saved him from being wounded by the hostility which it at first excited. The most brilliant of English scholars, Richard Bentley, of Cambridge, was eager in its defence, and himself laid down the lines of a new edition which had to wait more than a hundred years before a critic could arise-in the person of Lachmann-with the insight needed to extend and complete the design. These two sets of influences affected the conception of the original There were others, which only concerned the translation, derived from the literary taste of the age, which disliked the archaic flavour of Elizabethan expressions, and demanded that what had been already done for the classics should be equally applied to the Bible.1

1 Thus the Rev. E. Harwood (a Presbyterian minister verging towards Unitarian opinions, he preached the funeral sermon of Dr. John Taylor, at Chowbent, Lancashire, in 1761), published in 1758 A Liberal Translation of the New Testament, being an Attempt to translate the Sacred Writings with the same Freedom, Spirit, and Elegance with which other English Translations from the Greek Classics have been lately executed. The book was enriched with numerous classical parallels, but its style has ceased to be commendable: thus Luke xiv. 16, 'An opulent gentleman prepared a grand and splendid entertainment.' Harwood did better work than this on the text (see below).

In 1764 Anthony Purver, of the Society of Friends, published A New and Literal Translation of all the Books of the Old and New Testaments. A few sentences from his Introduction throw an interesting light on the literary feeling of his time. 'It is well known that those called the living Languages do alter, especially ours, who are such a changeable People. Hence it is necessary that new Translations should be made from one Time or Century to another, accommodated to the present Use of speaking or writing.' After pointing out that this had been done for the classics, he continued -'Why should the Scripture meet with less regard? Is it to be thereby more exposed to Ridicule and Contempt in our Libertine Age? But there are some who seem possessed with a notion, or bigotry, that the last Translation in King James's Reign must not be altered; though several new ones had been made before, when the Oldness of the Languages, as they were not long

The theological interest of the first half of the eighteenth century was largely absorbed by the Deistical controversy, and it was not till the publication of Lowth's famous lectures on Hebrew poetry in 1753 that any fruitful labour on the Old Testament was initiated. A little A little group of scholars, however, redeemed the age from reproach. The Primate, Archbishop Secker, bequeathed to the Lambeth Library two large Bibles, one in Hebrew, the other in English, containing the results of long study both of the original text with the help of Walton's Polyglot, and the Authorised Version, of which Bishop Lowth wrote enthusiastically, 'These valuable remains of that great and good man will be of infinite service whenever that necessary work, a new translation, or a Revision of the present translation of the Holy Scriptures, for the use of our

apart, did not call for it; and though the pedantry of that Reign is become a Ridicule, and the Style intolerable: nor does such a Notion commonly appear to be founded on an Opinion of that Translation being well done, since it has been the frequent Complaint from the Scripture-writers who understood the Original, of Passages rendered amiss.' Of the New Testament he remarked 'Our present Translation from the Greek . . . . seems worse worded than the other Part from the Hebrew'; but as his list of words 'such as are clownish, barbarous, hard,' etc., begins 'abstain, abstinence, access, abdicated,' etc., the modern reader will hardly think his condemnation justified. It must, however, be counted for righteousness to Purver that he translated the New Testament from 'that printed by Wetsten, at Amsterdam, 1711' (sic for 1751), of which more below. Compare also The New Testament translated according to the Present Idiom of the English Tongue,' by the Rev. John Worsley (died 1767), published in 1770.

1 Dr. John Taylor (of Norwich, afterwards Principal of the Warrington Academy), issued in 1751 his proposals for publishing the Hebrew Concordance on which he had been engaged for more than thirteen years; and its appearance in 1754 gave a further impulse to Old Testament study, as it served the purpose of a Lexicon as well.

Church, shall be undertaken." Kennicott, prompted by Lowth and encouraged by Secker, was at work on the collation of MSS. of the Old Testament.2 Blayney prepared for the Clarendon Press a very careful edition of the Authorised Version, with improved punctuation and spelling, and followed Lowth's Isaiah with a new translation of Jeremiah. Durell, the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, issued in 1763 a monograph of a type afterwards more familiar in Germany than in this country : while in the preface to his Critical Remarks on Job, Psalms, etc., 1772, he pleaded for a new translation of the Bible. Two notable essays in the last quarter of the century summed up the state of British learning on the Old Testament, the Preliminary Dissertation prefixed by Bishop Lowth to his New Translation of Isaiah, 1778, and the Prospectus of a New Translation of the Holy Bible, from corrected texts of the Originals, compared with the ancient Versions, issued by the learned Scotch Roman Catholic Priest, Dr. Geddes, at Glasgow, in 1786.

