This “holy song-book” for the harpsichord or the voice, was a gay novelty, and no book was ever more eagerly received by all classes than Marot’s “Psalms.”  In the fervour of that day, they sold faster than the printers could take them off their presses; but as they were understood to be songs, and yet were not accompanied by music, every one set them to favourite tunes, commonly those of popular ballads.  Each of the royal family, and every nobleman, chose a psalm or a song which expressed his own personal feelings, adapted to his own tune.  The Dauphin, afterwards Henry the Second, a great hunter, when he went to the chase, was singing Ainsi qu’on vit le cerf bruyre.  “Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks.”  There is a curious portrait of the mistress of Henry, the famous Diane de Poictiers, recently published, on which is inscribed this verse of the Psalm.  On a portrait which exhibits Diane in an attitude rather unsuitable to so solemn an application, no reason could be found to account for this discordance; perhaps the painter, or the lady herself, chose to adopt the favourite psalm of her royal lover, proudly to designate the object of her love, besides its double allusion to her name.  Diane, however, in the first stage of their mutual attachment, took Du fond de ma pensee, or, “From the depth of my heart.”  The queen’s favourite was

    Ne veuilles pas, o sire,
    Me reprendre en ton ire;

that is, “Rebuke me not in thy indignation,” which she sung to a fashionable jig.  Antony, king of Navarre, sung Revenge moy prens la querelle, or “Stand up, O Lord, to revenge my quarrel,” to the air of a dance of Poitou.  We may conceive the ardour with which this novelty was received, for Francis sent to Charles the Fifth Marot’s collection, who both by promises and presents encouraged the French bard to proceed with his version, and entreating Marot to send him as soon as possible Confitemini Domino quoniam bonus, because it was his favourite psalm.  And the Spanish as well as French composers hastened to set the Psalms of Marot to music.  The fashion lasted, for Henry the Second set one to an air of his own composing.  Catharine de’ Medici had her psalm, and it seems that every one at court adopted some particular psalm for themselves, which they often played on lutes and guitars, &c.  Singing psalms in verse was then one of the chief ingredients in the happiness of social life.

The universal reception of Marot’s Psalms induced Theodore Beza to conclude the collection, and ten thousand copies were immediately dispersed.  But these had the advantage of being set to music, for we are told they were “admirably fitted to the violin and other musical instruments.”  And who was the man who had thus adroitly taken hold of the public feeling to give it this strong direction?  It was the solitary Thaumaturgus, the ascetic Calvin, who from the depths of his closet at Geneva had engaged