ointed, but the metrical Psalms came, in time, to
have a wider and more democratic employment. Complete versions of the
Psalms in verse came to be regarded as a suitable accompaniment to the
Bible, until in the Scottish General Assembly of 1601 the proposition
for a new translation of the Bible was accompanied by a parallel
proposition for a correction of the Psalms in metre.[242]

Besides this general realization of the practical usefulness of these
versions in divine service, there was in some quarters an appreciation
of the peculiar literary quality of the Psalms which tended to express
itself in new attempts at translation. Arthur Golding, though not
himself the author of a metrical version, makes the following comment:
"For whereas the other parts of holy writ (whether they be historical,
moral, judicial, ceremonial, or prophetical) do commonly set down their
treatises in open and plain declaration: this part consisting of them
all, wrappeth up things in types and figures, describing them under
borrowed personages, and oftentimes winding in matters of prevention,
speaking of things to come as if they were past or present, and of
things past as if they were in doing, and every man is made a betrayer
of the secrets of his own heart. And forasmuch as it consisteth chiefly
of prayer and thanksgiving, or (which comprehendeth them both) of
invocation, which is a communication with God, and requireth rather an
earnest and devout lifting up of the mind than a loud or curious
utterance of the voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many broken
speeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed,
was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interrupted
with vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity,
that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by interminding
God's former promises and benefits."[243] George Wither finds that the
style of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of the
Muses," he declares, "in which the Psalms were originally written, is
not so properly expressed in the prose dialect as in verse." "I have
used some variety of verse," he explains, "because prayers, praises,
lamentations, triumphs, and subjects which are pastoral, heroical,
elegiacal, and mixed (all which are found in the Psalms) are not
properly expressed in one sort of measure."[244]

Besides such perception of the general poetic quality of the Psalms as
is fou