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obviously corrupt, might have been impossible with the means within their reach; yet it required very little critical discrimination to perceive the vast superiority of that which they perpetually appeal to as the “Roman edition” (p. xxvii.) over the older recensions of the Complutensian and Aldus. For the rest, they are contented to leave many a rendering of the Bishops’ Bible as they found it, when nearly any change must have been for the better; even where their predecessor sets them a better example they resort to undignified, mean, almost vulgar words and phrases1; and on the whole they convey to the reader’s mind the painful impression of having disparaged the importance of their own work, or of having imperfectly realised the truth that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well2.

Nor can the attentive student of the Authorized Version fail to marvel at the perfect and easy command over the English language exhibited by its authors on every page. The fulness and variety of their diction, the raciness of their idiomatic resources, seem almost to defy imitation, while they claim our just and cheerful admiration. We need not extenuate that great error of judgment which is acknowledged to be the capital defect of the Translation, especially in the New Testament, in that the same foreign word is perpetually translated by several English ones, while on the other hand a single English word is made to represent two or three in the original, and that too in the same context, where the cogency of the argument or the perspicuity of the narrative absolutely depends on identity in the rendering. But in avoiding this conspicuous fault of the men of 1611, some modern revisers whose efforts are already before the public have fallen into the opposite mistake of forcing the same English word to stand for the same Hebrew or Greek one where there is no real need for preserving such slavish uniformity, thus at once impoverishing our native tongue which is so much more copious than either of the others, and casting over the version an air of baldness very painful to a cultivated taste. Let us take for an example of the beautiful flexibility of their English style the numberless devices our Translators resort to while endeavouring to convey the intensive force of the Hebrew gerundial infinitive when used with some finite form of the selfsame verb, of which the earliest example occurs in Gen. iii. 4, “Ye shall not surely die.” The passages are cited almost at random and might be multiplied indefinitely.

1 Sam. ii. 16. Let them not fail to burn the fat. 2 Sam. xiv. 14. we must needs die (after the Bishops’); xvii. 10. shall utterly melt; 16. speedily pass over; xviii. 2. I will surely go forth; 3. if we flee away (with the Bishops’); 25. came apace (Bishops’); xx. 18. They were wont to speak (margin, They plainly spake). 1 Kin. ii. 37, (42). thou shalt know for certain that thou shalt surely die; iii. 26, 27. in no wise slay it (Bishops’); ix. 6. If ye shall at all turn. 1 Chr. iv. 10. Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed (Bishops’). Neh. i. 7. We have dealt very corruptly against thee (“grievously sinned” Bishops’). Esther iv. 14. If thou altogether holdest thy peace. Job vi. 2. Oh that my grief were throughly weighed (“truly weighed” Bishops’); xiii. 17 and xxi. 2. Hear diligently (Bishops’); xxvii. 22. he would fain flee. Jer. xxiii. 17. They say still; 32. profit at all; 39. utterly forget; xxv. 30. mightily roar; xxxi. 20. earnestly remember; xli. 6. weeping all along; l. 34. throughly plead. Ezek. i. 3. came expressly. Thus too both versions even in translating the Latin of 2 Esdr. iii. 33; iv. 2, 26; vii. 21, &c.

Yet it has been said by one who ought to know, that “our Translators of the Bible, in their attempt