The English Language 51
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children in the seventeenth, when the boy Bunyan loved to read of the heroes and the giants. There is in them a youthful charm and an indifference to plan and possibility. In Malory's
Morte d' Arthur, it is true, the charm common to all romances is uniquely combined with the restraint and firmness of a man of eloquence and dignity who believes in the ideals of chivalry; but Malory stood alone.
The unrestrained adventures of the Romances are as far as possible from what Tindale required.
The Middle Ages liked the Romances as they liked stories of the saints, Noah's Ark and Jonah's whale.
But Tindale would "read Jonah fruitfully, not as a poet's fable", looking here as everywhere for "' the lives stories and gests of men".
Tindale's task was to make real the common life of the Gospels.
He was to rediscover the parables. The story of the Prodigal Son never impressed the Middle Ages particularly.
It is one of the appeals of Christ to his hearers' sense of common human nature.
Before they possessed the Bible in their own language few people had considered that a story in some way acquired more weight if it were actually a reflection of common life.
In the last few years critics have been urging that Caxton, the most voluminous author, and Malory, the best, are not typical of the prose of the time.
Professor Chambers and Dr.
Owst take it rather that the second stream—the devotional and mystical prose which I have mentioned—was the great river, and that all secular prose was only tributary to a great religious tradition.
There were works of mysticism written in the fourteenth century which for nearly two hundred years men and women copied and read—Hilton, Rolle, and the Cloud of Unknowing. Lesser books of this kind were being written right up to the Reformation. We find two great lawyers and pious men, Sir John Fortescue and Sir Thomas More, writing meditatively on death and faith in this old style. At the same time it must be said that this manner of writing is not for general purposes.
It is a sweet, meditative and leisurely style, with strong power of description, using alliteration fancifully and even rhyme.
It came down from the neo-Platonists, from pseudo-Dionysius, mixed with medizval anecdote and descrip-
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tion. If it helped Tindale it was in passages which bear some likeness to St. John's Gospel. But this style was fitted only for such a work of beauty and meditation, and when Fortescue came to write his Governance of England or More his History of Richard III they at once adopt a totally different rhythm and type of sentence.
Fortescue when he left devotional writing kept to the barest facts and demonstrations—a Euclid of the House of Lancaster.
Sir Thomas More writes of Richard as if he were translating well from good Latin in long sentences neatly and most artificially balanced. Both men must have felt a distemper in the world of prose when they tried two such opposite cures.
If we pass on to the prose of exposition we come to what is probably the least successful of the three streams mentioned.
The writers have no tact; they have no idea how much general information in the reader to take for granted.
Chaucer was adroit in his rich passing allusions to the seven stars, the rule of St. Benedict and so forth—but prose writers never spare one an explanation.
The merciless Pecock, author of many treatises, does not ask for co-operation from the reader, like some Jeans or Eddington; he asks for obedience and chess-like concentration. Whatever he dictates we are to absorb. He is too logical. He will make even the Bible neater than it is:— helthe or salvacioun is not of a willer, neithir of a renner, but of God a rewer, or of mercy a doer.
(Pecock's translation of Romans ix. 16) Pecock at least kept good discipline. But Caxton's attempts at expository prose (for he tried hard at that) are lax in sentencestructure—he cannot keep the pattern in his head.
Only the quaintness of age makes interesting the treatises on Science, International Law or History which he translated and printed.
He died a fumbler for style.
The traditions of English prose, then, were not particularly | helpful to Tindale.
Probably he knew best the last kind of prose—the worst. And if we look at still earlier translations of the Bible, Tindale's seems miracle enough.
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»The only complete' versions of the Bible were those made under Wycliffe's influence from the Vulgate Latin.
There is the early, very literal version, and the later, probably made by Purvey in the last quarter of the fourteenth century.
There seems to be no evidence to support Sir Thomas More's statement that there were other early translations of the Bible more orthodox than Wycliffe's. But there were versions of the Psalter and many passages rendered in old sermons and works of controversy, books of extracts and harmonies of the Gospels.
I find, for instance, passages of Exodus in a little manuscript called The Wiles of Pharaoh.
