Some months before the death of my true hearted friend, Rev. S. W. Duffield, he wrote to express his wish that I should complete this work, if he did not live to finish it. As I was not aware how grave, and even hopeless, was his illness, I did not feel that I was undertaking a serious responsibility in assenting to his wish. But his untimely death brought to me the duty of discharging a wish which “the emphasis of death” made imperative.

In our conferences over the book and its subject, which we had had for three years past, I had come to appreciate Mr. Duffield’s ideas as to its form and content, and read with much interest his preliminary studies in the Christian Intelligencer, the Sunday-School Times, and the New Englander. On coming into possession of his manuscript and notes, I found that the greater part of the book had been carried almost to the point of readiness for the printer, although several chapters had not been written and all needed careful revision.

I have revised throughout the chapters Mr. Duffield left, but in doing so I have been embarrassed by the very vitality and personal quality in Mr. Duffield’s style. He reminds one of what Archdeacon Hare says of the freshness and living force in a page of Luther’s. This has constrained me to leave intact many a phrase or expression I should not have used, but which was natural and even inevitable in him. It is my hope that I have not sacrificed this admirable quality of his writing to any pedantry of judgment.

The chapters on Pope Damasus (Chapter IV.) I have rewritten throughout. That on Bernard of Cluny I have rearranged, but without much alteration. That on Thomas of Celano I have rewritten to the top of page 252. That on Hermann of Reichenau I should have liked to rewrite; but as I dissented from some of its arguments, I feared to more than retouch it. It stands as a monument of its author’s vehement conviction that in Hermann he had found the true author of the Veni Sancte Spiritus.

The later chapters, from Thomas Aquinas, with the exception of those on Jacoponus and Xavier, are the work of the editor alone. In preparing them I have followed the author’s own plan for the book, except (1) in treating of the less-known as well as the unknown hymn-writers in Chapters XXX. and XXXI.; (2) in inserting a chapter on the relations of Protestantism to Latin hymnology; and (3) in giving in the last chapter only a selection from Mr. Duffield’s great Index of the Latin Hymns, which I hope to see published complete in a separate book. Translations not credited to any other person are the work of Mr. Duffield.

Mr. Duffield’s own idea of his book is well expressed in the Introduction which follows this Preface. I give it as he left it, although he had noted his purpose to prepare another which would cover the ground more fully. It now remains to say something of the man personally, and in this I am indebted much to the assistance of his faithful coworker in his hymnological studies, Miss Lilian B. Day of Bloomfield, who copied his great Index of the Latin Hymns, and who prepared the indexes to both his English Hymns and the present volume.

Samuel Augustus Willoughby Duffield was born at Brooklyn, on September 24th, 1843. His family was of French Huguenot extraction (Du Field), and found a home in the North of Ireland after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Between 1725 and 1730 George Duffield, his ancestor by five removes, settled in Lancaster County, as one of the great Ulster emigration which was flowing into Pennsylvania. His son George graduated at Princeton, and after several pastorates was settled in Philadelphia in the Pine Street church. He was an ardent patriot, chaplain in Washington’s army, and Bishop White’s associate in the chaplaincy of the Continental Congress. Of two sons who survived him, one became a minister, while the other took a prominent part in public life. His grandson, Rev. George Duffield, D.D. (1796-1868) was a leader of the New School division of the Presbyterian Church, both before and after the separation of 1837, and while pastor at Carlisle was arraigned for unsound teaching in his work on Regeneration. “Barnes, Beman, and Duffield” were the three names most offensive to the Aristarchuses of orthodoxy in that time. He was married to a sister of Dr. George W. Bethune. His son, generally known in our times as Dr. George Duffield, Jr., to distinguish him from his father, was born in 1818 at Carlisle, graduated at Yale College in 1837, and at Union Theological Seminary. One of his pastorates was in Brooklyn, from 1840 to 1847, during which his son, Samuel Augustus Willoughby, was born. He is best known as a hymn-writer, two of his hymns being known and loved wherever the English language is spoken. They are, “Blessed Saviour, Thee I love,” and “Stand up, stand up for Jesus,” the latter being suggested by the dying words of Dudley Tyng in 1858.

Samuel W. Duffield was of the sixth American generation of his family. From his youth he was a young giant, with an inborn love of active sports, quick in movement, and apparently incapable of fatigue. His mind showed equal vigor and freshness, and he early developed a passion for poetry. By his tenth year he had mastered Chaucer, in spite of difficulties much more serious to beginners in those days than in our own. And he very early began to find expression for his own ideas in verse. He united with the Church at the age of thirteen, when his father was a pastor in Philadelphia, being the only one who did so at the time, so that the act was the result of personal decision and not of a revival excitement. He graduated at Yale in 1863; and after teaching for a while, he began the study of theology under the care of his grandfather and his father. Not until after he had been licensed to preach, and had had charge of a mission in Chicago, did he present himself as a student in Union Theological Seminary.

