Milton does not scruple to affirm: 'There are no songs to be
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets.
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v04
Early in the eighth century,
Bede was making a translation into Old English of the Gospel of
John, and, about the year 800 A. D. , the language was already
capable of such poetry as this from the Christ of Cynewulf1:
Thereupon from the four corners of the world, from the uttermost regions
of earth, angels all-shining shall with one accord blow their crashing
trampets; the earth shall tremble under men. Glorious and steadfast they
shall sound together over against the course of the stars, chanting in harmony
and making melody from south and from north, from east and from west,
throughout the whole creation. All mankind shall they wake from the dead
onto the Last Judgment; they shall rouse the sons of men all aghast from
the ancient earth, bidding them straightway arise from their deep sleep.
Throughout the Old English period, most of the literature
produced was strongly coloured by Biblical diction. Even a work
like Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People was under
this influence. By about the year 1000, the language was able
to render the Latin of Jerome, as given above, in the following
form? (Exod. xix, 16, 18, 19):
Fã cõm se brydda dæg, and ligetta and punor and picce genip oferwrēh
þone munt, and bỹman swêg wæs gehired, and eall þæt folo him ondrőd þe
wæs on þām fyrdwicon. . . . And eall Sinai munt smēac, forpampe Drihten wæs
uppan him on fyre; and se smic ārās of him, and eall se munt wæs egeslic.
And þære bỹman swēg wĒox swā leng swā swīdor3.
Before we leave this part of the subject, it may be added that,
according to the computations of Marsh, about 93 per cent. of
the words of the Authorised Version, counting repetitions of the
same word, are native English.
Ormulum and Piers Plowman will suggest the influence ex-
erted by the Bible on English diction during the period between
A. D. 1000 and 1400—roughly speaking, between the age of Aelfric and
1 Ll. 878–889, Whitman's translation.
9 The vowel-sounds of either Italian, French, or German will be sufficiently close,
The characters 8 and þ represent th; g before or after e or i is usually like y. Finale
is pronounced somewhat like that in liveth, or the final e of German. The maoron
indicates length of vowel.
3 Aelfric's versions of the same passage may be found in his Homilies, ed. Thorpe,
1, 312; 11, 196, 202.
## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################
38 The Authorised Version and its Influence
that of Wyclif. The poetry near the end of this period is better
able than prose to cope with the difficulties of translation. Thus,
Chaucer has :
Caste alle awey the werkes of derkpesse,
And armeth you in armure of brightnesse;
where the second Wyclifite version reads :
Rom. xiii, 12: Therfor caste we awei the werkis of derknessis, and be we
clothid in the armeris of lizt.
Though this second version, that of Purvey (1388), is, in general,
much less pedantically literal than the first, made some eight or
nine years earlier, yet such words as derknessis and armeris, for
the Latin plurals tenebrae and arma, illustrate the chief defect
of both the Wyclifite translations, namely, a failure to attain
perfect English idiom.
Purvey seems to have been quite conscious of the excessive
literalness of the earlier version (1380), and of the awkwardness
due to the close following of Latin idiom. In his prologue, after
describing how he had toiled, in association with others, to obtain
a true Latin text, and to elucidate its difficulties, he proceeds to
lay down important principles of Biblical translation, which have
never been superseded. Among them are :
First, to translate as clearly as possible according to the sense,
and not merely according to the words.
Secondly, to make the sentence at least as 'open' in English as
in Latin, that is, to have due regard to English idiom.
Nevertheless, it may be affirmed that both Wyclifite versions
are far inferior in ease and idiomatic character to the Old English.
It cannot be said that scholars are agreed as to the influence of
the Wyclifite versions upon Tindale and the Authorised Version;
but it is pretty clear that Tindale was influenced by them to a
moderate extent, and that expressions of great force and beauty
have, occasionally, been appropriated from Wyclif by the Autho-
rised Version, either mediately or directly. One or two instances
may suffice : John iv, 14, ‘a well of water springing up into ever-
lasting life' comes, through Tindale, from both the Wyclifite
versions; 1 Cor. ii, 10, 'the deep things of God,' which Tindale
renders, 'the bottom of God's secrets,' and the Rheims version,
'the profundities of God. '. How easy it is to go stylistically astray
in such matters is shown by the fact that two versions, both
published within the last ten years, have, respectively, for the first
passage above, ‘a spring of water . . . welling up for enduring life,'
i Second Nun's Tale, 384-5.
.
## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################
Caxton's Golden Legend
39
and 'a fountain . . . of water springing up for the Life of the ages”;
and, for the second, 'the profoundest secrets of God,' and 'the
depths of the divine nature. '
The Wyclifite version of Exod. xix, 16, 18, 19 is subjoined,
the spelling being modernised, and modern renderings being indi-
cated :
WYCLIF (earlier).
And now the third day was come, and the morning (morewe, morrow) tide
was full cleared ; and lo! thunders began to be heard and lightnings (leytes,
from the Old English word above] to shine, and the most thick cloud to cover
the hill; and the cry of the trump more hideously made noise, and the people
dreaded that was in the tents. . . . And all the hill of Sinai smoked, because
(for thi that] the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke rose (steyde]
up of it as of a furnace, and all the bill was full fearful; and the sound of the
trump little by little [litil mele) sprang into more, and longer was stretched. '
A hundred years later than the Wiclifite versions (20 November,
1483), Caxton published his Golden Legend, in which he had
inserted considerable portions of the Pentateuch and the Gospels,
on the basis, probably, of Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica.
Caxton's theory of translation, if we may judge from the preface
to his Eneydos, was to seek a mean between 'fair and strange
terms,” by some regarded as “over curious,' and such 'old and
homely terms' as were now strange and almost disused. His aim
lay in the wish to be generally understood. The clearness and
beauty of the passage from Exodus will be readily seen.
Caxton's Golden Legend (spelling modernised).
When the third day came, and the morning waxed clear, they heard
thunder and lightning, and saw a great cloud cover the mount; and the cry
of the trump was so shrill that the people were sore afraid. . . . All the mount
of Sinai smoked, for so much as our Lord descended on it in fire; and the
smoke ascended from the hill as it had been from a furnace. The mount was
terrible and dreadful, and the sound of the trump grew a little more, and
continued longer.
It will be evident that the vocabulary of Caxton is drawn from
the same sources as Tindale's, while it does not greatly differ from
Wyclif's, these sources being native English and Old French, with
a very slight admixture of words coming directly from the Latin.
It is agreed on all hands that the English of the Authorised
Version is, in essentials, that of Tindale. Minor modifications were
made by translators and revisers for the next eighty years or so;
but, speaking broadly, the Authorised Version is Tindale's. The
spirit of the man passed into his work, and therefore it is of
moment to ascertain what that spirit was.
He himself may
tell us :
## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################
40 The Authorised Version and its Influence
(a) His version was to be made for all the people, even the
humblest:
If God spare me life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the
plow to know more of the Scriptures than you [a theologian] do.
To the same effect is his preference of favour to grace, love to
charity, health to salvation.
(6) His surrender of himself to God. Writing to a friend and
fellow-labourer, Frith, he says:
:
The wisdom and the spirit of Stephen be with your heart and with your
mouth, and teach your lips what they shall say, and how to answer to all
things. He is our God if we despair in ourselves, and trust in him; and his is
the glory. Amen.
(c) His theory regarding the meaning to be conveyed:
Believing that every part of Scripture had one sense and one only, the
sense in the mind of the writer.
(d) On Greek and Hebrew with reference to English:
The Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin.
And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more
with the English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one,
so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the
English word for word, when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet
shalt have much work to translate it well-favouredly, so that it have the same
grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in the Latin as it
hath in the Hebrew. A thousand parts better may it be translated into the
English than into the Latin.
(e) His scrupulous fidelity:
I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord
Jesus Christ to give reckoning of our doings that I never altered one syllable
of God's word against my conscience, nor would to this day, if all that is in
earth-whether it be honour, pleasure, or riches—might be given me.
The observation of Augustus Hare, in speaking of the Jacobean
revisers, is applicable to Tindale: 'They were far more studious of
the matter than of the manner; and there is no surer preservative
against writing ill, or more potent charm for writing well. ' And so
Goldsmith: 'To feel your subject thoroughly, and to speak without
fear, are the only rules of eloquence. ' Elsewhere he says: 'Elo-
quence is not in the words, but in the subject; and in great
concerns, the more simply anything is expressed, it is generally the
more sublime.
(f) His humility:
And if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense
of the tongue, or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right
English word, that they put to their hand to amend it, remembering that so
is their duty to do.
Again, he speaks of himself as 'evil-favoured in this world, and
## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################
Coverdale's Translation
41
without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and
slow-witted. '
If we add that he was an assiduous and minute student, went
directly to the originals, and employed the best helps attainable,
all that is needful will have been said.
TINDALE.
And the third day in the morning there was thunder and lightning, and
a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the horn waxed exceeding
lond, and all the people that was in the host was afraid. . . . And Mount Sinai
was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended down upon it in fire;
and the smoke thereof ascended up, as it had been the smoke of a kiln, and
all the mount was exceeding fearful. And the voice of the horn blew, and
waxed louder and louder.
Before we pass from Tindale to the Authorised Version, three
other translations must be mentioned. Coverdale's nature may be
indicated by the fact that it is he who introduced into the language
the expressions 'loving kindness' and 'tender mercy. Tindale's
nature was masculine, Coverdale’s of a more feminine cast. His
translations, of which the Prayer Book' version of the Psalter is
the most generally known-possess a more flexible and musical
rhythm than Tindale's. Tindale wrote (Luke ii, 12): 'And take
this for a sign; ye shall find the child swaddled, and laid in a
manger. ' When this has passed under Coverdale’s revising hand,
it stands : ‘And take this for a sign; ye shall find the child
wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. ' Westcott
has truly said of Coverdale that he
allowed himself considerable freedom in dealing with the shape of the
original sentences. . . . There is in every part an endeavour to transfuse the
spirit as well as the letter into the English rendering.