In Chaucer's Parson's Tale, which is really a sermon, the good parson will first quote his text in Latin, then translate it extempore; and if he quotes a passage twice he may translate it differently.
So with all the sermons.
At this time there was a real desire among laymen all over Europe to have the psalter and the Gospel story in the common tongues.
But this did not produce any traditional method of translation. The first Wycliffite version was intolerably literal.
It was the Scriptures taken out of Latin but hardly put into English. The later Wycliffite version is still too close to Latin, though Purvey's aim was "to translate after the sentence, and not onli aftir the wordis "'. At times it has an unexpected and happy phrase:
But his eldere sone was in the feeld; and whanne he cam, and neighede to the hous, he herde a symfonye and a croude (viol) ; (Luke xv. 25) but the sentences are inattentively thrown one on another, and the value of the rhythm is dissipated without giving any particular effect.
The dedication of St. Luke's Gospel shows the faults of the earlier version.
It is too literal, and the architecture of the sentence is not sufficiently marked for such a lengthy period:
Forsothe for manye men enforceden to ordeyne the tellyng of thingis, whiche ben fillid in us, as thei that seyn atte the
WILLIAM TINDALE
bigynnyng, and weren ministris of the word, bitaken, it is seen also to me, hauynge alle thingis diligentli bi ordre, to write to thee, thou best Theofile, that thou knowe the treuthe of tho wordis, of whiche thou art lerned;
(Wycliffite earlier version) whereas Tindale makes of it a firm and well-built sentence:
For as moche as many have taken in hond to compyle a treates off thoo thynges/ which are surely knowen amonge us/ even as they declared them unto us/ which from the begynynge sawe them with their eyes/ and were ministers at the doyng: I determined also/ as sone as I had searched out diligently all thinges from the begynynge/ that then I wolde wryte unto the/ goode Theophilus/ that thou myghtest knowe the certente off thoo thinges/ whereof thou arte informed.
(Tindale, 1526) The psalms in the later Wycliffite version were adopted in the English Prymer or prayer-book which was made to help the ignorant orthodox in their devotions about the beginning of the fifteenth century.
'Though crude they are sometimes fresh and vivid:
Hevenes tellen out the glorie of God; and the firmament tellith the werkis of hise hondis:
The dai tellith out to the dai a word; and the nyght schewith kunnyng to the nyght ...
(Psalm xix. 1-2) In Psalm cii we can make a direct comparison with Tindale, for several verses are cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews which Tindale was to translate:
Lord! thou foundidist the erthe in the biginnynge; and hevenes ben the werkis of thin hondis.
Tho schulen perische, but thou dwellist parfitli; and alle schulen wexe eld as a cloth.
And thou schalt chaunge hem as an hilyng, and tho schulen. be chaungid; but thou art the same thi silf, and thi yeeris schulen not faile.
(Prymer ed. Littlehales, p. 42)
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Compare Tindale, 1 526:
And thou lorde in the begynnynge hast layde the foundacion of the erth: And the hevens are the workes off thy hondes. They shall perisshe/ but thou shallt endure. They all shall wexe olde as doth a garment: and as a vesture shalt thou chaunge them/ and they shalbe chaunged: but thou arte the same/ and thy yeares shall not fayle. | (Hebrews i)
The resemblance is not striking.
Tindale is at once majestic and suave, and even our Prayer Book version cannot improve upon him. Apparently the Wycliffite Bibles did not influence
Tindale.
'"'I had no man to counterfet/ nether was holpe with englysshe of eny that had interpreted the same/ or soche lyke thinge in the scripture before tyme.'' One resemblance I have noted which is rather curious—Tindale's tinkling cymbal in the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians might have come from the tynkynge cymbal of the later Wycliffite version.
In the later fifteenth century and up to Tindale's time fewer translations were being made from the Scriptures, though
Bishop Pecock and even Cardinal Pole thought that something was to be said for services (presumably with psalms) in the layfolks' language. We may find however in the sermons of Fisher, the great bishop of Rochester in Tindale's own day, plentiful translations of texts cited from the Vulgate Latin.
