Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/405

Rh 385 England by Berthelet, the king s printer. 1 In later years twenty-nine editions of Tyndale s New Testament were published, without reckoning modem reprints. Three years and a half after the publication of his English New Testament, on January 17, 1530, Tyndale published his English Pentateuch. That he did not know anything of Hebrew when he left England in 1524 seems certain (Eadie s Eng. Bible, i. 208), while translation of the New Testament and seeing it through the press in less than two years could scarcely have left him time for acquiring a knowledge of it before 1526. In May 1528 he published two works, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon and The Obedience of a Christian Man, and was at the same time engaged in writing The Practice of Prelates, a work of considerable size. Between the middle of 1526 and the middle of 1529 it was impossible for any man so fully employed to learn Hebrew so thoroughly as to be able to produce at the end of that time an original translation of the Pentateuch, and the opinion that Tyndale did so cannot be maintained in the face of such historical facts. Frith, who joined him at Marburg in 1528, may have been a Hebrew scholar, and from him Tyndale may have received assistance in tho work. But Foxe states that when Tyndale had completed his translation, he was shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, losing it and all his books, that he sailed by another ship to Hamburg, and that there Coverdale &quot;helped him in the translating of the whole five books of Moses, from Easter till December, in the house of a worship ful widow, Mistress Margaret Van Emmerson, 1529 A.D., a great sweating sickness being at the same time in the town. So having despatched his business at Hamburg he returned afterwards to Antwerp again.&quot; (Foxe s Acts and ftfon., v. 120, ed. 18-46.) But there is so much in com mon between the language of Tyndale s Pentateuch and that of his predecessor Purvey, that it is evident the old English Bible, already so familiar to Englishmen, was made the foundation of the new work. Tyndale himself may have had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to have corrected some of the more glaring errors of the Wickliffite version, especially by the help of Luther s German Bible ; or he may, as Foxe alleges, have been assisted by Coverdale, who had a competent acquaintance with the language. How ever this may have been, the English Pentateuch waa so rapidly placed in the printer s hands, notwithstanding Tyndale s other literary occupations, that it came from the press with the colophon &quot; Emprented at Marlborow, in the land of He.sse, by me, Hans Luft, the yere of cure Lorde MCCCCCXXX., the xvii. daye of January,&quot; and was shortly afterwards put in circulation in England. Of this work several copies are still in existence, but the only perfect one known is in the British Museum. In the following year Tyndale published a translation of Jonah, the only copy known of which is in the library of the marquis of Bristol at Ixworth ; and in 1534 he brought out a revised edition of the book of Genesis, which was the last of his labours in connection with the Old Testament. Meanwhile a complete English Bible was being pre pured by Miles Coverdale (1485-1565), an Augustiuian friar who was afterwards for a few years (1551-1555) bishop of Exeter. As the printing of the whole Bible must have occupied the printers for many months, and probably did occupy them for several years, and as that printing was mushed on October 4, 1535, it is evident that Coverdale must have been engaged on the preparation of the work for the press at almost as early a date as Tyndale. There is, 1 The type and the woodcut border of the title-page were immedi ately afterwards used by Berthelet in printing the Institution of a Christian Man, a work of considerable size, which was published in July 1537. The only copy known of this edition of Tyndale s transla tion is in the Bodleian Library. indeed, a correspondence extant between Cromwell when .he was secretary to Wolsey and Coverdale when he was resident at the Augustinian priory at Cambridge, which shows that the work was in hand in the year 1527. But the book was printed abroad, and Foxe s statement shows that Coverdale was at Antwerp in 1529, so that probably the greater part of the translation was made, like that of Tyndale, out of England. Mr Henry Stevens has pointed out that, in a biographical notice of Emanuel Van Meteren appended to his history of Belgium by Simon Ruytinck, the latter states that Jacob Van Meteren, the father of Emanuel, had manifested great zeal in producing at Antwerp a translation of the Bible into English &quot; for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in England, and for this purpose he employed a certain learned scholar named Miles Coverdale.&quot; As Van Meteren had been taught the art of printing in his youth, it seems very probable that he exercised his zeal in the matter by undertaking the cost of printing the work as well as that of remunerating the trans lator. The woodcuts in Coverdale s Bible, but not the type, have been traced up to James Nicolson, printer in St Thomas Hospital in 1535, and Mr Stevens connects him with the book and with Van Meteren in the following manner : &quot; The London bookbinders and stationers, finding the market filled with foreign books, especially Testaments, made complaint in 1533-34, and petitioned for relief; in consequence of which a statute was passed compelling foreigners to sell their editions entire to some London stationer, in sheets, so that the binders might not suffer. This new law was to come into operation about the begin ning of 1535. In consequence of this law, Jacob Van Meteren, as his Bible approached completion, was obliged to come to London to sell the edition. We have reason to believe that he sold it to James Nicolson of Southwark, who not only bought the entire edition, but the woodcuts, and probably the punches and type ; but if the latter, they were doubtless lost in transmission, as they have never turned up in any shape since. All the copies of the Cover- dale Bible in the original condition, as far as we know, have appeared in English binding, thus confirming this law of 1534.&quot; (Caxton Celebr. Catal., pp. 88, 89.) It is now evident that Coverdale refers partly, at least, to Jacob Van Meteren when he says in his dedication : &quot; Trusting in His infinite goodness that He would bring my simple and rude labour herein to good effect, therefore, as the Holy Ghost moved other men to do the cost hereof, so was I boldened in God to labour in the same.&quot; But although the discovery of Ruytinck s statement seems to show conclusively that Coverdale completed his translation, after Wolsey s fall, at the cost of Van Meteren, and at Antwerp instead of Cam bridge, he so far picked up the semi-official clue which he had dropped for a time that he published it with a dedica tion to King Henry VIII., which occupies five pages, and is subscribed &quot; youre Grace s humble subiecte and daylye oratour, Myles Coverdale.&quot; This first of all printed English Bibles is a small folio volume measuring 11 by 8 inches, and bears the title &quot; Biblia. The Bible, that is, the Holy Scripture of the Olde and New Testament, faithfully and truly translated out of Douche and Latyn in to Englyshe, M.D.XXXV.,&quot; with the texts 2 Thes. iii. 1, Col. iii. 16, Josh. i. 8 under neath. The colophon is &quot;Prynted in the yeare of our Lord M.D. xxxv., and fynished the fourth daye of October.&quot; The title page was, however, for some reason cancelled imme diately, and only one perfect copy of it is known. The new title page with the same date, 1535, merely says, &quot; fayth- fully translated in to Englyshe, &quot; omitting the words &quot;_ and truly&quot; and &quot; out of Douche and Latyn.&quot; A second edition in folio, &quot; newly oversene and corrected,&quot; was printed by Nicolson, with English type, in 1537; and also, in the VIII. 49