Lecture the Nineteenth. TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE-ROBERT BURTON-JOSEPH HALL-THOMAS OVER, BURY-JOHN SELDEN-JAMES USHER-JOHN HALES-OWEN FELTHAM. THE remarkable influence which has resulted to the English language and literature from the translation of the Bible, executed in the commencement 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, Wickliffe, 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. This 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. 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 inscrip tion: 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. Cranmer's, or the Great Bible,' as it was called, being printed ir 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 emi nent scholar in the kingdom, 'moved,' according to Dr. Barlow, 'his majesty that there might be a new translation of the Bible; because those allowed in the reign of Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth were corrupt, and not answerable to the truth of the original.' As the result of the Conference at Hampton, which was composed of the clergy of both the Puritan and the Established Church, fifty-four of the best scholars of the kingdom were designated to carry out the design contemplated. Of these, however, seven either died, or declined to serve before the translation commenced; and the remaining forty-seven were formed into five separate divisions. The first division met at Westminster, and to them, with Dr. Lancelot Andrews at their head, was assigned that part of the Old Testament which extends from Genesis to the second book of Kings, inclusive. The second division met at Cambridge, and at their head was placed Dr. Edward Livlie, who, for more than thirty years, was Regius Professor of Hebrew, in Cambridge University. The portion of the Old Testament assigned to this division extended from First Chronicles to Ecclesiastes, inclusive. The third division met at Oxford, and under the direction of Dr. John Harding, then Regius Professor of Hebrew in the university, and afterward President of Magdelen College, had assigned to them that part of the Old Testament which extends from Isaiah to Malachi, inclusive. The fourth division also met at Oxford, and with Dr. Thomas Ravis, Dean of Christ's Church, and afterward Bishop of London, at their head, undertook the translation of that part of the New Testament which extends from Matthew to the Acts, inclusive, and the Revelation. The fifth division, under the guidance of Dr. William Barlow, Dean of Chester, held their sessions at Westminster, and to them was assigned the remaining part of the New Testament, extending from Romans to Jude, inclusive. In executing their important task, each individual translator was required to translate the entire portion assigned to his division, and when all in any one division had finished, they met together and compared their several translations, decided all differences, and settled upon what they considered the best translation. When the several divisions had finished their labor, they all met together and appointed twelve of their number to revise the whole work. This being done, the new translation was published in 1611, under the following title:-The Holy Bible containing the Old Testament and the New, newly translated out of the Original Tongues, and with the former Translations diligently compared and revised by his Majesty's Special Commandment. As a specimen of the English language, this great work is, in the words of Spenser, emphatically, 'A well of English undefiled;' and as the learned Dr. Adam Clarke remarks:- The translators have seized the very spirit and soul of the original, and expressed this almost everywhere with pathos and energy they have not only made a standard translation, but have made. this translation the standard of our language.' We have little to fear, there fore, from the weak attempts of ephemeral minds to mar its accuracy and beauty. The importance of a correct view of the English standard translation of the Bible, has led us into a more extended detail of the circumstances under which we came into possession of that invaluable treasure, than the range of these lectures would otherwise have justified. We now proceed to notice those clerical and other writers of the period at present under consideration, to whom we have not hitherto referred. Of these the names of Burton, Hall, Overbury, Selden, Usher, Hales, and Felltham are the first that occur. ROBERT BURTON was of an ancient family of Leicestershire, and was born at Lindley, in that county, on the eighth of February, 1576. After pursuing the usual preparatory studies at a grammar-school in Warwickshire, he, in 1593, entered Brazen-nose College, Oxford, and six years after was elected student of Christ's Church College, in the same university. Having graduated and taken orders, Burton, in 1616, was preferred to the vicarage of St. Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, and received also, a few years after, the rectory of Segrave in Leicestershire, both of which he held, though with some difficulty, till his death, which occurred in January, 1639. Burton was a man of great benevolence and learning, but of whimsical and melancholy disposition. Though at certain times he was a facetious companion, yet at others, his spirits were very low; and when in this latter condition he would go down to the river near Oxford, and dispel his gloom by listening to the coarse jests and ribaldry of the bargemen, which excited him to violent laughter. To alleviate his mental distress, he wrote a work, entitled The Anatomy of Melancholy, which appeared in 1651, and presents, in quaint language, and with many shrewd and amusing remarks, a view of all the modifications of that disease, and the manner of curing it. The erudition displayed in this work is extraordinary, every page abounding with quotations from Latin authors. Its publication was so successful that the publisher realized a fortune by it; and it delighted Dr. Johnson so much, that he said 'it was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours before he wished to rise.' Prefixed to the Anatomy of Melancholy, is a poem from which Milton borrowed some of the imagery of 'Il Penseroso.' Of this poem the following are the first six stanzas : ABSTRACT OF MELANCHOLY. When I go musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknown, When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow, void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, All my joys to this are folly ; |