A peculiarity of the Genevan version is that it attains a
special accuracy. One example will suffice. Tindale translates
Lrike xi, 17: 'One house shall fall upon another. ' The Genevan
Bible has: ‘A house divided against itself, falleth. '
The Rheims and Douay versions inclined to Latinise, whereas
earlier versions had sought to employ simpler words, generally of
· The Prayer Book excels in the music of its phrasing. One of Cranmer's collects,
that for the first Sunday in Advent, will serve as a specimen (c. A. D. 1546): Almighty
God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the
armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ
came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in
His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life
immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now
and ever. '
Coverdale has been regarded by some as the originator of the tendency to translate
the same word in different ways at different times; but this tendenoy existed as far
back as the Old English period.
>
## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################
42 The Authorised Version and its Influence
j
native origin. Thus, Tindale had written (Rom. x, 10): “To know-
ledge [i. e. acknowledge) with the mouth maketh a man safe. ' The
Rheims version has: "With the mouth confession is made to salva-
tion’; the second Wyclifite version had rendered the same Latin
by: ‘By mouth knowledging is made to health. ' The trans-
lators of the Authorised Version endeavoured, out of the English
renderings with which they were acquainted, compared with the
originals and the principal versions into other tongues, ancient
and modern, to frame one which should surpass them all, by
appropriating the chief excellences of each—so far, at least, as
these excellences could be harmonised with one another. In so
far as it did thus reconcile pre-existing differences, it became a
powerful agent in establishing unity throughout the English nation,
for, to borrow the words of Gardiner: 'In its production all
sectarian influences were banished, and all hostilities were mute. '
Whereas previously, one Bible had been read in church, and
another at home, now, all parties and classes turned with one
accord to the new version, and adopted it as their very own. It
thus became bound up with the life of the nation. Since it stilled
all controversy over the best rendering, it gradually came to be
accepted as so far absolute that, in the minds of myriads, there
was no distinction between this version and the original texts, and
they may almost be said to have believed in the literal inspiration
of the very words which composed it.
It must not be overlooked that the Authorised Version profited
by all the controversy regarding previous translations. Practically
every word that could be challenged had been challenged. The
fate of a doctrine, even the fate of a party, had, at times, seemed to
depend upon a phrase. The whole ground had been fought over so
long that great intimacy with the Bible had resulted. Not only
did the mind take cognisance of it, but the emotions seized upon
it; much of it was literally learned by heart by great numbers of
the English people. Thus, it grew to be a national possession;
and literature which is a national possession, and by its very
nature appeals to the poor and lowly, is, in truth, a national
classic. No other book has so penetrated and permeated the
hearts and speech of the English race as has the Bible. What
Homer was to the Greeks, and the Koran to the Arabs, that, or
something not unlike it, the Bible has become to the English.
Huxley writes:
Consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has
been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history;
## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################
Biblical and Classical Prose
43
a
that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to poble and
simple, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once
were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and
abounds in exquisite beauties of pure literary form; and finally, that it
forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the
existence of other countries and other civilizations, and of a great past
stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest civilizations of the world.
The classical, yet popular, character of the Bible has been
already insisted on. Two or three comparisons will further illus-
trate this. Chateaubriand, rendering the pathetic address of Ruth
to Naomi in the Homeric manner, shows how prolix and com-
paratively languid Homer can be. It might be objected that
Chateaubriand has travestied Homer, but it cannot be said that
Thucydides, the consummate Greek historian, travesties himself.
Compare the close of a Thucydidean speech, being about one-sixth
of the harangue of Brasidas to his soldiers before their engage-
ment with the Illyrians (Thuc. iv, 126), with the whole of Gideon's
address to his men before their encounter with the Midianites
(Judges vii, 17, 18):
If you repel their tumultuous onset, and, when opportunity offers, with-
draw again in good order, keeping your ranks, you will sooner arrive at a
place of safety, and will also learn the lesson that mobs like these, if an
adversary withstand their first attack, do but threaten at a distance and make
a flourish of valour, although if he yields to them they are quick enough to
show their courage in following at his heels when there is no danger.
Look on me, and do likewise; and behold, when I come to the outside of
the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow with a
trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every
side of all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.
The speech of Jahaziel (2 Chron. xx, 15–17) seems real. It is
thus that an energetic man would speak. It runs (with modernised
punctuation):
Hearken ye, al Judab, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king
Jehoshaphat. Thus saith the Lord unto you: Be not afraid nor dismayed by
reason of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. To-
morrow go ye down against them. Behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz,
and ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of
Jeruel. Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye
still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, 0 Judah and Jerusalem.
Fear not, nor be dismayed. To-morrow go ont against them, for the Lord
will be with you.
Coleridge was so impressed with the vigour of Biblical style as
to affirm:
After reading Isaiah, or St Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and
Virgil are disgustingly tame to me, and Milton himself barely tolerable.
Shakespeare, by common consent, is the first name in English
literature. Of Shakespeare's prose, Churton Collins makes five
## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################
44 The Authorised Version and its Influence
classes, the last being what he calls highly wrought poetical prose.
“This,' he says, “is the style where Shakespeare has raised prose
to the sublimest pitch of verse. ' As the first illustration of it
he chooses Hamlet, act II, sc. 2, 310—321:
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is
a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving
how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.
a
This, indeed, is fine rhetoric, but how apostrophic it is, and
how repetitious! 'Canopy'-'firmament'-roof'-thus it is
!
amplified. Again, even if we can distinguish between 'noble in
reason,' 'infinite in faculty,' and 'in apprehension. . . like a god,'
how shall we make clear to ourselves the difference between
moving' and 'action'? And what an anticlimax-'the paragon
of animals'!
This is Shakespeare, though, to be sure, Shakespeare putting
words into the mouth of a dramatic character. And now, merely
.
as a composition, compare Psalm viii, 3–8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the seas.
Does ‘moon and stars' appeal less forcibly and pictorially to
the imagination than 'golden fire'? Shakespeare's 'majestical roof
is unrelated to man; the 'heavens' of the Biblical passage are
knit up into the same fabric with him. In the psalm there is no
exaggeration. Man is not, as a matter of fact, “infinite in faculty,'
nor may we assume a universal consensus that he is, above every-
thing else, 'the beauty of the world. ' In the psalm he is sub-
ordinated to the heavens, only to be exalted over the creatures,
and, when he is said to be 'a little lower than the angels,' the
moderation of tone is more permanently effective than Shake-
speare's ‘in action how like an angell' which seems merely a piece
of somewhat hysterical exaggeration—though, perhaps, dramati-
cally in keeping—to one who has formed his conception of angels
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
The English of the Bible
45
from the Bible, Dante, or Milton, from the Hermes of the ancient
poets, or even from Shakespeare's own line in this same play,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Milton does not scruple to affirm: 'There are no songs to be
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets. ' As Sir Walter Scott drew near his beautiful and
affecting end, he requested Lockhart to read to him. When asked
from what book, he replied: 'Need you ask? There is but one. '
To Wordsworth, 'the grand storehouses of enthusiastic and medi-
tative imagination . . . are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the
Holy Scriptures. '
Ruskin ascribed the best part of his taste in literature to his
having been required by his mother to learn by heart certain
chapters of the Bible, adding: 'I count [it] very confidently the
most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my
education. ' Carlyle said: 'In the poorest cottage. . . is one Book,
wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found
light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is deepest in him. ' Newman speaks of the Scriptures as 'com-
positions which, even humanly considered, are among the most
sublime and beautiful ever written. ' Macaulay regarded the Bible
as 'a book which, if everything else in our language should perish,
would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and
power'; and, elsewhere, he says of Bunyan: 'He had studied no
great model of composition, with the exception-an important
exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. '
Froude speaks of its ‘mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon
simplicity, the preternatural grandeur. ' Swift writes, almost exactly
a hundred years after the date of the Authorised Version: ‘The
translators of our Bible were masters of an English style much
fitter for that work than any which we see in our present writings,
which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the
whole'; and again, of the changes which had been introduced into
the language: 'They have taken off a great deal from that sim-
plicity which is one of the greatest perfections in any language. '
Hallam, though he admits that the style of the Authorised
Version is 'the perfection of our English language,' has often
been censured for declaring that the English of the Jacobean
version “is not the English of Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon'-in
fact, that 'it is not the language of the reign of James I. ' Yet this
is strictly true, and for the reason that he assigns, namely, 'in
consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions
which had been kept up since the time of Henry VIII. ' It is true,
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46 The Authorised Version and its Influence
>
in a sense, that no great writer's diction is of his age, any more
than he himself is of his age. Coleridge declares of Shakespeare,
‘His is not the style of the age,' just as Ben Jonson declared of
the poet himself, 'He was not of an age. Indeed, it seems as
' ,
though this were the necessary condition, at least in the case of
great writers, of being ‘for all time,' that one shall not be too
much ‘of an age. ' Great thought and great feeling draw their
own appropriate diction to themselves, somewhat as the magnet
attracts steel filings; and, after the appropriate diction has thus
been attracted, the union between it and the substance of dis-
course seems to be almost indissoluble. It is as if a soul had been
clothed upon with flesh. From that moment, nothing can be
changed with impunity; if you wrench away a word, it is as if
a portion of the life-blood followed it. Now the time when the
soul of the Bible began to take upon itself flesh for us was nearly
three-quarters of a century before the work of the Jacobean revisers.
