Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/132

126 [The next chapter contains what he calls a great revolution in the church, part of which I transcribe.]

Now was the long expected time arrived, when the psalms of king David should be hymned unto the same tunes, to which he played them upon his harp; so was I informed by my singing-master, a man right cunning in psalmody. Now was our over-abundant quaver and trilling done away, and in lieu thereof was instituted the sol-fa, in such guise as is sung in his majesty's chapel. We had London singing-masters sent into every parish, like unto excisemen; and I also was ordained to adjoin myself unto them, though an unworthy disciple, in order to instruct my fellow parishioners in this new manner of worship. What though they accused me of humming through the nostril as a sackbut; yet would I not forego that harmony, it having been agreed by the worthy parish-clerks of London still to preserve the same. I tutored the young men and maidens to tune their voices as it were a psaltery, and the church on the Sunday was filled with these new hallelujahs.

[Then follow full seventy chapters, containing an exact detail of the lawsuits of the parson and his parishioners concerning tithes, and near a hundred pages left blank with an earnest desire that the history might be completed by any of his successors, in whose time these suits should be ended.]

[The next contains an account of the briefs read in the church, and the sums collected upon each. For the reparation of nine churches, collected at nine veral