the Gospels, the Psalms, and other portions of the Scriptures. Bede was at work on a rendering of John's Gospel when he died, and more than two centuries later new versions, or recensions of older versions, were seeing the light. Theological activity, far from ceasing at the Conquest, was rather stimulated into new and more vigorous life. The era of cathedral building began, and much about the same time the first Miracle Plays must have been written. The tradition continues through such men as Orm, Richard of Hampole, and Langland, until we reach Wyclif - not even Chaucer lying outside its pale. From Wyclif to our own day the line is again unbroken. Who needs to be reminded of Tyndale, of Latimer, of Cromwell and his Puritans, of Bunyan, Addison, and Wesley? The Bible has been an active force in English literature for over twelve hundred years, and during that whole period it has been molding the diction of representative thinkers and literary artists. Forced into rivalry with other models, it has struggled against them, now vanquished for the moment, now sharing with its competitors the trophies of conquest, and now sole master of the field, yet always most powerful when the national life was most intense, and scarcely ever so baffled but that some signs of its authority are manifest.

Before considering the nature of the plastic influence which the Bible has exercised upon English style, it may be well to remind ourselves of some of the more obvious ways in which Scriptural language has been appropriated by English writers. Of these the most important are direct quotation and allusion..

Under the head of direct quotation it will not be necessary to include the use made of Scripture in sermons and theological treatises; it will be sufficient to refer to its occasional employment by secular writers to produce the effect of impressiveness or pathos. This effect has been aptly characterized in the current number of an American periodical, by an author1 whom I rejoice to call my friend. His words are, "A felicitous use of Scriptural quotations, with the solemn dignity of their style and feeling, brings us with our narrow cares into the presence of past ages,

1 Rev. Frederic Palmer, in the Andover Review for April, 1892.

and raises the individual from his solitariness into union with man everywhere, with the infinite and the eternal."

This truth is akin to that recognized by Shakespeare and the great dramatists of antiquity, that tragedy requires the occasional introduction of the aphorism or gnomic sentence. The same principle holds in prose, though perhaps its application is here somewhat more limited. John Morley perceives its validity when he says of Burke: "Burke will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of discussions on the local and the accidental he scatters apothegms that take us into the regions of _lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of the most strenuous and passionate deliverances, he suddenly rises aloof from his immediate subject, and in all tranquillity reminds us of some permanent relation of things, some enduring truth of human life or society." If a writer is sufficient for the coinage of his own maxims, it may in general be best that he should confine himself to these, especially where it is the pure intellect that is addressed; but if the sensibility is to be touched as well, a felicitous use of Scriptural phraseology will hardly fail to stir the deepest springs of emotion. Who has not been thrilled, even to tears, by the organ note struck at the euthanasia of Sydney Carton?

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-two.

I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-three.

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefulest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.

We might be tempted to believe that the emotion was created by the circumstances, or by Dickens' exquisite art in the shap

1 See also Aristotle's Rhetoric, Bk. 2, chap. 21.

ing of his own sentences; but read the final chapter without the Scripture words, and the difference will be readily appreciated.

Akin to direct quotation, but not identical with it, is the heightening of style through the employment of Biblical allusion. An instance of remote allusion is given by Payne, among the comments which follow. A more palpable one is supplied by an apostrophe near the end of Shelley's Defense of Poetry.

Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow; they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the imputations of real or fictitious crime have been confused in the contemporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how little is as it appears or appears as it is; look to your own motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged.

Here there are no fewer than seven Biblical sentences woven into a tissue all palpitating with generous sympathy and generous indignation.

Similar effects are often to be noted in poetry. Thus from the close of Aurora Leigh:

Along the tingling desert of the sky,

Beyond the circle of the conscious hills,

Were laid in jasper-stone as clear as glass

The first foundations of that new, near Day

Which should be builded out of heaven to God.

Or from Longfellow's Interlude before the Theologian's Tale:

Not to one church alone, but seven,

The voice prophetic spake from heaven;

And unto each the promise came,

Diversified, but still the same;

For him that overcometh are

The new name written on the stone,

The raiment white, the crown, the throne,

And I will give him the Morning Star!

But our concern is with prose, not poetry, and in prose there are all grades and settings of allusion, down to the sheerest flip

1 See p. xxxvi.

pancy, even the latter testifying, through its very irreverence, to the arrowy momentum and tenacity of these winged words.

As instances of an average sort of allusion, remarkable neither for elevation nor smartness, I select two or three from a single volume of Matthew Arnold's essays (the italics are mine).

He [Wordsworth] is one of the very chief glories of English Poetry; and by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry. Let us lay aside every weight which hinders our getting him recognized as this.

What we have of Shelley in poetry and prose suited with this charming picture of him; Mrs. Shelley's account suited with it; it was a possession which one would gladly have kept unimpaired. It still subsists, I must now add; it subsists even after one has read the present biography; it subsists, but so as by fire.

It [society] looked in Byron's glass as it looks in Lord Beaconsfield's, and sees, or fancies that it sees, its own face there; and then it goes its way, and straightway forgets what manner of man it saw.

When a writer, with a native vigor, lightness, and rapidity of his own, has become wholly permeated, as it were, with the thought and diction of the Bible, so that he has acquired its tone and manner, and yet kept himself above the condition of the mere servile and mechanical copyist, we have from him such a clear, simple, and picturesque style as that of Bunyan. Such writing has an archaic flavor, yet is intelligible to the meanest capacity; may be full of quotation, yet perfectly assimilates all that it quotes; abounds in allusion which it never degrades; but is best in that it seems to have drawn from the same perennial fountains as the Bible itself, instead of merely standing to it in a dependent and derivative relation. One or two familiar extracts from Bunyan will serve as illustrations.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with Rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, What shall I do?

Now I saw in my Dream that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured, and they had Raiment put on that shone like Gold. There were also that met them with Harps and Crowns, and gave them to them, the Harp to praise withal, and the Crowns in token of honor. Then I heard in my Dream that all the Bells in the City Rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, Enter ye into the joy of your Lord. I also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, Blessing, Honor, Glory, and Power be to Him that sitteth upon the Throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever.

In such examples as these we can study the Biblical style to better advantage, perhaps, than in the Bible itself. While preserving the essential qualities of Hebraic diction, Bunyan presents them at one remove from antiquity and its aloofness. Bunyan is a man of our own race, living but yesterday, as it were, in comparison with the centuries which separate us from the authors of the Bible. Moreover, in studying Bunyan we are not only studying Biblical style in English, but we are studying English itself at an epoch when, according to one of the most accomplished of foreign critics, it reached its best estate. Let us hear what Villemain has to say upon this topic. The time he is speaking of is the Restoration, and of it he affirms: "English idiom then attained its happiest epoch; it was taking on refinement without becoming impoverished; it still, like the ancient Northern languages, had its whole rich supply of native, energetic, concise expressions. With these it had blended a strong tincture of Biblical imagination. Besides, though it appropriated in passing many French words, it only employed them, so to speak, as proper names and fashionable phrases, and in no respect changed the primitive originality of its exact and elliptical constructions, and the energy of its numberless metaphors. In this respect it did not model itself upon less regular and less poetic tongues; it remained in possession of its own physiognomy and of all its vigor."

We now approach our subject proper. What is the literary quality which the Bible possesses, and which it has therefore been communicating to English for nearly thirteen hundred years? In

1 Tableau de la littérature au XVIIIe Siècle, I. 88.