6 shall here only mention the words I think censurable, referring to the margin for the places. Of learned words the following are a specimen verbose, loquaciousness,' advent, chasm,3 grumes,* steril,5 phenomena, consolated, investigate, innate,9 saliva ;10 concerning which, and some others of the same kind, his critical examiner, Mr. Twell, says justly, that they are unintelligible to the ignorant, and offensive to the knowing. His fine words and fashionable phrases, which on account of their affinity I shall throw together, the following may serve to exemplify: detachment," footguards,12 brigue,13 chicanery.14 Zacharias, we are told,15 "vented his divine enthusiasm ;" that is, when translated into common speech, prophesied. A later translator, or rather paraphrast, is not much happier in his expression, "he was seized with a divine afflatus," here spoken of as a disease. Zaccheus, for chief of the publicans,16 is made "collector-general of the customs." Simon Magus, in his hands, becomes "the plenipotentiary of God."17 Jesus Christ is titled "guarantee of the alliance," 18 and the Lord of hosts, "the Lord of the celestial militia." 19 And, to avoid the flatness of plain prose, he sometimes gives a poetical turn to the expression: "Before the cock crow," becomes in his hands, " Before the cock proclaims the day." 20 22 The foppery of these last expressions is, if possible, more unsufferable than the pedantry of the first. They are, besides, so far from conveying the sense of the author, that they all, less or more, misrepresent it. As to low and ludicrous terms, there is, sometimes a greater coincidence in these with quaint and modish words, than one at first would imagine. It would not be easy to assign a motive for rendering oixodebлórns, yeoman,21 but it is still worse to translate ὅσοι τὴν θάλλασσαν ἐργάζονται, supercargoes, άρπαξιν, raparees,23 which he explains in the margin to mean kidnappers, and μvovrov, sots.24 I am surprised he has not found a place μέθυοντων, for sharpers, gamblers, and swindlers, fit company in every sense for his sots and raparees. I'woooxóμov is distended into a bank.25 Γλωσσοκόμον and κλέπτης dwindles into a pilferer ;25 τὴν χαρὰν τοῦ κυρίου σου is degraded into thy master's diversions,26 and aivos is swollen into a concert of praise. The laudable and successful importunity of the two blind men, who, notwithstanding the checks they received from the multitude, persisted in their application to Jesus for relief, is contemptuously denoted bawling out 28 When we are told that 27 our Lord silenced iqiumos, the sadducees, this author acquaints us that he dumbfounded them.* In short, what by magnifying, what by diminishing, what by distorting and disfiguring, he has in many places burlesqued the original. For answering this bad purpose, the extremes of cant and bombast are equally well adapted. The excess in the instances now given is so manifest, as entirely to supercede both argument and illustration. 5. But in regard to the use of what may be called learned words, it must be owned, after all, that it is not easy in every case to fix the boundaries. We sometimes find classed under that denomination, all the words of Greek and Latin etymology which are not current among the inferior orders of the people. Yet I acknowledge, that, if we were rigidly to exclude all such terms, we should be too often obliged, either to adopt circumlocution, or to express the sentiment weakly and improperly. There are other disadvantages, to be remarked afterwards, which might result from the exclusion of every term that may be comprehended in the definition above given. The common translation, if we except the consecrated terms, as some call them, which are not many, is universally admitted to be written in a style that is not only natural, but easily understood by the people; yet, in the common translation, there are many words which can hardly be supposed ever to have been quite familiar among the lower ranks. There is, however, one advantage possessed by that version over every other book composed at that period, which is, that from the universality of its use, and (we may now add) its long continuance, it must have greatly contributed to give a currency to those words which are frequently employed in it. Now, it would be absurd in an interpreter of this age to expect a similar effect from any private version. A new translation, even though it were authorized by the public, would not have the same advantage at present, when our language is in a more advanced stage. 