THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. A General View of the History of the English Bible. By Brooke Foss Westcott, B.D., &c. London and Cambridge, 1868.

2. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books; in the Earliest English Versions made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his followers. Edited by the Rev. J. Forshall, F.R.S., &c., and Sir Frederick Madden, K.H., F.R.S., &c. Oxford, 1850.

3. On the Authorized Version of the New Testament, in connexion with some recent Proposals for its Revision. By Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D., Dean of Westminster. London, 1859.

IT

T is not creditable to the scholarship of this country that, until within the last few years, so little was done towards a thorough investigation of the external history of the English Bible, and that its internal history was suffered to remain almost unknown. It could not have been that the subject was devoid of interest or importance. To the Bible we owe most that ennobles us; and the story of our English Version is interwoven with the rise and progress of our civil and religious liberties, and with the establishment and consolidation of our Protestant Constitution. It is intimately associated also with the lives and labours of the greatest and best of England's worthies. Patriotism, apart from other considerations, ought to have made the history of the Book dear to us; and it is almost a national reproach that it has been so long neglected, and that even yet, in the works of our standard modern historians, such as Hallam and Froude, blunders are perpetuated on points which ought to be familiar to every educated Englishman. We are glad, therefore, to welcome the advent of a new era, and to give our meed of praise to Canon Westcott, and to the learned editors of Wycliffe's Bible, who have so propitiously opened the way for what we trust will eventually prove a complete elucidation of the origin and history of the English translations of the Bible, and a systematic critical examination Vol. 128.-No. 256.

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of the sources, claims, and defects, of our Authorized Version,with a special view to a judicious and scholarly revision.

The earliest notice hitherto discovered of a translation of any portion of the Sacred Scriptures into Anglo-Saxon is in the seventh century. Towards the close of that century there lived in the Convent of Streaneshalch (Whitby) a monk called Cædmon, the father of English poetry. He exercised his poetical powers chiefly in composing a version of the narratives of the creation, the Exodus, and the Incarnation and Passion of our Lord.* The poem has nothing of the character of an accurate translation, though a few detached passages of Scripture are rendered with tolerable fidelity. About the same period, or perhaps a few years later, Guthlac, or Gurthlake, the first Saxon Anchorite, wrote a Version of the Psalms' in Anglo-Saxon, which, it has been conjectured, is that found between the lines of a very ancient Roman 'Psalter' now among the Cottonian Manuscripts of the British Museum.† Baber says of the MS. that, it has well-grounded pretension to be one of the books which Pope Gregory the Great sent to Augustin, first Archbishop of Canterbury, soom after his arrival in England.' The fact that it is a Roman 'Psalter' confirms this view; for, while the Roman was introduced in Canterbury, the Gallican was used in other parts of England.

About the year 706, Aldhelm, § Bishop of Sherborn, translated the Psalter.' He was among the first of the Saxon ecclesiastics who was distinguished for learning. In his treatise 'De Laudibus Virginitatis' he praises certain nuns for their daily study of the Holy Scriptures, a fact which seems to indicate that there was then extant a vernacular translation of the Bible. The Anglo-Saxon version, discovered in the Royal Library at Paris about the beginning of the present century, has been supposed. to be, at least in part, Aldhelm's production. The first fifty Psalms are in prose, the others in verse.'||

Twenty-six years after the death of Aldhelm the Venerable.

Bede, Hist. Ec.' xxiv. A manuscript of the poem was given by Archbishop Usher to Francis Junius, a learned Dutchman, who published it at Amsterdam in 1655. A new edition was printed in 1832, under the editorial care of Mr. Benjamin Thorpe.

† Vesp. A. 1. It was edited for the Suretes Society by Rev. J. Stevenson, in the Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter.' 1843.

Account of the Saxon and English Versions of the Scriptures, prefixed to Wycliffe's New Testament,' p. lviii.

§ Also written Adhelm and Ealdhelm. He was educated in Kent, under Adrian, the emissary of the Pontiff Vitalian, and was for a time Abbot of Malmesbury.

Wycliffe's 'Bible,' Preface, p. i. This interesting relic of Anglo-Saxon literature was published at Oxford in 1835, by Mr. Thorpe (Liber Psalmorum Vers. Ant. Lat.,' &c.)

Bede

Bede translated another portion of Scripture into his native language. The story of its completion is told by St. Cuthbert. At that period there stood on the south bank of the Tyne, a little to the west of the modern town of South Shields, a monastery called Jarrow. The surrounding country was then thinly peopled. The river flowed silently between wooded banks and long reaches of moorland, past the towers of the Roman Wall and the cliffs of Tynemouth. On the evening of the 26th of May, 735--Ascension Day, as St. Cuthbert informs us-an unusual stillness pervaded the sacred retreat. The monks spoke in anxious whispers. On a low bed in one of the cells lay an aged priest. His wasted frame and sunken eye told that death was near. His breathing was slow and laboured. Near him sat a young scribe, with an open scroll and a pen in his hand. Looking with affectionate tenderness in the face of the dying man, he said, 'Now, dearest Master, there remains only one chapter; but the exertion is too great for you.' 'It is easy, my son, it is easy,' he replied; 'take your pen, write quickly; I know not how soon my Maker will take me.' Sentence after sentence was uttered in feeble accents, and written by the scribe. Again there was a long pause. Nature seemed exhausted. Again the boy spoke:Dear Master, only one sentence is wanting.' It, too, was pronounced slowly and painfully. It is finished,' said the scribe. 'It is finished,' repeated the dying saint; and then added: Lift up my head. Place me in the spot where I have been accustomed to pray.' With tender care he was placed as he desired. Then, clasping his hands, and lifting his eyes heavenward, he exclaimed, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;' and with the last word his spirit passed away. Thus died the Venerable Bede; and thus was completed the first Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of St. John.*

Bede also translated the Lord's Prayer, and apparently the Psalter, with other select portions of Holy Scripture, to which he added glosses and comments for the use of both clergy and people. None of these works, however, are now extant.

