Ancient & Modern_; but by the time that
these first tunes were printed, I determined to continue the book free of
this restriction, and, from whatever source, to provide words for tunes
which I had hitherto been unable to use. I then became aware of a real
cause for the absence of most of these tunes from the common hymnals:
_there were no words of any kind to which they could be sung_. Having
already translated some of the old Latin hymns for their proper melodies,
I was thence led on to the more difficult task of supplying the greater
need of these other tunes; the result being that over forty of these
hundred hymns have english words newly written by myself. Almost all of
these new hymns are in some sense translations, for even where an
original hymn could not be followed in its entirety, as an old Latin hymn
generally may be, there was usually a foundation to begin upon, and I
never failed to find the music conditioning, dictating, or inspiring the
remainder. I did not willingly engage in this, nor until I had searched
word-books of all kinds; a fruitless labour, unless for the hope begotten
thereof that my practice in versifying and my love for music may together
have created something of at least relative value.

The unusual method which I was constrained to follow, that is of writing
words to suit existing music, has its advantages. In some cases, as will
be seen in the notes to the hymns, the musician, out of despair or even
contempt for the doggrel offered to him, has composed a fine tune quite
independent of the words to which it was dedicated[22], and such tunes
have been silent ever since they were composed: while even when a melody
has been actually inspired by a particular hymn, the attention of the
composer to the first stanza has not infrequently set up a hirmos, or at
least a musical scheme of feeling, which, not having been in the mind of
the writer of the words, is not carried out in his other stanzas[23]:
indeed, as every one must have observed, the words of hymns have too
often been written with insufficient attention to the conditions which a
repetition of any music to every stanza must impose. To get rid of such
discrepancies between words and music is advantageous to both, and
although this treatment cannot of course be applied to english
hymns,--which it is not allowable to alter, except in cases of glaring
unfitness or absurdity, such as would if uncorrected cause the neglect of
a good hymn[24]