"True judgment suggested to him that what he drew from Scripture was best preserved in a pure and simple expression, and the fervour of his piety made that simplicity pathetic."
No doubt seems to have crossed the Bishop's mind as to the authorship. Sometimes Addison thought fit to throw a little mystery over these hymns. In Spectator, No. 489., after alluding to Psalm cvii. v. 23., "They that go down to the sea," &c. (which Addison says gives a description of a ship in a storm, preferable to any other that he has met with), he subjoins his "divine Ode made by a Gentleman on the conclusion of his travels," "How are Thy servants blest," &c.
The verses 4 to 8 are said to refer to the storm which Allison himself encountered on the Mediterranean, after he embarked at Marseilles in 1700.
The hymn "When rising from the bed of death," Spectator, No. 513, "a thought in sickness," is contained in a supposed letter from a Clergyman, viz. one of the club, "who assist me in my speculations."
Tickell, in his exquisite elegy, so worthy of its subject, when asking,
"What new employments please the unbody'd mind?"
adds,
"Or mixed with milder cherubim to glow,
In hymns of love, not ill essayed below."
Were not the very hymns which we are speaking of in Tickell's mind?