The King James Version of the Bible appeared in a great age of translation, when the English language seemed to move with a life of its own. It is a rough and kicking language, with words as direct as blows, a language in which “dung” and “bowels” do not seem anomalous; yet it can trip and sing and take wings at will: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good news.” The words have a ring and rhythm of their own, which threaten to eclipse even Handel’s music. It is a melody that lingers, in echoes and asides, around all the subsequent history of English literature; a musical ground against which, in harmonies and discords, all individual styles of song have been shaped; a pulse that set the tempo for all later trumpet-marshaling of words.
But no longer. England has lost her voice; and her modern literature, like the modern half-faiths, is either a ghostly left-over of the past or an aimless effort expended far from the center of national history and life How dreary in the desert are the feet of them that bray bad news.
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