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=Columbia University=

STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVELITERATURE

EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

BY

FLORA ROSS AMOS

OCTAGON BOOKS

A Division of Farrar, Straus and GirouxNew York 1973

Copyright 1920 by Columbia University Press

_Reprinted 1973by special arrangement with Columbia University Press_

OCTAGON BOOKSA DIVISION OF FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, INC. 19 Union Square WestNew York, N. Y. 10003

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Amos, Flora Ross, 1881- Early theories of translation. 

 Original ed. Issued in series: Columbia University studies in English and comparative literature. 

 Originally presented as the author's thesis, Columbia. 

 1. Translating and interpreting. I. Title. II. Series: Columbia University studies in English and comparative literature. 

[PN241. A5 1973] 418'. 02 73-397

ISBN 0-374-90176-7

_Printed in U. S. A. By_ NOBLE OFFSET PRINTERS, INC. New York, N. Y. 10003

TO

MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER

 _This Monograph has been approved by the Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication. _

 A. H. THORNDIKE, _Executive Officer_

PREFACE

In the following pages I have attempted to trace certain developments inthe theory of translation as it has been formulated by English writers. I have confined myself, of necessity, to such opinions as have been putinto words, and avoided making use of deductions from practice otherthan a few obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedureinvolves, of course, the omission of some important elements in thehistory of the theory of translation, in that it ignores thediscrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence whichpractice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, itconfines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurablelimits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, theperiod of the most enthusiastic experimentation, when, though it wasstill possible for the translator to rest in the comfortable medievalconception of his art, the New Learning was offering new problems andnew ideals to every man who shared in the intellectual awakening of histime. In the matter of theory, however, the age was one of beginnings, of suggestions, rather than of finished, definitive results; even by theend of the century there were still translators who had not yetappreciated the immense difference between medieval and modern standardsof translation. To understand their position, then, it is necessary toconsider both the preceding period, with its incidental, half-unconscious comment, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with their systematized, unified contribution. This last material, inespecial, is included chiefly because of the light which it throws inretrospect on the views of earlier translators, and only the maincourse of theory, by this time fairly easy to follow, is traced. 

The aim has in no case been to give bibliographical information. Anumber of translations, important in themselves, have received nomention because they have evoked no comment on methods. The referencesgiven are not necessarily to first editions. Generally speaking, it hasbeen the prefaces to translations that have yielded material, and suchprefaces, especially during the Elizabethan period, are likely to beincluded or omitted in different editions for no very clear reasons. Quotations have been modernized, except in the case of Middle Englishverse, where the original form has been kept for the sake of the metre. 

The history of the theory of translation is by no means a record ofeasily distinguishable, orderly progression. It shows an odd lack ofcontinuity. Those who give rules for translation ignore, in the greatmajority of cases, the contribution of their predecessors andcontemporaries. Towards the beginning of Elizabeth's reign a small groupof critics bring to the problems of the translator both technicalscholarship and alert, original minds, but apparently the new andsignificant ideas which they offer have little or no effect on thegeneral course of theory. Again, Tytler, whose _Essay on the Principleson Translation_, published towards the end of the eighteenth century, may with some reason claim to be the first detailed discussion of thequestions involved, declares that, with a few exceptions, he has "metwith nothing that has been written professedly on the subject, " astatement showing a surprising disregard for the elaborate prefaces thataccompanied the translations of his own century. 

This lack of consecutiveness in criticism is probably partiallyaccountable for the slowness with which translators attained the powerto put into words, clearly and unmistakably, their aims and methods. Even if one were to leave aside the childishly vague comment ofmedieval writers and the awkward attempts of Elizabethan translators todescribe their processes, there would still remain in the modern periodmuch that is careless or misleading. The very term "translation" is longin defining itself; more difficult terms, like "faithfulness" and"accuracy, " have widely different meanings with different writers. Thevarious kinds of literature are often treated in the mass with littleattempt at discrimination between them, regardless of the fact that theproblems of the translator vary with the character of his original. Tytler's book, full of interesting detail as it is, turns from prose toverse, from lyric to epic, from ancient to modern, till the effect itleaves on the reader is fragmentary and confusing. 

Moreover, there has never been uniformity of opinion with regard to theaims and methods of translation. Even in the age of Pope, when, if ever, it was safe to be dogmatic and when the theory of translation seemedsafely on the way to become standardized, one still hears the voices ofa few recalcitrants, voices which become louder and more numerous as thecentury advances; in the nineteenth century the most casual surveydiscovers conflicting views on matters of fundamental importance to thetranslator. Who are to be the readers, who the judges, of a translationare obviously questions of primary significance to both translator andcritic, but they are questions which have never been authoritativelysettled. When, for example, Caxton in the fifteenth century uses the"curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk or a noblegentleman, his critics complain because the common people cannotunderstand his words. A similar situation appears in modern times whenArnold lays down the law that the judges of an English version of Homermust be "scholars, because scholars alone have the means of reallyjudging him, " and Newman replies that "scholars are the tribunal ofErudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public must be theonly rightful judge. "

Again, critics have been hesitant in defining the all-important term"faithfulness. " To one writer fidelity may imply a reproduction of hisoriginal as nearly as possible word for word and line for line; toanother it may mean an attempt to carry over into English the spirit ofthe original, at the sacrifice, where necessary, not only of the exactwords but of the exact substance of his source. The one extreme islikely to result in an awkward, more or less unintelligible version; theother, as illustrated, for example, by Pope's _Homer_, may give us awork so modified by the personality of the translator or by theprevailing taste of his time as to be almost a new creation. But whileit is easy to point out the defects of the two methods, few critics havehad the courage to give fair consideration to both possibilities; totreat the two aims, not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary; torealize that the spirit and the letter may be not two but one. In thesixteenth century Sir Thomas North translated from the French Amyot'swise observation: "The office of a fit translator consisteth not only inthe faithful expressing of his author's meaning, but also in a certainresembling and shadowing forth of the form of his style and manner ofhis speaking"; but few English critics, in the period under ourconsideration, grasped thus firmly the essential connection betweenthought and style and the consequent responsibility of the translator. 

Yet it is those critics who have faced all the difficulties boldly, andwho have urged upon the translator both due regard for the original anddue regard for English literary standards who have made the mostvaluable contributions to theory. It is much easier to set the standardof translation low, to settle matters as does Mr. Chesterton in hiscasual disposition of Fitzgerald's _Omar_: "It is quite clear thatFitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good translation. " We can, itis true, point to few realizations of the ideal theory, but inapproaching a literature which possesses the English Bible, thatmarvelous union of faithfulness to source with faithfulness to thegenius of the English language, we can scarcely view the problem oftranslation thus hopelessly. 

The most stimulating and suggestive criticism, indeed, has come from menwho have seen in the very difficulty of the situation opportunities forachievement. While the more cautious grammarian has ever been doubtfulof the quality of the translator's English, fearful of the introductionof foreign words, foreign idioms, to the men who have cared most aboutthe destinies of the vernacular, --men like Caxton, More, orDryden, --translation has appeared not an enemy to the mother tongue, buta means of enlarging and clarifying it. In the time of Elizabeth thetranslator often directed his appeal more especially to those who lovedtheir country's language and wished to see it become a more adequatemedium of expression. That he should, then, look upon translation as apromising experiment, rather than a doubtful compromise, is an essentialcharacteristic of the good critic. 

