Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands." In this collection were included contri butions by Tanis, Morley, Dowland, and all the great masters of the day, as well as by Ravenscroft himself, who contributed the tunes St. David's, Bangor, and Canterbury. The name of John Milton, father of the poet, appears as composer of the tunes, York and Norwich. According to the then prevalent usage, the subject of air was given to the tenor voice. This custom was first departed from in the Whole Book of Psalms, in Three Parts, published in 1671, compiled and arranged by John Playfoid—whom sir J. Ilawkins calls the "father of modern psalmody"—where we have the more proper prac tice, which has since obtained, of making the melody the soprano part. Croft, Courte ville, Cary, the Backs, and Handel have, since that time, contributed to the psalmody in use in Britain.
Among other metrical •versions of the Psalms produced was one of doubtful origin which was attributed to James I. and which, a strong recommendation by his son, was never much used in churches. The version (if the Psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins came to be supplanted in England, toward the beginning of the last c., by that of Nahum Tate, poet-laureate under 'William III. and Anne, and Dr. Nicholas Brady, less literal in its renderings than its predecessor, and somewhat commonplace as regards poetical character. This _New Version of the Psalms first appeared in 1698, with the royal authority allowing in churches. Of late years modern hymns, selected according to the taste and at the will of the incumbent, have to a large extent taken the place of metrical psalms in the church of England.
In Scotland the early reformers paid great attention to singing. In John Knox's Psalter, arranged for use in churches, the metrical psalms are set to music in harmony of four parts. Several early translations of the Psalms were produced in n. Britain, but that of Sternhold and Hopkins was used in worship from 1564 down to the middle of the 17th century. In 1632, an attempt made by Charles I. to superseite it by king James's version, was more resolutely and decidedly opposed than in Englaufl. The vemon now in use in Scotland was introduced during the commonwealth by the general assembly, and founded on the metrical transla•on of Francis Rous, a member of Cromwell's council. This new version was in 1649 appointed by the general assembly to be the only paraphrase of the Psalms sung in the kirk of Scotland. About the beginning of the 18th c., an agitation began for the enlarging of the psalmody of the kirk, by adding to it paraphrases of other portions of scripture. A collection of such paraphrases was published in 1745, and was widely used. In 1775 a committee was appointed to revise it; and in 1781 the collection which has been so long in use was sanctioned by a permissive act of assembly. Iu addition to these, separate hymn-hooks are now sanctioned in the established and free churches of Scotland, and have long aithid in the worship of the U. P. church.