H. M. Macgill › Recommendations

Macgill, Hamilton Montgomerie, D.D., youngest s. of Thomas Macgill, was born Mar. 10, 1807, at Catrine, Ayrshire. After studying at the University of Glasgow (which conferred upon him the degree of D.D. in 1870), he became in 1837 joint minister of Duke St. United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow. In 1840 he removed with a portion of his congregation to a new church in Montrose Street. He became, in 1858, Home Mission Secretary of the United Presbyterian Church, and in 1868 Foreign Mission Secretary. He died June 3, 1880, at Paris, while on his way to recruit his health in the South of France. As a member of the Hymnal Committee of the U. P. Church in 1870-76, he contributed to their Presbyterian Hymnal, 1876, 5 translations from the Latin (Nos. 29, 34, 95, 101, 299) and 1 from the Greek (No. 346). These he subsequently included in his Songs of the Christian Creed and Life, 1876, a volume containing 6 translations from the Greek; 68 from the Latin; and 27 translations from English into Latin verse, in all 101 (No. 101 being by himself). The introduction includes careful and interesting biographical and critical notices of the authors whose hymns are included; and tho texts are given in Latin, Greek, and English.

Many of the translations are exceedingly good, and stand in the very first rank of modern English versions —their gracefulness and ease making them seem more like original English hymns than translations. Sir Theodore Martin paid the translations into Latin the high compliment of mistaking one of them for a mediaeval hymn. In the edition of 1879, Dr. Macgill made a number of verbal alterations, added two renderings from the Latin ("Jam moesta quiesce querela" and “O luce qui mortalibus"), one from the Bohemian, one from the Spanish, and a Latin version of "Art thou weary, art thou languid?" Twenty-two of his translations from the Latin and Greek had appeared in the Juvenile Missionary Magazine of the U. P. Church between 1866 and 1873. His translations are gradually coming into somewhat prominent use.

[Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]

--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)