under God, is the immediate author of their true Happiness." The King's great reverence for the Scriptures is abundantly evidenced by that little tractate of his the Basilikon Doron- not written for publication (though surreptitiously laid hold of by the book-makers) but intended for the private guidance of his eldest son, Prince Henry, in that time heir to the throne. The little book shows large theologic discretions; and-saving some scornings of the "vaine, Pharisaicall Puritaines " is written in a spirit which might be safely commended to later British Princes.

"When yee reade the Scripture [says the King] reade it with a sanctified and chast hart; admire reverentlie such obscure places as ye understand not, blaming only your own capacitie; reade with delight the plaine places, and study carefully to understand those that are somewhat difficile: preasse to be a good textuare; for the Scripture is ever the best interpreter of itselfe."

Some forty odd competent men were set out from the universities and elsewheres for the work of the Bible revision. Yet they saw none of King James' money, none from the royal exchequer ; which indeed from the King's disorderly extrava

gances, that helped nobody, was always lamentably low. The revisers got their rations, when they came together in conference, in Commons Hall, or where and when they could; and only at the last did some few of them who were engaged in the final work of proof-reading, get a stipend of some thirty shillings a week from that fraternity of bookmakers who were concerned with the printing and selling of the new Bible.

When the business of revision actually commenced it is hard to determine accurately; but it was not till the year 1611-eight years after the Hampton Conference - that an edition was published by printer Barker (who, or whose company, was very zealous about the matter, it being a fat job for him) and so presently, under name of King James' version "appointed (by assemblage of Bishops) to be read in churches," it came to be the great Bible of the English-speaking world- then, and thence-forward. ty men who dealt so wisely and sparingly with the old translators; who came to their offices of revision with so tender a reverence, and who put such nervous, masculine, clear-cut English into their

And now, who were the for

own emendations of this book as to leave it a monument of Literature? Their names are all of record: and yet if I were to print them, the average reader would not recognize, I think, a single one out of the twoscore.* You would not find Bacon's name, who, not far from this time was writing some of his noblest essays, and also writing (on the King's suggestion) about preaching and Church management. You would not find the name of William Camden, who was then at the mellow age of sixty, and of a rare reputation for learning and for dignity of character. You would not find the name of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who though writing much of religious intention, was deistically inclined; nor of Robert Burton, churchman, and author of that famous book The Anatomy of Melan

Among the more important names were those of Bishop Andrewes (of Winchester, friend of Herbert, and Dr. Donne) - famous for his oriental knowledges: Bedwell (of Tottingham), a distinguished Arabic scholar: Sir Henry Savile, a very learned layman, and warden of Merton College: Rainolds, representing the Puritan wing of the Church, and President of Corpus Christi, Oxford; and Chaderton, Master of Emmanuel, and representing the same wing of the Church from Cambridge.

choly then in his early prime; nor of Sir Walter Raleigh, nor of Sir Thomas Overbury - both now at the date of their best powers; nor yet would one find mention of John Donne,* though he came to be Dean of St. Paul's and wrote poems the reader may- and ought to know; nor, yet again, is there any hearing of Sir John Davies, who had commended himself specially to King James, and who had written poetically and reverently on the Immortality of the Soul† in strains that warrant our citing a few quatrains:

"At first, her mother Earth she holdeth dear,

And doth embrace the world and worldly things:
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestial wings.

"Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught
That with her heavenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be:

* John Donne, son of a London merchant, b. 1573, and d. 1631. There is a charming life of him by Izaak Walton, The Grosart edition of his writings is fullest and best.

From his poem of Nosce Teipsum, published in 1599. John Davies b. in Wiltshire about 1570, and d. 1626.

"For who, did ever yet, in honor, wealth,

Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health?

Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind?

"Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall,

Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay; She lights on that and this, and tasteth all,

But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away!"

This is a long aside; but it gives us good breath to go back to our translators, who if not known to the general reader, were educators or churchmen of rank; men of trained minds who put system and conscience and scholarship into their work. And their success in it, from a literary aspect only, shows how interfused in all cultivated minds of that day was a keen apprehension and warm appreciation of the prodigious range, and the structural niceties, and rhythmic forces of that now well-compacted English language which Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare, each in his turn, had published to the world, with brilliant illustration.

And will this old Bible of King James' version continue to be held in highest reverence? Speaking from a literary point of view - which is our