His

In the ninth century Alfred the Great placed an Anglo-Saxon version of the Ten Commandments, With such of the Mosaic injunctions in the three following chapters of Exodus, as were most to his purpose,' at the head of his Code of Laws. biographer tells us it was the desire of this good monarch that 'All the free-born youth of his kingdom should be able to read the English Scriptures.' Towards the close of his reign he

began a translation of the Psalms,* but did not live to complete it.†

Among the Cotton Manuscripts in the British Museum is a beautiful Latin copy of the Gospels, called 'The Durham Book.' It is said to have been written by Eadfrid, Bishop of Lindisfarne, in the seventh century. Two centuries later, Aldred, a priest, of Holy Isle, added an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. Another translation of the Gospels, apparently of the same age, and executed in the same way, the Anglo-Saxon words being written between the lines of the Latin text, is in the Bodleian Library, and is called the 'Rushworth Gloss.'§ It is so named because it was the property of a Mr. Rushworth. At the end of the volume are these words:-'Pray for Owun that this book glossed, and Farmen priest at Harewood.' The authors of the version thus give their names, but nothing farther is known of them.

The celebrated Anglo-Saxon scholar Elfric, who became Abbot of Peterborough in 1004, and Archbishop of York in 1023, translated considerable portions of the Bible, and wrote an abridgment of Old and New Testament history. His Biblical translations, including the greater part of the Pentateuch, and the books of Joshua, Judges, Job, Kings, and Esther, were published by Thwaites, from a MS. in the Bodleian, with the title Heptateuchus, Liber Job,' &c., Oxon. 1698. ||

The existence of so many different translations, made during one of the darkest periods of our country's history, shows that there must have been some desire on the part of a section of the English people to possess the Holy Scriptures in their own tongue; and that learned ecclesiastics were found willing to gratify them. It does not appear, however, that any of the above works had an extensive circulation. Some were evidently prepared for private use; others, perhaps, for a little circle of friends and associates; others for instruction in the public service of the church. To the people at large they were little known, and they had, therefore, little influence on the national mind. It is greatly to

Asser, Life of Alfred'; first published by Archbishop Parker in 1574; reprinted at Oxford, 1722; William of Malmesbury De Gest. Reg. Angl.'

It may be the same which was published, with the Latin interlineary text, in 1640, by John Spelman, under the title Psalterium Davidis Latino-Saxon. Vetus.' Similar glosses on the Psalter, the Lord's Prayer, the Book of Proverbs, and other portions of Scripture, exist in our public libraries. Some of them were published by the Surtees Society in 1840.

Nero, D. 4.

§ Rushworth, 3946.

His Scripture history was published by L'Isle in 1623, entitled 'A Saxon Treatise concerning the Old and New Testament;' and his other works, which illustrate the history of Holy Scripture during the Anglo-Saxon period, were edited by Mr. B. Thorpe for the Ælfric Society (2 vols. London, 1843-46).

be

be regretted that our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon translations should still be so very imperfect. No critical examination of the numerous and interesting Manuscripts contained in our public libraries has yet been made. The authorship and age of some of the most important are doubtful. Even over the life of Elfric much obscurity is thrown, owing to his being so generally confounded with Alfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1005. The Preface to Wycliffe's Bible is, upon this department, far too brief, and, in some respects, vague; the notices in the historical account prefixed to Bagster's 'Hexapla' are confused, and not always trustworthy; and the works edited by Mr. B. Thorpe are very unsatisfactory. A systematic description of the extant Anglo-Saxon translations, accompanied by a critical collation, is still a felt want in English Biblical Literature.

Soon after the Conquest an author called Orme wrote a paraphrase of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles in blank verse, which is now known as 'The Ormulum.' The MS. is in the Bodleian; and it was edited by Dr. White in 1852. In the same library is a large manuscript in Anglo-Norman, or English, containing a metrical summary of the leading events of Bible history, under the quaint name of Sowlehele, In Latyn tonge Salus Animae,' Its date is uncertain, but it may be ascribed to the 13th century. Towards the close of the same century a metrical version of the Psalms was made by an unknown author, and apparently circulated widely, as six copies of it are still extant. In the early part of the following century (cir. 1320) a translation of the entire Psalter in Latin and English, was written probably by William of Schorham, vicar of Chart-Sutton in Kent. It was intended for church service, as it contains the usual Canticles, with the Te Deum and the Athanasian Creed. In the middle of the 14th century Richard Rolle, better known as the Hermit of Hampole, wrote an English translation of the Book of Psalms with a Commentary. Many manuscript copies of it are in the public libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, and London; and their state proves that the work had not only been widely circulated, but repeatedly and carefully revised.§ In the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries numerous other fragments of English Psalters are preserved of the same or an earlier date. At first the Normans, when consolidating their new conquests, gave little thought to the Bible. Their invasion checked rather than advanced the progress of

* Bod. 779.

‡ Ibid., p. iv.

+ Preface, Wyc. 'Bible,' p. iii. note. It was published in Stevenson's AngloSaxon and Early English Psalter' (1843). § Preface, Wyc. Bible, p. iv.

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