nd in Wither's comment, there was some realization that metrical
elements were present in various books of Scripture. Jerome, in his
_Preface to Job_, had called attention to this,[245] but the regular
translators, whose references to Jerome, though frequent, are somewhat
vague, apparently made nothing of the suggestion. Elsewhere, however,
there was an attempt to justify the inclusion of translations of the
Psalms among other metrical experiments. Googe, defending the having of
the Psalms in metre, declares that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other parts of
the Bible "were written by the first authors in perfect and pleasant
hexameter verses."[246] Stanyhurst[247] and Fraunce[248] both tried
putting the Psalms into English hexameters. There was, however, no
accurate knowledge of the Hebrew verse system. The preface to the
American _Bay Psalm Book_, published in 1640,[249] explains that "The
psalms are penned in such verses as are suitable to the poetry of the
Hebrew language, and not in the common style of such other books of the
Old Testament as are not poetical.... Then, as all our English songs
(according to the course of our English poetry) do run in metre, so
ought David's psalms to be translated into metre, that we may sing the
Lord's songs, as in our English tongue so in such verses as are familiar
to an English ear, which are commonly metrical." It is not possible to
reproduce the Hebrew metres. "As the Lord hath hid from us the Hebrew
tunes, lest we should think ourselves bound to imitate them; so also the
course and frame (for the most part) of their Hebrew poetry, that we
might not think ourselves bound to imitate that, but that every nation
without scruple might follow as the grave sort of tunes of their own
country, so the graver sort of verses of their own country's poetry."
This had already become the common solution of the difficulty, so that
even Wither keeps to the kinds of verse used in the old Psalm books in
order that the old tunes may be used.

But though the metrical versions of the Psalms often inclined to
doggerel, and though they probably had little, if any, influence on the
Authorized Version, they made their own claims to accuracy, and even
after the appearance of the King James Bible sometimes demanded
attention as improved renderings. George Wither, for example, believes
that in using verse he is being more faithful to the Hebrew than are the
prose translations. "There is," he says, "a poetical emph