In sermons the translations are usually not close—the preacher is half an expositor even as he translates. Thus Fisher, quoting Psalm vi. I:— Domine ne in furore tuo arguas me; neque in ira tua corripias me (a motto formerly printed on our coins), read this meaning into it when he came to translate:
Good lorde correcte me not in the everlastynge payne of hell, neyther punysshe me in the paynes of purgatory.
Compare the literal rendering of Purvey:
'Lord, repreve thou not me in thi stronge veniaunce; nether chastice thou me in thin ire.
(F 435)
WILLIAM TINDALE
And Fisher's versions have one special fault.
There is a tendency to translate one word by a pair of synonyms.
An extraordinary love of doublets was characteristic of the fifteenth century and particularly affected translators, who would couple a word of English origin with a synonym from Latin or French.
We may meet it to-day in legal language—" goods and chattels °—or in the Prayer Book—" assemble and meet together" ; but unless we know Caxton's translations with their words two by two we do not realise what we have escaped in the simplicity of our own Bible.
Here are some examples of verbiage from Fisher :-— Blessyd are tho whiche have made vertuous ende and conclusyon of theyr lyfe in oure lorde for the Latin:
Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur ; compare Tindale (from the Greek):
Blessed are the deed/ which here after dye in the lorde.
(Rev. xiv. 13) Or compare the Latin: aperiente te manum tuam omnia implebuntur bonitate with Fisher's:
And whan it is thy pleasure to put forth and open thy plentevous hande all shall be sacyate and content with nowrysshynge convenyent for them, and with Coverdale in the Prayer Book: when thou openest thy hand they are filled with good.
(Psalm civ. 28) But Fisher's and Tindale's contemporary, Sir Thomas More, is a good translator.
For a special lesson to Tindale, whose versions he accused of bias and inaccuracy, he made a model translation of the sixth chapter of St. John, which may be examined.
More made it from the Vulgate Latin, which he
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pi thought the best text, but he took careful account of the Greek.
This is a rhythmical translation, and one which does not suffer from doublets.
It is perhaps slightly less colloquial and idiomatic than Tindale's. Compare:
The Jewes murmured therefore of that that he had saide, (More) with:
The Jewes murmured att itt/ because he sayde.
(Tindale. John vi. 41) So also More's:
How can this man give us his fleshe to eate? with Tindale's:
Howe can this felowe geve us his flesshe to eate?
(John vi. 52) More, it may be argued, would have thought the pithy idioms of Tindale mean. More's habitual thought of the Bible was of the dignified Latin composition, the nine years' work of St. Jerome, not of the story in the ready tongue of fishermen and sinners. This is how the snake in Tindale dismisses Eve's fears:
Then sayd the serpent unto the woman: tush ye shall not dye.
(Gen. iii. 4) b "Let me syppe of the red potage'"' says Esau, in Tindale, "for I am faintie."
(Gen. xxv. 30) We should not have found such phrases in More. For the too homely : hym that commeth to me/ cast I not out at the dores,
(Tindale, 1526) More has the better reading (though the grammar is not strict): he that cometh to me, I shall not cast him out.
WILLIAM TINDALE
The Authorized Version has the grammar of Tindale with the phrasing of More: him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out; and if the merits of the two translations could always be thus combined we should have a better thing than either, for each complements the other.
I will pick out the merits of Tindale and his contemporary as they seem to me. More has " the very bread " and "' verily meat '', Tindale '' the true bread " and '' meat indeed "'. More is nearer the Latin. To use his rendering seems archaic. 'Tindale uses "the same" as a kind of pronoun.
It is like the modern tradesman who gives "' thanks for same ". More makes better use of participles—he is thinking of the Latin. But More also managed to pay better attention than Tindale to the Greek articles, and anticipates the Revised Version of 1881 in his use of "a" and "the". He gives "' you seeke me, not because ye have sene miracles " where even the Authorized Version follows
Tindale's inaccurate '' the miracles". The whole question was argued by More in his Confutation of Tindale with particular reference to the first chapter of St. John, and in four places
Tindale afterwards gave way to More, altering the text of his revised edition of the Gospels. He had written in 1526:—" In the beginning was that word', but More's arguments for "the word" convinced him, and in 1534 he borrowed the reading.
