When the business of revision actually commenced it is hard to determine accurately; but it was not till the year 1611--eight years after the Hampton Conference--that an edition was published by printer Barker (who, or whose company, was very zealous about the matter, it being a fat job for him) and so presently, under name of King James’ version “appointed (by assemblage of Bishops) to be read in churches,” it came to be the great Bible of the English-speaking world--then, and thence-forward. And now, who were the forty men who dealt so wisely and sparingly with the old translators; who came to their offices of revision with so tender a reverence, and who put such nervous, masculine, clear-cut English into their own emendations of this book as to leave it a monument of Literature? Their names are all of record: and yet if I were to print them, the average reader would not recognize, I think, a single one out of the twoscore.[9] You would not find Bacon’s name, who, not far from this time was writing some of his noblest essays, and also writing (on the King’s suggestion) about preaching and Church management. You would not find the name of William Camden, who was then at the mellow age of sixty, and of a rare reputation for learning and for dignity of character. You would not find the name of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who though writing much of religious intention, was deistically inclined; nor of Robert Burton, churchman, and author of that famous book _The Anatomy of Melancholy_--then in his early prime; nor of Sir Walter Raleigh, nor of Sir Thomas Overbury--both now at the date of their best powers; nor yet would one find mention of John Donne,[10] though he came to be Dean of St. Paul’s and wrote poems the reader may--and ought to know; nor, yet again, is there any hearing of Sir John Davies, who had commended himself specially to King James, and who had written poetically and reverently on the _Immortality of the Soul_[11] in strains that warrant our citing a few quatrains:-- “At first, her mother Earth she holdeth dear, And doth embrace the world and worldly things: She flies close by the ground, and hovers here, And mounts not up with her celestial wings. “Yet under heaven she cannot light on aught That with her heavenly nature doth agree; She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought, She cannot in this world contented be: “For who, did ever yet, in honor, wealth, Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find? Who ever ceased to wish, when he had health? Or, having wisdom, was not vexed in mind? “Then, as a bee which among weeds doth fall, Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay; She lights on that and this, and tasteth all, But, pleased with none, doth rise and soar away!”