Tate and Brady

[1]: 119 By the early 1900s, it was remarked that the work, like the hymns of Isaac Watts, had "not stood the test of time", and that "Tate and Brady's psalms are not to be found in our hymnals".

As the author of "The Minstrel" says in his Letter to Dr. Blair: "It often sinks into flatness and prose; and as often affects familiar phrase, antitheses, and other conceits that prevailed among the middling poets of its time."

Archdeacon Hare writes that it "has been singularly successful in stripping the Psalms of their life and power"; and James Montgomery thinks it is at least as inanimate as the Sternhold version.

In our own day there may be conflicting opinions as to the merits of the two Psalters: but at any rate, we think a fair judgment of the Tate and Brady version would be that “though not excellent, it was not intolerable."

it never quite succeeded in supplanting the earlier Psalter: the present century was nearly reached before it distanced its competitor; and not long after this both versions became "reminiscences of the past.