III. HISTORY. explicit or intelligible or consistent with Cover- CHAP. dale's aims; but his critics have been importu- INTERNAL nately eager to exalt his scholarship at the cost of his honesty. If the title-page, said one who had not seen it, runs so, 'it contains a very great 'misrepresentation". To another the notice appears to be a piece of advertising tact. Expediency, a third supposes, led Coverdale to underrate his labours. And yet it may be readily shewn that the words are simply and literally true. Coverdale certainly had some knowledge of Hebrew by which he was guided at times in selecting his rendering; but in the main his version is based on the Swiss-German version of Zwingli and Leo 1 Whittaker, Historical Inquiry, p. 59 n. In support of this bold statement Dr Whittaker quotes four passages from Coverdale (pp. 52 ff.), and compares them with all the versions which, as he affirms, he could have consulted. As Coverdale differs from these, he is pronounced to have translated 'from 'the Hebrew and from nothing ‘else' (p. 50). Unhappily Dr Whittaker was not acquainted with the German-Swiss Version -a sufficiently famous bookfrom which they are all rendered. Ex. xxxiv. 30: Num. x. 31: Is. lvii. 5: Dan. iii. 25. [Since this CHAP. Juda, Zurich (1524-9, 1539, &c.), and on the Latin III. INTERNAL HISTORY. Coverdale's translation of Pagninus. He måde use also of Luther and the Vulgate. His fifth version may have been the Worms German Bible of 1529, or the Latin Bible of Rudelius with marginal renderings from the Hebrew (1527, 1529), or (as is most likely), for he does not specify that his 'five interpreters' are all Latin or German, the published English translations of Tyndale to which he elsewhere refers. The examination of a few chapters will place of Malachi. the primary dependence of Coverdale in the Old Testament on the Zurich Bible beyond all doubt. Thus in the four short chapters of Malachi there are about five-and-twenty places where he follows the German against the Hebrew and Vulgate. Three sample instances may be quoted. In i. 4, it is said they shall be called The border of 'wickedness,' in the Hebrew and Latin as in the Authorised Version, but in Coverdale 'A cursed 'land,' a literal translation of the German. Again in i. 13, 'it is weariness to me,' a single word, but in Coverdale and the German we read it is but 'labour and travail. Once again in iii. 8, 'will a 'man rob God?' is represented in Coverdale and the German by 'should a man use falsehood and deceit 'with God?' And such coincidences occur not in III. HISTORY. one book only but throughout the Old Testament'. CHAP. But at the same time on rare occasions Coverdale INTERNAL prefers to follow some one of the other translations which he consulted. Thus in two passages, ii. 3; 14, 15, of which the latter is a very remarkable one, he adopts the renderings of Pagninus and Luther in preference to those of the Zurich Bible. It is not therefore surprising that notwithstand- General character of ing his acknowledged partiality for the German his Bible. translators, Coverdale availed himself freely of the work of Tyndale as far as it was published, the Pentateuch, Jonah, and the New Testament3. His Pentateuch may, indeed, unless a partial examination has misled me, be fairly described as the Zurich translation rendered into English by the help of Tyndale, with constant reference to Luther, Pagninus and the Vulgate. In the remaining · books of the Old Testament the influence of the III. CHAP. Zurich Bible greatly preponderates'. In the Apo- His New a revision merits as a The New Testament is a very favourable specimen of his labour. Its basis is Tyndale's first edition, but this he very carefully revised by the help of the second edition' and yet more by the German. Thus on a rough calculation of changes, not simply of form or rhythm, more than threefourths of the emendations introduced by Coverdale into Tyndale's version of 1 John are derived from Luther, but the whole number of changes, and they are nearly all verbal, is, if I have counted rightly, only a hundred and twenty-three. Coverdale's Thus the claims of Coverdale, as far as his dest limits which he fixed himself. But though III. HISTORY. instinct of discrimination which is scarcely less CHAP. precious than originality, and a delicacy of ear INTERNAL which is no mean qualification for a popular translator. It would be an interesting work to note the subtle changes of order and turns of expression which we owe to him. In the epistle from which most of our illustrations have been taken 'the pride of life' and 'the world passeth away,' are immeasurable improvements on Tyndale's 'the 'pride of goods,' and 'the world vanisheth away;' and the rendering 'shutteth up his heart,' (due to Luther) is as much more vigorous than Tyndale's 'shutteth up his compassion' as it is more touching than the strange combination of the Authorised Version 'shutteth up his bowels of compassion.' Coverdale has a tendency to diffuseness, which in some places (as Ecclus. xliv.) leads him to long paraphrases of his text. The fault is one from which the Zurich Bible also suffers, and he may have fallen into it from imitating the style of his model too closely even when he abandoned its words. But his phrasing is nearly always rich and melodious. The general character of his version as compared with that of Tyndale may be very fairly represented by that of the Prayer Book |