2. The former was, as that of Wj'cliffe had been, to give an English Bible to the English people. He ap- peals to the authority of Bede, of Alfred, and of Gros- tete, to the examples of " Frenshc, and Beemers (Bo- hemians), and Britons." He answers the liypocritical objections that men were not holy enough for such a work; that it was wrong for "idiots" to do what the great doctors of the Church had left undone. He hopes "to make the sentence as trewe and open in Englishe as it is in Latine, or more trewe and open."
It need hardly be said, as regards the method of the translator, that the version was based upon the Vul- gate (comp. Gen. iii, 15 : '■^ She shall trede thy head"). If, in the previous century, scholars like Grostete and Roger Bacon, seeking knowledge in other lands, and from men of other races, had acquired, as they seem to have done, some knowledge both of Greek and He- brew, the succession had, at all events, not been per- petuated. The war to be waged at a later period with a different issue between scholastic philosophy and " humanity" ended, in the first struggle, in the trir umph of the former, and there was probably no one at Oxford among \V3'clifte's contemporaries who could have helped him or Purvey in a translation from the original. It is something to find at such a time the complaint that " learned doctoris taken littel heede to the lettre," the recognition that the Vulgate was not all sufficient, that "the texto of oure bokis" (he is speaking of the Psalter, aivl the difficulty of under- standing it) ' ' discordeth much from the Ebrcu" (which knowledge is, however, at second hand, " bi watnesse of Jerom, of Lire, and other expositouris"). The dif- ficulty which was thus felt was increased bj- the state of the Vulgate text. The translator complains that what the Church had in view was not Jerome's ver-
ENGLISH VERSIONS
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ENGLISH VERSIONS
sion, but a later and corrupt text; that "the comune Latyne Bibles ban nioie neede to be corrected as manie as I have seen in nij' life, than hath the Englishe Bi- ble late translated." To remedy this he had recourse to collation. Many MSS. were compared, and out of this coinpaiison the true reading ascertained as far as possible. The next step was to consult the Glossa Or- dinaria, the connnentaries of Nicholas de Lj'ra, and otliers, as to the meaning of any difficult passages. After this (we recognise here, perhaps, a departure from the right order) gramnuirs were consulted. Then came the actual work of translating, which he aimed at malving idiomatic ratlier than literal. As he went on, he submitted his work to the judgment of others, and accepted their suggestions. It is interesting to trace these early strivings after the true excellence of a translator ; yet more interesting to take note of the spirit, never surpassed, seldom equalled, in later trans- lators, in which the work was done. Nowhere do we find the conditions of the work, intellectual and moral, more solemnlj' assorted. "A translator hath grete nede to studie well the sentence, both before and after," so that no equivocal words may mislead his readers or himself, and then also "he hath nede to lyve a clene life, and be ful devout in preiers, and have not his wit occupied about worldli things, that the Holie Spirj^t, author of all wisedom, and cunnynge, and truth, dresse ( = train) him in his work, and suffer him not for to err"- (Forshall and Madden, Prol. p. 60).
3. The extent of the circulation gained by this ver- sion may be estimated from tlie fact that, in spite of all the chances of time, and all the sj-stematic efforts for its destruction made by archbishop Arundel and others, not less than 150 copies are known to be ex- tant, some of them obviously made for persons of wealth and rank, others apparently for humbler read- ers. It is significant as bearing, either on the date of the two works or on the jiosition of the writers, that while the quotations from Scripture in Langton's Vi- sion of Piers Ploicman are uniformly given in Latin, those in the Persones Tale of Chaucer are given in English, which for the most part agrees substantially with Wycliffe's translation.
4. The following characteristics maj' be noticed as distinguishing this version : (1) The general homeli- ness of its stjle. The language of tlie court or of scholars is as far as possible avoided, and that of the people followed. In this respect the principle has been acted on by later translators. The style of Wyc- liffe is to that of Chaucer as Tyndale's is to Surrey's, or that of the A. V. to Ben Jonson's. (2) The substi- tution, in many cases, of English equivalents for qua- si-technical words. Thus we find " fy" or "fogh" in- stead of " Eaca" (Matt, v, 22); "thej' were washed" in j\Iatt. iii, G ; "richesse" for " mammon" (Luke xvi, 9,11, 13); "bishop" for "high-priest" (^passiin). (3) The extreme literalness with which, in some instances, even at the cost of being unintelligible, the Vulgate text is followed, as in 2 Cor. i, 17-19.
III. Tyxdale.— The work of Wycliffe stands by itself. Wliatever power it exercised in preparing the way for the Keformation of the Kith centurj', it had BO perceptible influence on later translations. B}' the reign of Ilenr}' VIII its Englisli was already obsoles- cent, and the revival of classical scliolarship led men to feel dissatisfied with a version wliicli had avowedl}' been made at second-hand, not from the original. With '1 yndale, on the other liaiid, we enter on a con- tinuous succession. He is the patriarch, in no remote ancestry, of the Authorized Version. With a consist- ent, unswerving purpose, he devoted his whole life to this one work, and, tiirough dangers and difficulties, amid enemies and trcaclierous friends, in exile and loneliness, accomplished it. More tlian Craumer or Ridlej", he is the true hero jjf tlie English Keforma- tion. While they were slowly moving onwards, halt- ing between two opinions, watching how the court-