So also, in place of "And God was that word"
(Tindale, 1526), More advised "The word was God "—and Tindale took it over. Tindale was without pride, and sincerely wishing for the best translation, he was prepared to learn from his opponent.
In his attention to Greek idiom, More is occasionally careless of English.
He quite lost sight of the old distinction between "ye" and "' you"? which was regularly kept at the time.
In Tindale and the Authorized Version "ye" stands. for subject, "' you " for object:
I saye unto you: ye seke me/ nott because ye sawe the myracles ..
(Tindale, John vi. 26)
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More also sins against English idiom when he uses the phrase '"' he sayde that by Judas"' meaning " about Judas "'.
(John vi. 70.) Tindale has the idiomatic preposition " he spake it of Judas ". Before this, More had accused Tindale himself of inattention to good English in using "no" where "nay" would have been better; but More's words are self-contradictory, probably because of a misprint:
"No aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative [sic]. As for ensample, if a manne should aske Tindall hymselfe: ys an heretike mete to translate holy scripture into englishe?
Lo to thys question .
. he muste aunswere nay and not no."
(More's works, p. 448) Far more important was More's complaint that 'Tindale deliberately substituted for old known words with religious associations new words in twisted meanings—for '" church "', "congregation"; for "grace", "favour"; for "priest", " senior? and later "elder"; for "salvation", "health "'.
Above all, he put "' love " for what should be " charity ", as in the famous chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians
(see pp. 82 and 88). The Authorized Version sides with More; the Revised Version (on the question of charity) with Tindale.
Whether or no " love " is the better translation, it is an abrupt little word, and undoubtedly "charity "' reads better in the context.
But this was a matter of principle, not of taste.
Curiously enough, Tindale did not avoid the word "saint "— [Thou shalt not] "suffer thy Saint to see corruption " (Acts i; 277).
More perhaps had a better knowledge of Greek (though he did not know Hebrew) but Tindale has perhaps a surer sense of English.
But in intention and in the general movement of their prose they are actually very similar.
With More we are on the edge of a series of versions which are really in a common tradition. There is a continuity of purpose, as if all the numerous translators between Tindale and the Authorized Version had felt bound to aim at unaffected words, proper order, a rhythm like Tindale's.
Basing themselves largely on Tindale, these
WILLIAM TINDALE
later translators came not to destroy but to fulfil.
Where Tindale had occasionally been unable to find a good phrase or a clause with grateful rhythm, they sought for one—and he might easily have accepted it as an improvement. In hundreds of places the Authorized Version differs from Tindale for the sake of rhythm alone: cam not to call the rightewes to repentaunce: but the synners.
(Tindale) I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
(A. V., Luke v. 32) Here is an unpleasantly jumpy rhythm:
Sence nowe that he by the right honde of God exalted is.
(Tindale) which the Authorized Version has found means to round off:
Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted.
(A.V., Acts ii. 33) Tindale for once forgets the idiomatic order: grett feare cam on all them that these thynges herde.
(Tindale) great fear came on all them that heard these things.
(A.V., Acts v. 5) In Tindale we often find '' He answered unto them and said oe in the Authorized Version the familiar and grateful rhythm
"He answered and said unto them "'.
We have come to the point when the second generalization which I quoted at the beginning seems to have a meaning.
It is clear that Tindale's rhythm, which is the basis of the Author_ ized Version rhythm, must have been widely appreciated and appreciable by his contemporaries—they all shared a sympathy for this way of writing. How can we describe it? It is prose
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written in short lengths and the old punctuation of bars drawn across at the end of the rhythmical clause brings this out more clearly than the modern commas.
It is prose whose stresses are carefully separated from each other—bedded out at intervals comparatively regularly, not coming higgledy piggledy like those in use to-day. We think in an anarchy of rhythms, and most writers are reckless as to where the strong beats come.
Consider for instance this last sentence of mine, with three strongly stressed words fallen together—'' strong beats come".
If Tindale had put three strong beats together it would be purposed, for some good rhetorical reason of emphasis, as for instance I find in this sentence '' Now is all stich faith false faith" (Obedience, Parker Society I, p. 279). Just occasionally the greater regularity of rhythm in Tindale degenerates into singsong.