But, since the life-process, so to speak, did not absolutely begin
with Tindale, it really extended over a considerably longer period
than that named above, especially if we consider that Wyclif was
concerned in it; for, if the Wyclifite versions be included, the
Vulgate can hardly be ignored, so that eventually the Septuagint
must be regarded as having initiated a process which the Jaco-
bean revisers completed. If the substance of the Bible may
thus be compared to a soul which was to be fitted with a body,
it will follow that the diction will differ somewhat from member
to member, even as it did in the Hebrew and Greek originals; but
it will also follow, in proportion to the assumed relation and inter-
dependence of these parts or members, that this diction will have
a certain homogeneity, so that a radical change in the vocabulary
at any point would be likely to throw that part out of keeping
with the rest. The truth of this was recognised by Ellicott, when,
in 1870, he advised future revisers to
limit the choice of words to the vocabulary of the present [Authorised]
version, combined with that of the versions that preceded it; and in altera-
tions preserve as far as possible the rhythm and cadence of the Authorised
Version.
It is not a little remarkable that the effects wrought by the
English Bible should require so few words. The editors of the
New English Dictionary reckon the words in A to L, inclusive, as
160,813, of which number 113,677 are what they call main words.
Shakespeare, it has been estimated, employs about 21,000 (others
say 15,000, or 24,000); Milton, in his verse, about 13,000. The
Hebrew (with the Chaldee) of the Old Testament, according to the
>
a
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 47
computations of Leusden, comprises 5,642 words, and the New
Testament, it is said, has 4,800, while the whole English Bible, if
we may trust Marsh, employs about 6,000. Making all due allow-
ances for the ‘myriad-mindedness' of a Shakespeare, there is still
room for the conclusion that the capacities of words, especially of
the simpler words, are much greater than is believed by those who
use a large and heterogeneous vocabulary. In this respect, there
is not so much difference between native English and Norman-
French words as is commonly supposed. In the following examples,
the words clean, pure, and clear translate the same Greek ad-
jective, and all seem equally expressive, or nearly so:
Rev. xv, 6: ‘And the seven angels came out of the temple, . . .
clothed in pure and white linen. '
Rev. xix, 8: ‘And to her was granted that she should be arrayed
in fine linen, clean and white. '
Rev. xxi, 18: ‘And the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. '
That, in this sense, they are fairly interchangeable may be seen by
comparing Job xv, 15, ‘Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight,'
with Tennyson's
Make thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies.
This brings us to the question of the influence of the Authorised
Version upon subsequent English literature an influence which
cannot always be precisely distinguished from that of the Bible in
some earlier form. When Spenser or Shakespeare, for instance,
uses the Bible, it is, of course, not the Jacobean version, and
now and then the same thing will be true at a later period, as in
some of Milton's writing. The more important modes in which
the Bible has affected English literature are these:
(a) The themes are Scriptural, and the language partly, at
times even largely, Scriptural. Such is the case in sermons,
versified psalms, paraphrases of Scriptural narrative, devotional
essays, and the like. An excellent example is Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. This book apart, however, there are few, if any,
examples of a work which has been accepted as pure literature
employing Biblical diction to anything like such a degree. Other
attempts, such as the Book of Mormon, tend to the grotesque or
ludicrous, because of the disparity between the language and the
ideas suggested. A diction resembling that of the Bible in its
concreteness and simplicity, and in its slightly archaic character,
has, however, of late been employed with good effect in prose
versions from authors like Homer.
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48 The Authorised Version and its Influence
1
1
1
(6) Quotations from the Bible are introduced, sometimes
slightly changed, into secular writings. The object is to sub-
stantiate a statement, or to awaken a train of associations favour-
able to the author's purpose. These can be found in almost any
author, but they are more common in the nineteenth century than
earlier, being especially used by writers who have at heart the
reform or elevation of society or individuals.
(c) Allusions, or considerably modified quotations, are intro-
duced freely, and may be found on the editorial page of many
a newspaper. Thus, one reads: "The full measure of justice is not
meted out to them'; "They sold their birthright for a mess of
pottage'; 'They have fallen among thieves. ' In the last three
books which the present writer has read for amusement, he has
been interested to note quotations and allusions of this nature.
In one of them, a recent book on life in an Italian province,
63 references were found; in the second, a recent work on the
life of wild animals, 12; in the third, a novel by Thomas Hardy, 18.
(d) Many phrases have grown so common that they have
become part of the web of current English speech, and are hardly
thought of as Biblical at all, except on deliberate reflection. For
instance: 'highways and hedges'; 'clear as crystal'; 'still small
voice'; 'hip and thigh'; 'arose as one man'; 'lick the dust'; 'a
thorn in the flesh'; 'broken reed'; 'root of all evil'; 'the nether
millstone'; 'sweat of his brow'; 'heap coals of fire'; 'a law unto
themselves'; 'the fat of the land'; 'dark sayings'; 'a soft answer';
'a word in season'; 'moth and rust'; 'weighed in the balance and
found wanting'; even such colloquialisms as, 'we are the people'
(cf. Job xii, 2). Many more of these might readily be quoted.
(e) Other influences, less definitely measurable, but more
important, remain to be mentioned.
Of the Bible in its relations to religion, individual conduct, and
ideals political and social, this is not the place to speak; yet these
affect literature to an incalculable extent, if they do not even
provide its very substance. Of such matters as fall within the
scope of this chapter-matters of vocabulary, grammar, idiom,
and style-something may briefly be said.
In the first place, the literary influence of the Bible, like that
of any classic, is distinctly conservative. The reading of it tends
to keep alive a familiarity with the words and constructions which
were current when the English Bible grew up, or, rather, of such
of these words and constructions as proved most conformable to
the genius of the Hebrew and Greek employed in the sacred
>
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 49
writings. As hinted above, this influence, in conjunction with that
of the Bible in the sphere of thought and emotion, seems to have
culminated, if its culmination be not rather a matter of the future, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result is that many
terms formerly regarded as awkward, or alien to the genius of the
language, are now understood and accepted. Soon after the Autho-
rised Version was issued, Selden thus criticised the rendering:
The Bible is rather translated into English words than into English
phrases. The Hebraisms are kept, and the phrase of that language is kept.
A typical Hebraism is the use of of in such phrases as 'oil of
gladness,' 'man of sin,' 'King of kings'; but who has any difficulty
with them now? In the first half of the nineteenth century, Hallam
could say:
It abounds, . . . especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology,
and with singlo words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial
use.
At present this is no truer of the Bible than of Shakespeare, if
as true. Our earlier English has been so revived, and rendered so
familiar, that much which needed elaborate explanation in the
eighteenth century is now intelligible to every one. As Lightfoot
said of other objectors :
The very words which these critics would have ejected from our English
Bibles as barbarous, or uncouth, or obsolete, have again taken their places in
our highest poetry, and even in our popular language.
Like the course of a planet round the sun, the movement of
English diction, which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
was, on the whole, away from that of the Bible, now returns with
ever accelerating speed toward it. That the movement really began
at a much earlier date, though inconspicuously, is shown by the
counsels and practice of Swift, and by the circumstance that
Challoner's Roman Catholic version of 1763-4 abandoned many of
the Latinisms of the Rheims and Douay translations in favour of
the simpler language of the Authorised Version.
The use of concrete words has grown in favour. The colourless-
ness, vagueness and obscurity of abstract terms, and of conventional
phraseology whether abstract or not, have been discredited. Vivid-
ness, the sense of reality, have more and more prevailed in literature
that is, in non-technical writings.
Simplicity has always been recommended by the example of the
Authorised Version, and, especially since the age of Wordsworth,
is more and more gaining upon bombast and meretricious orpa-
ment. The concreteness and simplicity of the Authorised Version,
E. L. IV.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50 The Authorised Version and its Influence
6
and its use of the homely vernacular, have steadily appealed to plain
people, as distinguished from those who have had more abundant
opportunities of education. But the love of the humble for the Bible
is largely due to its message of cheer and hope. Huxley has even
gone so far as to call the Bible 'the Magna Charta of the poor and
the oppressed. ' Two men, Bunyan and Lincoln, who educated them-
selves largely by means of the Bible, may serve as examples of many
who have become known to posterity for their inestimable services to
their race. Both are famous as writers, and the best writing of
both is alive with the spirit of the Bible. Bunyan bas already
been mentioned. Of Lincoln it has been said that he
built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had
mastered it absolutely; mastered it as later he mastered only one or two
other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost
'a man of one book’; . . . and he left his life as part of the crowning work of
the century that has just closed.
Of Walt Whitman, the American who wished to be known as
the poet of democracy, it has been authoritatively said:
His own essential model, after all is said, was the rhythmical patterns of the
English Bible. Here was precisely that natural stylistic variation between
the 'terrific,' the “gentle, and the 'inferior' parts, so desired by William
Blake. Here were lyric fragments, of consummate beauty, imbedded in
narrative or argumentative passages. . . . In this strong, rolling music, this
intense feeling, these concrete words expressing primal emotion in daring
terms of bodily sensation, Whitman found the charter for the book he
wished to write.
The elevation and nobility of Biblical diction, assisted by its
slightly archaic tinge, have a tendency to keep all English style
above meanness and triviality. In the words of Coleridge, 'intense
study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of
style.
The Bible teaches that emotion should not habitually be divorced
from thought, nor thought from emotion; certainly not in litera-
ture. Wherever simple language is charged with noble feeling,
stirs the imagination, is directed by steady and comprehensive
thought, is adapted to actuate the will in the direction of social
and individual good, and is concise and pregnant, Biblical style is
approximated, and, very probably, Biblical influence is dominant.
