In closing this chapter I cannot refrain from remarking how great is the debt which Englishmen owe to the men, who laboured through many a month and year of hard and prayerful study, to produce the translations described. Few who read cheap Bibles and Testaments ever think of the toil and expense, the patience and prayer, devoted to the preparation of the Book which has now happily become so easily procurable. The business of these early translators was a heavy task. It was hard work to roll back the gates of the temple of truth-so long closed; to remove from the mouth of the well of living water the stones that covered it-so old and moss-grown. All honour to them for their pious toils! Let them have a place among our country's best benefactors. We will inscribe, even above the names of poets, patriots, soldiers, and statesmen, those of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Coverdale, and the rest; yet with no feeling of idolatry, but in a spirit akin to that of St. Paul, who, when speaking of those who rejoiced in his labours and success, devoutly acknowledged, “They glorified God in me.”

;

The persons engaged in the earlier period were not the great, the noble, the dignified in the world's estimation, but men for the most part poor, persecuted, and despised. Prouder names follow in the wake of these. "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in His presence."

There can be no reasonable doubt that the pre-eminence which distinguishes the history of England among the states of Europe for the last three hundred years is to be attributed

largely to the wide circulation of this volume, and the Biblereading habits of the people. It has proved a pillar of strength, bearing up and giving stability to public and private virtueto patriotism, loyalty, obedience, and domestic affection. It is a fountain of light and love, illuminating the intellect and purifying the heart-the true palladium of our liberties, our peace, and our prosperity.

YPOGRAPHY and bookbinding were matters regarded with much interest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The perfection of the art of printing as soon as it was invented has been noticed in a former chapter; and some early Bibles exhibit charming specimens of old English letters, sharply cut and carefully impressed upon thick, handsome paper. The binding was often worthy of the contents, embossed and gilded morocco being employed for the purpose. Black letter gave place to Roman before the end of the sixteenth century. The quarto Geneva Bibles and Testaments, printed upon thin paper and exhibiting rude woodcuts, did by no means equal in beauty their folio predecessors of the Coverdale and Great Bible class.

In the seventeenth century we meet with notices of handsome volumes, bound and ornamented for special purposes-for royal use, for service in parish churches, and for commemorating private friendship. Illustrations are at hand on all three points; and as they are presented they suggest

pictures, not only of persons and incidents with which they are immediately connected, but of family groups in episcopal palaces, baronial halls and chambers, of rich citizens gathered round tall folios in rich covers, lying on windowseats, beneath the light of sun-rays beaming through manycoloured panes.

Notes are preserved of costly charges expended on royal copies. In a bookbinder's bill for his majesty King James's Chapel there are the following items: "1619, three large church Bibles, gilded, with silk strings, £9. Two Bibles for his majesty's use, fair gilded, with silk strings, £8." Considering the value of money at that time, we have evidence of the ornate description of these royal volumes.* Another account shows that less was expended on books intended for the royal family. The charge for binding a large Bible in folio, for the Lady Elizabeth-afterwards the ill-fated Palatine Electress and Bohemian Queen-was only the modest amount of thirty shillings.+

Bishop Laud, on a Rochester visitation, 1634, inquired into the state of church furniture in his diocese, and one of the answers is to this effect: "For our church books we conceive that no church in England hath newer or fairer; for our great church Bible, and all our service books being bought not above one year since, or little more, and all our prick song-books have been pricked out new and true, and fairly bound, within the same time, to the great charge of the Church." t

A splendid edition was issued in 1638 by the famous printers Buck and Daniel. Sir Matthew Hale left Richard Baxter forty shillings in token of his love. With the forty shillings, he says, "I purchased the largest Cambridge Bible, * Report of Hist. Mss. Com. vol. iv. p. 311. + Ibid., p. 282. Ibid., p. 146.

and put his picture before it, as a monument to my house. But waiting for my own death, I gave it to Sir William Ellis, who laid out about ten pounds to put it into a more curious cover and keep it for a monument in his honour." A shrewd observer of manners and habits tells of a lady in Edinburgh, who had fallen into poorer circumstances, and lived in a room on the highest stair of Covenant Close, that she never read a chapter, except out of a Cambridge Bible printed by Daniel, and bound in embroidered velvet."

These are trifles not without interest; and there may be added to them another notice of the fact already mentioned that the printing of the Bible was a monopoly-a circumstance which repressed private enterprise, but which some adventurous people sought to evade by getting the Scriptures printed abroad, and then importing them for home circulation. An entry in the calendar of the House of Lords brings to light a case of this kind, and the consequent trouble in which the invader of the patent involved himself.

“1640. January 15, petition of Thomas Cowper. Some years since petitioner imported 850 Bibles, 2,000 prayer-books, and 750 psalm-books, of the orthodox translation, which were seized at the Custom House and placed in the custody of the registrar of the High Commission Court. Petitioner has taken steps to recover possession-prays that in order the books may not be lost they may be removed to a room which he has hired, near the parliament-house, of which he shall have one key, and some officer of the House another."+

A more important matter is brought to light in the Report of the Historical MSS. Commission. The library of Trinity College, Dublin, contains an English version of the Bible by * Baxter's Works, vol. i. p. 337. Scott's Redgauntlet. Eadie, vol. ii. p. 296. + House of Lords Calendar; Report of Hist. мss. Com., vol. iv. p. 40.