1 Preliminary Dissertation, prefixed to his Isaiah, 11th ed., 1835, p. xlviii. *See his Ten Annual Accounts, etc.; the total sum raised in aid of his enterprise amounted to £9117 7s. 6d. He cannot repress a burst of admiration (p. 171): 'Reader! what a sum is here! Let Foreign Nations read, with astonishment, this story of Britons and their KING.'

The Hebrew Texts of the Parallel Prophecies of Jacob and Moses relating to the Twelve Tribes, with a Translation and Notes, and the Various Sections of near Forty MSS., to which are added the Samaritan-Arabic Version of those Passages, and part of another Arabic Version made from the Samaritan Text, etc.

*The first of a series of renderings of the prophetical books, to which Bishop Newcombe (better known by his labours on the New Testament), contributed a version of the Minor Prophets.

Both of these distinguished scholars dwelt on the obvious corruption of the Hebrew text in many places. The Bishop pointed to errors arising from the confusion of similar letters, their accidental transposition or omission, causes of error which affected not letters only, but even words and clauses. Geddes looked for the means of correction to the various readings of Hebrew Manuscripts, to the occasional occurrence of parallel passages within the Old Testament itself,1 to quotations made by Jewish or Christian writers; and both scholars laid great stress on the aid to be derived from the versions, while they further defended occasional recourse to conjectural emendation. These were the methods which had been applied to the classical texts, why should they be withheld from the Bible ? 2

1 Such are, for instance, Is. 224 and Mic. 414; Ps. 18 and 2 Sam. 22; 2 Kings 1813-20 and Is. 36-39.

This plea is urged with great force by both writers: thus Lowth says (p. xliii.) The copies of the Holy Scriptures being then subject, like all other ancient writings, to mistakes arising from the unskilfulness or inattention of transcribers, a plain matter of fact which cannot be denied, and needs not be palliated; it is to be considered what remedy can be applied in this case .. ? Now the case being the same, the method which has been used with good effect in correcting the ancient Greek and Latin authors, ought in all reason to be applied to the Hebrew writings. At the revival of letters, critics and editors, finding the Greek and Latin authors full of mistakes, set about correcting them, by procuring different copies, and the best that they could meet with; these they compared together, and the mistakes not being the same in all, one copy corrected another; and thus they easily got rid of such errors as had not yet obtained possession in all the copies, and generally the more copies they had to compare, the more errors were corrected, and the more perfect the text was rendered.'

Similarly Geddes opens fire at once (p. 2), 'It is an assertion no less strange than true, that the text of scarcely any profane author of note has been so incorrectly published as that of the Hebrew Scriptures. To restore

There was, indeed, one grave difficulty; 'the oldest of the Hebrew MSS. now known,' said Lowth, 'does not come within many centuries of the times of the several authors, not nearer than about fourteen centuries to the age of Ezra, one of the latest of them, who is supposed to have revised the books of the Old Testament then extant, and to have reduced them to a perfect and correct standard.'

Modern scholarship does not justify this view of Ezra's critical activity; but it confirms the Bishop's lament concerning the late date of the only available manuscripts. The laborious collations of Kennicott1

Demosthenes, Tully, Virgil, Horace, as nearly as possible to their first integrity, no human pains have been spared; libraries have been ransacked, MSS. collated, parallel places compared, history, geography, criticism alternately called in to assistance. Why were not the same pains taken, and the same means employed, to give a correct edition of the Bible?' Geddes concludes (p. 147) with a charming vision of inter-ecclesiastical fellowship in Biblical enterprise which was to be realised a century later in this country by the Revisers (though Dr. Newman declined any share in the undertaking): 'It is from the united studies of the learned of all communions, that we can ever hope to bring the Scriptures to that degree of purity and perfection of which they are yet susceptible; and it is with infinite pleasure we perceive that the learned themselves begin to be of this sentiment. The labours of a Houbigant, a Villhoison, a Georgi, and a Rossi are as much prized at London, Leipsick and Gottengen, as those of a Lowth, a Kennicott, and a Michaelis are at Paris, Parma, and Rome: and if the present taste for Oriental learning continue to be diffused, we may soon look for, at least, as perfect and impartial editions and translations of the Hebrew classics, as we already have of the Greek and Latin.' This could not, alas, have been written in the first half of the nineteenth century! A useful indicator of the Biblical work of this period will be found in Dr. Henry Cotton's List of Editions of the Bible and Parts thereof in English from 1505 to 1820, Oxford, 1821. The list in Bishop Newcome's Historical View of the English Biblical Translations; the Expediency of revising by authority the present Translation, and the means of executing such a Revision (Dublin, 1792), is very imperfect.

1 His great Hebrew Bible was published in two vols., 1776-80. He had collated in all 581 MSS., but only 102 comprised the Old Testament complete.