Page:Our Hymns.djvu/368

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348
OUR HYMNS:

thereof, and joined the congregation of Ram's Episcopal Chapel at Homerton (where I then resided, and reside still), the incumbent of which was and is the Rev. Thomas Griffith, prebend of St. Paul s."

The embryo poet was educated at Hackney, whither his parents had removed in 1803. At the age of sixteen he was articled to an architect and surveyor. He continued in the office where he had learned his profession till 1816, and then commenced on his own account. Mr. Edmeston removed from Hackney to Homerton in 1822, and was married in the following year. His wife, after being the mother of a numerous family, died in 1850. In 1851 Mr. Edmeston became a church warden of St. Barnabas, Homerton, a new church erected in 1847. He also became secretary of the parochial schools, and took an active interest in promoting the erection of the new and costly school premises.

At the age of eighteen, Mr. Edmeston began to write for the press, and in 1817 he published a small volume, " The Search, and other Poems." This was dedicated to his friend, the Rev. F. A. Cox, better known afterwards as Dr. Cox. Then followed "Anston Park," a tale; and "The World of Spirits." In 1820 he published a small volume of " Sacred Lyrics," and in the two following years two other sets of " Sacred Lyrics ;" and in 1821, the " Home Missionary Society" published "The Cottage Minstrel ; or, Hymns for the Assistance of Cottagers in their Domestic Worship." These were fifty hymns composed for the Society by Mr. Edmeston, at the request of one of the friends of the Institution. The same year he published " One Hundred Hymns for Sunday Schools." In the year 1822, Mr. Edmeston published fifty hymns on missionary subjects, for use in united missionary prayer-meetings ; and the same year, " One Hundred Sunday School Hymns for Particular Occasions." And in 1829, a small volume containing a dramatic sketch, " The Woman of Shunam, and other Poems ;" also, " Patmos, a Fragment, and other Poems," in 1824. More recently, the