age of the authorized Bible must have been very close to that of
its time. For I cannot admit that much change can have taken place in fifty
years: and the language of the version represents both our common English
and that of Recorde with very close approximation. Take sentences from
Bacon and Raleigh, and it will be apparent that these writers will be held
to differ from all three, Recorde, the version, and ourselves, by
differences of the same character. But we speak of Recorde's conversation,
and of our own. We conclude that it is the plain and almost colloquial
character of the Authorized Version which distinguishes it from the English
of Bacon and Raleigh, by approximating it to the common idiom of the time.
If any one will cast an eye upon the letters of instruction written by
Cecil[610] and the Bishop of London to the translators themselves, or to
the general directions sent to them in the King's name, he will find that
these plain business compositions differ from the English of Bacon and
Raleigh by the same sort of differences which distinguish the version
itself.

PRONUNCIATION.

The foreign word, or the word of a district, or class of people, passes
into the general vernacular; but it is long before the specially learned
will acknowledge the right of those with whom they come in contact to
follow general usage. The rule is simple: so long as a word is technical or
local, those who know its technical or local pronunciation may reasonably
employ it. But when the word has become general, the specialist is not very
wise if he refuse to follow {331} the mass, and perfectly foolish if he
insist on others following him. There have been a few who demanded that
Euler should be pronounced in the German fashion:[611] Euler has long been
the property of the world at large; what does it matter how his own
countrymen pronounce the letters? Shall we insist on the French pronouncing
_Newton_ without that final _tong_ which they never fail to give him? They
would be wise enough to laugh at us if we did. We remember that a pedant
who was insisting on all the pronunciations being retained, was met by a
maxim in contradiction, invented at the moment, and fathered upon
Kaen-foo-tzee,[612] an authority which he was challenged to dispute. Whom
did you speak of? said the bewildered man of accuracy. Learn your own
system, was the answer, before you impose it on others; Confucius says that
too.[613]

The old English has _fote_,