CURRENT LITERATURE.
lah HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
A General View of the History of the English Bible. By Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D. Third Edition, Revised by William Aldis Wright. (Macmillan and Co. 12s. 6d. net.)—This book was first published in 1868, when the author was still a master at Harrow. A second edition appeared four years afterwards. Dr. W. A. Wright has now given us a third, the outcome of an arrangement made with the Bishop a few months before his death. "I will give you my materials," he said. To these Dr. Wright has added out of, his own copious stores. The task, then, has been accomplisted in an ideally perfect way. The book remains substantially what it was, but it has been brought up to date by the assimilation of matters that have come to light during the last thirty-odd years. Some dates have been corrected, and conclusions founded upon them modified. The relation between Tyndale and Luther is an important example. Tyndale's share in Matthews's Bible—the translation of the Historical Books of the Old Testament—as given by Hall, probably on the authority of Rogers, is stated. Some appendices have been added, among them an interesting summary of the history of the Revised Version. Dr. Westcott's book is almost wholly occupied with the history of the printed Bible. One chapter only is given to the manuscript.—This part of the subject has been treated in Our Own English Bible, by the Rev. W. J. Heaton (Francis Griffiths, 5s. net). Mr. Heaton is perhaps a little too facile of belief in legend, as when he says that "Simon Zelotes probably met his death [in Britain]." This is a, very late story; earlier traditions assigned Simon's labours to very different regions. The most probable connection of St. Paul with the island is through soldiers who may have served there after acting as his guards in prison. When Mr. Heaton reaches surer ground he gives us what has to be told in an attractive way. Caedmon, Aldhelm, Baeda, are described. Further on we hear of King Alfred, of the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Rushworth Gloss. Finally, we come to Wycliffe, of whose character and work there is an interesting account, written in a judiciously sympathetic spirit. Mr. Heaton hardly does justice to Stump°, the clothier of Malmesbury. Whatever his grandson may have done—Aubrey says that he used scores of manuscripts to stop the bungholes of ale barrels—Stumpe himself was a "pious founder." "Mr. Stumpe bought and turned the abbey into a cloth manufactory." He bought the abbey build- ings when they were doomed to destruction, and rescued the abbey church by giving it to his native town. England would have been richer in the splendid monuments of the past if the great nobles who laid their hands on monastic property had imitated the clothier of Malmesbury, who, by the way, is among the ancestors of the house of Suffolk and Berkshire.
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