Selected quad for the lemma: england_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
england_n	john_n	king_n	time_n	9,801	5	3.7758	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A76624	Daveidos: or, a specimen of some of David's psalms in English metre With remarks upon the late translators, by Mr. John Phillips.; Bible. O.T. Psalms. English. Selections.	Phillips, John, Mr.	1698 (1698)	Wing B2610A; ESTC T191036	18,640	63

DAVEIDOS OR A Specimen of some of David's Psalms IN English METRE With Remarks upon the Late TRANSLATORS By Mr. JOHN PHILLIPS LONDON Printed for William Keblewhite at the Swan in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1798. THE PREFACE IT was the Complaint of a Person no less eminent in the Church of England then Dr. Don Dean of St. Paul's that the Psalms of King David I mean as they were translated into English Metre in his time and by that means being adapted to the Vulgar Tunes were made a considerable Part of the Publick Worship should be admitted into the Church in such an undecent and unmannerly Dress That Great Person who himself expressing his own Thoughts and Notions with so much Rapture and Sublimity must certainly be deem'd a competent Judge in his Poem upon the Translation of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sidney and his Sister the Countess of Pembrook cannot forbear condoling the Misfortune of these Celestial Hymns so rudely handl'd by other Pens Says he The Songs are these which Heav'ns High Holy Muse Whisper'd to David David to the Jews And David's Successors in Holy Zeal In Forms of Joy and Art do re-reveal To us so sweetly and sincerely too That I must not rejoice as I would do When I behold that these Psalms are become So well attir'd abroad so ill at home So well in Chambers in thy Church so ill As I can scarce call that reform'd untIl This be reform'd Since the Death of Dr. Donne several Persons have attempted to redress this Grievance with more Zeal then good Success for Zeal and Poetry are two different Inspirations that do not always accompany one another Men may be good Men eloquent Divines most excellent Preachers yet but very bad Poets Sandys of later times and Buchanan before him both adventur'd to imp their Muses Wings with Cherubims Feathers and suffer 'em to expatiate in the Tempes of Fancy and Exuberancy yet Cowley in his Preface to his Pindaric Odes ranges both those Great Men among those that have not hit the Mark. For says He All the Translators of the Psalms of David even Mr. Sands Himself for in despite of Popular Error I will be bold not to Except him are so far from doing Honour or at least Justice to that Divine Poet that methinks they revile him worse then Shimei And Buchanan himself who much the best of them all and indeed a great Person comes in my Opinon no less short of David then his Country does of Judea And the Reason of this he gives to be because that none of these People have sought to supply the lost Excellencies of another Language with new ones in their own To this I cannot forbear adding That all the Translations which I have hitherto seen since his time are equally as guilty of their Predecessors Faults and are so far from supplying us with the Excellencies of our Language that where they are forc'd for their conveniency to gloss upon the Sense of the Text they rather deform the Granduer of the Sacred Authors's Style with flat and insipid Notions of their own and Expressions no less improper mean and vulgar They fetch in Rhimes by the Head and Shoulders like so many obstinate Delinquents and bind 'em with the Chains of Impropriety ànd Incongruity to Words and Sentences altogether forc'd and foreign from the true Signification and all this to patch up a Clink i' the Close And while they pretend to be Reformers of others sin against the very Idiom of the Language which they pretend to be Masters of Unrivall'd of which the Translators N. B. and N. T. seem to be proud off is an Epithite by no means proper for God And Incarnate ten times worse for the Messiah For Incarnate is a word more frequently taken in an ill then a good Sense We say of Women that are continually Brawling and Scolding that they are Devils Incarnate And therefore Words that admit of a twofold and dubious Signification are to be carefully avoided in a Sacred Translation Their Cadences which ought to fall with the greatest ease and softness imaginable are harsh and violent rather like the Shogs and Rubs of Carts and Coaches against the Posts i' the Street then natural Closes Of this number are The feather'd Throng spoken of Birds His rains from Heav'n parch'd Hills recruite and Storms the swift wing'd Steeds with which he flies Really not good Sense And make the angry Sea comply Let all the World O Lord combine to praise c. Then shall the Teeming Ground a large Increase disclose These Expressions will serve in a Ballad but there is nothing of Flight nothing of Curiosity in ' em Of the same nature are A thousand dewy Sweats distill'd Thy word unseal'd the Springs You who the Lord adore your Vows before him lay Thy ratling Thunders roard around As Floods through ancient Forrests roar or Mountain Shrubs surprize God for their Diet finds a way When great they seem like some large Cloak let shame be round 'em rould But enough of these Blunders in General little superiour to Hopkins and Sternhold for they do so Scaturire that it would almost require a Transcription of the whole to repeat 'em all In short the Poetry more especially N. B. and N. T 's is very ordinary and insipid not to be call'd Poetry the Contexture nothing better then Linsey Woolsey and the Stuffing meer Thrums To come to particulars I would fain know how N. B. and N. T. could pick out of these words Beterem javinou Sirothekem Atad in the 58th Psalm Ante spinae Vestrae crescant in Rhamnum this piece of ill sounding and spropositous Sense E're Thorns can make the Fleshpots Boyl 't was certainly before Dinner For I cannot see the least ground in the words for such a Pye Corner Expression In the 95th Psalm the Text runs thus Ki El Gadol Jehova ou melek Gadol gnal Col Elohim Quia Deus Magnus Jehova rex Magnus super omnes Deus These words N. B. and N. T. thus Translate For God the Lord enthron'd in State Is with unrival'd Glory great A King Superiour far to all Whom by his Title God we call Here are no less then two Blunders to supply the conciseness of the Text unrivall'd Glory hardly warrantable whom by his Title God we call of which there is nothing at all in the Text only it was a hard Shift which might have been supply'd with much better words These occurr'd to the first Glances of my Eye and I was unwilling to examin any farther for fear of meeting many more I shall say nothing farther at present of their Translation but that it is too full of He'ls and He 's deformities not to be endur'd in true and elegant Poetry As for the Psalms that have lately appear'd under the Name of Mr. Milbourn they may be truly said to be his For the whole is an exuberant Paraphrase with little of David in it insomuch that they may be rightly call'd David's Psalms