Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/434

 the council, and to the Marquis of Bergen-op-Zoom, governor of Vilvorde, asking them to use their influence in favour of Tyndale. In 1536 Tyndale was brought to trial for heresy, condemned, degraded from his orders, and sentenced to death. No record of his trial has been found, and of his imprisonment only one memorial is known, an autograph letter from him to the governor of Vilvorde, discovered in the archives of the council of Brabant, requesting to be allowed his Hebrew bible, grammar, and dictionary. Tyndale was executed at Vilvorde on 6 Oct. 1536, being strangled at the stake and his body afterwards burnt. ‘At the stake,’ says Foxe, ‘he cried with a fervent zeal and a loud voice, “Lord, open the king of England's eyes.”’ Eight years before he wrote: ‘If they shall burn me, they shall do none other thing than I looked for.’ ‘There is none other way into the kingdom of life than through persecution and suffering of pain, and of very death after the ensample of Christ.’

Though not perhaps the foremost figure of the English reformation, Tyndale was one of the most remarkable of its leaders. He left his country an unknown exile; he lived abroad in poverty, obscurity, and danger; and yet before his death he had made his name a household word in England. His original writings bear the impress of sound scholarship and of the highest literary power. They are unquestionably the ablest expositions of the views of the more advanced English reformers who triumphed under Edward VI, and developed into the Puritan party under Elizabeth. His translation of the Bible, however, though incomplete, forms his surest title to fame. Its substantial accuracy and fidelity were fully endorsed by the translators of the authorised version, who not only retained the substance of his rendering where it was available, but adopted his style and method as their model throughout their work.

Tyndale's influence on the future development of English literature was very great. The simplicity and force of his style, his happy preservation of Hebrew idioms and modes of expression, and his utter lack of pedantry were all perpetuated in succeeding versions, and more especially in the authorised version of the Bible. Tyndale's scholarship was amply sufficient for the task of translation. At the time of his residence Cambridge was perhaps the best Greek school in England. Tyndale's familiarity with Hebrew has been questioned, but he had probably a fair acquaintance with the language when he left England, and abroad he had ample opportunity of extending his knowledge, especially at Worms, where there was a large Jewish colony. His learning was admitted even by his adversaries, including so competent a judge as Sir Thomas More; and, among his friends, Hermann Buschius, the great humanist, bore emphatic testimony to his perfect mastery of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as to his skill in German, Spanish, and French (, Amœnitates Literariæ, 1731, iv. 431). His translations were made direct from the original without any undue dependence on other modern versions. He borrowed from Luther's German version only the arrangement, and a collation of texts demonstrates at once the independence of his rendering (for a contrary view in regard to the Pentateuch see Athenæum, 1885, i. 500, 562).

Tyndale did not live to accomplish the translation of the entire Bible. During his lifetime he published the New Testament, the Pentateuch, and the book of Jonah. There is strong ground for believing that he also left behind him a manuscript translation of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, completed while in prison.

Tyndale's translation of the New Testament was made from Erasmus's edition of the Greek text, with the assistance of Erasmus's Latin version, the Vulgate, and Luther's German translation. Of the first complete edition printed in 1525, two copies survive. The more perfect, wanting only the title-page, was discovered by the Earl of Oxford about 1740, and is now in the Baptist College at Bristol. The other, which is incomplete, is in the library of St. Paul's Cathedral. This edition was printed at Worms by Schoeffer in octavo, and illustrated by twelve woodcuts. It contains neither prologue nor glosses. The edition was reprinted from the Bristol copy by Bagster in 1836 (London, 8vo), and reproduced in facsimile by Francis Fry in 1862.

The sheets of Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, previously printed at Cologne, were also published. They did not contain more than St. Matthew's Gospel, with possibly a fragment of St. Mark, but they are mentioned in Tunstall's injunction, together with the Worms octavo edition, as if they formed an independent edition of the complete testament. The only fragment surviving is in the Grenville Library at the British Museum. It extends to the twelfth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Matthew. It is printed in quarto on the model of Luther's German Bible, with a prologue and marginal glosses, which in most cases are translations of those of Luther. It was photo-lithographed in 1871 for Arber's