The necessity for open-mindedness, indeed, in some degree accounts forthe tentative quality in so much of the theory of translation. Translation fills too large a place, is too closely connected with thewhole course of literary development, to be disposed of easily. As eachsucceeding period has revealed new fashions in literature, new avenuesof approach to the reader, there have been new translations and thetheorist has had to reverse or revise the opinions bequeathed to himfrom a previous period. The theory of translation cannot be reduced to arule of thumb; it must again and again be modified to include new facts. Thus regarded it becomes a vital part of our literary history, and hassignificance both for those who love the English language and for thosewho love English literature. 

In conclusion, it remains only to mention a few of my many obligations. To the libraries of Princeton and Harvard as well as Columbia UniversityI owe access to much useful material. It is a pleasure to acknowledge myindebtedness to Professors Ashley H. Thorndike and William W. Lawrenceand to Professor William H. Hulme of Western Reserve University forhelpful criticism and suggestions. In especial I am deeply grateful toProfessor George Philip Krapp, who first suggested this study and whohas given me constant encouragement and guidance throughout its course. 

_April, 1919. _

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

 I. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 3

 II. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 49

III. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 81

 IV. FROM COWLEY TO POPE 135

 INDEX 181

I. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

I

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD

From the comment of Anglo-Saxon writers one may derive a not inadequateidea of the attitude generally prevailing in the medieval period withregard to the treatment of material from foreign sources. Suggestivestatements appear in the prefaces to the works associated with the nameof Alfred. One method of translation is employed in producing an Englishversion of Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Care_. "I began, " runs the preface, "among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translateinto English the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_, and inEnglish _Shepherd's Book_, sometimes word by word, and sometimesaccording to the sense. "[1] A similar practice is described in the_Proem_ to _The Consolation of Philosophy_ of Boethius. "King Alfred wasthe interpreter of this book, and turned it from book Latin intoEnglish, as it is now done. Now he set forth word by word, now sensefrom sense, as clearly and intelligently as he was able. "[2] The prefaceto _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_, the beginning of which, unfortunately, seems to be lacking, suggests another possible treatment of borrowedmaterial. "I gathered for myself, " writes the author, "cudgels, andstud-shafts, and horizontal shafts, and helves for each of the toolsthat I could work with, and bow-timbers and bolt-timbers for every workthat I could perform, the comeliest trees, as many as I could carry. Neither came I with a burden home, for it did not please me to bring allthe wood back, even if I could bear it. In each tree I saw somethingthat I needed at home; therefore I advise each one who can, and has manywains, that he direct his steps to the same wood where I cut thestud-shafts. Let him fetch more for himself, and load his wains withfair beams, that he may wind many a neat wall, and erect many a rarehouse, and build a fair town, and therein may dwell merrily and softlyboth winter and summer, as I have not yet done. "[3]

Aelfric, writing a century later, develops his theories in greaterdetail. Except in the _Preface to Genesis_, they are expressed in Latin, the language of the lettered, a fact which suggests that, unlike thetranslations themselves, the prefaces were addressed to readers whowere, for the most part, opposed to translation into the vernacular andwho, in addition to this, were in all probability especially suspiciousof the methods employed by Aelfric. These methods were strongly in thedirection of popularization. Aelfric's general practice is like that ofAlfred. He declares repeatedly[4] that he translates sense for sense, not always word for word. Furthermore, he desires rather to be clear andsimple than to adorn his style with rhetorical ornament. [5] Instead ofunfamiliar terms, he uses "the pure and open words of the language ofthis people. "[6] In connection with the translation of the Bible he laysdown the principle that Latin must give way to English idiom. [7] For allthese things Aelfric has definite reasons. Keeping always in mind aclear conception of the nature of his audience, he does whatever seemsto him necessary to make his work attractive and, consequently, profitable. Preparing his _Grammar_ for "tender youths, " though he knowsthat words may be interpreted in many ways, he follows a simple methodof interpretation in order that the book may not become tiresome. [8] The_Homilies_, intended for simple people, are put into simple English, that they may more easily reach the hearts of those who read or hear. [9]This popularization is extended even farther. Aelfric explains[10] thathe has abbreviated both the _Homilies_[11] and the _Lives of theSaints_, [12] again of deliberate purpose, as appears in his preface tothe latter: "Hoc sciendum etiam quod prolixiores passiones breuiamusverbis non adeo sensu, ne fastidiosis ingeratur tedium si tantaprolixitas erit in propria lingua quanta est in latina. "

Incidentally, however, Aelfric makes it evident that his were not theonly theories of translation which the period afforded. In the prefaceto the first collection of _Homilies_ he anticipates the disapproval ofthose who demand greater closeness in following originals. He recognizesthe fact that his translation may displease some critics "quod nonsemper verbum ex verbo, aut quod breviorem explicationem quam tractatusauctorum habent, sive non quod per ordinem ecclesiastici ritus omniaEvangelia percurrimus. " The _Preface to Genesis_ suggests that thewriter was familiar with Jerome's insistence on the necessity forunusual faithfulness in translating the Bible. [13] Such comment impliesa mind surprisingly awake to the problems of translation. 

The translator who left the narrow path of word for word reproductionmight, in this early period, easily be led into greater deviations fromsource, especially if his own creative ability came into play. Thepreface to _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_ quoted above carries with it astimulus, not only to translation or compilation, but to work like thatof Caedmon or Cynewulf, essentially original in many respects, thoughbased, in the main, on material already given literary shape in otherlanguages. Both characteristics are recognized in Anglo-Saxon comment. Caedmon, according to the famous passage in Bede, "all that he couldlearn by hearing meditated with himself, and, as a clean animalruminating, turned into the sweetest verse. "[14] Cynewulf in his_Elene_, gives us a remarkable piece of author's comment[15] whichdescribes the action of his own mind upon material already committed towriting by others. On the other hand, it may be noted that the_Andreas_, based like the _Elene_ on a single written source, containsno hint that the author owes anything to a version of the story inanother language. [16]

In the English literature which developed in course of time after theConquest the methods of handling borrowed material were similar in theirvariety to those we have observed in Anglo-Saxon times. Translation, faithful except for the omission or addition of certain passages, compilation, epitome, all the gradations between the close rendering andsuch an individual creation as Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_, areexemplified in the works appearing from the thirteenth century on. WhenLydgate, as late as the fifteenth century, describes one of theprocesses by which literature is produced, we are reminded ofAnglo-Saxon comment. "Laurence, "[17] the poet's predecessor intranslating Boccaccio's _Falls of Princes_, is represented as

 In his Prologue affirming of reason, That artificers having exercise, May chaunge & turne by good discretion Shapes & formes, & newly them devise: As Potters whiche to that craft entende Breake & renue their vessels to amende. 

 . . . 