His ear does not mind:
" of the well of the water of lyfe" (Rev. xxi. 1). Lengthy prepositions and conjunctions are a help to the old rhythmical prose—unto, wherefore, howbeit, neverthelater, help to keep the strong nouns at predictable intervals.
Polysyllables are difficult, as they run away with a sentence at a great rate and one lands with a jerk. For it is a walking rate, not a cantering, at which the old prose sets off, and it is by no means so well suited to spontaneity or variety as ours.
It is difficult to include qualifications and niceties, afterthoughts and nuances—in fact it is difficult to render abstract thought in this old measure.
Tindale did not fully understand St. Paul's epistles, but even if he had, his prose was less fitted for the subtleties, the involved sentences, the afterthoughts, than is ours.
The extract from Ephesians on p. 83 illustrates this. King James's men revised the " Pistles" as Tindale calls them more studiously than the rest of the New
Testament, but they could not change the general effect, and proved that rhythmical prose is not fitted for thinking on paper and with effort of thought. Each sentence of the old prose is a monument—something important that is said.
It is not a facet of truth, to be merged with another quick facet as that falls uppermost.
The rhythm varies less than that of modern prose, but still
WILLIAM TINDALE
we are very conscious of variety.
For one thing the order of words in the sentence varies more than modern English. We have stereotyped the order—subject—verb—object—but in Tindale inversion is common. Just when the pattern of a series of short sentences is growing monotonous the order is changed.
It is enough to remove many a sentence from the commonplace:
Myne heed with oyle thou didest nott anoynte: and she hath annoynted my fete with oyntment.
(Luke vii. 46) Put the first part of the sentence back to normal order and it is ordinary.
King James's scholars left it.
But sometimes Tindale is too daring in his experiments and approaches ambiguity :
And unto Jhon shewed hys disciples off all these thynges, (Luke vii. 18) where John's disciples is the subject. This was too much for the Authorized Version. It is all very well in speech:
How doth he now see then?
(John ix. 19) That is the spoken order.
But the Authorized Version preferred an order which makes it plain when read with the eye:
How then doth he now see?
Here is another experiment of Tindale's which was not approved:
Because ye are not of the worlde/ but I have chosen you out of the worlde/ therfore hateth you the worlde.
(John xv. 19) More important than the matter of order is the good sequence of sentences which that old prose sustained.
In the
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old writers each Sentence looks backward, as it were—adds something fitting to what has gone before.
In our new prose each sentence leans forward; seems to be getting more and more into the argument, to be leading to something really interesting.
'The new prose manipulates the reader's mind in some direction; the old prose sentences settle comfortably into their positions, not unlike an old lady taking her seat in a railway carriage with a look round at the people already in possession, and seeming just to fit the space.
You read the new prose pressing on to the end of the sentence, hoping to meet something interesting as you get further into it; in the old prose you took in each part, section or sentence, piece after piece, fully understanding and consuming one part before moving on to consider the next.
It is more "'savourous"', as Chaucer would have said, to take your prose thus.
This kind of prose then was the common medium. In what does Tindale differ from the rest?
Many writers were able to hear something of the rhythm, but few could listen with such modesty as Tindale, and produce a prose so completely lacking in ostentation.
If it had not been for Tindale the Bible would not be such a homely thing.
He supplied the homely base, which his successors could heighten in those books where heightening was required.
The Pentateuch has a real flavour of flocks.
''I will go and see him yer that I die", says Jacob, like an old farmer of the West. The story of Christ's infancy is little altered (and little bettered) in the Authorized
Version (see p. 79).
We are almost sorry to lose Tindale's 'multitude of hevenly sowdiers " and to hear no more how
''every man went into his awne shyre toune to be taxed "
(version of 1526).
Often Tindale is racy and the Authorized Version comparatively colourless:
And won off the wenches/ as he sate/ behelde him by the light and sett goode eyesight on hym.
(Tindale) But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him.
(A.V., Luke xxii. 56)
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The Authorized Version is "grown up" as it were—but Tindale is vivid: bable not moche (Tindale) use not vain repetitions (A.V., Matthew. vi. 7) not to say crude:
Master here is good beinge for us (Matthew xvii. 4) or quaint: the mesellynge upon the herbes (Deut. xxxii. 2) the small rain upon the tender herb.
