions in 1677, and rewrote several plays by others including a rewritten King Lear with a happy ending (which Dr Johnson defended and which proved popular, even normative, for over a century). In 1682 he contributed substantially to Pt II of Dryden’s classic political satire Absalom and Achitophel. In 1692 he became Poet Laureate, holding the post under 3 sovereigns but becoming an obvious target for Pope’s catalogue of ‘fools’ in The Dunciad. With Nicholas Brady (qv) he produced the New Version of the Psalms of David in 1696, intended to replace Sternhold and Hopkins ‘Old Version’; in 1702 he became Historiographer Royal, and in 1710 he wrote an Essay on Psalmody, defending it against current attacks. But becoming ‘dissolute and intemperate’ he died in a London Refuge for Debtors where he had gone to escape his creditors. He was buried in an unmarked grave in St George’s parish, Southwark. Nos.33*, 379, 768*.