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member first of the fourth, afterwards of the second Company. Of him we are told

“Four years he spent in this service1, at the end thereof (the whole work being finished, and three copies of the whole Bible being sent to London, one from Cambridge, a second from Oxford, and a third from Westminster), a new choice was to be made of six in all, two out of each company, to review the whole work, and extract one out of all the three, to be committed to the press. For the despatch of this business Mr Downes2 and he, out of the Cambridge company3, were sent for up to London, where meeting their four fellow-labourers, they went daily to Stationer’s Hall, and in three quarters of a year fulfilled their task. Whilst they were employed in this last business, he, and he only, took notes of their proceedings, which he diligently kept to his dying day.”

Could these notes be recovered4, they would solve, not only the problem discussed by Mr Fry, but many other questions of great interest. If Dr Walker can be trusted, it would seem that every part of each Company’s task had in some fashion been revised by each of the rest, a statement which neither the time employed, nor the results obtained, render very likely (see Sect. VII. p. lxiii.). At all events it is clear, unless we reject his evidence altogether, that the printing, so far as the Translators superintended it at all, must have begun and ended within the short period of nine months, which seems wholly inadequate for the accomplishing of all they had in hand.

Although we have not been able to resist the pressure of the internal evidence which assures us that the issue represented by Synd. A. 3. 14 is the earlier of the two, yet the influence of our error (if any shall still judge it to be an error) upon the text of the present volume is infinitesimally small. It is strictly confined within the limits indicated in Appendix B, § 1, the great majority of which variations are either purely indifferent, or would have been received on their own merits, without reference to the prior claims of the copy that contains them.

Respecting Appendix C, wherein are registered the joint readings of the two issues of 1611 which in later times have been displaced but are now restored, not a few of them are quite insignificant in themselves, but are re-established as a matter of right, and as a kind of protest against the unnecessary, the almost wanton changes, in which certain editors of the Bible have been pleased to indulge. Examples of this kind will be seen in Judg. xix. 29; 1 Sam. xx. 5; 2 Sam. vii. 7 marg.; 1 Kin. xv. 27; xvi. 19; 2 Kin. viii. 19; Isai. vi. 8; Hos. xiii. 3; 1 Esdr. viii. 75; 2 Esdr. xv. 22; 2 Macc. viii. 33; Luke xix. 13 marg.5

We now proceed to describe the principal editions of the Authorized Bible which have appeared since 1611, especially those which seem to have been prepared with some degree of care, or have largely influenced the text of succeeding impressions.

(2) The Holy Bible of 1612, copies of which are in the British Museum (1276. b. 6) and at