corn"
which sent me back to "Ruth"; and a quotation in Quackenbos's
"Rhetoric"--"Can'st thou hook the Leviathan" which made me revel in
"Job."

Something Meg Merrilies said bore me on toward the roaring storm of
Isaiah. The Latinized medium seemed to suit his denunciations best; and
then, besides, I found more illuminating footnotes in the Douai version
than in the King James. In both versions, some passages were so obscure
that I often wondered how anybody could get any meaning out of them. I
was often astonished to find in English novels that the old people in
the cottages were soothed by texts, quoted at a great length, out of
which I could make nothing, so I limited myself to the Douai version,
which I found more illuminating.

Whether my system of reading is to be commended or not to young persons,
I am not prepared to say, but for me it made the Bible a really live
book. To be frank, and perhaps shocking at the same time--if anybody had
asked me whether, being marooned on an island, I should have most
preferred the Bible in my loneliness, I should promptly have answered
"No." At this age "Nicholas Nickleby" or "Midsummer Night's Dream," or
"The Tempest," or "As You Like it," or Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient
Rome," would have suited me better, provided, of course, that I could
have chosen only one book.

It was borne in on me many times that no author could improve on the
phrasing of the Bible. Both in the Vulgate and the King James versions
there are passages which, leaving aside all question of doctrine, it is
sacrilege to try to improve. The French translation of the Bible is, as
everybody knows, very paraphrastic, and that may account for the fact
that, while regarded as a precious depository of doctrine, it is not a
household book, and the dreadfully dull interpretations of Clement
Marot--called hymns--naturally bored a people who, in their hearts,
believe that God listens more amiably to petitions uttered in the
language of the Academy! In their novels, dealing with the beginnings of
Christianity--and there are many such novels in French unknown in other
countries--it is hard for a French author not to be rhetorical, in the
manner of the writer of "Ben Hur" when the death of Christ is described.
No human author could improve on the words of the Vulgate, or the words
of the King James version. What young heart can ponder over these words,
without a thrill, St. John XIX (Douai version: 1609; Rheims; 1582):