*The adverse opinion of Dr. Scrivener will be mentioned presently,
t For brevity, we will so denote the assumed first edition ; and the one we are describing, by B.
{ The actual copy described is that marked 3051 g 10 (1)in the Library of the British Museum.
§ Art. ‘English Bible,’ by the late Rey. J. H. Blunt, in Encyclop. Brit.9 vol. viii. p. 389.
| We adopt the convenient summary of Scrivener’s views (for which see his Authorized Edition, p. 5 ff.) given by the Rey. Walter E, Smith in his valuable monograph, A Study of the great ‘She’ Bible, 1890, p. 6.
VERSIONS (ENGLISH)
VERSIONS (ENGLISH) —.257
ec
1709, having had arun of 132 years. The subsequent stages, through Thomas Baskett, need not be par- ticularized. In 1799 a fresh patent was granted to George Eyre, Andrew Strahan, and John Reeves ; and so we come to the present distinguished firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode.*
It is obvious that purely business transactions, such as these, would not of necessity give rise to any lofty ideal of responsibility in a King’s Printer. He would feel it his first duty to recoup himself for the sums laid out. Any higher standard of work must be prompted by his own sense of noblesse oblige. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find traces of bad workmanship multiplying in editions of the AV, as the years rollon. A flagrant example of such negligence is to be seen in the 8vo edition of 1631,+ printed by Robert Barker and the assignees of J. Bill. In this, besides many other mistakes, the ‘not’ is left out in the Seventh Commandment (Ex 204). For this, it is fair to say, the printers were fined in the then substantial sum of £300 by the Court of High Commission, with Laud at its head. With the proceeds of the fine, Laud, it is said, designed to purchase a fount of Greek type for the university press of Oxford; but it does not appear that payment of the money was-ever enforced.
The universities, to which we are now accus- tomed to look for accuracy and beauty of typo- graphy, were late inthe race. Cambridge, as we have seen, had pleaded the privilege of its press as far back as 1583. But in point of fact no English Bible issued from it till 1629; nor from that of Oxford till 1673-5. The Cambridge folio of 1629, printed by Thomas and John Buck, is a creditable
iece of work, and shows traces of careful revision. Bat it is the first to exhibit a misprint, which held its ground, it is said, till 1803—‘ thy doctrine’ for ‘the doctrine,’ in 1 Ti 4°.
In 1638 a still more serious attempt at revision was made by a little band of Cambridge scholars, at the command, we are told, of Charles1. Their names are preserved in a manuscript note, made in a copy of the Bible in question, by a contemporary Master of Jesus College. They were Dr. Goad, Rector of Hadleigh in Suffolk, an old Eton and King’s man ; Dr. Ward and Mr. Boyse (Bois), both already spoken of in the lists of translators; and Mr. Mead, more familiar to us as Joseph Mede. Dr. Scrivener, while speaking favourably of their work as a whole, points out some fresh errata due to them: among these the substitution of ‘ye’ for ‘we’ in Ac 6, foolishly believed by some to be not an accidental misprint, but a deliberate change, made under Nonconformist influences.
Of other editions of the AV, an 8vo, printed at Edinburgh in 1633, may be noticed as the first printed in Scotland; the earliest in Ireland not appearing till 1714, and in America not till 1752. A 12mo of 1682, professing to be printed in London, but in all probability from a press in Amsterdam, may be taken as a specimen of a number of editions, produced in Holland, but counterfeiting the im- prints of London publishers, with the object of imposing upon English readers. They are mostly full of errors. Conspicuous for the magnificence of their typography are the noble folios of John
*§ee the articles on Chr. and Rob. Barker, and on Thomas Baskett, by Mr. H. R. Tedder in the Dict. of National Bio- graphy.
+ Scrivener, date, and speaks of
Authorized Edition, p. 25n., gives 1632 as the one copy only as known to be in existence, namely at Wolfenbiittel. Mr. Henry Stevens (Cat. of the Caxton Celebration, 1877, p. 114) shows both these statements to be incorrect. The name ‘Wicked Bible’ originated with Mr. Stevens in 1852. 4 ,
{ This last was issued surreptitiously, bearing the false im- print of ‘Mark Baskett, London.’ A 12mo, produced at Phila- delphia in 1782, is believed by Cotton to be the earliest English Bible avowedly published in America.
EXTRA VOL.—I7
Baskett (Oxford, 1717) and John Baskerville (Cam- bridge, 1763). In the former of these, however, a misprint of ‘vinegar’ for ‘ vineyard’ (or ‘ vine- garth’ ?) in the headline over Lk 22, has caused it to be commonly known as ‘The Vinegar Bible.’
Passing over the folio of 1701, revised by Bishop Lloyd, in which for the first time dates, taken in the main from Ussher, were added in the margin, we come to two editions which, from their prox- imity of date and similarity of aim, may be con- veniently studied together. ‘These are (1) an edition in folio and one in quarto (2 vols.), printed by J. Bentham at the Cambridge University Press in 1762, revised by Dr. Thomas Paris, Fellow of Trinity College ; and (2) an edition, also in folio and quarto, issued from the Clarendon Press at Oxford in 1769, revised by Dr. Benjamin Blayney. The fame of Dr. Paris has to some degree suffered eclipse ; partly from the later editor having his predecessor’s work to improve upon, and partly from the accident of a fire at Dod the bookseller’s having destroyed the greater part of the impression of 1762.* Yet competent judges have pronounced the work of Dr. Paris to be at the least not inferior to that of his successor. There is extant areport, dated Oct. 25th, 1769, addressed by Dr. Blayney to his employers, the delegates of the Clarendon Press, in which he states the principles by which he, and by implica- tion Dr. Paris, had been guided. The restoration of the exact text of 1611, where not itself corrupt ; the modernizing of the spelling; the weeding-out of references to passages in no way parallel, and the replacing of them by fresh ones; the making clear the allusions contained in Hebrew proper names by adding their English equivalents in the. margin; the rectification of the use of italics; the reform of the punctuation,—such were some of the objects aimed at. Oxford has done honour to Dr. Blayney, by making his two revisions of 1769 the standard text for its university press. Dr. Scrivener associates the work of Dr. Paris with his as deserv- ing of equal praise, pronouncing their labours to be ‘the last two considerable efforts to improve and correct our ordinary editions of Holy Scripture.’ With these, accordingly, the present section may fitly close. But a parting word of tribute must not, in justice, be withheld from the work of Dr. Scrivener himself, whose Cambridge Paragraph Bible (in 3 parts, 1870-3) is a model of care and laborious exactness. £