6. I should not be surprised that a reader, not accustomed narrowly to attend to these matters, were disposed at first hearing to question the fact, that there are many words in the vulgar translation which were not in common use at the time among the lower orders. But I am persuaded that a little reflection must soon convince him of it. Abstracting from those terms which have been transferred from the original languages, because there were no corresponding names in our tongue, such as phylactery, tetrarch, synagogue, proselyte, centurion, quaternion, legion, there are many in the English Bible which cannot be considered as having been at that time level to the meanest capacities. They are scarcely so yet, notwithstanding all the advantage which their occurring in that translation has * Matt. 22: 34. given them. Of such words I shall give a pretty large specimen in the margin. Nor can it be said of those there specified, that more familiar terms could not have been found equally expressive. For, though this may be true of some of them, it is not true of them all. Calling is equivalent to vocation, comfort to consolation, destruction to perdition, forgiveness to remission, defilement to pollution, almighty to omnipotent, enlightened to illuminated, watchful to vigilant, delightful to delectable, unchangeable to immutable, heavenly to celestial, and earthly to terrestrial. Nay, the first six in the marginal list might have been not badly supplied by the more homely terms, writer, scholar, comparison, letter, unbeliever, womb. Yet I would not be understood, by this remark, as intending to throw any blame upon the translators for the choice they have sometimes made of words, which, though not obscure, were not the most familiar that it was possible to find. There are several reasons, to be given immediately, which may justly determine the translator, on some occasions, to desert the common rule of adopting always the most obvious words. At the same time there are certain excesses in this way, whereof I have also given examples, into which a judicious interpreter will never be in danger of falling. The reason which ought, on the other hand to determine a translator not to confine himself to the words which are current in the familiar tattle of the lower ranks in society, are as follows: 7. First, in all compositions not in the form of dialogue, even the simplest, there is some superiority in the style to the language of conversation among the common people; and even the common people themselves understand many words, which far from having any currency among them, never enter into their ordinary talk. * First of nouns: Scribe, disciple, parable, epistle, infidel, matrix, lunatic, exile, exorcist, suppliant, residue, genealogy, appetite, audience, pollution, perdition, partition, potentate, progenitor, liberality, occurrent, immutability, pre-eminence, remission, diversity, fragment, abjects, frontier, tradition, importunity, concupiscence, redemption, intercession, superscription, inquisition, insurrection, communion, instructor, mediator, exactor, intercessor, benefactor, malefactor, prognosticator, ambassador, ambassage, ambushment, meditation, ministration, administration, abomination, consummation, convocation, constellation, consolation, consultation, acceptation, communication, disputation, cogitation, estimation, operation, divination, vocation, desolation, tribulation, regeneration, propitiation, justification, sanctification, salutation, interpretation, supplication, exaction, unction. Second, of adjectives.-Barbed, circumspect, conversant, extinct, vigilant, inordinate, delectable, tributary, impotent, magnifical, immutable, innumerable, celestial, incorruptible, terrestrial, omnipotent. Third, of verbs and participles.-Laud, distil, remit, abjure, implead, estimate, ascend, descend, frustrate, disannul, reverse, meditate, premeditate, predestinate, consort, amerce, transferred, transfigured, illuminated, consecrated, translated, incensed, mollified. VOL. I. 56 This is particularly the case with those of them who have had any sort of education, were it but the lowest. One ought, therefore, to consider accurately the degree of the uncommonness of the term, before it be rejected; as it may not be easy to supply its place with one more familiar, and equally apposite. Unnecessary circumlocutions are cumbersome, and ought always to be avoided. they are unfriendly alike to simplicity and to energy, and sometimes even to propriety and perspicuity. 