Introduction

Biography

Son of the vi­car of Wit­ley, Chand­ler was edu­ca­ted at Cor­pus Chris­ti Col­lege, Ox­ford (BA 1827, MA 1830).

He took Ho­ly Or­ders in 1831, and be­came vi­car of Wit­ley in 1837.

He was one of the ear­li­est and most suc­cess­ful trans­lat­ors of La­tin hymns. His trans­la­tions arose out of a de­sire to see the an­cient prayers of the Ang­li­can li­tur­gy ac­com­pa­nied by hymns of a cor­res­pond­ing date of com­po­si­tion. In the pre­face to his Hymns of the Pri­mi­tive Church, he said:

My at­ten­tion was a short time ago di­rect­ed to some trans­la­tions [by Isaac Will­iams] which ap­peared from time to time in the Brit­ish Ma­ga­zine, very beau­ti­ful­ly ex­ec­ut­ed, of some hymns ex­tract­ed from the Pa­ri­sian Bre­vi­ary, which orig­in­als an­nexed.

Some in­deed, of the Sap­phic and Al­ca­ic and oth­er Ho­ra­ti­an metres, seem to be of lit­tle val­ue; but the rest, of the pe­cul­iar hymn-metre, Di­me­ter Iam­bics, ap­pear an­cient, sim­ple, stri­king, and de­vo­tion­al—in a word in ev­ery way like­ly to an­swer our pur­pose.

So I got a co­py of the Pa­ri­sian Bre­vi­ary, and one or two oth­er old books of La­tin Hymns, es­pe­cial­ly one com­piled by Ge­or­gi­us Cas­san­der, print­ed at Co­logne, in the year 1556, and re­gu­lar­ly ap­plied my­self to the work of se­lec­tion and trans­la­tion. The re­sult is the col­lect­ion I now lay be­fore the pub­lic.

Works

• Hymns of the Pri­mi­tive Church, Now First Col­lect­ed, Trans­lat­ed, and Ar­ranged, 1837
• The Hymns of the Church, Most­ly Pri­mi­tive, Col­lect­ed, Trans­lat­ed, and Ar­ranged for Pub­lic Use, 1841 (a re­pub­li­ca­tion and ex­pan­sion of his 1837 work)
• Sermons and Tracts
• Life of Will­iam of Wyke­ham, 1842
• Horæ Sac­ræ; Pray­ers and Me­di­ta­tions from the Writ­ings of the Di­vines of the Ang­li­can Church, with an In­tro­duc­tion, 1844