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from designs of the best masters,” “Oxford, Printed by Thomas Baskett and Robert Baskett, Printers to the University 1744” (Old Testament): For the New Testament: “London, Printed by Thomas Baskett and Robert Baskett, Printers to the King’s most excellent Majesty 1743.”

We now come to the last two considerable efforts to improve and correct our ordinary editions of Holy Scripture, made in 1762 by Dr Paris, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and still commemorated in the list of the Benefactors of the College, and by Dr Blayney, whose labours were published in 1769, both anonymously. The latter, however, has left a very interesting account of his work and the principles upon which it was executed in a brief Report to the Vice-Chancellor and Delegates of the Clarendon Press, reprinted below as Appendix D (pp. xcviii., xcix.), and well deserving of attentive perusal. Dr Paris’s name is not mentioned therein in such terms as might have been expected from the liberal use made of his materials by his successor: in fact his book is almost unknown even to Biblical students, although it has contributed more than that which appeared but seven years later towards bringing the text, the marginal annotations, the italics, and the textual references of modern Bibles into their actual condition. The truth is that Paris’s edition had no real circulation, partly because it was so soon superseded by Blayney’s, chiefly by reason of a large portion of the impression having been destroyed by fire in Dod’s the publisher’s warehouse1.

(14) The Holy Bible, quarto, large paper, 2 vol. Cambridge, “Printed by Joseph Bentham, Printer to the University. Sold by Benjamin Dod, Bookseller…London, 1762.”

(15) The Holy Bible, quarto [and folio], 2 vol. Oxford, “Printed by T. Wright and W. Gill, Printers to the University: 1769.” With Prayer Book prefixed.

It will be seen when we come to discuss the italic type (Sect. III.) that the use of it was considerably extended in these two Bibles, notably in the later one, by a more full carrying out of the system of the Translators than they would have probably sanctioned themselves. The marginal annotations also, which had been growing in some Bibles since 1660 but were excluded from others (see Sect. II. pp. xxx., xxxi.), were finally received into the place they have occupied ever since, sundry new notes being added, the great majority in 1762. Bp. Lloyd’s dates and chronological notices were also received and added to at the same time, and the two editions contributed largely, in about equal proportions, to swell the catalogue of textual references to parallel passages of Scripture. An inspection of our Appendices A and C will shew how far each of them contributed to amend or corrupt the Translators’ text, and it cannot be doubted that these two editors are the great modernizers of the diction of the version, from what it was left in the seventeenth century, to the state wherein it appears in modern Bibles. Much of the labour described in Sect. v. (pp. xlviii., xlix., &c.) has been rendered necessary for the undoing of their tasteless and inconsistent meddling with archaic words and grammatical forms. On the whole, Dr Paris, who has been kept so utterly out of sight, performed his task with more diligence, exactness, and moderation than his Oxford successor. Yet, much as they left undone or did amiss, their editions of the Bible are monuments of genuine industry and pious zeal all the more conspicuous in an age when shallow superciliousness was too often made a substitute for generous criticism and scholar-like precision: they might either of them have cheered the heart of worthy Archbishop Secker, on whose suggestion Blayney’s labours are believed to have been undertaken. In point of typographical correctness, as is already well known, the quarto (and to a slightly less extent the scarce folio) of 1769 are conspicuously deficient: on one page of the Apocrypha there are no less than three typographical errors (Esth. xi. 2 “Nison;” 8 “upon earth” (“the” omitted); xii. 6 “the eunuchs” (“two” omitted), so that the commonly estimated number of 116 such errata would seem below the truth. In Rev. xviii. 22 occurs an omission of a whole clause, for the same cause as was spoken of in regard to the Bible of 1613: “And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee.” Some of Blayney’s needless changes are in Ps. cxv. 3; cxli. 9; 2 Pet. i. 9 (see Appendix C): certain of a better character occur in Prov. vi. 19