d treat this as sublime poetry, why cannot we,
who have translated and made it ours?

V

Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly
inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and
rather wittily proved, in his Preface to "Gondibert," 'is a
dangerous term.' It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative
term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things
that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to
be mad--that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can
order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they
say in my part of the world) 'not exactly,' and one or two of us
here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration.
So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend
it to be all inspired _equally._ 'No' you may say, 'not all
equally: but all of it _directly,_ as no other book is.'

To that I might answer, 'How do you _know_ that direct
inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St John the Divine, and
closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what
authority have you to say that Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," for
example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly
inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above
themselves: and, if not directly, Why indirectly, and how?'

But I pause on the edge of a morass, and spring back to firmer
ground. Our Bible, as we have it, is a translation, made by
forty-seven men and published in the year 1611. The original--and
I am still on firm ground because I am quoting now from "The
Cambridge History of English Literature"--'either proceeds from
divine inspiration, as some will have it, or, according to
others, is the fruit of the religious genius of the Hebrew race.
From either point of view the authors are highly gifted
individuals' [!]--

highly gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their
diversities, and the progressiveness observable in their
representations of the nature of God, are wonderfully
consistent in the main tenor of their writings, and serve, in
general, for mutual confirmation and illustration. In some
cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier productions
by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive
conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and
profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier
conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the
deepe