Page:The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated.djvu/446

 434 THE METHODIST HYMN-BOOK ILLUSTRATED

Hymn 845. The day of wrath, that dreadful day.

SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. (1771-1832).

Sir Walter Scott s celebrated condensation of the Dies Irae marks the culminating point of The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), where pilgrimage was made to Melrose Abbey f&amp;lt; repose of the soul of Michael Scott-

Then Mass was sung, and prayers were said, And solemn requiem for the dead ; And bells toll d out their mighty peal, For the departed spirit s weal ; And ever in the office close The hymn of intercession rose ; And far the echoing aisles prolong The awful burthen of the song, Dies irae, dies ilia, Sol vet saeclum in favilla ; While the pealing organ rung. Were it meet with sacred strain To close my lay, so light and vain, Thus the holy Fathers sung :

Then follows The Hymn for the Dead

Dr Collyer used this as a hymn in his Selection, 1812.

hymn &quot;of Rebecca in Ivanhoe, When Israel of the Lord

beloved, is another fine illustration of Sir Walter Scott s power

as a writer of sacred song.

Mr Gladstone said in a speech at Hawarden, February 3,
 * 866 I know nothing more sublime in the writings of Sir

Walter Scott-certainly I know nothing so sublime m any portion of the sacred poetry of modern times, I mean of the present century, as the - Hymn for the Dead,&quot; extending only to twelve line* which he embodied in &quot;The Lay of the Last

��roc says in his account of Sir Walter Scott s

death-bed, But commonly whatever we could follow him in was foment of the Bible (especially the Prophecies of Isaiah and e Book of Job), or some petition in the Litany-or a verse of some psalm (in the old Scotch metrical version)-or of some of the magnificent hymns of the Romish ritual, m which he always delighted, but which probably hung on his memory connexion with the Church services he had attended

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