Talk:William Billings

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Hmm, as far as I know there is no such thing as a portrait of William Billings. Maybe one of the engravings from the covers of his publications would be nice... Opus33 19:53, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Followup: if you type "William Billings" into Google Images, you do get a picture claimed to be Billings. But I strongly suspect it's a posthumously created fantasy. McKay and Crawford's authoritative bio of Billings has plenty of pictures, but they didn't include that one (so we shouldn't either). Opus33 23:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

While it would be nice to establish a connection between Cather and Billings, the passage of the novel gives no indication that it was the Billings version of the hymn that was sung. The words are by Isaac Watts, who was hugely popular as a lyricist for hymns, so in the book the text could have been set by any number of composers. Opus33 (talk) 17:30, 10 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]