 And semblably these clerkes in writing Thing that was made of auctours them beforn They may of newe finde & fantasye: Out of olde chaffe trye out full fayre corne, Make it more freshe & lusty to the eye, Their subtile witte their labour apply, With their colours agreable of hue, To make olde thinges for to seme newe. [18]

The great majority of these Middle English works contain withinthemselves no clear statement as to which of the many possible methodshave been employed in their production. As in the case of theAnglo-Saxon _Andreas_, a retelling in English of a story alreadyexisting in another language often presents itself as if it were anoriginal composition. The author who puts into the vernacular of hiscountry a French romance may call it "my tale. " At the end of _Launfal_, a version of one of the lays of Marie de France, appears thedeclaration, "Thomas Chestre made this tale. "[19] The terms used tocharacterize literary productions and literary processes often have nottheir modern connotation. "Translate" and "translation" are appliedvery loosely even as late as the sixteenth century. _The Legend of GoodWomen_ names _Troilus and Criseyde_ beside _The Romance of the Rose_ as"translated" work. [20] Osbern Bokenam, writing in the next century, explains that he obtained the material for his legend of St. Margaret"the last time I was in Italy, both by scripture and eke by mouth, " buthe still calls the work a "translation. "[21] Henry Bradshaw, purposingin 1513 to "translate" into English the life of St. Werburge of Chester, declares, Unto this rude werke myne auctours these shalbe: Fyrst the true legende and the venerable Bede, Mayster Alfrydus and Wyllyam Malusburye, Gyrarde, Polychronicon, and other mo in deed. [22]

Lydgate is requested to translate the legend of St. Giles "after thetenor only"; he presents his work as a kind of "brief compilation, " buthe takes no exception to the word "translate. "[23] That he shoulddesignate his _St. Margaret_, a fairly close following of one source, a"compilation, "[24] merely strengthens the belief that the terms"translate" and "translation" were used synonymously with various otherwords. Osbern Bokenam speaks of the "translator" who "compiled" thelegend of St. Christiana in English;[25] Chaucer, one remembers, "translated" Boethius and "made" the life of St. Cecilia. [26]

To select from this large body of literature, "made, " "compiled, ""translated, " only such works as can claim to be called, in the modernsense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitabletask. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider thewhole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of theirauthors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondaryorigin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his owntime was reckoned "grant translateur. "[27] Of the books which Caxton acentury later issued from his printing press a large proportion wereEnglish versions of Latin or French works. Our concern, indeed, is withthe larger and by no means the least valuable part of the literatureproduced during the Middle English period. 

The theory which accompanies this nondescript collection of translationsis scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable tomisinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Beforeproceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certainphases of the general literary situation which created peculiardifficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing tothe present-day reader. As regards the translator, existingcircumstances were not encouraging. In the early part of the period heoccupied a very lowly place. As compared with Latin, or even withFrench, the English language, undeveloped and unstandardized, could makeits appeal only to the unlearned. It had, in the words of athirteenth-century translator of Bishop Grosseteste's _Castle of Love_, "no savor before a clerk. "[28] Sometimes, it is true, the English writerhad the stimulus of patriotism. The translator of _Richard Coeur deLion_ feels that Englishmen ought to be able to read in their owntongue the exploits of the English hero. The _Cursor Mundi_ istranslated

 In to Inglis tong to rede For the love of Inglis lede, Inglis lede of Ingland. [29]

But beyond this there was little to encourage the translator. Hisaudience, as compared with the learned and the refined, who read Latinand French, was ignorant and undiscriminating; his crude medium wasentirely unequal to reproducing what had been written in more highlydeveloped languages. It is little wonder that in these early days hisEnglish should be termed "dim and dark. " Even after Chaucer had showedthat the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the writer ofless genius must often have felt that beside the more sophisticatedLatin or French, English could boast but scanty resources. 

There were difficulties and limitations also in the choice of materialto be translated. Throughout most of the period literature existed onlyin manuscript; there were few large collections in any one place; travelwas not easy. Priests, according to the prologue to Mirk's _Festial_, written in the early fifteenth century, complained of "default ofbooks. " To aspire, as did Chaucer's Clerk, to the possession of "twentybooks" was to aspire high. Translators occasionally give interestingdetails regarding the circumstances under which they read andtranslated. The author of the life of St. Etheldred of Ely refers twice, with a certain pride, to a manuscript preserved in the abbey of Godstowwhich he himself has seen and from which he has drawn some of the factswhich he presents. The translator of the alliterative romance of_Alexander_ "borrowed" various books when he undertook his Englishrendering. [30] Earl Rivers, returning from the Continent, brought back amanuscript which had been lent him by a French gentleman, and set aboutthe translation of his _Dictes and Sayings of the Old Philosophers_. [31]It is not improbable that there was a good deal of borrowing, with itsattendant inconveniences. Even in the sixteenth century Sir ThomasElyot, if we may believe his story, was hampered by the laws ofproperty. He became interested in the acts and wisdom of AlexanderSeverus, "which book, " he says, "was first written in the Greek tongueby his secretary Eucolpius and by good chance was lent unto me by agentleman of Naples called Padericus. In reading whereof I wasmarvelously ravished, and as it hath ever been mine appetite, I wishedthat it had been published in such a tongue as more men might understandit. Wherefore with all diligence I endeavored myself whiles I hadleisure to translate it into English: albeit I could not so exactlyperform mine enterprise as I might have done, if the owner had notimportunately called for his book, whereby I was constrained to leavesome part of the work untranslated. "[32] William Paris--to return to theearlier period--has left on record a situation which stirs theimagination. He translated the legend of St. Cristine while a prisonerin the Isle of Man, the only retainer of his unfortunate lord, the Earlof Warwick, whose captivity he chose to share. 

 He made this lyfe in ynglishe soo, As he satte in prison of stone, Ever as he myghte tent therto Whane he had his lordes service done. [33]

One is tempted to let the fancy play on the combination of circumstancesthat provided him with the particular manuscript from which he worked. It is easy, of course, to emphasize overmuch the scarcity and theinaccessibility of texts, but it is obvious that the translator'schoice of subject was largely conditioned by opportunity. He did notselect from the whole range of literature the work which most appealedto his genius. It is a far cry from the Middle Ages to the seventeenthcentury, with its stress on individual choice. Roscommon's advice, Examine how your humour is inclined, And what the ruling passion of your mind; Then seek a poet who your way does bend, And choose an author as you choose a friend, seems absurd in connection with the translator who had to choose whatwas within his reach, and who, in many cases, could not sit down inundisturbed possession of his source. 

The element of individual choice was also diminished by the interventionof friends and patrons. In the fifteenth century, when translators werebecoming communicative about their affairs, there is frequent referenceto suggestion from without. Allowing for interest in the new craft ofprinting, there is still so much mention in Caxton's prefaces ofcommissions for translation as to make one feel that "ordering" anEnglish version of some foreign book had become no uncommon thing forthose who owned manuscripts and could afford such commodities astranslations. Caxton's list ranges from _The Fayttes of Armes_, translated at the request of Henry VII from a manuscript lent by theking himself, to _The Mirrour of the World_, "translated . . . At therequest, desire, cost, and dispense of the honorable and worshipful man, Hugh Bryce, alderman and citizen of London. "[34]

One wonders also how the source, thus chosen, presented itself to thetranslator's conception. His references to it are generally vague orconfused, often positively misleading. Yet to designate with anydefiniteness a French or Latin text was no easy matter. When oneconsiders the labor that, of later years, has gone to the classificationand identification of old manuscripts, the awkward elaboration ofnomenclature necessary to distinguish them, the complications resultingfrom missing pages and from the undue liberties of copyists, one realizessomething of the position of the medieval translator. Even categories werenot forthcoming for his convenience. The religious legend of _St. Katherine of Alexandria_ is derived from "chronicles";[35] the moral taleof _The Incestuous Daughter_ has its source in "romance";[36]Grosseteste's allegory, _The Castle of Love_, is presented as "a romanceof English . . . Out of a romance that Sir Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, made. "[37] The translator who explained "I found it written in old hand"was probably giving as adequate an account of his source as truth wouldpermit. 

Moreover, part of the confusion had often arisen before the manuscriptcame into the hands of the English translator. Often he was engaged intranslating something that was already a translation. Most frequently itwas a French version of a Latin original, but sometimes its ancestry wascomplicated by the existence or the tradition of Greek or Hebrewsources. The medieval Troy story, with its list of authorities, Dictys, Dares, Guido delle Colonne--to cite the favorite names--shows thesituation in an aggravated form. In such cases the earlier translator'sblunders and omissions in describing his source were likely to beperpetuated in the new rendering. 

