80. The style of this translation is in general so enthusiastically praised, that no one is permitted either to qualify or even explain the grounds of his approbation. It is held to be the perfection of our English language. I shall not dispute this proposition; but one remark as to a matter of fact cannot reasonably be censured, that, in consequence of the principle of adherence to the original versions which had been kept up ever since the time of Henry VIII., it is not the language of the reign of James I. It may, in the eyes of many, be a better English, but it is not the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or Bacon, as any one may easily perceive. It abounds, in fact, especially in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology, and with single words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial use. On the more important question, whether this translation is entirely, or with very trifling exceptions, conformable to the original text, it seems unfit to enter. It is one which is seldom discussed with all the temper and freedom from oblique views which the subject demands, and upon which, for this reason, it is not safe for those who have not had leisure or means to examine it for themselves, to take upon trust the testimony of the learned. A translation of the Old Testament was published at Douay in 1609, for the use of the English Catholics. CHAPTER XX. HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1600 TO 1650. SECT. I. _Aristotelian Logic--Campanella--Theosophists--Lord Herbert of Cherbury--Gassendi’s Remarks upon him._ |Subjects of this chapter.|