same claim to be treated as a grammatical combination. The signification of the propositions I will and you shall, does not differ in person only, as is the case with I shall and you will. The import of I will is the imminence of the act in dependence on the will of the agent; of you shall, the imminence of the act in dependence on the will, not of the agent himself, but of the enouncer of the proposition. The essential distinction between the two cases was perhaps overlooked by Professor De Morgan when apparently condemning both alike in the paper above quoted. He says, "In introducing the common mode of stating the future tenses, grammar has proceeded as if she were more than a formal science. She has no more business to collect together I shall, thou wilt, he will, than to do the same with I rule, thou art ruled, he is ruled." (Philolog. Trans. vol. iv. p. 186.)

In recapitulation, the principle by which the use of opposite auxiliaries in the first and second persons respectively of the English future is governed may be summed up in this, that while the signification of either of these verbs may be extended to express a simple expectation of the future, irrespective of the intrinsic or extrinsic nature of the principles of action from consideration of which the events predicted are foreseen, yet the exigencies of language having appropriated will in the first person, and shall in the second, to the primitive and restricted sense of the word, the complementary forms I shall and thou wilt are left for the purpose of simple prediction.

VOL. VI.

DECEMBER 10, 1852.

No. 127.

The Rev. OLIVER COCKAYNE in the Chair.

The following paper was read—

"On some Philological Peculiarities in the English Authorized Version of the Bible." By Thomas Watts, Esq.

Even in the Bible there are few passages that thrill the heart so forcibly as the well-known words in the ninetieth psalm :-- "The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, so soon passeth it away, and we are gone." They form part of our burial service. We have all heard them when everything around us combined to drive their awful purport home. But under any circumstances whatever, this passage can hardly ever fall on a languid ear. There is a solemn beauty in its wording that deepens to a singular degree its inherent impressiveness and effect. One element of this beauty is surely the unwonted, and, if we may call it so, the patriarchal phrase of "threescore years and ten;' words in which there is something inexplicably touching to the ear and the mind, on both of which they linger with a mournful harmony.

It is to the pen of Coverdale, the early English translator of the Bible, that we appear to have been indebted for an expression so happy. In the original it does not occur. The word employed in the Hebrew is simply Dya, or "seventy," without a periphrase. The Septuagint closely follows the Hebrew, and the Vulgate agrees with both. Coverdale has been accused of making too much use in his English of the German translation of Luther, which preceded his; but in that version also, nothing but the ordinary "siebenzig" appears. It has not been supposed that he consulted the French translation, but in that language the turn of phrase which in ours is a beauty or a blemish, is a strict necessity, and the ungraceful "soixante-dix" may possibly have suggested the fortunate paraphrase. Whatever its origin, the beauty of the expression in this passage seems to have stamped it as a possession for ever:" it has passed into all subsequent versions, and probably no innovator will ever arise so tasteless as to propose the removal of the hallowed "threescore and ten."

There occurs in an English book of a still earlier date than Coverdale's Bible, an instance of the passing over of the word "seventy" so striking as to be worthy of notice. The book is the " Recuyell of the Histories of Troy," translated by Caxton; a work remarkable on several accounts, as it is the first book printed in the English language, while the original by Raoul Le Fevre, also from the press of Caxton, is the first book printed in French. In the title-page to the 'Recuyell,'-for title-page it may be called, and it is one of the earliest in existence,-it is said that the translation was " ended and

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fynnishid in the holy cyte of Colen, the xix day of septembre, the yere of our sayd lord god a thousand foure hundred sixty and enleuen." One might almost be led to imagine, from so strange a paraphrase for seventy-one as sixty and eleven,' that a word for seventy was wanting in the English of that time as well as the French; but there are ample proofs that this was not the case. In Wickliffe's version of the Bible, and in other early records of the language, the word seventy is of frequent occurrence. The sixty and eleven' of Caxton must therefore be ascribed, either to the not uncommon tendency of translators to slip unawares into the idioms of the language they are rendering, or to an unacquaintance with his own tongue, not to be wondered at in an "uplandish man," as he terms himself, who had spent abroad so much of a life which was finally destined to be so memorable and so useful.