Such, roughly speaking, were the circumstances under which thetranslator did his work. Some of his peculiar difficulties are, approached from another angle, the difficulties of the present-dayreader. The presence of one or more intermediary versions, acomplication especially noticeable in England as a result of the Frenchoccupation after the Conquest, may easily mislead us. The originals ofmany of our texts are either non-extant or not yet discovered, but incases where we do possess the actual source which the English writerused, a disconcerting situation often becomes evident. What at firstseemed to be the English translator's comment on his own treatment ofsource is frequently only a literal rendering of a comment alreadypresent in his original. It is more convenient to discuss the details ofsuch cases in another context, but any general approach to the theory oftranslation in Middle English literature must include thisconsideration. If we are not in possession of the exact original of atranslation, our conclusions must nearly always be discounted by thepossibility that not only the subject matter but the comment on thatsubject matter came from the French or Latin source. The pronoun of thefirst person must be regarded with a slight suspicion. "I" may refer tothe Englishman, but it may also refer to his predecessor who made atranslation or a compilation in French or Latin. "Compilation" suggestsanother difficulty. Sometimes an apparent reference to source is only anappeal to authority for the confirmation of a single detail, an appealwhich, again, may be the work of the English translator, but may, on theother hand, be the contribution of his predecessor. A fairly commonsituation, for example, appears in John Capgrave's _Life of St. Augustine_, produced, as its author says, in answer to the request of agentlewoman that he should "translate her truly out of Latin the life ofSt. Augustine, great doctor of the church. " Of the work, its editor, Mr. Munro, says, "It looks at first sight as though Capgrave had merelytranslated an older Latin text, as he did in the _Life of St. Gilbert_;but no Latin life corresponding to our text has been discovered, and asCapgrave never refers to 'myn auctour, ' and always alludes to himselfas handling the material, I incline to conclude that he is himself theoriginal composer, and that his reference to translation signifies hisuse of Augustine's books, from which he translates whole passages. "[38]In a case like this it is evidently impossible to draw dogmaticconclusions. It may be that Capgrave is using the word "translate" withmedieval looseness, but it is also possible that some of the commentexpressed in the first person is translated comment, and the editor addsthat, though the balance of probability is against it, "it is stillpossible that a Latin life may have been used. " Occasionally, it istrue, comment is stamped unmistakably as belonging to the Englishtranslator. The translator of a _Canticum de Creatione_ declares thatthere were

 --fro the incarnacioun of Jhesu Til this rym y telle yow Were turned in to englisch, A thousand thre hondred & seventy And fyve yere witterly. Thus in bok founden it is. [39]

Such unquestionably _English_ additions are, unfortunately, rare and thesituation remains confused. 

But this is not the only difficulty which confronts the reader. Hesearches with disappointing results for such general and comprehensivestatements of the medieval translator's theory as may aid in theinterpretation of detail. Such statements are few, generally late indate, and, even when not directly translated from a predecessor, areobviously repetitions of the conventional rule associated with the nameof Jerome and adopted in Anglo-Saxon times by Alfred and Aelfric. Anearly fifteenth-century translator of the _Secreta Secretorum_, forexample, carries over into English the preface of the Latin translator:"I have translated with great travail into open understanding of Latinout of the language of Araby . . . Sometimes expounding letter by letter, and sometimes understanding of understanding, for other manner ofspeaking is with Arabs and other with Latin. "[40] Lydgate makes asimilar statement:

 I wyl translate hyt sothly as I kan, After the lettre, in ordre effectuelly. Thogh I not folwe the wordes by & by, I schal not faille teuching the substance. [41]

Osbern Bokenam declares that he has translated

 Not wurde for wurde--for that ne may be In no translation, aftyr Jeromys decree-- But fro sentence to sentence. [42]

There is little attempt at the further analysis which would give thisprinciple fresh significance. The translator makes scarcely any effortto define the extent to which he may diverge from the words of hisoriginal or to explain why such divergence is necessary. John deTrevisa, who translated so extensively in the later fourteenth century, does give some account of his methods, elementary, it is true, buthonest and individual. His preface to his English prose version ofHigden's _Polychronicon_ explains: "In some place I shall set word forword, and active for active, and passive for passive, a-row right as itstandeth, without changing of the order of words. But in some place Imust change the order of words, and set active for passive andagain-ward. And in some place I must set a reason for a word and tellwhat it meaneth. But for all such changing the meaning shall stand andnot be changed. "[43] An explanation like this, however, is unusual. 

Possibly the fact that the translation was in prose affected Trevisa'stheorizing. A prose rendering could follow its original so closely thatit was possible to describe the comparatively few changes consequent onEnglish usage. In verse, on the other hand, the changes involved were sogreat as to discourage definition. There are, however, a few comments onthe methods to be employed in poetical renderings. According to the_Proem_ to the _Boethius_, Alfred, in the Anglo-Saxon period, firsttranslated the book "from Latin into English prose, " and then "wroughtit up once more into verse, as it is now done. "[44] At the verybeginning of the history of Middle English literature Orm attacked theproblem of the verse translation very directly. He writes of hisOrmulum:

 Icc hafe sett her o thiss boc Amang Godspelles wordess, All thurrh me sellfenn, manig word The rime swa to fillenn. [45]

Such additions, he says, are necessary if the readers are to understandthe text and if the metrical form is to be kept. 

 Forr whase mot to laewedd follc Larspell off Goddspell tellenn, He mot wel ekenn manig word Amang Godspelless Wordess. & icc ne mihhte nohht min ferrs Ayy withth Godspelless wordess Wel fillenn all, & all forrthi Shollde icc wel offte nede Amang Godspelless wordess don Min word, min ferrs to fillenn. [46]

Later translators, however, seldom followed his lead. There are a fewcomments connected with prose translations; the translator of _The Bookof the Knight of La Tour Landry_ quotes the explanation of his authorthat he has chosen prose rather than verse "for to abridge it, and thatit might be better and more plainly to be understood";[47] the Lord inTrevisa's _Dialogue_ prefixed to the _Polychronicon_ desires atranslation in prose, "for commonly prose is more clear than rhyme, moreeasy and more plain to understand";[48] but apparently the only one ofOrm's successors to put into words his consciousness of thecomplications which accompany a metrical rendering is the author of _TheRomance of Partenay_, whose epilogue runs:

 As ny as metre can conclude sentence, Cereatly by rew in it have I go. Nerehand stafe by staf, by gret diligence, Savyng that I most metre apply to; The wourdes meve, and sett here & ther so. [49]

What follows, however, shows that he is concerned not so much with thepeculiar difficulty of translation as with the general difficulty of"forging" verse. Whether a man employs Latin, French, or the vernacular, he continues, Be it in balede, vers, Rime, or prose, He most torn and wend, metrely to close. [50]

Of explicit comment on general principles, then, there is but a smallamount in connection with Middle English translations. Incidentally, however, writers let fall a good deal of information regarding theirtheories and methods. Such material must be interpreted withconsiderable caution, for although the most casual survey makes it clearthat generally the translator felt bound to put into words something ofhis debt and his responsibility to his predecessors, yet one does notknow how much significance should attach to this comment. He seldomoffers clear, unmistakable information as to his difficulties and hismethods of meeting them. It is peculiarly interesting to come upon suchexplanation of processes as appears at one point in Capgrave's _Life ofSt. Gilbert_. In telling the story of a miracle wrought upon a sick man, Capgrave writes: "One of his brethren, which was his keeper, gave himthis counsel, that he should wind his head with a certain cloth of linenwhich St. Gilbert wore. I suppose verily, " continues the translator, "itwas his alb, for mine author here setteth a word 'subucula, ' which isboth an alb and a shirt, and in the first part of this life the sameauthor saith that this holy man wore next his skin no hair as for thehardest, nor linen as for the softest, but he went with wool, as withthe mean. "[51] Such care for detail suggests the comparative methodslater employed by the translators of the Bible, but whether or not itwas common, it seldom found its way into words. The majority of writersacquitted themselves of the translator's duty by introducing atintervals somewhat conventional references to source, "in story as weread, " "in tale as it is told, " "as saith the geste, " "in rhyme I read, ""the prose says, " "as mine author doth write, " "as it tells in thebook, " "so saith the French tale, " "as saith the Latin. " Tags like theseare everywhere present, especially in verse, where they must often haveproved convenient in eking out the metre. Whether they are to beinterpreted literally is hard to determine. The reader of Englishversions can seldom be certain whether variants on the more ordinaryforms are merely stylistic or result from actual differences insituation; whether, for example, phrases like "as I have heard tell, ""as the book says, " "as I find in parchment spell" are rewordings of thesame fact or represent real distinctions. 

