CHAPTER XVII. IN many intellectual and spiritual movements, while one man by his genius, persistence, or bravery towers above his fellows, another often stands by him, somewhat overshadowed by his greater height-second to him, but still essential to the final success of the enterprise. In such a relation stood Paul and Barnabas, Luther and Melanchthon, Calvin and Beza, Tyndale and Coverdale. The translation of the Bible was the chief end of Tyndale's existence. The purpose was his own, formed in his inmost soul, and in the intensity of a great and ardent nature it was inwrought like a subtle influence into all the fibres of his being, fostered apart from all minor pursuits with a "godly jealousy," and pressing into its service all learning and all time. He could not be wiled away from his work, except to interpret it and defend it, and he never relaxed from it till he was "carried whither he would not." His independence, decision, earnestness, and presentiment of martyrdom might seem to impart somewhat of hardness to his temperament, and the fruit might appear to hang on a leafless bough. There was, however, no sullenness about him, though he was alone among strangers that could not appreciate him; adversity had not embittered him; but his history and his mission shed a profound solemnity over him, and every word and act was viewed in the light of high principle, and of an eternity which he felt to be ever nearing him. Complimentary terms were beneath him, and his affectionate greetings, as those to Fryth, were without efflorescence. His sincerity did not garnish itself with cheap sentiment; his honesty did not robe itself in purple; his eye was single, and his aim was definite. To give his country a faithful and idiomatic version of the Divine Word, a true reflection of the inspired original, was his one labour; for it he lived, and for it he died a homeless, solitary exile and martyr. His successor, Coverdale, was a man fitted in all ways to act a secondary part. Loyal to truth and conscience, he was not characterized by mental independence. It was not his nature to cherish a self-born resolve, or act it out apart from advice and consultation. He liked to lean on some one; and while he was honest and persevering, he was singularly susceptible of impression and guidance. Tyndale never had a patron, but Coverdale, though he does not seem to have begged patronage, or to have ever abased himself in order to keep it, yet liked to nestle under it. The unctuous style of his time does not suffer in his hands, as when he tells Crumwell that "like Jacob, he has obtained the chief blessing;" and concludes, "farewell, thou ornament of learning and of counsels, and, in fine, of every virtue." His instinct was rather to follow than to discover the path of duty. He seems to have had little confidence in himself, but he had great faith in the judgment of others. ``He was afraid to take any momentous step till others had suggested it, or at least till he had taken counsel with them about it; but he set himself without hesitation to do his work when it had been clearly pointed out to him. He could not lead; he preferred to be led as friends directed, or circumstances seemed to warrant or indicate. While, in Tyndale's experience, duty became a divine necessity to which, at all hazards, he ever responded, Coverdale was advised and urged to the work of translation. He did not venture upon it as a competitor for fame, "not as a checker, not as a reprover or despiser of other men's translations," and he appears now and then to be on the point of offering an apology for engaging in it at all. "Now, for thy part, most gentle reader, take that I here offer thee with a good will, and let this present translation be no prejudice to the other that out of the Greek have been translated before, or shall be hereafter;" and in another allusion to Tyndale he adds, 1 Prologue to the New Testament of 1538. XVII.] TYNDALE AND COVERDALE. 253 "Notwithstanding, when I considered how great pity it was that we should want it so long, and called to my remembrance the adversity of those which were not only of ripe knowledge, but would also with all their hearts have performed that they had began, if they had not had impediment, considering, I say, that, by reason of their adversity, it could not so soon have been brought to an end as our most prosperous nation would fain have had it. . . . I was the more bold to take it in hand."1 He uniformly and repeatedly disclaimed all merit as the founder of the enterprise, confessing, however, to have felt the influence of one subsidiary motive, that as other nations were more plenteously provided with the Scriptures in "their mother tongue" than his own, he would do his best to supply the want.? Tyndale knew his powers, and put a high estimate on his translation, as a work of earnest industry and scholarship, and he could defend it with lofty spirit and sternness against such assailants as Sir Thomas More and George Joye. But Coverdale had no overweening estimate of the value of his labour, for his hope and prayer was that "if it was not worthily ministred, God shall send it in a better shape." In unaffected humility he was content if his version served only as a foundation "for another to build thereon," and he kept his word. So utterly unselfish was he that he worked heartily at a new edition intended to supersede his own. He had no gall in his nature; was not one of those men who consider a work to be ill done if they have not a chief share in the doing of it. He was far in spirit from another class who, if their own plot have little greenery, are compensated by the thought that a worm is twining itself round 1 Prologue to the Bible of 1535. 