“And he desired to fill his stomach with the carob pods which the swine eat.”

“And one poor widow came and cast in two lepta, which is a quadrans [4 mills].”

It requires no knowledge of the original to pass judgment on such changes as are here made from the common version.  The practice which Mr. Sawyer here introduces and sanctions is a vicious one in any translation, and is especially so in the case of the Holy Scriptures, which are to be read by the unlearned and ignorant as well as by the scholar and the critic.  Mr. Sawyer’s translation of such words as we have noted above conveys no idea to the mind of the common reader, and requires a glossary to make it intelligible.  There is in his choice of words a pedantry and affectation of learning that are in bad taste.  But in this, as in his other strictly literal renderings, he is inconsistent, and does not adhere to his own rule.  He translates Matt. vi. 30,—­“And if God so clothes the grass of the field, which to-day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven,” etc.  If he were consistent in his practice, he would have rendered the word “oven” klibanon, and then, in parenthesis, explained that it signifies “a large round pot, of earthen or other material, two or three feet high, narrowing towards the top, on the sides of which the dough was spread to be baked in thin cakes.”  Probably Mr. Sawyer was deterred from following his rule in this case by the formidableness of the necessary parenthesis; but there is as much reason why he should have written klibanon instead of “oven,” as there is for substituting lepton for “farthing,” or modius for “bushel,” or carob pods for “husks,”—­and in fact more reason, because the word “oven,” which he indorses and uses, conveys a far more imperfect idea of the original, [Greek:  klibanon], than those words of the common version which he has rejected do of their originals.  All such changes as those instanced above, in our judgment, mar the simplicity and obscure the meaning of the passages where they occur.

But we will now notice what appears to us a more serious defect than any of those already mentioned.  Mr. Sawyer throughout his translation substitutes vulgar Latinisms and circumlocutions for the vigorous phrases of the received version.  Sometimes this is done at the expense of homely Saxon words which are the very sinews of our language; and wherever such words are sacrificed for Latinisms, the beauty and force of the whole are impaired or destroyed.  Again, the translator seems to have a peculiar antipathy to everything like poetical expressions or the euphonious arrangement of sentences.  He has evidently fallen into the error of supposing that the most prosaic rendering is necessarily the most exact; whereas the fact is, that the most poetical form of expression of which a passage is susceptible is often the most clear, forcible, and precise.  The best method of giving the reader an idea of the justice of this portion of our criticism of Mr. Sawyer’s version is to quote some passages in contrast with the common version.