Finally, the English Bible is the chief bond which holds united,
in a common loyalty and a common endeavour, the various branches
of the English race. The influence of the Bible can be traced
through the whole course of English literature and English civilisa-
tion, and, more than anything else, it tends to give unity and per-
petuity to both.
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
SIR WALTER RALEGH
>
NOTHING, perhaps, is more remarkable with regard to Sir
Walter Ralegh's literary career than the fact that a man of his
nature should have won for himself a place in the history of
letters. He was, pre-eminently, a man of action, a man who loved
the stir and bustle of life, the excitement of adventure ; and his
proud, ambitious character made him keen to play a foremost
part in the affairs of the world. But his intellectual activity was
as great as his physical energy. Neither his mind nor his body
could rest. All the periods of enforced leisure in his life he used
for study or writing; yet the chance of an active enterprise could
always win him away from his books.
At the age of 14 or 15, Ralegh, who was born in 1552, at
Hayes Barton, Budleigh, Devon, went to Oxford, where he stayed
for about three years. According to Anthony à Wood, ‘he became
the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and
philosophy. ' He passed from Oxford quickly to seek more stirring
adventures in the Huguenot army in France. But, wherever he
went, he was gathering knowledge. Sir Robert Naunton says 'he
was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land, and none of
the least observers both of men and the times. ' On his sea voyages,
he took always a trunk of books with him, and spent the long
hours, when he had nothing to divert him, in reading. He is said,
by an early biographer, to have slept but five hours, so as to gain
daily four hours for reading. His knowledge of literature helped,
no doubt, to give him that command of words, that incisive way
of stating a question which called Elizabeth's attention to him
when he discussed Irish affairs over the council table with lord
Grey. He had, says Naunton, 'a strong natural wit and a better
judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set
out his parts to the best advantage. ' He retained a decided Devon-
shire accent all his life ; but his parliamentary speeches were
distinguished by good style and pointed utterance.
He seems
1 Ralegh's name may be found spelt in some seventy different ways. His own
signature varied very considerably till 1584, after which he used no other signature
bat Ralegh; he never used the common modern form Raleigh. His pronunciation of
his name is clear from the fact that in his early days he often wrote Rauley.
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
Sir Walter Ralegh
to have shown a tendency towards liberal views. In a debate
about the Brownists, in 1583, he spoke against religious persecu-
tion. But his was neither the speech nor the nature by which a
man wins ready popularity, for in everything, though he showed
himself a lover of liberty, he showed, also, his proud and con-
temptuous character.
Perhaps that proud and contemptuous
character showed itself also in the extravagance of the language
of compliment and adulation with which he addressed Elizabeth.
Such language was fashionable at the time, but it seems strange
in the mouth of a man like Ralegh, and we are inclined to think
that it was his ambition and desire to get on which made him put
no limit to his exaggeration, in scornful contempt of the vanity
that could be pleased by such language.
That Ralegh must have early been known as a writer of
occasional verse is shown by the fact that he contributed some
introductory verses, In commendation of the Steel Glass, to George
Gascoigne's satire, published in 1576. In these lines he describes
Gascoigne's poems in one of his concise, pointed phrases :
This medicine may suffice
To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise.
Elizabethan poets appear to have had little desire to see their
works in print. They wrote to please their friends, or for their
own delight, not for the general public. Their poems were passed
about in manuscript or read to their friends, and then might,
perhaps, find their way into some of the popular miscellanies
of verse. Few of Ralegh's poems appeared with his name during
his lifetime, and it was long after his death before any attempt
was made to identify or collect his scattered verses. Some of them
had appeared in England's Helicon with the signature ‘Ignoto,
and it was, in consequence, at first assumed that all the poems
so signed in that collection were his. More critical examination
has rejected many of these, and Hannah's carefully edited collec-
tion, published in 1892, gives some thirty pieces which have
reasonably been supposed to be Ralegh’s? These are enough to
justify fully the judgment passed on him in Puttenham’s The Arte
of English Poesie, 'For dittie and amourous ode I find Sir Walter
Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate. '
Ralegh seems, at many crises in his life, to have sought
expression for his feelings in verse. When, after his rapid rise to
favour at court, he was driven into temporary disgrace by the
jealousy of Essex, he employed himself in composing a long elegy
* See post, the chapter on the • Song Books. '
6
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
Cynthia
53
expressing his devotion to Elizabeth, and his despair at her anger,
in which he addressed the queen as Cynthia. We hear of this
poem first in Spenser's verses Colin Clout's Come Home Again.
During this temporary disgrace, Ralegh revisited Ireland, where he
had served some years before. There, he either began or renewed
at Kilcolman his friendship with Spenser, then lord Grey's
secretary. The poets seem to have passed some delightful days in
reading their verses to one another. Spenser says of Ralegh in
Colin Clout
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
Ralegh’s delight in The Faerie Queene led him, as soon as he
was restored to favour, to introduce Spenser at court. Spenser,
in his turn, was full of admiration of Ralegh's work, and wrote
Full sweetly tempered is that Muse of his
That can empierce a Princes' mightie hart.
He returns to it again in the beautiful sonnet addressed to
Ralegh which appeared attached to The Faerie Queene, where
he says that, compared with Ralegh's, his rimes are 'unsavory
and sowre,' and concludes
Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,
Let thy fair Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.
Cynthia was never published; we do not know that it was ever
presented to Elizabeth. It was thought to be entirely lost, when a
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870. This fragment is entitled The twenty-
first and last book of the Occan to Cynthia. Spenser used to
.
call Ralegh ‘The Shepherd of the Ocean,' and, hence, Ralegh took
to calling himself 'the Ocean. ' Hannah published this fragment as
A continuation of the lost poem Cynthia, and imagined that
it was composed during Ralegh's imprisonment in the Tower
under James I. But it has been conclusively shown that it must
be a portion of the earlier poem? If the other twenty books were
of the same length as this canto, the whole poem must have con-
sisted of ten to fifteen thousand lines. It is written in four lined
stanzas, alternately rimed. Judging from the fragment that
remains, there appears to have been no action or narrative in this
1 This point has been clearly demonstrated by Edmund Gosse from internal evi.
dence, in two letters printed in The Athenaeum for the first two weeks of January 1886.
See, also, Sir Walter Ralegh, by W. Stebbing, p. 73.
6
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Sir Walter Ralegh
6
long poem, yet Gabriel Harvey describes the part of it which he
saw before 1590 as 'a fine and sweet invention. There are many
fine passages, none finer than the line
>
Of all which past the sorrow only stays.
The stately, dignified sonnet by Ralegh, which was appended to
the first edition of The Faerie Queene, in 1590, is worthy of an
age when the sonnet attained rare distinction. Brydges, the first
editor of a collection of Ralegh's poems, says:
Milton had deeply studied this sonnet, for in his compositions of the same
class, he has evidently more than once the very rhythm and construction,
as well as cast of thought of this noble though brief composition.
Other of the poems by Ralegh show more of the impetuous
and daring spirit which was compelled to find an utterance. The
ringing scorn of 'The Lie' depicts the man who knew from personal
experience courts and their meanness. The disenchantment with
life expressed in several of his poems led to the assumption that
they were written on the night before his death ; but of only one
can this be true, the fine lines found in his Bible at the gate-house,
Westminster :
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
The others, such as Like Hermit Poor, and The Pilgrimmage,
were, probably, written at moments when his impatient spirit was
filled with disgust of life. No poem of his has greater charm than
The Pilgrimmage, whether for its form, its fancy, or for the deep
seriousness underlying its light grace. Among the authenticated
poems of Ralegh there are few love poems, and those few are
singularly free from sentimentality or the precious conceits popular
at the time. In his reply to Marlowe's song The passionate Shep-
herd to his Love, he by no means responds to the passion of the
appeal, but shows his disbelief in the possibility of the permanence
of the shepherd's love in a world full of fears of' cares to come. '
The authenticity of many of Ralegh’s prose works is almost as
difficult to decide with any certainty as that of his poems. He
seems to have written papers on many varied subjects, but only
two of them, and The History of the World, were published
during his lifetime. Ralegh manuscripts were collected by literary
men, were to be found in many libraries and were much valued.
It is said in the Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites
of England, by David Lloyd, published in 1665, that John
2
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
Prose Writings
55
Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of
transcribing 3452 sheets of Ralegh’s writing. Archbishop Sancroft
speaks of a great MS in folio,' by Sir Walter, lent to him by
Mr Ralegh, the author's grandson. He also possessed another
MS, a Breviary of the History of England under William I
which he attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, and which he said had
been ‘taken from the papers of an old Presbyterian in Hertford-
shire, which sort of men were always the more fond of Sir Walter's
books, because he was under the disfavour of the Court. ' One of
his MSS, called The Arts of Empire, was first printed by Milton
in 1658, under the title of The Cabinet Council by the ever-
renovoned knight, Sir Walter Ralegh.
Bede was making a translation into Old English of the Gospel of
John, and, about the year 800 A. D. , the language was already
capable of such poetry as this from the Christ of Cynewulf1:
Thereupon from the four corners of the world, from the uttermost regions
of earth, angels all-shining shall with one accord blow their crashing
trampets; the earth shall tremble under men. Glorious and steadfast they
shall sound together over against the course of the stars, chanting in harmony
and making melody from south and from north, from east and from west,
throughout the whole creation. All mankind shall they wake from the dead
onto the Last Judgment; they shall rouse the sons of men all aghast from
the ancient earth, bidding them straightway arise from their deep sleep.