One group of doubtful references apparently question the reliability ofthe written source. In most cases the seeming doubt is probably theresult of awkward phrasing. Statements like "as the story doth us bothwrite and mean, "[52] "as the book says and true men tell us, "[53] "butthe book us lie, "[54] need have little more significance than theslightly absurd declaration, The gospel nul I forsake nought _Thaugh_ it be written in parchemyn. [55]

Occasional more direct questionings incline one, however, to take thematter a little more seriously. The translator of a _Canticum deCreatione_, strangely fabulous in content, presents his material withthe words, --as we finden in lectrure, I not whether it be in holy scripture. [56]

The author of one of the legends of the Holy Cross says, This tale, quether hit be il or gode, I fande hit writen of the rode. Mani tellis diverseli, For thai finde diverse stori. [57]

Capgrave, in his legend of _St. Katherine_, takes issue unmistakablywith his source. 

 In this reknyng myne auctour & I are too: ffor he accordeth not wytz cronicles that ben olde, But diversyth from hem, & that in many thyngis. There he accordeth, ther I him hold; And where he diversyth in ordre of theis kyngis, I leve hym, & to oder mennys rekenyngis I geve more credens whech be-fore hym and me Sette alle these men in ordre & degre. [58]

Except when this mistrust is made a justification for divergence fromthe original, these comments contribute little to our knowledge of themedieval translator's methods and need concern us little. More needfulof explanation is the reference which implies that the English writer isnot working from a manuscript, but is reproducing something which he hasheard read or recounted, or which he has read for himself at some timein the past. How is one to interpret phrases like that which introducesthe story of _Golagros and Gawain_, "as true men me told, " or that whichappears at the beginning of _Rauf Coilyear_, "heard I tell"? Oneexplanation, obviously true in some cases, is that such references areonly conventional. The concluding lines of _Ywain and Gawin_, Of them no more have I heard tell Neither in romance nor in spell, [59]

are simply a rough rendering of the French

 Ne ja plus n'en orroiz conter, S'an n'i vialt manconge ajoster. [60]

On the other hand, the author of the long romance of _Ipomadon_, whichfollows its source with a closeness which precludes all possibility ofreproduction from memory, has tacked on two references to hearing, [61]not only without a basis in the French but in direct contradiction toHue de Rotelande's account of the source of his material. In _Emare_, "as I have heard minstrels sing in sawe" is apparently introduced asthe equivalent of the more ordinary phrases "in tale as it is told" and"in romance as we read, "[62] the second of which is scarcely compatiblewith the theory of an oral source. 

One cannot always, however, dispose of the reference to hearing soeasily. Contemporary testimony shows that literature was oftentransmitted by word of mouth. Thomas de Cabham mentions the"ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et vitam sanctorum";[63]Robert of Brunne complains that those who sing or say the geste of _SirTristram_ do not repeat the story exactly as Thomas made it. [64] Eventhough one must recognize the probability that sometimes the immediateoral source of the minstrel's tale may have been English, one cannotignore the possibility that occasionally a "translated" saint's life orromance may have been the result of hearing a French or Latin narrativeread or recited. A convincing example of reproduction from memoryappears in the legend of _St. Etheldred of Ely_, whose author recountscertain facts, The whiche y founde in the abbey of Godstow y-wis, In hure legent as y dude there that tyme rede, and later presents other material, The whiche y say at Hely y-write. [65]

Such evidence makes us regard with more attention the remark inCapgrave's _St. Katherine_, --right soo dede I lere Of cronycles whiche (that) I saugh last, [66]

or the lines at the end of _Roberd of Cisyle_, Al this is write withoute lyghe At Rome, to ben in memorye, At seint Petres cherche, I knowe. [67]

It is possible also that sometimes a vague phrase like "as the storysays, " or "in tale as it is told, " may signify hearing instead ofreading. But in general one turns from consideration of the referencesto hearing with little more than an increased respect for the superiordefiniteness which belongs to the mention of the "black letters, " the"parchment, " "the French book, " or "the Latin book. "

Leaving the general situation and examining individual types ofliterature, one finds it possible to draw conclusions which are somewhatmore definite. The metrical romance--to choose one of the most popularliterary forms of the period--is nearly always garnished with referencesto source scattered throughout its course in a manner that awakenscuriosity. Sometimes they do not appear at the beginning of the romance, but are introduced in large numbers towards the end; sometimes, after along series of pages containing nothing of the sort, we begin to comeupon them frequently, perhaps in groups, one appearing every few lines, so that their presence constitutes something like a quality of style. For example, in _Bevis of Hamtoun_[68] and _The Earl of Toulouse_[69]the first references to source come between ll. 800 and 900; in _Ywainand Gawin_ the references appear at ll. 9, 3209, and 3669;[70] in _TheWars of Alexander_[71] there is a perpetual harping on source, onephrase seeming to produce another. 

Occasionally one can find a reason for the insertion of the phrase in agiven place. Sometimes its presence suggests that the translator hascome upon an unfamiliar word. In _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, speaking of abird that has carried off a child, the author remarks, "a griffin, saiththe book, he hight";[72] in _Partenay_, in an attempt to give a vesselits proper name, the writer says, "I found in scripture that it was abarge. "[73] This impression of accuracy is most common in connectionwith geographical proper names. In _Torrent of Portyngale_ we have thename of a forest, "of Brasill saith the book it was"; in _Partonope ofBlois_ we find "France was named those ilke days Galles, as mine authorsays, "[74] or "Mine author telleth this church hight the church ofAlbigis. "[75] In this same romance the reference to source accompanies adefinite bit of detail, "The French book thus doth me tell, twentywaters he passed full fell. "[76] Bevis of Hamtoun kills "fortySarracens, the French saith. "[77] As in the case of the lastillustration, the translator frequently needs to cite his authoritybecause the detail he gives is somewhat difficult of belief. In _TheSege of Melayne_ the Christian warriors recover their horsesmiraculously "through the prayer of St. Denys, thus will the chroniclesay";[78] in _The Romance of Partenay_ we read of a wondrous lightappearing about a tomb, "the French maker saith he saw it with eye. "[79]Sometimes these phrases suggest that metre and rhyme do not always floweasily for the English writer, and that in such difficulties a stockspace-filler is convenient. Lines like those in Chaucer's _Sir Thopas_, And so bifel upon a day, Forsothe _as I you telle may_ Sir Thopas wolde outride, and

 The briddes synge, _it is no nay_, The sparhauke and the papejay

may easily be paralleled by passages containing references to source. 

