Still, it must not be supposed that he himself did all the work, or even more than a small proportion of it.

What he did was to tone it; he overlooked and corrected all the text submitted to him, and suffered only the best forms to survive.

Yet what magnificent material he had to choose from! All the translations of the Bible that had been made before his time were carefully studied with a view to the conservation of the best phrases, both for sound and for form.

We must consider the result not merely as a study of literature in itself, but also as a study of eloquence; for every attention was given to those effects to be expected from an oratorical recitation of the text in public.
This marks the end of the literary evolution of the Bible.

Everything that has since been done has only been in the direction of retrogression, of injury to the text.