And so with respect to that splendid Hebraic poem of Job, or that mooted book of Ecclesiastes; no matter what critical scholarship may do in amplification or curtailment, it can never safely or surely refine away the marvellous graces of their strong, old English current--burdened with tender memories--murmurous with hopes drifting toward days to come--“or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.” The scientists may demonstrate that this ancient oak--whose cooling shadows have for so many ages given comfort and delight--is overgrown, unshapely, with needless nodules, and corky rind, and splotches of moss, and seams that show stress of gone-by belaboring tempests; they may make it clear that these things are needless for its support--that they cover and cloak its normal organic structure; but who shall hew them clean away, and yet leave in fulness of stature and of sheltering power the majestic growth we venerate? I know the reader may say that this is a sentimental view; so it is; but science cannot measure the highest beauty of a poem; and with whose, or what fine scales shall we weigh the sanctities of religious awe? It must be understood, however, that the charms of the “King James’ Version” do not lie altogether in Elizabethan beauties of phrase, or in Jacobean felicities; there are quaint archaisms in it which we are sure have brought their pleasant reverberations of lingual sound all the way down from the days of Coverdale, of Tyndale, and of Wyclif. A few facts about the printing and publishing of the early English Bibles it may be well to call to mind. In a previous chapter I spoke of the fatherly edicts against Bible-reading and Bible-owning in the time of Henry VIII.; but the reign of his son, Edward VI., was a golden epoch for the Bible printers. During the six years when this boy-king held the throne, fifty editions--principally Coverdale’s and Tyndale’s versions--were issued, and no less than fifty-seven printers were engaged in their manufacture. Queen Mary made difficulties again, of which a familiar and brilliant illustration may be found in that old New England Primer which sets forth in ghastly wood-cut “the burning of Mr. John Rogers at the Stake, in Smithfield.” Elizabeth was coy; she set a great many prison-doors open; and when a courtier said, “May it please your Majesty, there be sundry other prisoners held in durance, and it would much comfort God’s people that they be set free.” She asked, “Whom?” And the good Protestant said, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” But she--young as she was--showed her monarch habit. “Let us first find,” said she, “if they wish enlargement.” But she had accepted the gift of a Bible on first passing through Cheapside--had pressed it to her bosom in sight of the street people, and said she should “oft read that holy book”--which was easy to say, and becoming.