A good illustration from almost every point of view of the significanceand lack of significance of the appearance of these phrases in a givencontext is the version of the Alexander story usually called _The Warsof Alexander_. The frequent references to source in this romance occurin sporadic groups. The author begins by putting them in with someregularity at the beginnings of the _passus_ into which he divides hisnarrative, but, as the story progresses, he ceases to do so, perhapsforgets his first purpose. Sometimes the reference to source suggestsaccuracy: "And five and thirty, as I find, were in the riverdrowned. "[80] "Rhinoceros, as I read, the book them calls. "[81] Thestrength of some authority is necessary to support the weight of theincredible marvels which the story-teller recounts. He tells of a valleyfull of serpents with crowns on their heads, who fed, "as the prosetells, " on pepper, cloves, and ginger;[82] of enormous crabs with backs, "as the book says, " bigger and harder than any common stone orcockatrice scales;[83] of the golden image of Xerxes, which on theapproach of Alexander suddenly, "as tells the text, " falls topieces. [84] He often has recourse to an authority for support when hetakes proper names from the Latin. "Luctus it hight, the lettre and theline thus it calls. "[85] The slayers of Darius are named Besan andAnabras, "as the book tells. "[86] On the other hand, the significationof the reference in its context can be shown to be very slight. As wassaid before, the writer soon forgets to insert it at the beginning ofthe new _passus_; there are plenty of marvels without any citation ofauthority to add to their credibility; and though the proper namecarries its reference to the Latin, it is usually strangely distortedfrom its original form. So far as bearing on the immediate context isconcerned, most of the references to source have little more meaningthan the ordinary tags, "as I you say, " "as you may hear, " or "as Iunderstand. "

Apart, however, from the matter of context, one may make a roughclassification of the romances on the ground of these references. Leaving aside the few narratives (e. G. _Sir Percival of Galles_, _KingHorn_) which contain no suggestion that they are of secondary origin, one may distinguish two groups. There is, in the first place, a largebody of romances which refer in general terms to their originals, but donot profess any responsibility for faithful reproduction; in the secondplace, there are some romances whose authors do recognize the claims ofthe original, which is in such cases nearly always definitely described, and frequently go so far as to discuss its style or the style to beadopted in the English rendering. The first group, which includesconsiderably more than half the romances at present accessible in print, affords a confused mass of references. As regards the least definite ofthese, one finds phrases so vague as to suggest that the author himselfmight have had difficulty in identifying his source, phrases where theomission of the article ("in rhyme, " "in romance, " "in story") or theuse of the plural ("as books say, " "as clerks tell, " "as men us told, ""in stories thus as we read") deprives the words of most of theirsignificance. Other references are more definite; the writer mentions"this book, " "mine author, " "the Latin book, " "the French book. " Ifthese phrases are to be trusted, we may conclude that the Englishtranslator has his text before him; they aid little, however, inidentification of that text. The fifty-six references in Malory's _Morted'Arthur_ to "the French book" give no particular clue to discovery ofhis sources. The common formula, "as the French book says, " marks thehighest degree of definiteness to which most of these romances attain. 

An interesting variant from the commoner forms is the reference to_Rom_, generally in the phrase "the book of Rom, " which appears in someof the romances. The explanation that _Rom_ is a corruption of _romance_and that _the book of Rom_ is simply the book of romance or the bookwritten in the romance language, French, can easily be supported. In thesame poem _Rom_ alternates with _romance_: "In Rome this geste ischronicled, " "as the romance telleth, "[87] "in the chronicles of Rome isthe date, " "in romance as we read. "[88] Two versions of _Octavian_ read, the one "in books of Rome, " the other "in books of ryme. "[89] On theother hand, there are peculiarities in the use of the word not so easyof explanation. It appears in a certain group of romances, _Octavian_, _Le Bone Florence of Rome_, _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, _Torrent ofPortyngale_, _The Earl of Toulouse_, all of which develop in some degreethe Constance story, familiar in _The Man of Law's Tale_. In all of themthere is reference to the city of Rome, sometimes very obvious, sometimes slight, but perhaps equally significant in the latter casebecause it is introduced in an unexpected, unnecessary way. In _Le BoneFlorence of Rome_ the heroine is daughter of the Emperor of Rome, and, the tale of her wanderings done, the story ends happily with herreinstatement in her own city. Octavian is Emperor of Rome, and hereagain the happy conclusion finds place in that city. Sir Eglamourbelongs to Artois, but he does betake himself to Rome to kill a dragon, an episode introduced in one manuscript of the story by the phrase "asthe book of Rome says. "[90] Though the scenes of _Torrent of Portyngale_are Portugal, Norway, and Calabria, the Emperor of Rome comes to thewedding of the hero, and Torrent himself is finally chosen Emperor, presumably of Rome. The Earl of Toulouse, in the romance of that name, disguises himself as a monk, and to aid in the illusion some one says ofhim during his disappearance, "Gone is he to his own land: he dwellswith the Pope of Rome. "[91] The Emperor in this story is Emperor ofAlmaigne, but his name, strangely enough, is Diocletian. Again, in_Octavian_, one reads in the description of a feast, "there was many arich geste of Rome and of France, "[92] which suggests a distinctionbetween a geste of Rome and a geste of France. In _Le Bone Florence ofRome_ appears the peculiar statement, "Pope Symonde this story wrote. Inthe chronicles of Rome is the date. "[93] In this case the word _Rome_seems to have been taken literally enough to cause attribution of thestory to the Pope. It is evident, then, that whether or not _Rome_ is acorruption of _romance_, at any rate one or more of the persons who hada hand in producing these narratives must have interpreted the wordliterally, and believed that the book of Rome was a record ofoccurrences in the city of Rome. [94] It is interesting to note that in_The Man of Law's Tale_, in speaking of Maurice, the son of Constance, Chaucer introduces a reference to the _Gesta Romanorum_:

 In the old Romayn gestes may men fynde Maurice's lyf, I bere it not in mynde. 

Such vagueness and uncertainty, if not positive misunderstanding withregard to source, are characteristic of many romances. It is notdifficult to find explanations for this. The writer may, as wassuggested before, be reproducing a story which he has only heard orwhich he has read at some earlier time. Even if he has the book beforehim, it does not necessarily bear its author's name and it is not easyto describe it so that it can be recognized by others. Generallyspeaking, his references to source are honest, so far as they go, andcan be taken at their face value. Even in cases of apparent falsityexplanations suggest themselves. There is nearly always the possibilitythat false or contradictory attributions, as, for example, the mentionof "book" and "books" or "the French book" and "the Latin book" assources of the same romance, are merely stupidly literal renderings ofthe original. In _The Romance of Partenay_, one of the few cases wherewe have unquestionably the French original of the English romance, morethan once an apparent reference to source in the English is only a closefollowing of the French. "I found in scripture that it was a barge"corresponds with "Je treuve que c'estoit une barge"; "as saith thescripture" with "Ainsi que dient ly escrips";

 For the Cronike doth treteth (sic) this brefly, More ferther wold go, mater finde might I

with

 Mais en brief je m'en passeray Car la cronique en brief passe. Plus déisse, se plus trouvasse. [95]

A similar situation has already been pointed out in _Ywain and Gawin_. The most marked example of contradictory evidence is to be found in_Octavian_, whose author alternates "as the French says" with "as saiththe Latin. "[96] Here, however, the nearest analogue to the Englishromance, which contains 1962 lines, is a French romance of 5371 lines, which begins by mentioning the "grans merueilles qui sont faites, et delatin en romanz traites. "[97] It is not impossible that the Englishwriter used a shorter version which emphasized this reference to theLatin, and that his too-faithful adherence to source had confusingresults. But even if such contradictions cannot be explained, in themass of undistinguished romances there is scarcely anything to suggestthat the writer is trying to give his work a factitious value bymisleading references to dignified sources. His faults, as in _Ywain andGawin_, where the name of Chrétien is not carried over from the French, are sins of omission, not commission. 

