The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
§ 6. The Wyclifite versions
Nevertheless, it may be affirmed that both Wyclifite versions are far inferior in ease and idiomatic character to the Old English. It cannot be said that scholars are agreed as to the influence of the Wyclifite versions upon Tindale and the Authorised Version; but it is pretty clear that Tindale was influenced by them to a moderate extent, and that expressions of great force and beauty have, occasionally, been appropriated from Wyclif by the Authorised Version, either mediately or directly. One or two instances may suffice: John iv, 14, “a well of water springing up into everlasting life” comes, through Tindale, from both the Wyclifite versions; 1 Cor. ii, 10, “the deep things of God,” which Tindale renders, “the bottom of God’s secrets,” and the Rheims version, “the profundities of God.” How easy it is to go stylistically astray in such matters is shown by the fact that two versions, both published within the last ten years, have, respectively, for the first passage above, “a spring of water … welling up for enduring life,” and “a fountain … of water springing up for the Life of the ages”; and, for the second, “the profoundest secrets of God,” and “the depths of the divine nature.”
The Wyclifite version of Exod. xix, 16, 18, 19 is subjoined, the spelling being modernised, and modern renderings being indicated:
A hundred years later than the Wiclifite versions (20 November, 1483), Caxton published his Golden Legend, in which he had inserted considerable portions of the Pentateuch and the Gospels, on the basis, probably, of Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica. Caxton’s theory of translation, if we may judge from the preface to his Eneydos, was to seek a mean between “fair and strange terms,” by some regarded as “over curious,” and such “old and homely terms” as were now strange and almost disused. His aim lay in the wish to be generally understood. The clearness and beauty of the passage from Exodus will be readily seen.
It will be evident that the vocabulary of Caxton is drawn from the same source as Tindale’s, while it does not greatly differ from Wyclif’s, these sources being native English and Old French, with a very slight admixture of words coming directly from the Latin.