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vulgarity, that two centuries have not superannuated probably more than a dozen of his words.'

LORD HERBERT of Cherbury was an intimate friend of Hobbes, and a brave and high-spirited man, at a time when honorable feeling was rare at the English Court. Like Hobbes he distinguished himself as a free-thinker; and, according to Leland, as he was one of the first, so he was confessedly one of the greatest writers that have appeared among us in the deistical cause.'

Edward Herbert was born at Montgomery Castle, in Wales, in 1581. At the age of fourteen he entered a gentleman commoner of University College, Oxford, where he laid the foundation of that admirable learning for which he was afterward so distinguished. From the university he travelled abroad, and applied himself to military exercises in foreign countries, by which he became a most accomplished gentleman. On his return to England, in 1603, he was knighted by King James, and soon after made one of the counsellors of that king for military affairs. In 1616 he was sent ambassador to Paris, and there published, in 1624, his celebrated deistical work, Of Truth, as it is distinguished from Probable, Possible, and False Revelation. In this work, the first in which deism was ever reduced to a system, the author maintains the sufficiency, universality, and absolute perfection of natural religion, and the consequent uselessness of supernatural revelation. In reprinting the work in London, in 1645, he added two tracts, the one, Of the Causes of Error, and the other, Of the Religion of a Layman; and soon afterward he published another book, entitled, The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles, and Cause of their Errors Considered.

Lord Herbert died in London on the twentieth of August, 1648; and the next year after his death, appeared his History of the Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth. This work is termed by Lord Orford a masterpiece of historic biography;' and in Bishop Nicholson's opinion 'the author has acquitted himself with the like reputation as Lord Chancellor Bacon gained by the life of Henry the Seventh, having in the polite and martial part, been admirably exact, from the best records that remain.' In its style, the work is considered one of the best old specimens of historical composition in the language, being manly and vigorous, and unsullied by the quaintness and pedantry of the age. Lord Herbert is remarkable also as the earliest of English autobiographers. The memoirs which he kept of his own life were first printed in 1764, and have ever since been popular. As a specimen of his historical writing, we present the following passage from his 'Life of Henry the Eighth :'

SIR THOMAS MORE'S RESIGNATION OF THE GREAT SEAL.

Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, after divers suits to be discharged of his place, (which he had held two years and a-half,) did at length by the king's good leave resign it. The example whereof being rare, will give me occasion to speak more particularly of him. Sir Thomas More, a person of sharp wit, and en

dued besides with excellent parts of learning, (as his works may testify,) was yet (out of I know not what natural facetiousness) given so much to jesting, that it detracted no little from the gravity and importance of his place, which, though generally noted and disliked, I do not think was enough to make him give it over in that merriment we shall find anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I believe him so much addicted to his private opinions as to detest all other governments but his own Utopia, so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow his book, or secret offence taken against some person or matter, (among which perchance the king's new intended marriage, or the like might be accounted,) occasioned this strange counsel; though, yet, I find no reason pretended for it, but infirmity and want of health. Our king hereupon taking the seal and giving it, together with the order of knighthood, to Thomas Audeley, speaker of the Lower House, Sir Thomas More, without acquainting any body with what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea, where, after a mass celebrated the next day in the church, he comes to his lady's pew, with his hat in his hand, (an office formerly done by one of his gentlemen,) and says, 'Madam, my lord is gone.' But she thinking this at first to be but one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her sadly, he had given up the great seal; whereupon she speaking some passionate words, he called his daughters then present to see if they could not spy some fault about their mother's dressing; but they after searching saying they could find none, he replied, 'Do you not perceive that your mother's nose standeth somewhat awry ?'-of which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she went from him in a rage. Shortly after, he acquainted his servants with what he had done, dismissing them also to the attendance of some other great personages, to whom he had recommended them. For his fool, he bestowed him on the lord mayor during his office, and afterward on his successors in that charge. And now coming to himself, he began to consider how much he had left, and finding that it was not above one hundred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he advised with his daughters how to live together. But the grieved gentlewomen, (who knew not what to reply, or indeed how to take these jests,) remaining astonished, he says, 'We will begin with the slender diet of the students of the law, and if that will not hold out, we will take such commons as they have at Oxford; which yet if our purse will not stretch to maintain, for our last refuge we will go a-begging, and at every man's door sing together a Salve Regina to get alms.' But these jests were thought to have in them more levity, than to be taken everywhere for current; he might have quitted his dignity without using such sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more retired and quiet life, without making them or himself contemptible. And certainly whatsoever he intended hereby, his family so little understood his meaning, that they needed some more serious instructions. So that I can not persuade myself for all this talk, that so excellent a person should omit at fit times to give his family that sober account of his relinquishing this place, which I find he did to the Archbishop Warham, Erasmus, and others.

Lecture the Nineteenth.

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE-ROBERT BURTON-JOSEPH HALL-THOMAS OVER

BURY-JOHN SELDEN-JAMES USHER-JOHN HALES-OWEN FELTHAM.

HE remarkable influence which has resulted to the English language

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mencement of the reign of James the First, and which has now for more than two centuries been the cherished version of the sacred Word with the millions who speak the English tongue, seems to require that, at this period in our remarks, we should notice the circumstances under which that great work was performed. Hazlitt, the accomplished critic, in mentioning the several causes which made the age of Elizabeth and James so distinguished for its great names in literature, assigns to the translation of the Bible the first place. In reference to this subject he observes, in his 'Lectures on the Literature of the age of Elizabeth,' that 'The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in this great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in a common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment; it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it.' With such testimony before us respecting the influence which the Bible then exerted, we shall proceed to mention the circumstances under which the present English version was produced; but to do this the more successfully we must notice, briefly, the translations from the sacred volume which were previously made in both the Saxon and the English languages.