(A.V.) But I do not see that there is any advantage in changing "a flawe off wynde out of the northeste"' into "a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon " (Acts xxvii. 14). "' To speake of meate dedicat unto ydols" is changed by the Authorized Version into '"' As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols" (I Cor. viii. 4). I would not altogether trust the authors of that alteration to produce by themselves a simple translation of the Gospels.
But where wonders and portents require an exalted style the Authorized Version seems to rescue Tindale from the earth.
In the Revelation Tindale's homely words are out of place. He has in his edition of 1526 "'a ponde off fyre burnynge with brymstone " (Rev. xix. 20), 'the apples that thy soul lusted after" (Rev. xviii. 14).
How inferior "for the olde _ thynges are gone" is to "for the former things are passed away" (Rev. xxi. 4). And the word " fine "' just keys up this sentence: whose fete are lyke brasse.
(Tindale) And his feet are like fine brass.
(A.V., Rev. ii. 18) I should say that the Authorized Version differs from Tindale more noticeably in phrasing than in rhythm.
In. rhythm the Authorized Version is like the critic who keeps a great man up to his own best level of work; in phrasing the Authorized Version every now and then has something of a
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s different sort from what is found in Tindale—something that outgoes him. We see him improving his various versions:
Care not therfore for the daye foloynge.
For the daye foloynge shall care ffor yt sylfe.
Eche dayes trouble ys sufficient for the same silfe day.
(Tindale, 1525 and 1526) Care not then for the day following; but let the day following care for itself.
For the day that is present hath ever enough of his own trouble.
(Tindale in Exposition of St. Matthew, 1532.) Care not then for the morow, but let the morow care for it selfe: for the daye present hath ever ynough of his awne trouble.
(Tindale, 1534) He has found the word "' morrow '"—but he has not the touch that would ever make a proverb or an epigram out of the ending:
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
(A.V., Matt. vi. 34) Few texts which have become proverbial are put by Tindale in memorable form.
'' The reward of sin is death"', "' God is not partial', "' precious pearl", "an angel .
. that stirred the water", "' malicious speakings corrupt good manners ".—The reader can supply for himself the form in which the Authorized Version makes these sayings stick.
Nor, curiously enough, did Tindale set up many of the very commonest repeated phrases of the English Bible. When we think of it we can recall certain phrases which we have never met in any other book, and words almost inseparable from scripture in our minds.
''It came to pass'', " made manifest', "'the uttermost parts of the earth", '' parable "', even "verily"? and "of a truth", are turns of speech kept in currency by the Bible. But Tindale rarely uses any of them.
For the first he has a variety of translations—'"' it happened "', "it chanced "', 'it fortuned ", 'it followed".
For " mani1 Cranmer (1539) has 'sufficient unto the daye, is the travayle therof'.
WILLIAM TINDALE
fest"? he has "declare", '"' appear", "open", "show"'.
For "the uttermost parts of the earth" he has " the world's end". For " parable " he often uses "' similitude"'.
" Verily " he uses, but sometimes he has '' no doubt"', with flat effect.
For 'forthwith " I find " by and by". For "and after that many days were fulfilled" Tindale has simply "after a good while".
The curious thing about Tindale's language is that it is often less archaic, less tinged with the phrasing of one particular age, than that of the Authorized Version, which appeared eighty years after.
'' Come on, let us build us a tower "' say the builders of Babel. The phrase in the Authorized
Version '' go to" has for us a flavour of the Elizabethans—we have heard it somewhere in Shakespeare.
'"' When he had apprehended him" (A.V.) would scarcely be said to-day; "when he had caught him" (Tindale) is as good as ever.
St. John's head on a " platter " (Tindale) is easy; on a " charger" (Authorized Version) is out of the way.
'' When they had read it" (Tindale) is good English.
'' Which when they had read" (Authorized Version) reminds us of the schooldays when we ourselves were translators.
It is true that Tindale occasionally has homely old compounds instead of the Latin words of later introduction found in the Authorized Version.
