the Lollards]

While they were thus led more and more to appeal to the Bible as the
divine standard of right living and right thinking, at the same time
they found in the sacred volume the treasures of a most original and
noble literature unrolled before them; stirring history and romantic
legend, cosmical theories and priestly injunctions, profound metaphysics
and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of
exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful
wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless
eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a
time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people,
this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English
mind as in a virgin soil. Great consequences have flowed from the fact
that the first truly popular literature in England--the first which
stirred the hearts of all classes of people, and filled their minds with
ideal pictures and their every-day speech with apt and telling phrases--
was the literature comprised within the Bible. The superiority of the
common English version of the Bible, made in the reign of James I., over
all other versions, is a fact generally admitted by competent critics.
The sonorous Latin of the Vulgate is very grand, but in sublimity of
fervour as in the unconscious simplicity of strength it is surpassed
by the English version, which is scarcely if at all inferior to the
original, while it remains to-day, and will long remain, the noblest
monument of English speech. The reason for this is obvious. The common
English version of the Bible was made by men who were not aiming at
literary effect, but simply gave natural expression to the feelings
which for several generations had clustered around the sacred text. They
spoke with the voice of a people, which is more than the voice of the
most highly gifted man. They spoke with the voice of a people to whom