Throughout the Old English period, most of the literature
produced was strongly coloured by Biblical diction. Even a work
like Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People was under
this influence. By about the year 1000, the language was able
to render the Latin of Jerome, as given above, in the following
form? (Exod. xix, 16, 18, 19):
Fã cõm se brydda dæg, and ligetta and punor and picce genip oferwrēh
þone munt, and bỹman swêg wæs gehired, and eall þæt folo him ondrőd þe
wæs on þām fyrdwicon. . . . And eall Sinai munt smēac, forpampe Drihten wæs
uppan him on fyre; and se smic ārās of him, and eall se munt wæs egeslic.
And þære bỹman swēg wĒox swā leng swā swīdor3.
Before we leave this part of the subject, it may be added that,
according to the computations of Marsh, about 93 per cent. of
the words of the Authorised Version, counting repetitions of the
same word, are native English.
Ormulum and Piers Plowman will suggest the influence ex-
erted by the Bible on English diction during the period between
A. D. 1000 and 1400—roughly speaking, between the age of Aelfric and
1 Ll. 878–889, Whitman's translation.
9 The vowel-sounds of either Italian, French, or German will be sufficiently close,
The characters 8 and þ represent th; g before or after e or i is usually like y. Finale
is pronounced somewhat like that in liveth, or the final e of German. The maoron
indicates length of vowel.
3 Aelfric's versions of the same passage may be found in his Homilies, ed. Thorpe,
1, 312; 11, 196, 202.
## p. 38 (#60) ##############################################
38 The Authorised Version and its Influence
that of Wyclif. The poetry near the end of this period is better
able than prose to cope with the difficulties of translation. Thus,
Chaucer has :
Caste alle awey the werkes of derkpesse,
And armeth you in armure of brightnesse;
where the second Wyclifite version reads :
Rom. xiii, 12: Therfor caste we awei the werkis of derknessis, and be we
clothid in the armeris of lizt.
Though this second version, that of Purvey (1388), is, in general,
much less pedantically literal than the first, made some eight or
nine years earlier, yet such words as derknessis and armeris, for
the Latin plurals tenebrae and arma, illustrate the chief defect
of both the Wyclifite translations, namely, a failure to attain
perfect English idiom.
Purvey seems to have been quite conscious of the excessive
literalness of the earlier version (1380), and of the awkwardness
due to the close following of Latin idiom. In his prologue, after
describing how he had toiled, in association with others, to obtain
a true Latin text, and to elucidate its difficulties, he proceeds to
lay down important principles of Biblical translation, which have
never been superseded. Among them are :
First, to translate as clearly as possible according to the sense,
and not merely according to the words.
Secondly, to make the sentence at least as 'open' in English as
in Latin, that is, to have due regard to English idiom.
Nevertheless, it may be affirmed that both Wyclifite versions
are far inferior in ease and idiomatic character to the Old English.
It cannot be said that scholars are agreed as to the influence of
the Wyclifite versions upon Tindale and the Authorised Version;
but it is pretty clear that Tindale was influenced by them to a
moderate extent, and that expressions of great force and beauty
have, occasionally, been appropriated from Wyclif by the Autho-
rised Version, either mediately or directly. One or two instances
may suffice : John iv, 14, ‘a well of water springing up into ever-
lasting life' comes, through Tindale, from both the Wyclifite
versions; 1 Cor. ii, 10, 'the deep things of God,' which Tindale
renders, 'the bottom of God's secrets,' and the Rheims version,
'the profundities of God. '. How easy it is to go stylistically astray
in such matters is shown by the fact that two versions, both
published within the last ten years, have, respectively, for the first
passage above, ‘a spring of water . . . welling up for enduring life,'
i Second Nun's Tale, 384-5.
.
## p. 39 (#61) ##############################################
Caxton's Golden Legend
39
and 'a fountain . . . of water springing up for the Life of the ages”;
and, for the second, 'the profoundest secrets of God,' and 'the
depths of the divine nature. '
The Wyclifite version of Exod. xix, 16, 18, 19 is subjoined,
the spelling being modernised, and modern renderings being indi-
cated :
WYCLIF (earlier).
And now the third day was come, and the morning (morewe, morrow) tide
was full cleared ; and lo! thunders began to be heard and lightnings (leytes,
from the Old English word above] to shine, and the most thick cloud to cover
the hill; and the cry of the trump more hideously made noise, and the people
dreaded that was in the tents. . . . And all the hill of Sinai smoked, because
(for thi that] the Lord descended upon it in fire; and the smoke rose (steyde]
up of it as of a furnace, and all the bill was full fearful; and the sound of the
trump little by little [litil mele) sprang into more, and longer was stretched. '
A hundred years later than the Wiclifite versions (20 November,
1483), Caxton published his Golden Legend, in which he had
inserted considerable portions of the Pentateuch and the Gospels,
on the basis, probably, of Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica.
Caxton's theory of translation, if we may judge from the preface
to his Eneydos, was to seek a mean between 'fair and strange
terms,” by some regarded as “over curious,' and such 'old and
homely terms' as were now strange and almost disused. His aim
lay in the wish to be generally understood. The clearness and
beauty of the passage from Exodus will be readily seen.
Caxton's Golden Legend (spelling modernised).
When the third day came, and the morning waxed clear, they heard
thunder and lightning, and saw a great cloud cover the mount; and the cry
of the trump was so shrill that the people were sore afraid. . . . All the mount
of Sinai smoked, for so much as our Lord descended on it in fire; and the
smoke ascended from the hill as it had been from a furnace. The mount was
terrible and dreadful, and the sound of the trump grew a little more, and
continued longer.
It will be evident that the vocabulary of Caxton is drawn from
the same sources as Tindale's, while it does not greatly differ from
Wyclif's, these sources being native English and Old French, with
a very slight admixture of words coming directly from the Latin.
It is agreed on all hands that the English of the Authorised
Version is, in essentials, that of Tindale. Minor modifications were
made by translators and revisers for the next eighty years or so;
but, speaking broadly, the Authorised Version is Tindale's. The
spirit of the man passed into his work, and therefore it is of
moment to ascertain what that spirit was.
He himself may
tell us :
## p. 40 (#62) ##############################################
40 The Authorised Version and its Influence
(a) His version was to be made for all the people, even the
humblest:
If God spare me life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the
plow to know more of the Scriptures than you [a theologian] do.
To the same effect is his preference of favour to grace, love to
charity, health to salvation.
(6) His surrender of himself to God. Writing to a friend and
fellow-labourer, Frith, he says:
:
The wisdom and the spirit of Stephen be with your heart and with your
mouth, and teach your lips what they shall say, and how to answer to all
things. He is our God if we despair in ourselves, and trust in him; and his is
the glory. Amen.
(c) His theory regarding the meaning to be conveyed:
Believing that every part of Scripture had one sense and one only, the
sense in the mind of the writer.
(d) On Greek and Hebrew with reference to English:
The Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin.
And the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more
with the English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one,
so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the
English word for word, when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and yet
shalt have much work to translate it well-favouredly, so that it have the same
grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in the Latin as it
hath in the Hebrew. A thousand parts better may it be translated into the
English than into the Latin.
(e) His scrupulous fidelity:
I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord
Jesus Christ to give reckoning of our doings that I never altered one syllable
of God's word against my conscience, nor would to this day, if all that is in
earth-whether it be honour, pleasure, or riches—might be given me.
The observation of Augustus Hare, in speaking of the Jacobean
revisers, is applicable to Tindale: 'They were far more studious of
the matter than of the manner; and there is no surer preservative
against writing ill, or more potent charm for writing well. ' And so
Goldsmith: 'To feel your subject thoroughly, and to speak without
fear, are the only rules of eloquence. ' Elsewhere he says: 'Elo-
quence is not in the words, but in the subject; and in great
concerns, the more simply anything is expressed, it is generally the
more sublime.
(f) His humility:
And if they perceive in any places that I have not attained the very sense
of the tongue, or meaning of the Scripture, or have not given the right
English word, that they put to their hand to amend it, remembering that so
is their duty to do.
Again, he speaks of himself as 'evil-favoured in this world, and
## p. 41 (#63) ##############################################
Coverdale's Translation
41
without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and
slow-witted. '
If we add that he was an assiduous and minute student, went
directly to the originals, and employed the best helps attainable,
all that is needful will have been said.
TINDALE.
And the third day in the morning there was thunder and lightning, and
a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the horn waxed exceeding
lond, and all the people that was in the host was afraid. . . . And Mount Sinai
was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended down upon it in fire;
and the smoke thereof ascended up, as it had been the smoke of a kiln, and
all the mount was exceeding fearful. And the voice of the horn blew, and
waxed louder and louder.
Before we pass from Tindale to the Authorised Version, three
other translations must be mentioned. Coverdale's nature may be
indicated by the fact that it is he who introduced into the language
the expressions 'loving kindness' and 'tender mercy. Tindale's
nature was masculine, Coverdale’s of a more feminine cast. His
translations, of which the Prayer Book' version of the Psalter is
the most generally known-possess a more flexible and musical
rhythm than Tindale's. Tindale wrote (Luke ii, 12): 'And take
this for a sign; ye shall find the child swaddled, and laid in a
manger. ' When this has passed under Coverdale’s revising hand,
it stands : ‘And take this for a sign; ye shall find the child
wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger. ' Westcott
has truly said of Coverdale that he
allowed himself considerable freedom in dealing with the shape of the
original sentences. . . . There is in every part an endeavour to transfuse the
spirit as well as the letter into the English rendering.
