special reference to Armchairs. An exhibition of Armchairs was held in Burlington House. Professor Yumpeltick of Yale wrote a monograph in three volumes illustrative of the genesis and nature of Armchairs.

'My poem,' murmured Beamshifter, 'is. being damned with faint prose. I admit I am autochthonous, but my universality is being disregarded. My flight, demonstrably, is sustained, but they have not computed the height of my ascent. Moreover

...

'he turned down the jets of his gas-stove, 'I am not merely the greatest poet of my time. I am the greatest critic!' His head turned frigidly on the vertebrae of his neck. 'Am I not?' he inquired icily. The gas-stove purred timid assent.

It would be unseemly, he admitted, for the only adequate appreciation of Beamshifter to appear over his own initials in The Loud Noise, the journal whose editorial chair he had lately deigned to occupy. The appreciation of The Armchair by K. K. Kurtis in the pages of The Loud Noise was the fine flower of criticism during that decade.

The Hearthrug followed The Armchair, and The Kettle-Holder consummated his primacy of poetry. The only critic in Fleet Street who

could soar to the peaks of their argument was K. K. Kurtis. The balanced enthusiasm of Kurtis was tempered by a spirit of precise criticism. In lines 945-6 of The Toothbrush, he pointed out the rhyming of 'jaws' with 'wars.' He reproved the eccentricities of the poet's punctuation.

He suggested that the inspiration had been cramped by undue brevity.

The

The summit of Beamshifter's genius was at last attained with The Kitchensink, a poem in twelve cantos. Anthology of Contemporary Poetry for the lustrum signalised by The Kitchensink found that it was wholly unseemly to enclose the work of any other writer soever within the same covers as The Kitchen-sink. It was produced, accordingly, with fifty blank pages before and fifty blank pages after the Masterpiece Itself.

When Lordly Beamshifter died at length, K. K. Kurtis, it was rumoured, found the world of letters a desert so Saharan that he turned broken-hearted from the practice of criticism. Some declare he bought up a large boardinghouse on the Swanage front, others that he committed suicide. It is certain that K. K. Kurtis did not long survive the great poet whose virtues he had so masterfully analysed.

THE publication by Miss Deanesly this learned volume brings to a close we believe, a controversy carried for the last thirty years. For this troversy we may be thankful; has served to sweep away a mass traditional error as regards Wy"s translation of the Bible, and the place to build up a truer doce. The spades of many painsing workers have made it possible Miss Deanesly to reach finality many matters hitherto in suspense. the following pages we propose to e our readers a brief account of stages through which the conversy over Wyclif's Bible has passed, 1 of the conclusion that we believe l not be generally accepted, though O must premise that strict proof of ny of the contentions is impossible. Seventy years ago scholarship and dition alike assigned to Wyclif publication of the first English nslation of the Bible, at a period his life variously dated as between 8 and his death (December 31, 4). Elaborate pictures were drawn Wyclif at work at Lutterworth, f paralysed, yet never resting until had completed his gigantic task. e absence of printed copies 2 made jecture and romance easy, the more

The Lollard Bible and other Medieval BibliVersions. By Margaret Deanesly. Camge University Press, 318 6d. net. There were partial editions. Purvey's New ament was printed by J. Lewis in 1731, by Baber in 1810, and by S. Baxter in 1841 is Hexapla, in each case assigned to Wywhile Adam Clarke had printed the Song Solomon in his Commentary (1808). The r Wyclif version of the New Testament first published in 1848 by Lea Wilson.

so as there was as yet no scientific study of Middle English in its various dialectic forms, and no Early English Text Society to make this possible. But in 1850 the publication in four magnificent volumes by J. Forshall and J. Madden of Wyclif's Bible in its entirety gave no further excuse for substituting tradition for knowledge. This monumental work conclusively showed that the so-called Wyclif Bible existed in two forms; the one form an earlier version, a literal construe scarcely English in its structure; the other or later form alone deserving the name of a translation. The earlier version was seen to be composite in origin. The Old Testament, up to Baruch iii. 20, claimed to be the work of a prominent Oxford lollard, an associate of Wyclif, Nicholas Hereford. There Hereford's share ended, as is shown by a manuscript now in the Bodleian of which a facsimile was published by the editors. The cause of the abrupt termination was the citation of Hereford before the council of bishops at the Blackfriars, May, 1382, and his subsequent flight to Rome in a vain appeal to the Pope. In addition to Hereford, whose style was stiff and pedantic, and whose dialect was west midland, there is evidence in the Bodleian manuscript of four other contributors. What part of the whole, if any, was by Wyclif was not determined. A manuscript in the British Museum assigns to him the translation of Clement of Llanthony's Harmony of

himself from residence near Saltwood. Four years before Arundel's threats he had resigned his living (October 8, 1403). Until recently his later career was scarcely known. It was surmised that he resumed his lollardy, and there was some evidence for his imprisonment by Archbishop Chichele. Miss Deanesly's researches enable us to fill up some of the gaps in Purvey's life by establishing his authorship of. two tracts, both of which she has printed. From these we see that for some years after 1403 he engaged in controversy in defence of vernacular bibles. That Purvey ended his life either in hiding or in some bishop's gaol appears certain. But the date of his death is unknown. A doubtful monogram, written in a small but clear hand, in a lollard manuscript of 1427, J. Perney,' and also a Latin distich in the same manuscript