8. Secondly, there are cases wherein some things may be done, nay, ought to be done by a translator, for the sake of variety. I acknowledge that this is a subordinate consideration, and that variety is never to be purchased at the expense of either perspicuity or simplicity. But even the sacred historians, though eminently simple and perspicuous, do not always confine themselves to the same words in expressing the same thoughts. Not that there appears in their manner any aim at varying the expression; but it is well known, that, without such an aim, the same subject, even in conversation, is hardly ever twice spoken of precisely in the same words. To a certain degree this is a consequence of that quality I have had occasion oftener than once to observe in them, a freedom from all solicitude about their language. Whereas an unvarying recourse to the same words for expressing the same thoughts, would in fact require one to be solicitous about uniformity, and uncommonly attentive to it. But in the use of the terms of principal consequence, in which the association between the words and the ideas is much stronger, they are pretty uniform in recurring to the same words, though they are not so in matters of little moment. Yet in these the variety is no greater than is perfectly natural in men whose thoughts are engrossed by their subject, and who never search about in quest of words. Now it is only in consequence of some attention to language in a translator, that he is capable of doing justice to this inattention, if I may so denominate it, of his author. 9. Thirdly, it was remarked before,* that though there is a sameness of idiom in the writers of the New Testament, particularly the evangelists, there is a diversity in their styles. Hence it arises, that different terms are sometimes employed by the different historians in relating the same fact. But as this circumstance has not much engaged the attention of interpreters, it often happens, that, in the translations of the Gospels, (for this is not peculiar to any one translation), there appears in the version a greater coincidence in the style of the evangelists than is found in the original. There are cases, I own, in which it is unavoidable. It often happens that two or more words in the language of the author are synonymous, and may therefore be used indiscriminately for expres * Diss. I. Part ii. sing the same thing, when it is impossible to find more than one in the language of the translator which can be used with propriety. When our Lord fed the five thousand men in the desert, the order he gave to the people immediately before was, as expressed by Matthew, (14: 19), ἀνακλιθῆναι ἐπὶ τοὺς χόρτους; as expressed by Mark, (6: 39), ἀνακλῖναι ἐπὶ τῷ χλωρῷ χόρτα; as expressed by Luke, (9: 14), xaranλivare autous; and as expressed by John, (6: 10), ποιήσατε ἀναπεσεῖν. Here every one of the evangelists conveys the same order in a different phrase, all of them, however, both naturally and simply. This variety it would be impossible to imitate in English, without recurring to unnatural and affected expressions. The three last evangelists use different verbs to express the posture, namely, ανακλίνω, κατακλίνω, and αναπίπτω. And even in the first the expression is, I may say, equally varied, as one of the two who use that verb employs the passive voice, the other the active. Now, in the common translation, the phrase to sit down, signifying the posture, is the same in them all. I do not here animadvert on the impropriety of this version. I took occasion formerly to observe, that those Greek words denote always to lie, and not to sit. My intention at present is only to show, that the simplicity of the sacred writers does not entirely exclude variety. Even the three terms above-mentioned are not all that occur in the Gospel for expressing the posture then used at table. Ανάκειμαι and κατάκειμαι are also employed. It would be in vain to attempt in modern tongues, which are comparatively scanty, to equal the copiousness of Greek; but, as far as the language which we use will permit, we ought not to overlook even these little variations. * 10. The evangelists have been thought, by many, so much to coincide in their narratives, as to give scope for suspecting that some of those who wrote more lately copied those who wrote before them. Though it must be owned that there is often a coincidence, both in matter and in expression, it will not be found so great in the original, nor so frequent, as perhaps in all translations ancient and modern. Many translators have considered it as a matter of no moment, provided the sense be justly rendered, whether the differences in manner were attended to or not. Nay, in certain cases, wherein it would have been easy to attain in the version all the variety of the original, some interpreters seem studiously to have avoided it. Perhaps they did not judge it convenient to make the appearance of a difference between the sacred writers in words, when there was none in meaning. In this, however, I think they judged wrong. An agreement in the sense, is all that ought to be desired in them; more especially, as they wrote in a language different from that spoken by the persons whose * Diss. VIII, Part iii, sect. 3, etc. |