A peculiarity of the Genevan version is that it attains a
special accuracy. One example will suffice. Tindale translates
Lrike xi, 17: 'One house shall fall upon another. ' The Genevan
Bible has: ‘A house divided against itself, falleth. '
The Rheims and Douay versions inclined to Latinise, whereas
earlier versions had sought to employ simpler words, generally of
· The Prayer Book excels in the music of its phrasing. One of Cranmer's collects,
that for the first Sunday in Advent, will serve as a specimen (c. A. D. 1546): Almighty
God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the
armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ
came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in
His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life
immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now
and ever. '
Coverdale has been regarded by some as the originator of the tendency to translate
the same word in different ways at different times; but this tendenoy existed as far
back as the Old English period.
>
## p. 42 (#64) ##############################################
42 The Authorised Version and its Influence
j
native origin. Thus, Tindale had written (Rom. x, 10): “To know-
ledge [i. e. acknowledge) with the mouth maketh a man safe. ' The
Rheims version has: "With the mouth confession is made to salva-
tion’; the second Wyclifite version had rendered the same Latin
by: ‘By mouth knowledging is made to health. ' The trans-
lators of the Authorised Version endeavoured, out of the English
renderings with which they were acquainted, compared with the
originals and the principal versions into other tongues, ancient
and modern, to frame one which should surpass them all, by
appropriating the chief excellences of each—so far, at least, as
these excellences could be harmonised with one another. In so
far as it did thus reconcile pre-existing differences, it became a
powerful agent in establishing unity throughout the English nation,
for, to borrow the words of Gardiner: 'In its production all
sectarian influences were banished, and all hostilities were mute. '
Whereas previously, one Bible had been read in church, and
another at home, now, all parties and classes turned with one
accord to the new version, and adopted it as their very own. It
thus became bound up with the life of the nation. Since it stilled
all controversy over the best rendering, it gradually came to be
accepted as so far absolute that, in the minds of myriads, there
was no distinction between this version and the original texts, and
they may almost be said to have believed in the literal inspiration
of the very words which composed it.
It must not be overlooked that the Authorised Version profited
by all the controversy regarding previous translations. Practically
every word that could be challenged had been challenged. The
fate of a doctrine, even the fate of a party, had, at times, seemed to
depend upon a phrase. The whole ground had been fought over so
long that great intimacy with the Bible had resulted. Not only
did the mind take cognisance of it, but the emotions seized upon
it; much of it was literally learned by heart by great numbers of
the English people. Thus, it grew to be a national possession;
and literature which is a national possession, and by its very
nature appeals to the poor and lowly, is, in truth, a national
classic. No other book has so penetrated and permeated the
hearts and speech of the English race as has the Bible. What
Homer was to the Greeks, and the Koran to the Arabs, that, or
something not unlike it, the Bible has become to the English.
Huxley writes:
Consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has
been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history;
## p. 43 (#65) ##############################################
Biblical and Classical Prose
43
a
that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to poble and
simple, from John-o'-Groat's House to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once
were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and
abounds in exquisite beauties of pure literary form; and finally, that it
forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the
existence of other countries and other civilizations, and of a great past
stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest civilizations of the world.
The classical, yet popular, character of the Bible has been
already insisted on. Two or three comparisons will further illus-
trate this. Chateaubriand, rendering the pathetic address of Ruth
to Naomi in the Homeric manner, shows how prolix and com-
paratively languid Homer can be. It might be objected that
Chateaubriand has travestied Homer, but it cannot be said that
Thucydides, the consummate Greek historian, travesties himself.
Compare the close of a Thucydidean speech, being about one-sixth
of the harangue of Brasidas to his soldiers before their engage-
ment with the Illyrians (Thuc. iv, 126), with the whole of Gideon's
address to his men before their encounter with the Midianites
(Judges vii, 17, 18):
If you repel their tumultuous onset, and, when opportunity offers, with-
draw again in good order, keeping your ranks, you will sooner arrive at a
place of safety, and will also learn the lesson that mobs like these, if an
adversary withstand their first attack, do but threaten at a distance and make
a flourish of valour, although if he yields to them they are quick enough to
show their courage in following at his heels when there is no danger.
Look on me, and do likewise; and behold, when I come to the outside of
the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow with a
trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every
side of all the camp, and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon.
The speech of Jahaziel (2 Chron. xx, 15–17) seems real. It is
thus that an energetic man would speak. It runs (with modernised
punctuation):
Hearken ye, al Judab, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king
Jehoshaphat. Thus saith the Lord unto you: Be not afraid nor dismayed by
reason of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's. To-
morrow go ye down against them. Behold, they come up by the cliff of Ziz,
and ye shall find them at the end of the brook, before the wilderness of
Jeruel. Ye shall not need to fight in this battle. Set yourselves, stand ye
still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, 0 Judah and Jerusalem.
Fear not, nor be dismayed. To-morrow go ont against them, for the Lord
will be with you.
Coleridge was so impressed with the vigour of Biblical style as
to affirm:
After reading Isaiah, or St Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and
Virgil are disgustingly tame to me, and Milton himself barely tolerable.
Shakespeare, by common consent, is the first name in English
literature. Of Shakespeare's prose, Churton Collins makes five
## p. 44 (#66) ##############################################
44 The Authorised Version and its Influence
classes, the last being what he calls highly wrought poetical prose.
“This,' he says, “is the style where Shakespeare has raised prose
to the sublimest pitch of verse. ' As the first illustration of it
he chooses Hamlet, act II, sc. 2, 310—321:
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is
a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving
how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me.
a
This, indeed, is fine rhetoric, but how apostrophic it is, and
how repetitious! 'Canopy'-'firmament'-roof'-thus it is
!
amplified. Again, even if we can distinguish between 'noble in
reason,' 'infinite in faculty,' and 'in apprehension. . . like a god,'
how shall we make clear to ourselves the difference between
moving' and 'action'? And what an anticlimax-'the paragon
of animals'!
This is Shakespeare, though, to be sure, Shakespeare putting
words into the mouth of a dramatic character. And now, merely
.
as a composition, compare Psalm viii, 3–8:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all
things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through
the paths of the seas.
Does ‘moon and stars' appeal less forcibly and pictorially to
the imagination than 'golden fire'? Shakespeare's 'majestical roof
is unrelated to man; the 'heavens' of the Biblical passage are
knit up into the same fabric with him. In the psalm there is no
exaggeration. Man is not, as a matter of fact, “infinite in faculty,'
nor may we assume a universal consensus that he is, above every-
thing else, 'the beauty of the world. ' In the psalm he is sub-
ordinated to the heavens, only to be exalted over the creatures,
and, when he is said to be 'a little lower than the angels,' the
moderation of tone is more permanently effective than Shake-
speare's ‘in action how like an angell' which seems merely a piece
of somewhat hysterical exaggeration—though, perhaps, dramati-
cally in keeping—to one who has formed his conception of angels
## p. 45 (#67) ##############################################
The English of the Bible
45
from the Bible, Dante, or Milton, from the Hermes of the ancient
poets, or even from Shakespeare's own line in this same play,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Milton does not scruple to affirm: 'There are no songs to be
compared with the songs of Zion, no orations equal to those of
the prophets. ' As Sir Walter Scott drew near his beautiful and
affecting end, he requested Lockhart to read to him. When asked
from what book, he replied: 'Need you ask? There is but one. '
To Wordsworth, 'the grand storehouses of enthusiastic and medi-
tative imagination . . . are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the
Holy Scriptures. '
Ruskin ascribed the best part of his taste in literature to his
having been required by his mother to learn by heart certain
chapters of the Bible, adding: 'I count [it] very confidently the
most precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my
education. ' Carlyle said: 'In the poorest cottage. . . is one Book,
wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found
light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever
is deepest in him. ' Newman speaks of the Scriptures as 'com-
positions which, even humanly considered, are among the most
sublime and beautiful ever written. ' Macaulay regarded the Bible
as 'a book which, if everything else in our language should perish,
would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and
power'; and, elsewhere, he says of Bunyan: 'He had studied no
great model of composition, with the exception-an important
exception undoubtedly—of our noble translation of the Bible. '
Froude speaks of its ‘mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon
simplicity, the preternatural grandeur. ' Swift writes, almost exactly
a hundred years after the date of the Authorised Version: ‘The
translators of our Bible were masters of an English style much
fitter for that work than any which we see in our present writings,
which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the
whole'; and again, of the changes which had been introduced into
the language: 'They have taken off a great deal from that sim-
plicity which is one of the greatest perfections in any language. '
Hallam, though he admits that the style of the Authorised
Version is 'the perfection of our English language,' has often
been censured for declaring that the English of the Jacobean
version “is not the English of Daniel, of Raleigh, or Bacon'-in
fact, that 'it is not the language of the reign of James I. ' Yet this
is strictly true, and for the reason that he assigns, namely, 'in
consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions
which had been kept up since the time of Henry VIII. ' It is true,
## p. 46 (#68) ##############################################
46 The Authorised Version and its Influence
>
in a sense, that no great writer's diction is of his age, any more
than he himself is of his age. Coleridge declares of Shakespeare,
‘His is not the style of the age,' just as Ben Jonson declared of
the poet himself, 'He was not of an age. Indeed, it seems as
' ,
though this were the necessary condition, at least in the case of
great writers, of being ‘for all time,' that one shall not be too
much ‘of an age. ' Great thought and great feeling draw their
own appropriate diction to themselves, somewhat as the magnet
attracts steel filings; and, after the appropriate diction has thus
been attracted, the union between it and the substance of dis-
course seems to be almost indissoluble. It is as if a soul had been
clothed upon with flesh. From that moment, nothing can be
changed with impunity; if you wrench away a word, it is as if
a portion of the life-blood followed it. Now the time when the
soul of the Bible began to take upon itself flesh for us was nearly
three-quarters of a century before the work of the Jacobean revisers.
