AUTHORISED VERSION OF THE BIBLE

   was executed between the years 1604 and 1610 at the instance of James I., so that it is not undeservedly called King James's Bible, and was the work of 47 men selected with marked fairness and discretion, divided into three groups of two sections each, who held their sittings for three years severally at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford, the whole being thereafter revised by a committee of six, who met for nine months in Stationers' Hall, London, and received thirty pounds each, the rest being done for nothing. The result was a translation that at length superseded every other, and that has since woven itself into the affectionate regard of the whole English-speaking people. The men who executed it evidently felt something of the inspiration that breathes in the original, and they have produced a version that will remain to all time a monument of the simplicity, dignity, grace, and melody of the English language; its very style has had a nobly educative effect on the national literature, and has contributed more than anything else to prevent it from degenerating into the merely frivolous and formal.