2 Before 1477 there had been four editions of the German Bible, and ten more followed within forty years. There had been an Italian Bible in 1471, and in about thirty years there were nine other editions. A French Bible appeared in 1487; Sweden, Denmark, Holland,Bohemia, and Poland had their Bibles at an early period. All that had been printed in England was Bishop Fisher's Exposition of the Seven Penitential Psalms. Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1509. the root of their neighbour's gourd. Tyndale sharply resented any attempt to tamper with his work, and claimed the sole power to amend it; but Coverdale, in the preface to his Diglott Testament, avows, "Yet, forasmuch as I am but a private man, and am obedient unto the higher powers, I refer the reformation and amendment thereof unto the same, and to such as excel in authority and knowledge." These words should scarcely have been written by a skilful and painstaking translator, conscious of doing his best in his very responsible task. Were we not assured of his honesty and simple-heartedness, we should regard him as guilty of wretched obsequiousness, when, after all his toil, patience, and prayers, he ends his royal dedication of his Bible by the morbid avowal, "I thought it my duty, and to belong unto my allegiance, when I had translated the Bible, not only to dedicate this translation unto your highness, but wholly to commit it unto the same, to the intent that, if anything therein be translated amiss, it may stand in your grace's hands to amend it, to improve it, yea, and clean to reject it, if your godly wisdom shall think it necessary." Though all this protestation is undoubtedly genuine, it indicates a marvellous facility of temperament, the absence of all self-reliance, a morbid proneness to self-depreciation, and a total want of ambition to be earliest in suggestion or first in progress. But he took his own place, and willingly filled it without envy, jealousy, or uncharitableness, and heartily did he welcome any coadjutor or successor. Provided the work was done, he did not covet identification with it, though he did not publish anonymously as did Tyndale at first. Tyndale would not have become a translator at all if he could not have rendered directly from the original texts; but Coverdale, with lowlier aim, scrupled not to confess on his first title-page that his Bible was "translated out of Douche and Latyn into Englishe." Tyndale's convictions were firm, and he was ever ruled by them; but Coverdale was so flexible as to say, "here the Hebrues begynnethe X Psalm,” and yet to mark the next Psalm as the tenth also, according to 1 Prologue to the New Testament, printed by Francis Regnault, 1838. 2" Improve," (improbo) to condemn or reject, as in his own version of 2 Tim. iv, 2, "improve, rebuke, exhort," and also in Tyndale. XVII.] COVERDALE. 255 the other numeration; and he could note, in reference to a portion of the fourteenth Psalm found in the Vulgate, "these thre verses are not in the Hebrue," and yet he puts them without hesitation into his text. In his professed translation of the Vulgate New Testament, he forsakes the form of the Lord's Prayer in St. Luke, and, unfaithful to his purpose as told on his title-page, he follows the Greek, but he admits the inconsistency in his Preface. In his Prologue he quietly accepted "Vulgarius" from a strange error of Erasmus,1 who gave Theophylact a name derived from his diocese of Bulgaria. Quaintly and earnestly he opens his soul to the reader: "If, when thou readest this or any other like book, thou chance to find any letter altered and changed, either in the Latin or English (for the turning of a letter is a fault soon committed in the print), then take thy pen and mend it, considering that thou art as much bound so to do as I am to correct all the rest." And the concluding words are the coinage of his heart: "And what edifying soever thou receivest at any man's hand, consider that it is no man's doing, but cometh even of the goodness of God, to whom only be praise and glory."2 Miles Coverdale was born about 1488 in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and probably in the district that gave him his own name, Cover-dale, which lay in what was called Richmondshire. Of his youth and early life nothing is known, though Hoker 3 describes him as " from his childhood given to learning, wherein he profited much." He was, at a fitting age, attached to the Convent of the Augustines at Cambridge, and, according to Tanner, was admitted in 1514 to priest's orders at Norwich by John, Bishop of Chalcedon. Barnes, who became Prior in 1523, at length espoused the reformed doctrines, and his influence brought many around him over to his views. 1 Erasmus who, in Latinizing his own Dutch name, had made two blunders, does not get very well out of the oversight of taking the geographical term for a proper name. His assertion that his MS. was all but illegible is said not to be fully borne out. Drummond's Erasmus, vol. I, pp. 315, 316. Prologue to the reader, Diglott. 3 Catalogue of the Bishops of Exeter. 4 This convent shared the fate of many similar establishments in 1539. |