But to return to the Bible—we mean the Bible of 1611, known as the Authorised Version, which J. A. Weisse tells us contains about 15,000 different words (i.e. the same number as used in the Shakespeare plays). It was translated by 48 men, whose names are known, and then handed to King James I. * It was printed about one and a half years later. In the Preface, which is evidently written by Bacon, we are told "we have not tyed ourselves to an uniformitie of phrasing, or to an identitie of words." This question of variety of expression is discussed in the Preface at considerable length (compare with Max Müller's references to Shakespeare's extraordinary variety of expression) and then we read: "Wee might also be charged... with some unequall dealing towards a great number of good English words... if we should say, as it were, unto certaine words, Stand up higher, have a place in the Bible alwaies, and to others of like qualitie, Get ye hence, be banished for ever." This means that an endeavour was made to insert all good English words into this new translation of the Bible, so that none might be deemed to be merely "secular."
* Note.—The forty-eight translators made use of "The
Bishops' Bible," but no copy of this work, on which appear
any annotations by the translators, can be discovered. See
Bishop Westcott's "History of the English Bible," 1905, p.
118.
Is it possible that any intelligent person can really read the Bible as a whole, not now a bit and now a scrap, but read it straight through like an ordinary book and fail to perceive that the majestic rhythm that runs through the whole cannot be the language of many writers, but must flow from the pen, or at least from the editorship, of one great master mind?
A confirmation of this statement that the Authorised Version of King James I. was edited by one masterhand is contained in the "Times" newspaper of March 22nd, 1912, where Archdeacon Westcott, writing about the Revised Version of 1881, says, the revisers "were men of notable learning and singular industry.... There were far too many of them; and successful literary results cannot be achieved by syndicates."
Yes, the Bible and Shakespeare embody the language of the great master, but before it could be so embodied, the English tongue had to be created, and it was for this great purpose that Bacon made his piteous appeals for funds to Bodley, to Burleigh, and to Queen Elizabeth.
Observe the great mass of splendid translations of the Classics (often second-hand from the French, as Plutarch's "Lives" by North) with which England was positively flooded at that period. Hitherto no writer seems to have called attention to the fact that certain of these translations were made from the French instead of from the original Greek or Latin, not because it was easier to take them from the French, but because in that way the new French words and, phrases were enabled to be introduced to enrich the English tongue. The sale of these translations could not possibly have paid any considerable portion of their cost.
Thus Bacon worked. Thus his books under all sorts of pseudonyms appeared. No book of the Elizabethan Age of any value proceeded from any source except from his workshop of those "good pens," over whom Ben Jonson was foreman.
In a very rare and curious little volume, published anonymously in 1645, under the title of "The Great Assises holden in Parnassus by Apollo and his Assessours," Ben Jonson is described as the "Keeper of the Trophonian Denne," and in Westminster Abbey his medallion bust appears clothed in a left-handed coat to show us that he was a servant of Bacon.
O, rare Ben Jonson—what a turncoat grown!
Thou ne'er wast such, till clad in stone;