In Tindale we have " throughshining-glass " instead of "transparent", " the waiting-for " instead of " the expectation '', '' gazingstock " for "' spectacle ".
Instead of "the Tetrarch's nursefellow" the Authorized Version has a whole phrase—" which had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch"'. More often it is the other way round;
Tindale uses a phrase where the Authorized Version has a single word at its command—''a maker of dismal days "
(Leviticus xx. 27) becomes "'a wizard"; 'bonds after the manner as they were wont to bind their dead withall"
(Tindale, 1526) becomes "' graveclothes "'.
There are only a certain number of usages in Tindale which» belong to an earlier state of the language than that of the Authorized Version; words such as " grece"' for " stairs "',
"scrawleth"? for "creepeth", "eareth" for " ploweth "',
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pe ""raynes "' for '"' garments', and the curious divided preposition "' to his burying ward'.
Such words are rare.
And in dialogue, the test of whether any author writes natural English, 'Tindale is strikingly modern. There is nothing in the following which could not come out of a novel of peasant life to-day:
Whether he be a sinner or no, I cannot tell; One thing I am sure of, that I was blind, and now I see
(Tindale, John ix. 25) (with modernized spelling).
A novelist would rather have written that than the Authorized Version:
Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.
It will be apparent by this time, how richly gifted Tindale was in his appreciation of spoken idioms.
There is no vestige of literariness in his writings.
Compare him with Malory, for instance, whose ear for rhythm was perhaps even better than Tindale's, whose work has survived with his from four centuries ago—and yet one feels that Malory was literary,
Tindale was not.
Malory had a sure literary touch, Tindale was all unconscious.
With Hebrew, says 'Tindale, " thou needest not but to translate it into the English word for word" as if art had scarcely a place. The truth is that Tindale hated literature.
Next to a papist he hated a poet.
Plato, Robin Hood and More's Utopia are all the same to him.
In all his works there is no trace of writing for effect.
In his original books he goes steadily and says straight what he means.
The short sentences of the translations are turned here into vigorous and dogmatic statements, and between them come longer paragraphs tightly built, clearing up one thing, clearing up another, at times relieved by bitter irony, but turning little aside—how unlike the rich rambling and various style of More his antagonist.
'' You can't catch me," says More. But Tindale cannot understand why More does not say what he thinks straight out and be done with it. Why the tortuous method
WILLIAM TINDALE
of a dialogue?
In exasperation he calls More a " poet". For More was literary to his finger-tips.
If we think that somehow it would be an appalling disaster to have a self-consciously written Bible—think of a Bible written by Pater—then Tindale was the best man to save us from that.
It is an ironical thing that any essay should come to be written on Tindale the literary artist.
G. D. BONE.
A LIST OF TINDALE'S WORKS
A. TRANSLATIONS
1. Old Testament.
The Pentateuch. [Antwerp] 1530.
Genesis, revised. [Antwerp 1534.] Jonah. [Antwerp 1531.] The Epistles appointed from the Old Testament, added to the New Testament of 1534.
Joshua—II Chronicles, left in MS. and probably used in the Matthew Bible of 1537.
2. New Testament.
Matthew and Mark. [Cologne 1525.] 4° with glosses.
[?New Testament. Worms 1526. 4° with glosses, no copy extant. ] New Testament. [Worms 1526.] 8° without glosses.
New Testament, revised. Antwerp Nov. 1534.
New Testament, again revised.
[Antwerp, early] 1535.
3. The Enchiridion of Erasmus, London, 1533.
B. ORIGINAL WORKS, INCLUDING
ADAPTATIONS OF LUTHER
A compendious introduction unto the pistle to the Romayns.
[Worms 15267] The parable of the wicked mammon.
[Antwerp] 1528.
The obedience of a christen man. [Antwerp] 1528.
The practyse of prelates. [Antwerp] 1530.
A pathway to the holy scripture. London [153-].
The prologue to Fonah. [Antwerp 1531.] The exposition of the fyrste epistle of seynt Jhon. [Antwerp]
1531.
WILLIAM 'TINDALE
An answere unto Sir T. More's dialogue. [Antwerp 1531.] An exposition uppon the v. vt. vit. ode of Mathew.