To return to the English Bible. There is another and a very striking instance of the influence which Coverdale's version appears to have exerted over our language. An acclamation which has rung for centuries from the mouth of English millions, differs most remarkably in its wording from all its foreign equivalents. In France the welcome which greeted a monarch was Vive le Roi," even in hyperbolical Spain or fervent Italy it is "Viva el Rey," or "Viva il Re;" in short, in nearly all countries but our own it is merely a wish that the king may "live," sometimes accompanied with the addition that he may live many years. In Russia the phrase

is, "Da zdravstvuet Tsar," "May the Tsar be healthy," which certainly adds somewhat of benediction. In England the loyal acclamation combines the name of the Deity with that of the sovereign. It is always "God save the King," or "God save the Queen." The origin of the phrase has been seldom thought of, and once at least, when inquired into, the search has ended in error. Mr. Richard Clark, in his elaborate "Account of the National Anthem,” (an octavo volume published in 1822) says, "It will be seen by the following extracts from sacred history that the expression of 'God save the king' may be traced as far back as three thousand years." He then cites, from the authorized version of the Bible, some of the passages in which the phrase occurs, and concludes;-"These are the earliest accounts on record that I can find of the expression of God save the king.' The leading passage is the well-known verse describing the coronation of Solomon:-" And Zadok the priest took an horn of oil out of the tabernacle and anointed Solomon; and they blew the trumpet, and all the people cried, God save King Solomon" (1st book of Kings, chap. i. ver. 39). There are five other passages of scripture in which the expression is repeated*; all in the historical books. In every one of the six a reference to the Hebrew will show that the original is less emphatic than the translation,—that in the language of the Scriptures the English acclamation has no precedent. The words in each instance are simply '', or "May the

King live," the identical phrase which is in use

* 1 Kings, c. i. vv. 25. 34. 2 Kings, c. xi. v. 12. 2 Chron. c. ii. v. 23.

in the modern Eu

2 Samuel, c. xvi. v. 16.

ropean languages already cited, in all of which they are accordingly so rendered.

It may be remarked in passing, that if this simple phraseology had been adopted in our Coronation Anthem, it would in that case, taken in connexion with what follows, have produced an additional beauty. The words now used are these ::- Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king, and all the people rejoiced, and said, God save the king, Long live the king, God save the king, May the king live for ever." There is here a want of climax: how preferable would have been the arrangement-" May the king live, May the king live long, May the king live for ever!"

The expression "God save the king" does not occur in the early English versions of the Bible which were current towards the close of the fourteenth century. The recent editors of these versions, the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden, have published the text of two, one of which they assign to Wickliffe, and the other to Purvey, one of his followers and a leader of the Lollards. In Wickliffe's, which is the earlier translation, the verse in the Book of Kings stands thus:-" And Sadoch the preest took an horn of oyle fro the tabernacle and anoyntide Salomon, and thei sungen with the trompe, and al the puple seide, Lyue the kyng Salomon*." In Purvey's it is as follows:--" And Sadoch the preest took an horn of oyle of the tabernacle and anoyntide Salomon, and thei sungen with a clarioun and al the puple seide, Lyue kyng Salomon." The date of both these versions is settled to have been anterior to 1390. About a hundred and fifty years afterwards, when Cranmer's Bible was issued, the acclamation appears to have been in popular use. In the engraved titlepage to the edition of 1540, which is said to have been designed by Holbein, and is not unworthy of his master-hand, the king is represented on his throne distributing the Scriptures with one hand to the clergy and with the other to the laity, while at the bottom of the page a multitude is depicted as vehemently shouting in honour of the exemplary monarch. Labels are introduced, attached to the mouths of several of the figures, bearing in some cases the inscription "Vivat Rex," and in others God save the kynge." These expressions were evidently considered then, as now, equivalent to each other.

It is a question more easy to ask than it is to answer, how it came to pass, that a form of words which answers so much more closely to the "Domine salvum fac Regem," should thus have been substituted for the unadorned "Vivat Rex." It was not used by Wickliffe in 1380, it was used by Coverdale in 1535, and why? He did not find this in the German, any more than the threescore and ten; the phrase made use of by Luther is "Glück zu dem Könige," "Good fortune to the King." If Coverdale first made use of it purely at the suggestion of his native taste, we may admire his own good fortune in having been followed, not only by all subsequent translators, but by the whole body of a nation: and unless the form of words can be pointed out in some earlier writer, to him the

Wickliffe's Bible, Forshall and Madden's edition, A.D. 1850, vol. ii. p. 161.