THE STORY OF THE HYMNS AND THEIR WRITERS 12$

something for a Christmas present in 1745, and on Christmas morning she found an envelope addressed to her containing this hymn, headed Christmas Day for Dolly. The MS. is preserved at Cheetham s Hospital, Manchester. It remained in the possession of his family for about a century, till it passed into the hands of James Crossby ; and on his death was sold to the hospital, of which he had been honorary librarian. It was published in Harrop s UlancJicster Mercury in 1746. Byrom wrote many hymns for the boys at Cheetham s Hospital, and said he preferred that employment to being laureate to Frederick II, then engaged in the Seven Years War.

Byrom was very tall, and gives an amusing account of the difficulty he had in finding a horse high enough for him to ride ; but he was eclipsed by a gentleman from Worcestershire, almost a head taller than I ; people talk to me as if I were grown a mere dwarf. He carried a stick with a crook-top, and wore a curious, low-polled, slouched hat, from under the long- peaked front brim of which his benignant face bent forward a cautiously inquisitive kind of look, as if he were in the habit of prying into everything, without caring to let everything enter deeply into him.

Hymn 125. O Saviour, whom this holy morn. REGINALD HEUER, D.D. (28).

Published in the Christian Observer, November, I Si I, headed Christmas Day. The latter half of the first verse reads

To wandering and to labour born, To weakness and to woe !

This is altered in the posthumous Hymns, 1827.

Hymn 120. To us a child of royal birth. CHARLES WESLEY (i).

Hymns on tJu Four Gospels (left in MS.); Works, xi. 117. Luke ii. n.

Hymn 127. Brightest and best of the sons of the morning.

REGINALD HEBER, D.D. (28).

Epiphany hymn, first published in Christian Observer, November, iSn.

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