[Antwerp 1533?] The souper of the Lorde. [Antwerp] 1533.
A briefe declaration of the sacraments.
1533, no copy extant; also London [c. 1548].
The testament of master W. Tracie esquier, expounded both by W. Tindall and J. Frith. [Antwerp] 1535.
The whole workes of W. Tyndall, }. Frith and Doct.
Barnes, London, 1573.
N.B.—The dates given are those of publication. They are not all certain, and do not always correspond to the date of writing.
For works wrongly ascribed to Tindale and tracts edited by him, see Mozley, William Tyndale, Appendix B.
A SELECTION FROM THE WORKS OF
TINDALE (F 435)
Section I Passages from 'Translations of the Bible 1.
Genesis, iii.
THE FALL From the Pentateuch of 1530.
Bvt the serpent was sotyller than all the beastes of the felde which y° LORde God had made/ and sayd vnto the woman.
Ah syr/ that God hath sayd/ ye shall not eate of all maner trees in the garden.
And the woman sayd vnto the serpent/ of the frute of the trees in the garden we may eate/ but of the frute of the tree y* is in the myddes of the garden (sayd God) se that ye eate not/ and se that ye touch it not: lest ye dye.
Then sayd the serpent vnto the woman: tush ye shall not dye:
But God doth knowe/ that whensoever ye shulde eate of it/ youre eyes shuld be opened and ye shulde be as/
God and knowe both good and evell.
And the woman sawe that it was a good tree to eate of and lustie vnto the eyes and a pleasant tre for to make wyse. And toke of the frute of it and ate/ and gaue vnto her husband also with her/ and he ate.
And the eyes of both them were opened/ that they vnderstode how that they were naked.
Than they sowed fygge leves togedder and made them.apurns.
And they herd the voyce of the LORde God as he walked in the garden in the coole of the daye. And Adam hyd hymselfe and his wyfe also from the face of the LORde God/ amonge the trees of the garden.
And the LORde God called Adam and .sayd vnto him where art thou?
And he answered. Thy voyce I harde in the garden/ but I was afrayd because I was naked/ and therfore hyd myselfe.
And he sayd: who told the that thou wast naked? hast thou eaten of the tree/ of which I bade the that thou shuldest not eate? And Adam answered.
The woman which thou gavest to bere me company she toke
WILLIAM TINDALE
me of the tree/ and I ate.
And the Lorde God sayd vnto the woman: wherfore didest thou so? And the woman answered/ the serpent deceaved me and I ate.
And the LORde God sayd vnto the serpent because thou haste so done moste cursed be thou of all catell and of all beastes of the feld: vppon thy bely shalt thou goo: and erth shalt thou eate all dayes of thy lyfe.
Morover I will put hatred betwene the and the woman/ and betwene thy seed and hyr seed. And that seed shall tread the on the heed/ and thou shalt tread hit on the hele.
And vnto the woman he sayd: I will suerly encrease thy sorow and make the oft with child/ and with payne shalt thou be deleverd: And thy lustes shall pertayne vnto thy husbond and he shall rule the.
And vnto Adam he sayd: for as moch as thou hast obeyed the voyce of thy wyfe/ and hast eaten of the tree of which I commaunded the saynge: se thou eate not therof: cursed be the erth for thy sake. In sorow shalt thou eate therof all dayes of thy lyfe/ And it shall beare thornes and thystels unto the.
And thou shalt eate the herbes of y* feld: In the swete of thy face shalt thou eate brede/ vntill thou returne vnto the erth whence thou wast taken: for erth thou art/ and vnto erth shalt thou returne.
And Adam called his wyfe Heva/ because she was the mother of all that lyveth. And the LORde God made Adam and hys wyfe garmentes of skynnes/ and put them on them.
And the LORde God sayd: loo/ Adam is become as it were one of vs/ in knowlege of good and evell.- But now lest he strech forth his hand and take also of the tree of lyfe and eate and lyve ever.
And the LORde God cast him out of the garden of Eden/ to tylle the erth whence he was taken. And he cast Adam out/ and sette at y* enteringe of the garden Eden/ Cherubin with a naked swerde movinge in and out/ to kepe the way to the tree of lyfe.