A History of English Literature

market-place, due to mistaken reliance on words; and idols of the theater
(that is, of the schools), resulting from false reasoning.
In the details of all his scholarly work Bacon's knowledge and point of
view were inevitably imperfect. Even in natural science he was not
altogether abreast of his time--he refused to accept Harvey's discovery of
the manner of the circulation of the blood and the Copernican system of
astronomy. Neither was he, as is sometimes supposed, the _inventor_ of
the inductive method of observation and reasoning, which in some degree is
fundamental in all study. But he did, much more fully and clearly than any
one before him, demonstrate the importance and possibilities of that
method; modern experimental science and thought have proceeded directly in
the path which he pointed out; and he is fully entitled to the great honor
of being called their father, which certainly places him high among the
great figures in the history of human thought.
THE KING JAMES BIBLE, 1611. It was during the reign of James I that the
long series of sixteenth century translations of the Bible reached its
culmination in what we have already called the greatest of all English
books (or rather, collections of books), the King James ('Authorized')
version. In 1604 an ecclesiastical conference accepted a suggestion,
approved by the king, that a new and more accurate rendering of the Bible
should be made. The work was entrusted to a body of about fifty scholars,
who divided themselves into six groups, among which the various books of
the Bible were apportioned. The resulting translation, proceeding with the
inevitable slowness, was completed in 1611, and then rather rapidly
superseded all other English versions for both public and private use. This
King James Bible is universally accepted as the chief masterpiece of
English prose style. The translators followed previous versions so far as
possible, checking them by comparison with the original Hebrew and Greek,
so that while attaining the greater correctness at which they aimed they
preserved the accumulated stylistic excellences of three generations of
their predecessors; and their language, properly varying according to the
nature of the different books, possesses an imaginative grandeur and rhythm
not unworthy--and no higher praise could be awarded--of the themes which it
expresses. The still more accurate scholarship of a later century demanded
the Revised Version of 1881, but the superior literary quality of the King
James version remains undisputed. Its style, by the nature of the case, was
somewhat archaic from the outset, and of course has become much more so
with the passage of time. This entails the practical disadvantage of making
the Bible--events, characters, and ideas--seem less real and living; but on
the other hand it helps inestimably to create the finer imaginative
atmosphere which is so essential for the genuine religious spirit.
MINOR PROSE WRITERS. Among the prose authors of the period who hold an
assured secondary position in the history of English literature three or
four may be mentioned: Robert Burton, Oxford scholar, minister, and
recluse, whose 'Anatomy of Melancholy' (1621), a vast and quaint compendium
of information both scientific and literary, has largely influenced
numerous later writers; Jeremy Taylor, royalist clergyman and bishop, one
of the most eloquent and spiritual of English preachers, author of 'Holy
Living' (1650) and 'Holy Dying' (1651); Izaak Walton, London tradesman and
student, best known for his 'Compleat Angler' (1653), but author also of
charming brief lives of Donne, George Herbert, and others of his
contemporaries; and Sir Thomas Browne, a scholarly physician of Norwich,
who elaborated a fastidiously poetic Latinized prose style for his
pensively delightful 'Religio Medici' (A Physician's Religion--1643) and
other works.