disturbances between
the master tailors and journeymen about wages at this time; and the
author has amusingly worked out the disputes and their consequences in
the heroic style of a blank verse tragedy.]

[Footnote 297: Beattie on Poetry and Music, p. 111.]

[Footnote 298: I have arranged many facts, connected with the present
subject, in the fifth chapter of "The Literary Character," in the
enlarged and fourth edition, 1828.]

[Footnote 299: A physician of eminence has told us of the melancholy
termination of the life of a gentleman who in a state of mental
aberration cut his throat; the loss of blood restored his mind to a
healthy condition; but the wound unfortunately proved fatal.]

[Footnote 300: It would be polluting these pages with ribaldry,
obscenity, and blasphemy, were I to give specimens of some hymns of the
Moravians and the Methodists, and some of the still lower sects.]

[Footnote 301: There is a rare tract, entitled "Singing of Psalmes,
vindicated from the charge of Novelty," in answer to Dr. Russell, Mr.
Marlow, &c., 1698. It furnishes numerous authorities to show that it was
practised by the primitive Christians on almost every occasion. I shall
directly quote a remarkable passage.]

[Footnote 302: In the curious tract already referred to, the following
quotation is remarkable; the scene the fancy of MAROT pictured to him,
had _anciently occurred_. St. Jerome, in his seventeenth Epistle to
Marcellus, thus describes it: "In Christian villages little else is to
be heard but Psalms; for which way soever you turn yourself, either you
have the ploughman at his plough singing _Hallelujahs_, the weary brewer
refreshing himself with a _psalm_, or the vine-dresser chanting forth
somewhat of _David's_."]

[Footnote 303: Mr. Douce imagined that this alludes to a common practice
at that time among the Puritans of _burlesquing the plain chant_ of the
Papists, by adapting vulgar and ludicrous music to psalms and pious
compositions.--_Illust. of Shakspeare_, i. 355. Mr. Douce does not
recollect his authority. My idea differs. May we not conjecture that the
intention was the same which induced Sternhold to versify the Psalms, to
be sung instead of lascivious ballads; and the most popular tunes came
afterwards to be adopted, that the singer might practise his favourite
one, as we find it occurred in France?]

[Footnote 304: Ed. Philips in his "Satyr against Hypocrites," 1689,
alludes to this custom of the pio