No hard and fast line of division can be drawn between the romances justdiscussed and those of the second group, with their frequent and fairlydefinite references to their sources and to their methods of reproducingthem. A rough chronological division between the two groups can be madeabout the year 1400. _William of Palerne_, assigned by its editor to theyear 1350, contains a slight indication of the coming change in theclaim which its author makes to have accomplished his task "as fully asthe French fully would ask. "[98] Poems like Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_and _Franklin's Tale_ have only the vague references to source of theearlier period, though since they are presented as oral narratives, theybelong less obviously to the present discussion. The vexed question ofthe signification of the references in _Troilus and Criseyde_ is outsidethe scope of this discussion. Superficially considered, they are an oddmingling of the new and the old. Phrases like "as to myn auctour listethto devise" (III, 1817), "as techen bokes olde" (III, 91), "as wrytenfolk thorugh which it is in minde" (IV, 18) suggest the first group. Thepuzzling references to Lollius have a certain definiteness, andfaithfulness to source is implied in lines like:

 And of his song nought only the sentence, As writ myn auctour called Lollius, But pleynly, save our tonges difference, I dar wel seyn, in al that Troilus Seyde in his song; lo! every word right thus As I shal seyn (I, 393-8)

and

 "For as myn auctour seyde, so seye I" (II, 18). 

But from the beginning of the new century, in the work of men likeLydgate and Caxton, a new habit of comment becomes noticeable. 

Less distinguished translators show a similar development. The author of_The Holy Grail_, Harry Lonelich, a London skinner, towards the end ofhis work makes frequent, if perhaps mistaken, attribution of the Frenchromance to

 . . . Myn sire Robert of Borron Whiche that this storie Al & som Owt Of the latyn In to the frensh torned he Be holy chirches Comandment sekerle, [99]

and makes some apology for the defects of his own style:

 And I, As An unkonning Man trewly Into Englisch have drawen this Story; And thowgh that to yow not plesyng It be, Yit that ful Excused ye wolde haven Me Of my necligence and unkonning. [100]

_The Romance of Partenay_ is turned into English by a writer whopresents himself very modestly:

 I not acqueynted of birth naturall With frenshe his very trew parfightnesse, Nor enpreyntyd is in mind cordiall; O word For other myght take by lachesse, Or peradventure by unconnyngesse. [101]

He intends, however, to be a careful translator:

 As nighe as metre will conclude sentence, Folew I wil my president, Ryght as the frenshe wil yiff me evidence, Cereatly after myn entent, [102]

and he ends by declaring that in spite of the impossibility of giving anexact rendering of the French in English metre, he has kept very closelyto the original. Sometimes, owing to the shortness of the French"staffes, " he has reproduced in one line two lines of the French, but, except for this, comparison will show that the two versions are exactlyalike. [103]

The translator of _Partonope of Blois_ does not profess such slavishfaithfulness, though he does profess great admiration for his source, The olde booke full well I-wryted, In ffrensh also, and fayre endyted, [104]

and declares himself bound to follow it closely:

 Thus seith myn auctour after whome I write. Blame not me: I moste endite As nye after hym as ever I may, Be it sothe or less I can not say. [105]

However, in the midst of his protestations of faithfulness, he confessesto divergence:

 There-fore y do alle my myghthhe To saue my autor ynne sucche wyse As he that mater luste devyse, Where he makyth grete compleynte In french so fayre thatt yt to paynte In Englysche tunngge y saye for me My wyttys alle to dullet bee. He telleth hys tale of sentament I vnderstonde noghth hys entent, Ne wolle ne besy me to lere. [106]

He owns to the abbreviation of descriptive passages, which so manyEnglish translators had perpetrated in silence:

 Her bewte dyscry fayne wolde I Affter the sentence off myne auctowre, Butte I pray yowe of thys grette labowre I mote at thys tyme excused be;[107]

 Butte who so luste to here of hur a-raye, Lette him go to the ffrensshe bocke, That Idell mater I forsoke To telle hyt in prose or els in ryme, For me thoghte hyt taryed grette tyme. And ys a mater full nedless. [108]

One cannot but suspect that this odd mingling of respect and freedom asregards the original describes the attitude of many other translators ofromances, less articulate in the expression of their theory. 

To deal fairly with many of the romances of this second group, one mustconsider the relationship between romance and history and the uncertaindivision between the two. The early chronicles of England generallydevoted an appreciable space to matters of romance, the stories of Troy, of Aeneas, of Arthur. As in the case of the romance proper, suchchronicles were, even in the modern sense, "translated, " for though thehistorian usually compiled his material from more than one source, hismethod was to put together long, consecutive passages from variousauthors, with little attempt at assimilating them into a whole. Thedistinction between history and romance was slow in arising. The _MorteArthure_ offers within a few lines both "romances" and "chronicles" asauthorities for its statements. [109] In Caxton's preface to _Godfrey ofBullogne_ the enumeration of the great names of history includes Arthurand Charlemagne, and the story of Godfrey is designated as "this noblehistory which is no fable nor feigned thing. " Throughout the period thestories of Troy and of Alexander are consistently treated as history, and their redactors frequently state that their material has come fromvarious places. Nearly all the English Troy stories are translations ofGuido delle Colonne's _Historia Trojana_, and they take over from theiroriginal Guido's long discussion of authorities. The Alexander romancespresent the same effect of historical accuracy in passages like thefollowing:

 This passage destuted is In the French, well y-wis, Therefore I have, it to colour Borrowed of the Latin author;[110]

 Of what kin he came can I nought find In no book that I bed when I began here The Latin to this language lelliche to turn. [111]

The assumption of the historian's attitude was probably the largestfactor in the development of the habit of expressing responsibility forfollowing the source or for noting divergence from it. Less easy ofexplanation is the fact that comment on style so frequently appears inthis connection. There is perhaps a touch of it even in Layamon'saccount of his originals, when he approaches his French source: "Layamonbegan to journey wide over this land, and procured the noble books whichhe took for authority. He took the English book that Saint Bede made;another he took in Latin that Saint Albin made, and the fair Austin, whobrought baptism hither; the third he took, (and) laid there in themidst, that a French clerk made, who was named Wace, who well couldwrite. . . . Layamon laid before him these books, and turned the leaves . . . Pen he took with fingers, and wrote on book skin, and the true words settogether, and the three books compressed into one. "[112] Robert ofBrunne, in his _Chronicle of England_, dated as early as 1338, combinesa lengthy discussion of style with a clear statement of the extent towhich he has used his sources. Wace tells in French

 All that the Latyn spelles, ffro Eneas till Cadwaladre; this Mayster Wace ther leves he. And ryght as Mayster Wace says, I telle myn Inglis the same ways. [113]

Pers of Langtoft continues the history;

 & as he says, than say I, [114]

writes the translator. Robert admires his predecessors, Dares, whose"Latyn is feyre to lere, " Wace, who "rymed it in Frankis fyne, " andPers, of whose style he says, "feyrer language non ne redis"; but he isespecially concerned with his own manner of expression. He does notaspire to an elaborate literary style; rather, he says, I made it not forto be praysed, Bot at the lewed men were aysed. [115]

Consequently he eschews the difficult verse forms then coming intofashion, "ryme cowee, " "straungere, " or "enterlace. " He does not writefor the "disours, " "seggers, " and "harpours" of his own day, who tellthe old stories badly. 

