To trace the history of modern metrical psalmody, we must have recourse to Bayle, who, as a mere literary historian, has accidentally preserved it.  The inventor was a celebrated French poet; and the invention, though perhaps in its very origin inclining towards the abuse to which it was afterwards carried, was unexpectedly adopted by the austere Calvin, and introduced into the Geneva discipline.  It is indeed strange, that while he was stripping religion not merely of its pageantry, but even of its decent ceremonies, this levelling reformer should have introduced this taste for singing psalms in opposition to reading psalms.  “On a parallel principle,” says Thomas Warton, “and if any artificial aids to devotion were to be allowed, he might at least have retained the use of pictures in the church.”  But it was decreed that statues should be mutilated of “their fair proportions,” and painted glass be dashed into pieces, while the congregation were to sing!  Calvin sought for proselytes among “the rabble of a republic, who can have no relish for the more elegant externals.”  But to have made men sing in concert, in the streets, or at their work, and, merry or sad, on all occasions to tickle the ear with rhymes and touch the heart with emotion, was betraying no deficient knowledge of human nature.

It seems, however, that this project was adopted accidentally, and was certainly promoted by the fine natural genius of Clement Marot, the favoured bard of Francis the First, that “prince of poets and that poet of princes,” as he was quaintly but expressively dignified by his contemporaries.  Marot is still an inimitable and true poet, for he has written in a manner of his own with such marked felicity, that he has left his name to a style of poetry called Marotique.  The original La Fontaine is his imitator.  Marot delighted in the very forms of poetry, as well as its subjects and its manner.  His life, indeed, took more shapes, and indulged in more poetical licences, than even his poetry.  Licentious in morals,—­often in prison, or at court, or in the army, or a fugitive, he has left in his numerous little poems many a curious record of his variegated existence.  He was indeed very far from being devout, when his friend, the learned Vatable, the Hebrew professor, probably to reclaim a perpetual sinner from profane rhymes, as Marot was suspected of heresy (confession and meagre days being his abhorrence), suggested the new project of translating the Psalms into French verse, and no doubt assisted the bard; for they are said to be “traduitz en rithme Francais selon la verite Hebraique.”  The famous Theodore Beza was also his friend and prompter, and afterwards his continuator.  Marot published fifty-two Psalms, written in a variety of measures, with the same style he had done his ballads and rondeaux.  He dedicated his work to the King of France, comparing him with the royal Hebrew, and with a French compliment!