rsion of the Bible and of the Book of Common Prayer.

With regard to the former, no one, he said, could be more deeply
convinced of the inestimable value of its having been made when it was,
and being what it is. In his opinion it was made at the happy juncture
when our language had attained adequate expansion and flexibility, and
when at the same time its idiomatic strength was unimpaired by excess of
technical distinctions and conventional refinements; and these
circumstances, though of course infinitely subordinate to the spiritual
influence of its subject-matter, he considered to be highly important in
connection with a volume which naturally became a universally recognised
standard of the language; for thus the fresh well of English undefiled
was made a perennial blessing to the nation, in no slight degree
conducive to the robust and manly thinking and character of its
inhabitants. He was satisfied, too, as to its general and most impartial
accuracy, and its faithfulness in rendering not only the words but the
style, the strength, and the spirit and the character of the original
records. He attached too the value one might suppose he would attach to
the desirableness of leaving undisturbed the sacred associations which
to the feelings of aged Christians belonged to the _ipsissima verba_
which had been their support under the trials of life.

And so with regard to the Prayer Book, he reverenced and loved it as the
Church's precious heritage of primitive piety, equally admirable for its
matter and its style. It may be interesting to add, that in reference to
this latter point I have heard him pronounce that many of the collects
seemed to him examples of perfection, consisting, according to his
impression, of words whose signification filled up without excess or
defect the simple and symmetrical contour of some majestic meaning, and
whose sound was a harmony of accordant simplicity and grandeur; a
combination, he added, such as we enjoy in some of the best passages of
Shakespeare.

But notwithstanding that he held these opinions, which will evince that
he was not one who would lightly touch either sacred volume, he did not
think that plain mistakes in the translation of the Bible, or obsolete
words, or renderings commonly misunderstood, should be perpetually
handed down in our authorised version of the volume of inspiration, or
that similar blemishes in the Prayer Book, which, as being of human
composition, would ad