_"History is Philosophy," &c._--What is the exact source of the often repeated passage,
"History is philosophy teaching by examples?"
I am aware that it is commonly attributed to Bolingbroke, but a distinguished literary friend tells me that he cannot find it in Bolingbroke's writings, and suspects that, as is the case with some other well-known sayings, its paternity is unknown.
[In the _Encyclopædia Metropolitana_, vol. ix., p. 13., this passage is attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus.]
Learned disputes about the translation of Biblical words might occupy the pages of "N. & Q." to the discomfort of some of its readers. In fact its numbers might be all swallowed up in the important inquiry after those original texts which our eminent translators used when they supplied England with the water of life, by furnishing the country with a faithful translation of the Holy Oracles. To the martyr Tyndale, and the venerable servant of Christ, Coverdale, this nation and the world are indebted to an extent that no honour to their memory can ever repay. Tyndale, fearless, learned, and devoted, was sacrificed in the prime of life; while Coverdale, more cautious, went on to old age constantly energetic in promoting the Reformation.
Words and sentences can be produced in which Coverdale claims superiority over Tyndale. While Tyndale's is more suited to this day of fearless enquiry and meridian light, Coverdale's may be preferred as a gentler clearing away of the morning clouds which obscured the horizon after Wickliffe had introduced the day spring from on high.
It has become too much the fashion in our day to exalt Tyndale at the expense of Coverdale. This is ungenerous and unjust: they were both of them great and shining lights in the hemisphere of the Reformation. Tyndale's learning and decision of character gave him great advantages as a translator from languages then but little known; while Coverdale's cautious, pains-taking perseverance enabled him to render most essential service to the sacred cause of Divine Truth. Our inquiry commenced with the question, why the words "translated out of Douche and Latyn into Englyshe" appeared upon the title-page to _some_ copies of Coverdale's Bible, 1535. I must remind my excellent friend, the Rev. HENRY WALTER, that while the copy in the British Museum, and that at Holkham, has those words, a finer and unsophisticated copy in the library of Earl Jersey of the _same_ edition has no such words; and that the four editions subsequently published by Coverdale all omit the words "Douche and Latyn," and insert in their place, "faythfully translated in English." My decided impression is, that the insertion of those words on the first title-page was not with Coverdale's knowledge, and that, lest they should mislead the reader, they were omitted when the title was reprinted; and a dedication and prologue were added when the copies arrived in England, the dedication and preface being from a very different fount of type to that used in printing the text.