“A hymn ought to be as regular in its structure as any other poem; it should have a distinct subject, and that subject should be simple, not complicated, so that whatever skill or labour might be required in the author to develope his plan, there should be little or none required on the part of the reader to understand it. Consequently, a hymn should have a beginning, middle, and end.”
...“A line is no more metre because it contains a certain concatenation of syllables, than so many crotchets and quavers, pricked at random, would constitute a bar of music.”
James Montgomery in his “Introductory Essay” to The Christian Psalmist; or, Hymns, Selected and Original, pp. xiv, xvi.
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