“Ye Roxbury poets, keep clear of ye crime
  Of missing to give us very good rhyme,
  And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen,
  But with the texts own words you will y’m strengthen.”

The version of this ministerial trio was printed in the year 1640, at Cambridge, and has the honor of being the first production of the North American press that rises to the dignity of a book.  It was entitled, “The Psalms newly turned into Metre.”  A second edition was printed in 1647.  “It was more to be commended, however,” says Mr. Peirce, in his History of Harvard University, “for its fidelity to the text, than for the elegance of its versification, which, having been executed by persons of different tastes and talents, was not only very uncouth, but deficient in uniformity.  President Dunster, who was an excellent Oriental scholar, and possessed the other requisite qualifications for the task, was employed to revise and polish it; and in two or three years, with the assistance of Mr. Richard Lyon, a young gentleman who was sent from England by Sir Henry Mildmay to attend his son, then a student in Harvard College, he produced a work, which, under the appellation of the ‘Bay Psalm-Book,’ was, for a long time, the received version in the New England congregations, was also used in many societies in England and Scotland, and passed through a great number of editions, both at home and abroad.”—­p. 14.

The Seventy-eighth Psalm is thus rendered in the first edition:—­

  Give listning eare unto my law,
    Yee people that are mine,
  Unto the sayings of my mouth
    Doe yee your eare incline.

  My mouth I’le ope in parables,
    I’le speak hid things of old: 
  Which we have heard, and knowne:  and which
    Our fathers have us told.

  Them from their children wee’l not hide,
    To th’ after age shewing
  The Lords prayses; his strength, and works
    Of his wondrous doing.

  In Jacob he a witnesse set,
    And put in Israell
  A law, which he our fathers charg’d
    They should their children tell: 

  That th’ age to come, and children which
    Are to be borne might know;
  That they might rise up and the same
    Unto their children show.

  That they upon the mighty God
    Their confidence might set: 
  And Gods works and his commandment
    Might keep and not forget,

  And might not like their fathers be,
    A stiffe, stout race; a race
  That set not right their hearts:  nor firme
    With God their spirit was.

The Bay Psalm-Book underwent many changes in the various editions through which it passed, nor was this psalm left untouched, as will be seen by referring to the twenty-sixth edition, published in 1744, and to the edition of 1758, revised and corrected, with additions, by Mr. Thomas Prince.

2.—­Watts’s Version.