II. ENGLISH HYMNODY SUBMERGED BY REFORMED PSALMODY
The urge, not only for versifying all parts of the Scriptures, including genealogies, but of actually singing them with fervor, submerged the native impulse of song. The religious loyalty to the letter of the Scriptures that followed closed the door against the development of the English hymn.[1]
Professor Reeves in his The Hymn as Literature remarks: “As vigorous and variegated and prevalent as this union of popular poetry and popular music was in England, it strangely weakened and paled at the one time in English history when it might have been expected most to flourish. The Reformation, born of that new freedom of thought and worship which produces the best hymnody, did not in England, as it gloriously did in Germany, speak out richly in the native vernacular hymn.”[2]