But, since the life-process, so to speak, did not absolutely begin
with Tindale, it really extended over a considerably longer period
than that named above, especially if we consider that Wyclif was
concerned in it; for, if the Wyclifite versions be included, the
Vulgate can hardly be ignored, so that eventually the Septuagint
must be regarded as having initiated a process which the Jaco-
bean revisers completed. If the substance of the Bible may
thus be compared to a soul which was to be fitted with a body,
it will follow that the diction will differ somewhat from member
to member, even as it did in the Hebrew and Greek originals; but
it will also follow, in proportion to the assumed relation and inter-
dependence of these parts or members, that this diction will have
a certain homogeneity, so that a radical change in the vocabulary
at any point would be likely to throw that part out of keeping
with the rest. The truth of this was recognised by Ellicott, when,
in 1870, he advised future revisers to
limit the choice of words to the vocabulary of the present [Authorised]
version, combined with that of the versions that preceded it; and in altera-
tions preserve as far as possible the rhythm and cadence of the Authorised
Version.
It is not a little remarkable that the effects wrought by the
English Bible should require so few words. The editors of the
New English Dictionary reckon the words in A to L, inclusive, as
160,813, of which number 113,677 are what they call main words.
Shakespeare, it has been estimated, employs about 21,000 (others
say 15,000, or 24,000); Milton, in his verse, about 13,000. The
Hebrew (with the Chaldee) of the Old Testament, according to the
>
a
## p. 47 (#69) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 47
computations of Leusden, comprises 5,642 words, and the New
Testament, it is said, has 4,800, while the whole English Bible, if
we may trust Marsh, employs about 6,000. Making all due allow-
ances for the ‘myriad-mindedness' of a Shakespeare, there is still
room for the conclusion that the capacities of words, especially of
the simpler words, are much greater than is believed by those who
use a large and heterogeneous vocabulary. In this respect, there
is not so much difference between native English and Norman-
French words as is commonly supposed. In the following examples,
the words clean, pure, and clear translate the same Greek ad-
jective, and all seem equally expressive, or nearly so:
Rev. xv, 6: ‘And the seven angels came out of the temple, . . .
clothed in pure and white linen. '
Rev. xix, 8: ‘And to her was granted that she should be arrayed
in fine linen, clean and white. '
Rev. xxi, 18: ‘And the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. '
That, in this sense, they are fairly interchangeable may be seen by
comparing Job xv, 15, ‘Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight,'
with Tennyson's
Make thou my spirit pure and clear
As are the frosty skies.
This brings us to the question of the influence of the Authorised
Version upon subsequent English literature an influence which
cannot always be precisely distinguished from that of the Bible in
some earlier form. When Spenser or Shakespeare, for instance,
uses the Bible, it is, of course, not the Jacobean version, and
now and then the same thing will be true at a later period, as in
some of Milton's writing. The more important modes in which
the Bible has affected English literature are these:
(a) The themes are Scriptural, and the language partly, at
times even largely, Scriptural. Such is the case in sermons,
versified psalms, paraphrases of Scriptural narrative, devotional
essays, and the like. An excellent example is Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress. This book apart, however, there are few, if any,
examples of a work which has been accepted as pure literature
employing Biblical diction to anything like such a degree. Other
attempts, such as the Book of Mormon, tend to the grotesque or
ludicrous, because of the disparity between the language and the
ideas suggested. A diction resembling that of the Bible in its
concreteness and simplicity, and in its slightly archaic character,
has, however, of late been employed with good effect in prose
versions from authors like Homer.
## p. 48 (#70) ##############################################
48 The Authorised Version and its Influence
1
1
1
(6) Quotations from the Bible are introduced, sometimes
slightly changed, into secular writings. The object is to sub-
stantiate a statement, or to awaken a train of associations favour-
able to the author's purpose. These can be found in almost any
author, but they are more common in the nineteenth century than
earlier, being especially used by writers who have at heart the
reform or elevation of society or individuals.
(c) Allusions, or considerably modified quotations, are intro-
duced freely, and may be found on the editorial page of many
a newspaper. Thus, one reads: "The full measure of justice is not
meted out to them'; "They sold their birthright for a mess of
pottage'; 'They have fallen among thieves. ' In the last three
books which the present writer has read for amusement, he has
been interested to note quotations and allusions of this nature.
In one of them, a recent book on life in an Italian province,
63 references were found; in the second, a recent work on the
life of wild animals, 12; in the third, a novel by Thomas Hardy, 18.
(d) Many phrases have grown so common that they have
become part of the web of current English speech, and are hardly
thought of as Biblical at all, except on deliberate reflection. For
instance: 'highways and hedges'; 'clear as crystal'; 'still small
voice'; 'hip and thigh'; 'arose as one man'; 'lick the dust'; 'a
thorn in the flesh'; 'broken reed'; 'root of all evil'; 'the nether
millstone'; 'sweat of his brow'; 'heap coals of fire'; 'a law unto
themselves'; 'the fat of the land'; 'dark sayings'; 'a soft answer';
'a word in season'; 'moth and rust'; 'weighed in the balance and
found wanting'; even such colloquialisms as, 'we are the people'
(cf. Job xii, 2). Many more of these might readily be quoted.
(e) Other influences, less definitely measurable, but more
important, remain to be mentioned.
Of the Bible in its relations to religion, individual conduct, and
ideals political and social, this is not the place to speak; yet these
affect literature to an incalculable extent, if they do not even
provide its very substance. Of such matters as fall within the
scope of this chapter-matters of vocabulary, grammar, idiom,
and style-something may briefly be said.
In the first place, the literary influence of the Bible, like that
of any classic, is distinctly conservative. The reading of it tends
to keep alive a familiarity with the words and constructions which
were current when the English Bible grew up, or, rather, of such
of these words and constructions as proved most conformable to
the genius of the Hebrew and Greek employed in the sacred
>
## p. 49 (#71) ##############################################
Influence upon English Literature 49
writings. As hinted above, this influence, in conjunction with that
of the Bible in the sphere of thought and emotion, seems to have
culminated, if its culmination be not rather a matter of the future, in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. The result is that many
terms formerly regarded as awkward, or alien to the genius of the
language, are now understood and accepted. Soon after the Autho-
rised Version was issued, Selden thus criticised the rendering:
The Bible is rather translated into English words than into English
phrases. The Hebraisms are kept, and the phrase of that language is kept.
A typical Hebraism is the use of of in such phrases as 'oil of
gladness,' 'man of sin,' 'King of kings'; but who has any difficulty
with them now? In the first half of the nineteenth century, Hallam
could say:
It abounds, . . . especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology,
and with singlo words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial
use.
At present this is no truer of the Bible than of Shakespeare, if
as true. Our earlier English has been so revived, and rendered so
familiar, that much which needed elaborate explanation in the
eighteenth century is now intelligible to every one. As Lightfoot
said of other objectors :
The very words which these critics would have ejected from our English
Bibles as barbarous, or uncouth, or obsolete, have again taken their places in
our highest poetry, and even in our popular language.
Like the course of a planet round the sun, the movement of
English diction, which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
was, on the whole, away from that of the Bible, now returns with
ever accelerating speed toward it. That the movement really began
at a much earlier date, though inconspicuously, is shown by the
counsels and practice of Swift, and by the circumstance that
Challoner's Roman Catholic version of 1763-4 abandoned many of
the Latinisms of the Rheims and Douay translations in favour of
the simpler language of the Authorised Version.
The use of concrete words has grown in favour. The colourless-
ness, vagueness and obscurity of abstract terms, and of conventional
phraseology whether abstract or not, have been discredited. Vivid-
ness, the sense of reality, have more and more prevailed in literature
that is, in non-technical writings.
Simplicity has always been recommended by the example of the
Authorised Version, and, especially since the age of Wordsworth,
is more and more gaining upon bombast and meretricious orpa-
ment. The concreteness and simplicity of the Authorised Version,
E. L. IV.
CH. II.
## p. 50 (#72) ##############################################
50 The Authorised Version and its Influence
6
and its use of the homely vernacular, have steadily appealed to plain
people, as distinguished from those who have had more abundant
opportunities of education. But the love of the humble for the Bible
is largely due to its message of cheer and hope. Huxley has even
gone so far as to call the Bible 'the Magna Charta of the poor and
the oppressed. ' Two men, Bunyan and Lincoln, who educated them-
selves largely by means of the Bible, may serve as examples of many
who have become known to posterity for their inestimable services to
their race. Both are famous as writers, and the best writing of
both is alive with the spirit of the Bible. Bunyan bas already
been mentioned. Of Lincoln it has been said that he
built up his entire reading upon his early study of the Bible. He had
mastered it absolutely; mastered it as later he mastered only one or two
other books, notably Shakespeare; mastered it so that he became almost
'a man of one book’; . . . and he left his life as part of the crowning work of
the century that has just closed.
Of Walt Whitman, the American who wished to be known as
the poet of democracy, it has been authoritatively said:
His own essential model, after all is said, was the rhythmical patterns of the
English Bible. Here was precisely that natural stylistic variation between
the 'terrific,' the “gentle, and the 'inferior' parts, so desired by William
Blake. Here were lyric fragments, of consummate beauty, imbedded in
narrative or argumentative passages. . . . In this strong, rolling music, this
intense feeling, these concrete words expressing primal emotion in daring
terms of bodily sensation, Whitman found the charter for the book he
wished to write.
The elevation and nobility of Biblical diction, assisted by its
slightly archaic tinge, have a tendency to keep all English style
above meanness and triviality. In the words of Coleridge, 'intense
study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar in point of
style.
