Ashes instead of bread I eat, And mix my drink with tears. Like grass that thirsts for rain. BRADY AND TATE. If the Scotch version of the Psalms is English, the English version is Irish, in as far as both of its authors were natives of the sister isle. Dr Nicholas Brady was born at Bandon, in the county of Cork, October 28, 1659, and after an education begun at Westminster School and Christ Church College, and completed at the University of Dublin, he became successively minister of St Catharine Cree, London, and Stratford-upon-Avon, and died rector of Clapham, as well as minister of Richmond, Surrey, May 20, 1726. Nahum Tate, a native of Dublin, and son of a clergyman, was born 1652. What profession he followed, if any, does not appear, and although promoted to the rank of poetlaureate, his place in literature never was high. He died in deep poverty, at the Mint in Southwark, a place of refuge for debtors, Aug. 12, 1715. The divine and the laureate together compiled the "New Version," now almost universally employed in the worship of the Church of England. Occasionally feeble, and never sublime, it is usually smooth and melodious, and its evenly cadence is not unfrequently relieved by some forcible turn or elegant expression; and, in order to appreciate it rightly, nothing more is needful than to compare it with the efforts of acknowledged masters of the lyre, few of whom, in this difficult enterprise, have been equally successful. BRADY AND TATE. 143 Psalm cxxxix. Thou, Lord, by strictest search hast known My public haunts and private ways; Surrounded by Thy power I stand, To think of once deserting Thee, If up to heaven I take my flight, 'Tis there Thou dwell'st enthroned in light; Or dive to hell's infernal plains, 'Tis there Almighty vengeance reigns. Or should I try to shun Thy sight The veil of night is no disguise, No screen from Thy all-searching eyes; Thro' midnight shades Thou find'st Thy way, As in the blazing noon of day. Thou know'st the texture of my heart, My reins, and every vital part; THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, AND ITS BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP. Of all the British centuries, the richest in religious authorship is the one of which we are now to take leave the century illustrated by the earnestness of Baxter, the profundity of Owen, the lofty idealism of Howe, the masculine energy of Barrow, the oriental opulence of Jeremy Taylor, the magnificence of Milton, the bright realisations of Bunyan—the century which produced the Authorised Version of the Bible, which compiled the Westminster Standards, and which has bequeathed to us "The Saint's Rest," and "Holy Living and Dying," "Paradise Lost," and "The Pilgrim's Progress." Our survey has been almost entirely confined to its more popular Christian literature, but it would leave our sketch very incomplete if we did not glance for a moment at its SACRED SCHOLARSHIP. The forty-seven translators of the Bible were, most of them, mighty in the knowledge of the original languages; and from the beginning to the close of the century, names like Hugh Broughton, Henry Ainsworth, Joseph Mede, Henry Hammond, James Ussher, John Selden, Patrick Young, and Simon Patrick, retained for England a rank which drew towards it the respectful regards of Biblical interpreters on the Continent, like Grotius and Voetius, Marckius and Buxtorf, Bochart, De Dieu, and the Spanheims. Pre-eminent amongst them was Dr EDWARD POCOCK, In 1630, when he was in his six-and-twentieth year, and when he had already distinguished himself by the publication of the first complete edition of the Syriac New Testament, he was appointed chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo. Here he found himself all at once in the midst of an Illustrated Bible the dogs "going about the city" and "making a noise," the husbandman winnowing corn with a trident or shovel, and thrashing it out with an instrument of iron, &c.; and with the alertness of an enlightened observer, he noted down elucidations of Scripture, which were still practically unknown to Europe. Over and above he applied himself with a noble enthusiasm to the mastery of the Arabic language, and at last not only spoke it with fluency, but, like his own contemporary Golius of Leyden, and like Burckhardt in our own generation, he became as learned in its niceties as if it had been his native tongue, and his tutor at last pronounced him no whit inferior to the Mufti of Aleppo. One fruit of his industry was a collection of six thousand Arabic proverbs, which he translated, and eventually deposited in the Bodleian Library. On his return to England, six years afterwards, Archbishop Laud founded an Arabic lectureship at Oxford, and gave Pocock the first appointment. Soon afterwards he paid a second visit to the East, chiefly in search of Oriental manuscripts, and returned to find the kingdom in the incipient confusion of the Parliamentary war. In 1643 he obtained, in addition to his lectureship, the living of Childrey, a country parish twelve miles from Oxford. Here his discourses were a great contrast to the elaborate and critical sermons which he preached before the University. As stated by his biographer, Dr Twells, they "were plain and easy, having nothing in them which he conceived to be above the capacities even of the meanest of his auditors. And as he carefully avoided the shows and ostentation of learning, so he would not, by any means, indulge himself in the practice of those arts which at that time were very common and much |