Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/86

 498 Patriotic Songs and Hymns "of the simplest form and most marked rhythm, the words easy to be retained by the popular memory, and the melody and harmony such as may be readily sung by ordinary voices." In this respect George M. Cohan met the situation as Root and Work and Gilmore did fifty years ago, and, like them, he wrote music of the day. It belongs to the same public that delights in O. Henry, Walt Mason, Irvin S. Cobb, and Wallace Irwin, all in the main sane, wholesome, obvious people. It comes from Broadway, which supplies the populace with much of their fun. On the other hand The Star Spangled Banner belonged to the public of Francis and Joseph Hopkinson and John Copley and Gilbert Stuart. The artistic work of that day was well-turned and graceful; poetry and music lent them- selves to dashes of magniloquent heroism and tender sentiment. The courtly traditions of manly strength, feminine grace, the cheering influence of the social glass, and a traditionally aris- tocratic point of view, were all implicit in them. What John Howard Payne's patron called "the desolating effects of democracy" he would say were registered in the loss of these echoed gentilities. The same loss is apparent in the course of American hymnology ; but there is no reason for considering it more than a cheap and temporary price for benefits received and in store. For various reasons no selection of American hymns can quite compare in certainty with the choice of patriotic songs. As expressions of religious feeling hymns belong to an un- national language, and the most excellent are sung without regard to authorship. The best American hymns have, there- fore, to meet the challenge of the best from every other Chris- tian source, and the process of grouping them together is arbi- trary and local rather than logical. Moreover, the traditions of worship have been responsible for the iteration of a great deal of bathos, since the convenience of public worship has made the hymnal far more of an instrument than the song book in conserving words and music that ought to have gone to oblivion. Yet though the fields of secular and religious song are very different, the outstanding types and the drift of development are quite comparable. Three hymns of Timothy Dwight, Ray Palmer, and Oliver