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this book alone (so far as we know) has the following changes for the better:

*1 Esdr. v. 5 marg. “Or,” set before “Foacim;” 2 Esdr. vi. 49 marg. “Or,” set before “Behemoth;” Ecclus. iv. 16 “generations” for “generation” of 1611, &c. For Tobit iv. 10; Judith i. 6; 2 Macc. ix. 18, see Appendix C.

This book contains also the following errata:

1 Esdr. v. 72 and Judith iv. 7 “straight” for “strait;” 1 Esdr. vi. 22 “our Lord” for “our lord;” viii. 32 marg. “Shechanaiah” for “Shechaniah;” ix. 4 “bear” for “bare;”26 marg. Porosh for Parosh; 2 Esdr. vii. 17 “shall” for “should;” Judith x. 8 and xiii. 5; Ecclus. xxxvii. 16; 2 Macc. xiv. 5 “enterprizes:” but “enterprises” in 1 Macc. ix. 55; Judith xvi. 11 || with “these,” instead of with the first “they;” Wisd. i. 6 “a witness” for “witness;” v. 23 “dealings” for “dealing;” vi. 11 “affections” for “affection;” xiii. 11 “|| a carpenter” for “a || carpenter;” Ecclus. iii. 27 “sorrow” for “sorrows;” xlvi. 7 “murmurings” for “murmuring;” Song, ver. 5 “upou us” (second); 1 Macc. iv. 20 “hosts” for “host;” 34 “above” for “about;” vii. 45 “|| Then they” for “Then || they;” x. 54 “son-in-law” for “son in law:” Comp. Tobit x. 12; ch. xi. 2; xiv. 27 “hight priest;” ver. 32 “the || valiant” for “|| the valiant;” 2 Macc. i. 23 “priest” for second “priests;” xiii. 23 marg. “|| Or, rebelled” over against ver. 24; ibid. “entreated” for “intreated” (as six times before); xiv. 25 “|| and” for “and ||.”

The Epistle of “The Translators to the Reader,” which follows the Dedication in all principal editions of the Authorized Version, has been illustrated in this volume by such notes as seemed necessary. The reputed author of this noble Preface (for, in spite of the quaintness of its style and the old fashion of its learning, it deserves no meaner epithet) is Dr Miles Smith of the first Oxford Company, who would naturally be one of the six final revisers (p. xiv.), and became Bishop of Gloucester in 1612. The Calendar and Tables of Lessons usually annexed to this Preface are no more a part of the Version than the Book of Common Prayer and the metrical Psalms which are sometimes placed at the beginning and end of the Bible. The Genealogical charts, accompanied with a Map of Canaan and its Index, the work of John Speed, were printed separately in various sizes, that they might be bound up with the Bibles, without any option of the purchaser. Mr Fry prints (A Description, &c. p. 40) a Patent granting to him this privilege dated in the eighth year of James I., to hold good “only during the term of ten years next ensuing,” at an additional charge of not more than two shillings for the large folio size.

Section II.

On the marginal notes and the original texts of the Authorized Version of the English Bible.

Besides those references to parallel texts of Scripture which will be spoken of elsewhere (Section VI), the margin of most of our English Bibles, including the Authorized Version, contains certain brief annotations, the extent and character of which will now be described. The practice was begun by Tyndale, in whose earliest New Testament of 1525, the slight fragments of whose single known copy enrich the Grenville Library in the British Museum, notes rather expository than relating to interpretation are extant in the margin. In some places, and yet more in his version of the Pentateuch (1530 and subsequent years), these notes become strongly polemical, and breathe a spirit which the warmest admirers of that truly great man find it easier to excuse than to commend. In Coverdale’s Bible (1535), which was issued in hot haste to seize a fleeting opportunity, only five out of the eighteen notes found in the New Testament are explanatory, the rest having reference to the proper rendering: in the earlier pages of his Bible they occur much more frequently. Annotations of this kind are quite a distinctive feature as well of the Geneva New Testament of 1557, as of the Geneva Bible of 1560; and, mingled with others which are purely interpretative, are strewn somewhat unequally over the pages of the Bishops’ Bible (1568, 1572). One of the most judicious of the Instructions to the Translators laid down for their guidance by King James I., and acted upon by them with strict fidelity, prescribed that “No marginal notes at all be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot, without some circumlocution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.” It had by that time grown intolerable, that on the self-same page with the text of Holy Scripture, should stand some bitter pithy comment, conceived in a temper the very reverse of that which befits men who profess to love God in Christ.

In the Old Testament the marginal notes in our standard Bibles of 1611 amount to 6637, whereof 4111 express the more literal meaning of the original Hebrew or Chaldee (there are 77 referring