CHAPTER XVII.

THE ENGLISH OF THE PRAYER BOOK-ITS LITERARY STYLE-THE PSALTER-COVERDALE.

OME few parts of the present Prayer Book date from the reign of James I., and a few from the final revision under Charles II.; but the main body of its contents represents the English of about the middle of the sixteenth century, and in some places, as we shall afterwards see, of a considerably earlier period.

In the Prayer Book Psalter we possess a noble monument of a diction characterised by an archaic stateliness, yet possessed withal of a singular freedom of movement. It abounds in happy turns of expression, and furnishes not a few examples of the tenderest grace and most delicate beauty. In point of time the Psalter, taken, as it was, from the Great Bible (of which editions appeared in 1539, 1540, and 1541), represents the earliest English of the Prayer Book. As regards minute accuracy, it is, as a translation, inferior to the Authorised Version; but on the whole the sense and spirit of the original is substantially and successfully conveyed. This splendid gift to England we owe to the native genius and painstaking labour of the sturdy Protestant, Myles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter.

In 1535 appeared Coverdale's great work, Biblia : The Bible, that is the Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and truly translated out of Douche [ie. German] and Latyn in to Englishe. In this Bible we have the original basis of our Prayer Book Psalter. But Coverdale was not quite satisfied with the outcome of his labours, and the result was numerous further corrections, which were embodied in the Psalter of what, from its size, was called the Great Bible (1539). Our present Prayer Book Psalter is thus (with certain exceptions to be afterwards noticed) Coverdale's original work as subsequently revised by himself.*

Though Coverdale was not unacquainted with Hebrew, he probably felt his deficiencies to be so considerable that he thought it wise to rely mainly on the previous labours of others. Mr. Westcott (now Bishop of Durham), writing in 1868,† says of Coverdale's Bible: "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 Juda (Zurich, 1524-9) and on the Latin of Pagninus. He also made use of Luther and the Vulgate." Mr. Westcott also makes plain that in his subsequent revision of his own work, Coverdale was much influenced by the Latin translation (1534-5) of another distinguished German scholar, Sebastian Münster. But while in endeavour

* Coverdale's Bible (1535) was the first complete printed Bible in the English tongue.

† A general view of the history of the English Bible, p. 213.

ing to reach the sense of the original, he made use of the labours of foreign scholars, the force, vivacity, and charm of the English rendering is entirely his own. Indeed, not only the version in the Prayer Book, but also that in the Authorised Version of the Bible, owes much to Coverdale, as is evident on a comparison of the latter with his work.

Mr. Westcott thus contrasts the Prayer Book Version with that in the English Bible: "Coverdale, like Luther and the Zurich translators [ie. Zwingli and Leo Juda], on whose model his style was formed, allowed himself considerable freedom in dealing with the shape of the original sentences. At one time a word is repeated to bring out the balance of the two clauses at another time the number is changed: at another time a fuller phrase is supplied for the simple copula, now a word is resolved; and again a particle, or an adverb, or a pronoun, or even an epithet is introduced for the sake of definiteness: there is in every part an endeavour to transfuse the spirit as well as the letter into the English rendering. The execution of the version undoubtedly falls far below the conception of it: the Authorised Version is in almost every case more correct: but still in idea and tone Coverdale's is as a whole superior, and furnishes a noble type of any future revision.”*

Another scholar of our time, the late Dr. Scrivener,

whom no one can justly accuse of any lack in appreciation of minute accuracy, in his account of the Authorised Version complains of "the prosaic tone of its version of the Psalms, which," he remarks, * p. 264.

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“however exact and elaborate, is so spiritless as to be willingly used by but few that are familiar with the version in the Book of Common Prayer, a recension which, though derived immediately from the Great Bible, is, in substance, the work of that consummate master of rhythmical prose Bishop Miles Coverdale."* If we understand by "prosaic tone" a lack of rhythmical balance and grace of diction, Dr. Scrivener's censure is not unjust; but it may be questioned whether in a rendering which sets before it precision and accuracy as the paramount consideration, there must not of necessity be a sacrifice in other directions. Nor can the work of a committee, whether dealing with prayers or the poetry of devotion, ever attain the formative unity of impulse that comes of a single mind and is essential to true poetry, whether in prose

or verse.

Mr. Earle has observed with good reason that "the beauty of Coverdale's translation must have counted for much with Cranmer and his associates in the institution of the monthly recital of the whole Psalter, and in reconciling congregations to the practice.Ӡ The same writer also remarks: "In this Psalter we take the English language at its happiest moment. The Psalter of 1539 is the mellowed product of the whole medieval period, and there is just enough of the influence of the New Learning perceptible in it to make us aware by what a hairbreadth's escape it stands apart from the ordinary modish type of

* The Authorised Edition of the English Bible, 1611, p. 139. + The Psalier of the Great Bible of 1539, edited by Rev. J. Earle, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford.

sixteenth century English." And again, the Psalter "is a choice example from the school of Tyndale and Coverdale and their companions. And as Tyndale took not new English, but an old and ripe and settled diction, such as was used by plain staid men in discoursing of serious matters, therefore his language belongs to the generation of those that taught him, and it carries us back some way into the fifteenth century. But while we recognise the strain from which it descends, we at the same time discover in it something of a new departure."* And certainly, without any deliberate or even conscious seeking on the part of Coverdale after an archaic style, such as is frequently apparent in modern devotional compositions, we may take it that there would have been an instinctive avoiding of language that was either trivial or new-fangled.+

Attention may here be called to an injustice done to Coverdale's Psalter by the neglect of the printers of the Prayer Book to indicate, as he had done, words and phrases which he embodied in his

+ The latest testimony to the merits of Coverdale's Psalter is from the pen of Professor Driver, the object of whose work, The Parallel Psalter, is to correct the inaccuracies —" inaccuracies which were unavoidable at the time" of Coverdale. Dr. Driver writes as follows: "Though made upwards of 360 years ago, it is still-save for occasional archaisms, to be noted presently-perfectly intelligible; its style is bold and vigorous, and at the same time singularly flowing and melodious; its phraseology, while thoroughly idiomatic, and of genuinely native growth, is dignified and chaste. Coverdale, it is evident, must have been a natural master of English style, and must have possessed a natural aptitude for finding felicitous turns of expression, and for casting them into harmonious and finely-rolling periods."-Parallel Psalter, Introduction, p. xxiv.