824 OUR HYMNS :
some danger of undervaluing his predecessors. The Rev. "W. Goode, in his preface to his " New Version of the Psalms," speaks truly of the older versions as obsolete and defective. But he seems unduly to undervalue the labours of other later writers, and especially of Watts, whose object seems to have been the same as his own, since he professes it as his purpose to make a version simple enough for the people generally, and Christian so as to be adapted to our dispensation. And this was the very work Dr. Watts undertook and successfully accomplished.
Mr. Goode s work is entitled, " A New Version of the Book of Psalms, with Original Prefaces and Notes, Critical andExplanatory." Two vols., 1811. It had reached a third edition in 18 L6. John Holland, in " The Psalmists of Britain" (1843) describes Mr. Goode as rector of St. Antholme s, London, " the very first church in which psalm- singing began in connexion with the Protestant worship."
On the title page of the above work he is described as " rector of St. Andrew Wardrobe, and St. Ann, Blackfriars, lecturer of St. John, of Wapping," &c.
" Thou, gracious God, and kind." No. 114.
This is part of Mr. Goode s version of Psalm 79. His psalm consists of four verses in long metre and nine in short metre. In the " New Congregational," four of the latter verses are given without alteration.
The Rev. William Goode, D.D., dean of Ripon, who is the son of this psalm-writer, has supplied the following particulars of his father s life in a memoir first published with his father s " Essays" in 1822, and afterwards in a separate form in 1828.
William Goode was born on the 2nd of April, 1762, of pious parents, in the town of Buckingham. His first studies were pur sued at his native place, but at the age of thirteen he went to be educated by the Rev. T. Bull, a dissenting minister at Newport Pagnell. Young Goode s parents had been driven from their parish church by the unsatisfactory state of the preaching
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