sons, a patriot sternly resenting all dishonour to his country, a reformer who ventured his life for the purity of the Church and the freedom of the Bible -an earnest, faithful "parsoun of a toune" standing out conspicuously among the clergy of the time,

"For Criste's lore and his apostles twelve

He taughte-and first he folwede it himselve."1

Here is a choice specimen from one of the monkish writers of the time describing his death:-"On the feast of the passion of St. Thomas of Canterbury, John Wycliffe, the organ of the devil, the enemy of the Church, the idol of heretics, the image of hypocrites, the restorer of schism, the storehouse of lies, the sink of flattery, being struck by the horrible judgment of God, was seized with the palsy throughout his whole body, and that mouth which was to have spoken huge things against God and His saints, and holy Church, was miserably drawn aside, and afforded a frightful spectacle to beholders; his tongue was speechless and his head shook, showing plainly that the curse which God had thundered forth against Cain was also inflicted on him." 2

Some time after his death a petition was presented to the Pope, which to his honour he rejected, praying him to order Wycliffe's body to be taken out of consecrated ground and buried in a dunghill. But forty years after, by a decree of the Council of Constance, the

1 Chaucer's Prologue, 527. The whole of that exquisite description of the "parsoun" is supposed to refer to Wycliffe, whose teaching the poet had warmly embraced. 2 Lewis's "Life of Wycliffe."

old Reformer's bones were dug up and burnt, and the ashes flung into the little river Swift, which "runneth hard by his church at Lutterworth." And so, in the often-quoted words of old Fuller, "as the Swift bare them into the Severn, and the Severn into the narrow seas, and they again into the ocean, thus the ashes of Wycliffe is an emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed over all the world."

§ 4. But it is with his Bible translation that we are specially concerned. As far as we can learn, the whole Bible was not translated by the Reformer. About half the Old Testament is ascribed to Nicholas de Hereford,1 one of the Oxford leaders of the Lollards, the remainder, with the whole of the New Testament, being done by Wycliffe himself. About eight years after its completion the whole was revised by Richard Purvey, his curate and intimate friend, whose manuscript is still in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. Purvey's preface is a most interesting old document, and shows not only

1 He appears to have stopped abruptly in the middle of the verse (Baruch iii. 20), probably at the time of his seizure for heresy. Here is a specimen of his translation, Psalm xxiii. :-"The Lord gouerneth me and no thing to me shal lacke; in the place of leswe where he me ful sette. Ouer watir of fulfilling he nurshide me; my soule he conuertide. He broghte down upon me the sties of rightwiseness; for his name. For whi and if I shal go in the myddel of the shadewe of deth; I shal not dreden euelis, for thou art with me. Thi yerde and thi staf; the han confortid me. Thou hast maad redi in thi sighte a bord; aghen them that trublyn me. Thou hast myche fatted in oile myn hed and my chalis makende ful drunken, hou right cler it is. And thi mercy shall vnderfolewe me; alle the dayis of my lif. And that I dwelle in the hous of the Lord in to the lengthe of dayis."

that he was deeply in earnest about his work, but that he thoroughly understood the intellectual and moral conditions necessary for its success.

"A simpel creature," he says, "hath translated the Scripture out of Latin into Englische. First, this simpol creature had much travayle with divers fellows and helpers to gather many old Bibles and other doctors and glosses to make one Latin Bible some deal true and then to study it anew the texte and any other help he might get, especially Lyra on the Old Testament, which helped him much with this work. The third time to counsel with olde grammarians and old divines of hard words and hard sentences how they might best be understood and translated, the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunnyng at the correcting of the translacioun. . . . A translator hath great nede to studie well the sense both before and after, and then also he hath nede to live a clene life and be full devout in preiers, and have not his wit occupied about worldli things that the Holy Spyrit author of all wisdom and cunnynge and truthe dresse him for his work and suffer him not to err." And he concludes with the prayer, "God grant to us all grace to ken well and to kepe well Holie Writ, and to suffer joiefulli some paine for it at the laste."

Like all the earlier English translations, Wycliffe's Bible was based on the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome; and this is the great defect in his work, as compared with the versions that followed. He was not capable of

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