The Bible teaches that emotion should not habitually be divorced
from thought, nor thought from emotion; certainly not in litera-
ture. Wherever simple language is charged with noble feeling,
stirs the imagination, is directed by steady and comprehensive
thought, is adapted to actuate the will in the direction of social
and individual good, and is concise and pregnant, Biblical style is
approximated, and, very probably, Biblical influence is dominant.
Finally, the English Bible is the chief bond which holds united,
in a common loyalty and a common endeavour, the various branches
of the English race. The influence of the Bible can be traced
through the whole course of English literature and English civilisa-
tion, and, more than anything else, it tends to give unity and per-
petuity to both.
## p. 51 (#73) ##############################################
CHAPTER III
SIR WALTER RALEGH
>
NOTHING, perhaps, is more remarkable with regard to Sir
Walter Ralegh's literary career than the fact that a man of his
nature should have won for himself a place in the history of
letters. He was, pre-eminently, a man of action, a man who loved
the stir and bustle of life, the excitement of adventure ; and his
proud, ambitious character made him keen to play a foremost
part in the affairs of the world. But his intellectual activity was
as great as his physical energy. Neither his mind nor his body
could rest. All the periods of enforced leisure in his life he used
for study or writing; yet the chance of an active enterprise could
always win him away from his books.
At the age of 14 or 15, Ralegh, who was born in 1552, at
Hayes Barton, Budleigh, Devon, went to Oxford, where he stayed
for about three years. According to Anthony à Wood, ‘he became
the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and
philosophy. ' He passed from Oxford quickly to seek more stirring
adventures in the Huguenot army in France. But, wherever he
went, he was gathering knowledge. Sir Robert Naunton says 'he
was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land, and none of
the least observers both of men and the times. ' On his sea voyages,
he took always a trunk of books with him, and spent the long
hours, when he had nothing to divert him, in reading. He is said,
by an early biographer, to have slept but five hours, so as to gain
daily four hours for reading. His knowledge of literature helped,
no doubt, to give him that command of words, that incisive way
of stating a question which called Elizabeth's attention to him
when he discussed Irish affairs over the council table with lord
Grey. He had, says Naunton, 'a strong natural wit and a better
judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set
out his parts to the best advantage. ' He retained a decided Devon-
shire accent all his life ; but his parliamentary speeches were
distinguished by good style and pointed utterance.
He seems
1 Ralegh's name may be found spelt in some seventy different ways. His own
signature varied very considerably till 1584, after which he used no other signature
bat Ralegh; he never used the common modern form Raleigh. His pronunciation of
his name is clear from the fact that in his early days he often wrote Rauley.
4-2
## p. 52 (#74) ##############################################
52
Sir Walter Ralegh
to have shown a tendency towards liberal views. In a debate
about the Brownists, in 1583, he spoke against religious persecu-
tion. But his was neither the speech nor the nature by which a
man wins ready popularity, for in everything, though he showed
himself a lover of liberty, he showed, also, his proud and con-
temptuous character.
Perhaps that proud and contemptuous
character showed itself also in the extravagance of the language
of compliment and adulation with which he addressed Elizabeth.
Such language was fashionable at the time, but it seems strange
in the mouth of a man like Ralegh, and we are inclined to think
that it was his ambition and desire to get on which made him put
no limit to his exaggeration, in scornful contempt of the vanity
that could be pleased by such language.
That Ralegh must have early been known as a writer of
occasional verse is shown by the fact that he contributed some
introductory verses, In commendation of the Steel Glass, to George
Gascoigne's satire, published in 1576. In these lines he describes
Gascoigne's poems in one of his concise, pointed phrases :
This medicine may suffice
To scorn the rest, and seek to please the wise.
Elizabethan poets appear to have had little desire to see their
works in print. They wrote to please their friends, or for their
own delight, not for the general public. Their poems were passed
about in manuscript or read to their friends, and then might,
perhaps, find their way into some of the popular miscellanies
of verse. Few of Ralegh's poems appeared with his name during
his lifetime, and it was long after his death before any attempt
was made to identify or collect his scattered verses. Some of them
had appeared in England's Helicon with the signature ‘Ignoto,
and it was, in consequence, at first assumed that all the poems
so signed in that collection were his. More critical examination
has rejected many of these, and Hannah's carefully edited collec-
tion, published in 1892, gives some thirty pieces which have
reasonably been supposed to be Ralegh’s? These are enough to
justify fully the judgment passed on him in Puttenham’s The Arte
of English Poesie, 'For dittie and amourous ode I find Sir Walter
Ralegh's vein most lofty, insolent and passionate. '
Ralegh seems, at many crises in his life, to have sought
expression for his feelings in verse. When, after his rapid rise to
favour at court, he was driven into temporary disgrace by the
jealousy of Essex, he employed himself in composing a long elegy
* See post, the chapter on the • Song Books. '
6
## p. 53 (#75) ##############################################
Cynthia
53
expressing his devotion to Elizabeth, and his despair at her anger,
in which he addressed the queen as Cynthia. We hear of this
poem first in Spenser's verses Colin Clout's Come Home Again.
During this temporary disgrace, Ralegh revisited Ireland, where he
had served some years before. There, he either began or renewed
at Kilcolman his friendship with Spenser, then lord Grey's
secretary. The poets seem to have passed some delightful days in
reading their verses to one another. Spenser says of Ralegh in
Colin Clout
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse, and of usage hard
Of Cynthia the Ladie of the Sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.
Ralegh’s delight in The Faerie Queene led him, as soon as he
was restored to favour, to introduce Spenser at court. Spenser,
in his turn, was full of admiration of Ralegh's work, and wrote
Full sweetly tempered is that Muse of his
That can empierce a Princes' mightie hart.
He returns to it again in the beautiful sonnet addressed to
Ralegh which appeared attached to The Faerie Queene, where
he says that, compared with Ralegh's, his rimes are 'unsavory
and sowre,' and concludes
Yet, till that thou thy Poeme wilt make knowne,
Let thy fair Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.
Cynthia was never published; we do not know that it was ever
presented to Elizabeth. It was thought to be entirely lost, when a
fragment of it was discovered among the Hatfield MSS and first
printed by Hannah in 1870. This fragment is entitled The twenty-
first and last book of the Occan to Cynthia. Spenser used to
.
call Ralegh ‘The Shepherd of the Ocean,' and, hence, Ralegh took
to calling himself 'the Ocean. ' Hannah published this fragment as
A continuation of the lost poem Cynthia, and imagined that
it was composed during Ralegh's imprisonment in the Tower
under James I. But it has been conclusively shown that it must
be a portion of the earlier poem? If the other twenty books were
of the same length as this canto, the whole poem must have con-
sisted of ten to fifteen thousand lines. It is written in four lined
stanzas, alternately rimed. Judging from the fragment that
remains, there appears to have been no action or narrative in this
1 This point has been clearly demonstrated by Edmund Gosse from internal evi.
dence, in two letters printed in The Athenaeum for the first two weeks of January 1886.
See, also, Sir Walter Ralegh, by W. Stebbing, p. 73.
6
## p. 54 (#76) ##############################################
54
Sir Walter Ralegh
6
long poem, yet Gabriel Harvey describes the part of it which he
saw before 1590 as 'a fine and sweet invention. There are many
fine passages, none finer than the line
>
Of all which past the sorrow only stays.
The stately, dignified sonnet by Ralegh, which was appended to
the first edition of The Faerie Queene, in 1590, is worthy of an
age when the sonnet attained rare distinction. Brydges, the first
editor of a collection of Ralegh's poems, says:
Milton had deeply studied this sonnet, for in his compositions of the same
class, he has evidently more than once the very rhythm and construction,
as well as cast of thought of this noble though brief composition.
Other of the poems by Ralegh show more of the impetuous
and daring spirit which was compelled to find an utterance. The
ringing scorn of 'The Lie' depicts the man who knew from personal
experience courts and their meanness. The disenchantment with
life expressed in several of his poems led to the assumption that
they were written on the night before his death ; but of only one
can this be true, the fine lines found in his Bible at the gate-house,
Westminster :
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust.
The others, such as Like Hermit Poor, and The Pilgrimmage,
were, probably, written at moments when his impatient spirit was
filled with disgust of life. No poem of his has greater charm than
The Pilgrimmage, whether for its form, its fancy, or for the deep
seriousness underlying its light grace. Among the authenticated
poems of Ralegh there are few love poems, and those few are
singularly free from sentimentality or the precious conceits popular
at the time. In his reply to Marlowe's song The passionate Shep-
herd to his Love, he by no means responds to the passion of the
appeal, but shows his disbelief in the possibility of the permanence
of the shepherd's love in a world full of fears of' cares to come. '
The authenticity of many of Ralegh’s prose works is almost as
difficult to decide with any certainty as that of his poems. He
seems to have written papers on many varied subjects, but only
two of them, and The History of the World, were published
during his lifetime. Ralegh manuscripts were collected by literary
men, were to be found in many libraries and were much valued.
It is said in the Observations on the Statesmen and Favourites
of England, by David Lloyd, published in 1665, that John
2
## p. 55 (#77) ##############################################
Prose Writings
55
Hampden, shortly before the Civil Wars, was at the charge of
transcribing 3452 sheets of Ralegh’s writing. Archbishop Sancroft
speaks of a great MS in folio,' by Sir Walter, lent to him by
Mr Ralegh, the author's grandson. He also possessed another
MS, a Breviary of the History of England under William I
which he attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, and which he said had
been ‘taken from the papers of an old Presbyterian in Hertford-
shire, which sort of men were always the more fond of Sir Walter's
books, because he was under the disfavour of the Court. ' One of
his MSS, called The Arts of Empire, was first printed by Milton
in 1658, under the title of The Cabinet Council by the ever-
renovoned knight, Sir Walter Ralegh.