The first version of any portion of the Bible into a British tongue, appeared about 727, and was executed by the venerable Bede, who, for the age in which he lived, was a miracle of learning. His translation is sup

posed to have been made from the Latin Vulgate, and though it embraced only the Gospel of St. John, he himself regarded it as his most important literary performance. From the death of Bede a period of more than one hundred and fifty years elapsed before any other attempt seems to have been made to render any portion of the Scriptures into the vernacular tongue. Alfred the Great, after having succeeded in driving the Danes out of his dominions, and in inducing a state of general peace and prosperity throughout his kingdom, turned his attention toward the moral and spiritual condition of his subjects. For their benefit he, about 895, produced, and rendered popular among them, a translation of the Psalms of David. About a century after, Alfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, with similar views with those which influenced the mind of the great monarch himself toward the common people, translated, for their particular benefit, the first seven books of the Old Testament. The foregoing translations were all made from the Latin into the Saxon language, and were in common use until the Saxon began to give place to the Norman French. This change was gradual, but eventuated, in the course of about three centuries, in forming the basis of the present English tongue.

In 1375, Wickliff, in order to oppose the more effectually the encroachments and impositions of the Church of Rome, produced an entire translation of the Old and New Testaments from the Latin Vulgate into English, the English language having, at this time, assumed a comparatively permanent form. Nearly two long and dreary centuries, however, followed, during the whole of which the Romish Church waved its iron sceptre over Britain with increasing power, sealing, as it had done from the beginning, for the better effecting of its own wicked purposes, the sacred volume from the common eye. In the commencement of the reign of Henry the Eighth, this power reached its very climax; but a succession of events rapidly followed, which separated the Church of England from the Church of Rome, and prepared the way for the general reception of the Scriptures in the vernacular tongue.

Ten years previously, however, to the withdrawal of Henry the Eighth from the Romish Church, Tyndale, in order to avoid persecution, had retired to the continent, and there prepared, and in 1526, published an English translation of the New Testament out of the original Greek text. This was followed by the publication, in 1530, of a version from the original language, of the first five books of the Old Testament, in which he is said to have been assisted by Coverdale. The translation of Tyndale, when we remember the embarrassing disadvantages under which it was made, must be regarded as a very wonderful performance.

In 1535, Coverdale, having also previously retired from Yorkshire to the continent, produced a translation into English of the entire Bible. The copies of his first edition bear upon their title-page the following inscription:-Biblia the Bible; that is, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, faithfully and newly translated out of the Deutche and Latin.'

To Coverdale, therefore, belongs the honor of having given to the English nation the first translation of the whole Bible into their native tongue. Four years after Coverdale's Bible was published, appeared a translation of the Scriptures purporting to be by Thomas Matthewe. The name is generally supposed to be fictitious, and of Matthewe's Bible, John Rogers, who was burned at the stake in the reign of Mary, was the real author.

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Cranmer's, or the Great Bible,' as it was called, being printed in a large double folio volume form, appeared in 1539. This was a revision and republication from former translations of the Scriptures, by a number of scholars, but Bishop Cranmer had no farther connection with the work than to write the preface. In the same year appeared Taverner's Bible, the text of which was formed upon Matthewe's, or Rogers's translation, already mentioned.

Cranmer's Bible was now the favorite, and, accordingly, in 1541, Henry the Eighth issued a decree that the 'Great Bible' should be placed in every parish church in England, and all curates not already furnished with a copy of it, were commanded to procure one, and place it in a situation convenient for consultation in their respective churches, and all bishops were required to see that this command was strictly enforced. 'It was wonderful,' says the historian Stripe, 'to see with what joy this book of God was received, not only among the learneder sort, but generally all England over, among all the people; and with what greediness God's Word was read, and what resort to places where the reading of it was.' During the short reign of Edward the Sixth, eleven different impressions of the English Bible was made, but they were merely reprints of some one of the former versions.

In 1560, the 'Geneva Bible' was published. This was a translation, with notes, by Coverdale and others, who, during the reign of queen Mary, had fled for safety from England to Geneva, in Switzerland, and while they resided there they effected this important work. This was long the favorite Bible of the English Puritans and the Scotch Presbyterians; and it is estimated that during the reign of Elizabeth, not less than fifty editions were published. The 'Douay Bible' is the only other version of the Scriptures of any note that preceded the present standard translation. Of this translation the New Testament was printed at Rheims, in 1582, and the Old, at Douay, from which the whole receives its name, in 1609.

Soon after the accession of James the First to the English crown, complaints of discrepancies in the various translations of the English Scriptures then in use, became so common, that on the twenty-fourth of October, 1603, that monarch issued a proclamation, 'Touching a meeting for the hearing and for the determining things pretended to be amiss in the church.' This meeting, known as the 'Conference of the Hampton Court,' was held at that place in the middle of January, 1604, and on the third and last day of the session, Dr. John Rainolds, President of Corpus Christi College, a man of high and unblemished character, and at that time esteemed the most eminent scholar in the kingdom, 'moved,' according to Dr. Barlow, 'his majesty

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