CHAPTER IX.

MISCELLANEOUS PROSE PIECES.

I. THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

THE publication of the English translation of the Bible, with the permission for its free use among the people, was accomplished in the year 1536, in the reign of Henry VIII. Before the Reformation two versions existed of the Bible in English,-two, certainly; perhaps, three. One was Wycliffe's; another, based on Wycliffe's, but tinted more strongly with the peculiar opinions of the Lollards, followed at the beginning of the fifteenth century; and there is said to have been a third, but no copy of this is known to survive, and the history of it is vague. The possession or the use of these translations was prohibited by the Church, under pain of death. They were extremely rare and little read; and it was not till Luther's great movement began in Germany, and his tracts and commentaries found their way into England, that a practical determination was awakened among the people to have before them, in their own tongue, the book on which their faith was built.

A person named William Tyndal felt his heart burn in him to accomplish this great work for his country; applied for assistance to a learned bishop, discovered rapidly that the assistance which he would receive from the Church authorities would be a speedy elevation to martyrdom, went across the Channel to Luther, and thence to Antwerp; and there, in the year 1526, achieved and printed the first edition of the New Testament. Copies were carried over secretly to London, and circu

lated in thousands by the Christian Brothers. The council threatened; the bishops anathematised. They opened subscriptions to buy up the hated and dreaded volumes. They burnt them publicly in St. Paul's. The whip, the gaol, the stake did their worst, and their worst was nothing. Three editions were sold before 1530, and in that year a fresh instalment was completed. The Pentateuch was added to the New Testament; and afterwards, by Tyndal himself or under Tyndal's eyes, the Historical Books, the Psalms and Prophets. At length the whole canon was translated, and published in separate portions.

All these were condemned with equal emphasis-all continued to spread. The progress of the evil had, in 1531, become so considerable as to be the subject of an anxious protest to the Crown from the episcopal bench. They complained of the translations as inaccurate,-of unbecoming reflections on themselves in the prefaces and side-notes. They required stronger powers of repression, more frequent holocausts, a more efficient inquisitorial police. In Henry's reply they found that the waters of their life were poisoned at the spring. The king, too, was infected with the madness. The king would have the Bible in English; and directed them, if the translation was unsound, to prepare a better translation without delay. But the bishops remained for several years inactive, and at length the king's patience was exhausted. The legitimate methods having been tried in vain, he acted on his own responsibility. Miles Coverdale silently went abroad with a license from the Crown, with Tyndal's help, collected and edited the scattered portions, and in 1536 there appeared in London, published under authority and dedicated to Henry VIII., the first complete copy of the English Bible. The fountain of the new opinions -so long dreaded, so long execrated-was thenceforth to lie open in every church in England; and the clergy were ordered not to permit only, but to encourage all men to resort to it and read.-Froude.

II.-STUDY.

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. The chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by duty; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them: for they teach not their own use, but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted; not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that should be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sorts of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not.-Bacon.

III.-ADVANTAGES OF A CLASSICAL EDUCATION. A READER unacquainted with the real nature of a classical education, will be in danger of undervaluing it, when he sees that so large a portion of time at so important a period of human life is devoted to the study of a few ancient writers, whose works seem to have no direct bearing on the studies and duties of our own generation. For instance, although some provision is undoubtedly made at Rugby for acquiring a knowledge of modern history, yet the History of Greece and Rome is more studied than that of France and England; and Homer and Virgil are certainly much more attended to than Shakespeare and Milton. This appears to many persons a great absurdity; while others, who are so far swayed by authority as to believe the system to be right, are yet unable to understand how it can be so.

It may be freely confessed that the first origin of classical education affords in itself no reasons for its being continued now. When Latin and Greek were almost the only written languages of civilized man, it is manifest that they must have furnished the subjects of all liberal education. The question therefore is wholly changed, since the growth of a complete literature in other languages; since France, and Italy, and Germany, and England have each produced their philosophers, their poets, and their historians, worthy to be placed on the same level with those of Greece and Rome.

But although there is not the same reason now which existed three or four centuries ago, for the study of Greek and Roman literature, yet there is another no less substantial. Expel Greek and Latin from your schools, and you confine the views of the existing generation to themselves and their immediate predecessors; you will cut off so many centuries of the world's experience, and place us in the same state as if the human race had first come into existence in the year 1500. For it is nothing to say that a few learned individuals might still study classical literature; the effect produced on the public mind

would be no greater than that which has resulted from the labours of our oriental scholars; it would not spread beyond themselves, and men in general, after a few generations, would know as little of Greece and Rome, as they do actually of China and Hindostan. But such an ignorance would be incalculably more to be regretted. With the Asiatic mind we have no nearer connexion and sympathy than is derived from our common humanity. But the mind of the Greek and of the Roman is in all the essential points of its constitution our own; and not only so, but it is our mind developed to an extraordinary degree of perfection. Wide as is the difference between us with respect to those physical instruments which minister to our uses or our pleasures; although the Greeks and Romans had no steam-engines, no printing presses, no mariner's compass, no telescopes, no microscopes, no gunpowder; yet in our moral and political views, in those matters which most determine human character, there is a perfect resemblance in these respects. Aristotle, and Plato, and Thucydides, and Cicero, and Tacitus, are most untruly called ancient writers; they are virtually our own countrymen and contemporaries, but have the advantage which is enjoyed by intelligent travellers, that their observation has been exercised in a field out of the reach of common men; and that having thus seen in a manner with our eyes what we cannot see for ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear upon our own circumstances, while their information has all the charm of novelty, and all the value of a mass of new and pertinent facts, illustrative of the great science of the nature of civilized man.

Now when it is said, that men in manhood so often throw their Greek and Latin aside, and that this very fact shows the uselessness of their early studies, it is much more true to say that it shows how completely the literature of Greece and Rome would be forgotten, if our system of education did not keep up the knowledge of it. But it by no means shows that system to be useless, unless it followed that, when a man laid aside his Greek and Latin books, he forgot also that he had ever gained