Christus homofactus J. P. prosperet actus

would appear to show that he was alive in 1427. Netter, also writing in 1427, tells us: 'I have in my hands now a book taken from John Purvey in prison.' 2

The mention of Purvey has led us into a digression. Our apology

must be the reverence we feel for this

first real translator of the English Bible. For this translation was almost wholly his work, nor is there any reason to believe that any part of it was finished in Wyclif's lifetime. Though the gospels were finished about 1387, and a copy of the same presented to Richard's queen, Anne

1Thorpe's dairy of his imprisonment in 1407 is one of the most interesting human documents we possess. It can be read in Foxe or in other modern reprints.

2In the third chapter of this work, Purvey claimed that women should be allowed to preach.

1Articles republished in 1897 in Gasquet's An Old English Bible.

of Bohemia, the whole work was not completed until 1395-6. But to return. For forty years the conclusions set out by Forshall and Madden were generally accepted. In 1893, however, Abbot Gasquet-for he had not at that time been elevated to the purple-astonished the world of scholars by claiming that Wyclif's Bible was not a lollard work at all, but was a sort of authorised version of the Scriptures sanctioned by the medieval Church, the reading of which, if not exactly encouraged, was certainly not prohibited. He further maintained that Wyclif's alleged translation was by no means the earliest translation of the Bible into English, but was one only of several translations made before and in his times, of some of which the Church had approved.

Gasquet's conclusions so damaging to the reputation of Wyclif, so subversive of Protestant tradition-were based upon two lines of evidence. He took for granted that any Bible translated by Wyclif or his followers must necessarily savour of his errors. He examined the two Wyclif versions, and, apart from Purvey's General Prologue in the second version, could decided that they must have been the find no heresy in them. He therefore work of orthodox writers, whose names history had not recorded. The wide distribution of these bibles, their numerous manuscripts, the fact that several were possessed by ecclesiastics, led him to infer that they were 'authorized versions,' and, as a necessary conclusion, to overthrow, as he thought, the whole traditional Protestant view as to the attitude of the medieval Church to vernacular Scriptures.

In addition to this à priori reasoning Gasquet adduced positive evidence. He reminded us of a statement of

Sir Thomas More. In his famous Dialogue, published as part of his controversy with Tindale, More discusses the question whether or not the Bible may be read in English. He maintains that 'the Holy Bible was long before his' ('the great arch-heretic Wyclif's') 'day by virtuous and well learned men translated into the English tongue.' 'Wyclif,' he adds,

purposely corrupted the holy text, maliciously placing therein such words as might in the reader's ear serve for the proof of such heresies as he went about for to sow, which he not only set forth with his own translation of the Bible, but also with certain prologues and glosses which he had made thereon.

In the following chapter More once more repeated this statement. He is dealing with the charge brought forward by Tindale, that the Romanists have burned the English Bible He replies:

If this were so, then were it in my mind not well done. But I believe ye mistake it. How be it, what ye have seen I cannot say. But myself have seen and could show you Bibles fair and old written in English which have been known and seen by the bishop of the diocese, and left in laymen's hands (women's, too, such as be known for good and catholic folk), who used it with devotion and soberness. But, of truth, all such as are found in the hands of heretics they use to take away. But they do cause none to be burned, so far as ever I could wit, but only such as be found faulty. Whereof many be set forth with evil logues or glosses maliciously made by Wyclif and other heretics. For no good man, I ween, would be so mad as to burn up the Bible wherein they found no fault, nor any law that letted (hindered) it be looked on and read.

pro

More further maintained, on the doubtful evidence of an ambiguous reading in the seventh constitution of Oxford, (1408)-the council that suppressed Wyclif's Bible-that 'to have the Bible in English was no hurt.' More did not stand alone. Foxe also tells us that 'before John Wyclif

was born, the whole body of the Scriptures was by sundry men translated into our mother tongue.' Ussher repeated the same statement with more circumstance in his Preface to the Authorized Version of 1611:

And about that time, even in our own King Richard the Second's day, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen with diverse; translated, as is very probable, in that age.

Ussher derived his information about Trevisa-a famous 'turner' or translator of the age, and a fellow lodger with Wyclif at Queen's College after the Reformer's expulsion from Canterbury Hall-from Caxton. But all search for Trevisa's translation has proved vain, while more accurate knowledge of his life leads us to conclude that he was unlikely to have attempted it.

Gasquet's eminence as a scholar, and the apparent strength of the evidence that he brought forward from More, secured wide acceptance of his positions, in spite of the arguments of the late learned Wyclif scholar, F. Matthews, and of a searching article in the Church Quarterly Review, January, 1901. Gasquet's contentions were considerably strengthened by the researches of the next ten years. Libraries were searched and catalogued by Dr. M. R. James and others, and their buried treasures brought to light. These included several vernacular translations.Though none of these were of the whole Bible, they showed that More and Gasquet had not argued without some justification. The attention of scholars was first directed to the English translation of the Psalter, together with extracts from Job and Jeremiah made by the Yorkshire hermit, Richard Rolle, of Hampole,