Milton's paraphrase of the Psalms belongs to history, but to the
history of psalmody, not that of poetry. At St. Paul's School, at
fifteen, the boy had turned two psalms, the 114th and the 136th, by
way of exercise. That in his day of plenary inspiration, Milton, who
disdained Dryden as "a rhymist but no poet," and has recorded his own
impatience with the "drawling versifiers," should have undertaken
to grind down the noble antistrophic lyrics of the Hebrew bard
into ballad rhymes for the use of Puritan worship, would have been
impossible. But the idea of being useful to his country had acquired
exclusive possession of his mind. Even his faculty of verse should
be employed in the good cause. If Parliament had set him the task,
doubtless he would have willingly undertaken it, as Corneille, in the
blindness of Catholic obedience, versified the _Imitatio Christi_ at
the command of the Jesuits. Milton was not officially employed, but
voluntarily took up the work. The Puritans were bent upon substituting
a new version of the Davidic Psalms for that of Sternhold and Hopkins,
for no other reason than that the latter formed part of the hated Book
of Common Prayer.
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