Hallam remarks that the Authorized Version of the Bible is not in the
language of the time of James the First: that it is not the English of
Raleigh or of Bacon. Here arises the question whether Raleigh and Bacon are
the true expositors of the language of their time; and whether they were
not rather the incipient promoters of a change which was successfully
resisted by--among other things--the Authorized Version of the Testaments.
I am not prepared to concede that I should have given to the English which
would have been fashioned upon that of Bacon by imitators, such as they
usually are, the admiration which is forced from me by Bacon's English from
Bacon's pen. On this point we have a notable parallel. Samuel Johnson {328}
commands our admiration, at least in his matured style: but we nauseate his
followers. It is an opinion of mine that the works of the leading writers
of an age are seldom the proper specimens of the language of their day,
when that language is in its state of progression. I judge of a language by
the colloquial idiom of educated men: that is, I take this to be the best
medium between the extreme cases of one who is ignorant of grammar and one
who is perched upon a style. Dialogue is what I want to judge by, and plain
dialogue: so I choose Robert Recorde[609] and his pupil in the _Castle of
Knowledge_, written before 1556. When Dr. Robert gets into his altitudes of
instruction, he differs from his own common phraseology as much as probably
did Bacon when he wrote morals and philosophy. But every now and then I
come to a little plain talk about a common thing, of which I propose to
show a specimen. Anything can be made to look old by such changes as
_makes_ into _maketh_, with a little old spelling. I shall invert these
changes, using the newer form of inflexion, and the modern spelling: with
no other variation whatever.
"_Scholar._ Yet the reason of that is easy enough to be conceived, for when
the day is at the longest the Sun must needs shine the more time, and so
must it needs shine the less time when the day is at the shortest: this
reason I have heard many men declare.
_Master._ That may be called a crabbed reason, for it {329} goes backward
like a crab. The day makes not the Sun to shine, but the Sun shining makes
the day. And so the length of the day makes not the Sun to shine long,
neither the shortness of the day causes not [_sic_] the Sun to shine the
lesser time, but contrariwise the long shining of the Sun makes the long
day, and the short shining of the Sun makes the lesser day: else answer me
what makes the days long or short?
_Scholar._ I have heard wise men say that Summer makes the long days, and
Winter makes the long nights.
_Master._ They might have said more wisely, that long days make summer and
short days make winter.
_Scholar._ Why, all that seems one thing to me.
_Master._ Is it all one to say, God made the earth, and the earth made God?
Covetousness overcomes all men, and all men overcome covetousness?
_Scholar._ No, not so; for here the effect is turned to be the cause, and
the agent is made the patient.
_Master._ So is it to say Summer makes long days, when you should say: Long
days make summer.
_Scholar._ I perceive it now: but I was so blinded with the vulgar error,
that if you had demanded of me further what did make the summer, I had been
like to have answered that green leaves do make summer; and the sooner by
remembrance of an old saying that a year should come in which the summer
should not be known but by the green leaves.
_Master._ Yet this saying does not import that green leaves do make summer,
but that they betoken summer; so are they the sign and not the cause of
summer."
I have taken a whole page of our author, without omission, that the reader
may see that I do not pick out sentences convenient for my purpose. I have
done nothing but alter the third person of the verb and the spelling: but
great is the effect thereof. We say "the Sun shining makes the day";
Recorde, "the Sonne shynynge maketh the daye." {330} These points apart, we
see a resemblance between our English and that of three hundred years ago,
in the common talk of educated persons, which will allow us to affirm that
the language of the authorized Bible must have been very close to that of
its time. For I cannot admit that much change can have taken place in fifty
years: and the language of the version represents both our common English
and that of Recorde with very close approximation. Take sentences from
Bacon and Raleigh, and it will be apparent that these writers will be held
to differ from all three, Recorde, the version, and ourselves, by
differences of the same character. But we speak of Recorde's conversation,
and of our own. We conclude that it is the plain and almost colloquial
character of the Authorized Version which distinguishes it from the English
of Bacon and Raleigh, by approximating it to the common idiom of the time.
If any one will cast an eye upon the letters of instruction written by
Cecil[610] and the Bishop of London to the translators themselves, or to
the general directions sent to them in the King's name, he will find that
these plain business compositions differ from the English of Bacon and
Raleigh by the same sort of differences which distinguish the version
itself.