CHILDREN'S PRAYERS.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Ste,—As regards the attribution of the evening hymn, " Forgive me, dearest Lord, for Thy dear Son," &c., to Jeremy Taylor, do not these lines occur in the "Verbum Sempiternum," one of the numerous works of John Taylor, known as the " Water Poet "? The late Dean Plumptre, of Wells, says : " Curiously enough, the
Verbum Sempiternum ' has not seldom been ascribed to Jeremy Taylor." Au edition of this work, now ,in the British Museum Library, was published in 1693. There is also in it a prayer for the morning, commencing : " Glory to Thee, my God : Who safe hest kept." The resemblance between these two prayers and the corresponding verses in Bishop Ken's Morning and Evening Hymns must have struck all readers, and Dean Pluniptre's conjecture was that Ken's hymns. existed prior to the publication of the "Verbum Sempiternum," and that the editor of that work appropriated and altered the verses as written by Ken.—I am,
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