It is necessary to insist strongly on one caution, viz. that grammar is not style, and settings which avoid modernisms are not for that reason a fair presentation of the old manner. Nothing is less like a fine work of art than its incompetent imitation. And this practically exhausts, as far as I am aware, the material which this period provides.
The next class will be made up of our Restoration hymns, by Jeremy Clark, Croft, and others who added to the succeeding editions of the metrical Psalms. If there are not many in this class, yet the few are good; and Clark must be regarded as the inventor of the modern English hymn-tune, regarded, that is, as a pure melody in the scale with harmonic interpretation of instrumental rather than true vocal suggestion. His tunes are pathetic, melodious, and of truly national and popular character, the best of them almost unaccountably free from the indefinable secular taint that such qualities are apt to introduce, and which the bad following of his example did very quickly introduce in the hands of less sensitive artists. They are suitable for evening services.
After this time there followed in England, in the wake of Handel, a degradation of style which is now completely discredited. Diatonic flow, with tediously orthodox modulation, overburdened with conventional graces, describe these innumerable and indistinguishable productions. And just as the old tunes were related to the motets and madrigals, so are these to the verse-anthems and glees of their time. These weak ditties, in the admired manner of Lord Mornington, were typically performed by the genteel pupils of the local musician, who, gathered round him beneath the laughing cherubs of the organ case, warbled by abundant candlelight to their respectful audience with a graceful execution that rivalled the weekday performances of _Celia's Arbour_ and the _Spotted Snakes_. Good tunes may be written at any time, for style is independent of fashion; but there are very few exceptions to the complete and unregretted disappearance of all the tunes of this date.
We have then nothing left for us to do but to review the material which the revival of music in the last fifty years has given us in the way of hymns.