His first pastorate was from 1867 to 1870 at Tioga, one of the northern suburbs of Philadelphia. As he frequently came to the office of the American Presbyterian, on which I was assisting the late Dr. John W. Mears, I then formed an acquaintance with him, which ripened into a friendship that was to be lifelong, and I hope even longer. He was an impressive figure, of more than the ordinary height, and yet so massively built that he was seen to be tall only when beside another person. His manner was cheerful, affectionate and buoyant, giving evidence in various ways of his French descent. His character was winning and attractive by its openness, and its entire freedom from selfishness. He was a man out of whose heart the child never died, and he carried the freshness of his boyhood’s years into the mature pursuits of his manhood.

Our common love of poetry and our dawning interest in Latin hymnology—he had translated Bernard of Cluny and was trying his hand on the Dies Irae in those days—drew us closer together and gave our friendship an intellectual interest. When he left Tioga for Jersey City our intercourse became more fragmentary, but during his pastorate at Ann Arbor (1871-74) it was renewed by correspondence. He felt himself especially at home in the university city of Michigan, with a congregation composed largely of the students. Here he had the delight of welcoming Dr. George Macdonald to his pulpit, when the poet visited America in 1873. He worked hard to have me called to the Chair of English Literature in the University of Michigan, but did not succeed.

Chicago, 1874, Auburn, 1876, Altoona, 1878, and Bloomfield, 1882, were his subsequent pastorates; and in Bloomfield he remained until his death. In this New Jersey suburb of New York City he seemed to find himself especially at home. It was indeed the home of his early boyhood, for his father had been pastor of the same church from 1847 to 1852; he well remembered his playmates and schoolmates, and kept up his acquaintance by correspondence and visits, until he came among them as their pastor. He was near enough to the great city to find easy access to its libraries, especially the Astor Library and that of Union Seminary, and to enjoy the friendship of scholars of tastes similar to his own, especially that of Dr. Charles S. Robinson. He found a congenial people in his congregation. He took a lively interest in matters relating to the welfare of the town, was an active member of the Village Improvement Association, labored hard to establish a public library, and helped to set on foot a good weekly paper. He became Chaplain of the Fire Company, and preached a special sermon every year to its members. He spoke always with enthusiasm of his new environment, and seemed to look forward to many happy and useful years there. His home life, I shall only say, was especially happy and helpful to him. Among his delights was to watch the dawning powers of a daughter, who inherits all her father’s poetic gifts.

His best poetical work is still unpublished, except such parts of it as have appeared in the Sunday-School Times and other weeklies. His first venture was The Heavenly Land, from the Rhythm of Bernard of Morlaix (New York, 1867). His second and most characteristic book was Warp and Woof: A Book of Verse (1868), in which “Undergraduate Orioles” and some other pieces at once attracted attention by their felicitous beauty and genuineness. Along with his father, he prepared The Burial of the Dead (1882), a manual for use at funerals. In the long interval between these two dates he was already laboring at his book on the Latin hymn-writers. “During the years 1882-85,” writes Miss Day, “those of us who saw him most frequently on his way to and from the New York libraries came to recognize a large, square note-book and a green cloth bag as his inseparable Monday companions. Something of their contents we knew, for with his genial disposition he could not refrain from quoting snatches of the old Latin hymns with translations into musical English. But no one could appreciate the real worth of the knowledge concealed between cloth and board as did the student himself, who had spent the hours of leisure snatched from professional labors in the libraries, and among Latin quartos and folios, in search of the materials for his book. During the latter part of 1885 the Latin hymn-writers were laid aside for a while to give time for his work on English Hymns: Their Authors and History (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886),” which was suggested by the appearance of Dr. Robinson’s Laudes Domini in 1884, and is mainly an account of the hymns included in that work, and of their authors. When this was finished he returned to his opus magnum, in the expectation of having it soon ready for the press. From our conferences and correspondence I was led to hope for its early appearance. But this was not to be. A failure of the vessels of the heart, evidently from some constitutional weakness, as he had been making no special exertion when it showed itself, was the beginning of the end. Twelve weary months of illness, spent partly in Bloomfield and partly at a watering-place, to which he had gone for change of air, were followed by his death on May 12th, 1887. He died as he had lived, in the full assurance of the Gospel, and looking for life everlasting in Jesus Christ.

The news of his death was received with grief by the whole community, especially by the young people, with whom he had so lively a sympathy. The Bloomfield Fire Company displayed their flag at half-mast, placed a guard of honor over his remains during the forty hours they lay at the church, and attended his funeral in a body. Signs of the general mourning were seen everywhere, and the town felt it had lost a public-spirited citizen, while his church had lost a faithful and devoted pastor. Mingled with memoranda for his book, I find in his note-books other indications of the breadth and energy of his work for the spiritual and intellectual improvement of his people, especially through his lectures before the Young People’s Society of the Westminster Church.

In the city of the dead at Detroit, where his kindred lie buried, there stands a memorial stone, which bears the inscription:

DILECTISSIMUS
EHEU PRAEMISSUS EST
QUANQUAM E VITAE INTEGRAE MEDIO
RAPTUS
AEVUM LONGISSIMUM PEREGIT
BEATO ILLI
PATER UXOR
MULTIS CUM LACRIMIS
HOC MARMOR
DEDICAVERE

Beside him lies now the mortal part of the much-loved father who wrote these words. Dr. George Duffield the younger died July 6, 1888.