Then many common expressions are taken from characters in well-known books. We often speak of some one's _Man Friday_, meaning a right-hand man or general helper; but the original Man Friday was, of course, the savage whom Robinson Crusoe found on his desert island, and who acted afterwards as his servant. In describing a person as _quixotic_ we do not necessarily think of the original Don Quixote in the novel of the great Spanish writer, Cervantes. Don Quixote was always doing generous but rather foolish things, and the adjective _quixotic_ now describes this sort of action. A quite different character, the Jew in Shakespeare's play, "The Merchant of Venice," has given us the expression "a Shylock." From Dickens's famous character Mrs. Gamp in "Martin Chuzzlewit," who always carried a bulgy umbrella, we get the word _gamp_, rather a vulgar name for "umbrella." We speak of "a Sherlock Holmes" when we mean to describe some one who is very quick at finding out things. Sherlock Holmes is the hero of the famous detective stories of Conan Doyle. It is a very great testimony to the power of a writer when the names of persons or places in his books become in this way part of the English language. CHAPTER VII. WORDS THE BIBLE HAS GIVEN US. A great English historian, writing of the sixteenth century, once said, "The English people became the people of a book." The book he meant was, of course, the Bible. When England became Protestant the people found a new interest in the Bible. In Catholic times educated people, like priests, had read the Bible chiefly in Latin, though the New Testament had been translated into English. But most of the people could not even read. They knew the Bible stories only from the sermons and teaching of the priests, and from the great number of statues of Biblical kings and prophets which covered the beautiful churches of the Middle Ages. But the new Protestant teachers were much more enthusiastic about the Bible. Many of them found the whole of their religion in its pages, and were constantly quoting texts of Scripture. New translations of the New Testament were made, and at last, in 1611, the wonderful translation of the whole Bible known as the "Authorised Version," because it was the translation ordered and approved by the Government, was published. About the same time a translation into English was made for Catholics, and this was hardly less beautiful. It is known as the "Douai Bible" because it was published at Douai by Catholics who had fled from England. From that time the Bible has been the book which English people have read most, and it has had an immense influence on the English language. Even in the Middle Ages the Bible had given many new words to the language. Names of Eastern animals, trees, and plants, etc., like _lion_, _camel_, _cedar_, _palm_, _myrrh_, _hyssop_, _gem_, are examples of new words learned from the Bible at this time.