 Non tham says as thai tham wrought, & in ther sayng it semes noght. [116]

A confusion of pronouns makes it difficult to understand what heconsiders the fault of contemporary renderings. Possibly it is thataffectation of an obsolete style to which Caxton refers in the prefaceto the _Eneydos_. In any case, he himself rejects "straunge Inglis" for"simple speche. "

Unlike Robert of Brunne, Andrew of Wyntoun, writing at the beginning ofthe next century, delights in the ornamental style which has added acharm to ancient story. 

 Quharfore of sic antiquiteis Thei that set haly thare delite Gestis or storyis for to write, Flurist fairly thare purpose With quaynt and curiouse circumstance, For to raise hertis in plesance, And the heraris till excite Be wit or will to do thare delite. [117]

The "antiquiteis" which he has in mind are obviously the tales of Troy. Guido delle Colonne, Homer, and Virgil, he continues, all

 Fairly formyt there tretyss, And curiously dytit there storyis. [118]

Some writers, however, did not adopt the elevated style which suchsubject matter deserves. 

 Sum usit bot in plane maner Of air done dedis thar mater To writ, as did Dares of Frigy, That wrait of Troy all the story, Bot in till plane and opin style, But curiouse wordis or subtile. [119]

Andrew does not attempt to discuss the application of his theory toEnglish style, but he has perhaps suggested the reason why the questionof style counted for so much in connection with this pseudo-historicalmaterial. In the introduction to Barbour's _Bruce_, though the point atissue is not translation, there is a similar idea. According to Barbour, a true story has a special claim to an attractive rendering. 

 Storyss to rede ar delitabill, Supposs that thai be nocht bot fabill; Than suld storyss that suthfast wer, And thai war said in gud maner, Have doubill plesance in heryng. The fyrst plesance is the carpyng, And the tothir the suthfastness, That schawys the thing rycht as it wes. [120]

Lydgate, Wyntoun's contemporary, apparently shared his views. Intranslating Boccaccio's _Falls of Princes_ he dispenses with stylisticornament. 

 Of freshe colours I toke no maner hede. But my processe playnly for to lede: As me semed it was to me most mete To set apart Rethorykes swete. [121]

But when it came to the Troy story, his matter demanded a differenttreatment. He calls upon Mars

 To do socour my stile to directe, And of my penne the tracys to correcte, Whyche bareyn is of aureate licour, But in thi grace I fynde som favour For to conveye it wyth thyn influence. [122]

He also asks aid of Calliope. 

 Now of thy grace be helpyng unto me, And of thy golde dewe lat the lycour wete My dulled breast, that with thyn hony swete Sugrest tongis of rethoricyens, And maistresse art to musicyens. [123]

Like Wyntoun, Lydgate pays tribute to his predecessors, the clerks whohave kept in memory the great deeds of the past

 . . . Thorough diligent labour, And enlumyned with many corious flour Of rethorik, to make us comprehend The trouthe of al. [124]

Of Guido in particular he writes that he

 . . . Had in writyng passynge excellence. For he enlumyneth by craft & cadence This noble story with many fresch colour Of rethorik, & many riche flour Of eloquence to make it sownde bet He in the story hath ymped in and set, That in good feyth I trowe he hath no pere. [125]

None of these men point out the relationship between the style of theoriginal and the style to be employed in the English rendering. Caxton, the last writer to be considered in this connection, remarks in hispreface to _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_ on the "fair languageof the French, which was in prose so well and compendiously set andwritten, " and in the prologue to the _Eneydos_ tells how he wasattracted by the "fair and honest terms and words in French, " and how, after writing a leaf or two, he noted that his English was characterizedby "fair and strange terms. " While it may be that both Caxton andLydgate were trying to reproduce in English the peculiar quality oftheir originals, it is more probable that they beautified their ownversions as best they could, without feeling it incumbent upon them tomake their rhetorical devices correspond with those of theirpredecessors. Elsewhere Caxton expresses concern only for his ownlanguage, as it is to be judged by English readers without regard forthe qualities of the French. In most cases he characterizes hisrenderings of romance as "simple and rude"; in the preface to _Charlesthe Great_ he says that he uses "no gay terms, nor subtle, nor neweloquence"; and in the preface to _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_ hedeclares that he does not know "the art of rhetoric nor of such gayterms as now be said in these days and used, " and that his only desireis to be understood by his readers. The prologue to the _Eneydos_, however, tells a different story. According to this he has been blamedfor expressing himself in "over curious terms which could not beunderstood of the common people" and requested to use "old and homelyterms. " But Caxton objects to the latter as being also unintelligible. "In my judgment, " he says, "the common terms that be daily used, arelighter to be understood than the old and ancient English. " He iswriting, not for the ignorant man, but "only for a clerk and a noblegentleman that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in love, andin noble chivalry. " For this reason, he concludes, "in a mean have Ireduced and translated this said book into our English, not over rudenor curious, but in such terms as shall be understood, by God's grace, according to the copy. " Though Caxton does not avail himself ofWyntoun's theory that the Troy story must be told in "curious andsubtle" words, it is probable that, like other translators of hiscentury, he felt the attraction of the new aureate diction while heprofessed the simplicity of language which existing standards demandedof the translator. 

Turning from the romance and the history and considering religiouswritings, the second large group of medieval productions, one finds themost significant translator's comment associated with the saint'slegend, though occasionally the short pious tale or the more abstracttheological treatise makes some contribution. These religious worksdiffer from the romances in that they are more frequently based on Latinthan on French originals, and in that they contain more deliberate andmore repeated references to the audiences to which they have beenadapted. The translator does not, like Caxton, write for "a clerk and anoble gentleman"; instead he explains repeatedly that he has striven tomake his work understandable to the unlearned, for, as the author of_The Child of Bristow_ pertinently remarks, The beste song that ever was made Is not worth a lekys blade But men wol tende ther-tille. [126]

Since Latin enditing is "cumbrous, " the translator of _The Blood atHayles_ presents a version in English, "for plainly this the truth willtell";[127] Osbern Bokenam will speak and write "plainly, after thelanguage of Southfolk speech";[128] John Capgrave, finding that theearlier translator of the life of St. Katherine has made the work "fullhard . . . Right for the strangeness of his dark language, " undertakes totranslate it "more openly" and "set it more plain. "[129] This conceptionof the audience, together with the writer's consciousness that even inpresenting narrative he is conveying spiritual truths of supremeimportance to his readers, probably increases the tendency of thetranslator to incorporate into his English version such runningcommentary as at intervals suggests itself to him. He may add a line ortwo of explanation, of exhortation, or, if he recognizes a quotationfrom the Scriptures or from the Fathers, he may supply the authority forit. John Capgrave undertakes to translate the life of St. Gilbert "rightas I find before me, save some additions will I put thereto which men ofthat order have told me, and eke other things that shall fall to my mindin the writing which be pertinent to the matter. "[130] Nicholas Loveputs into English _The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ_, "with more put to in certain parts, and also with drawing out of diversauthorities and matters as it seemeth to the writer hereof most speedfuland edifying to them that be of simple understanding. "[131] Suchincidental citation of authority is evident in _St. Paula_, publishedby Dr. Horstmann side by side with its Latin original. [132] With moresimplicity and less display of learning, the translator of religiousworks sometimes vaguely adduces authority, as did the translator ofromances, in connection with an unfamiliar name. One finds suchstatements as: "Manna, so it is written";[133] "Such a fiend, as thebook tells us, is called Incubus";[134] "In the country of Champagne, asthe book tells";[135] "Cursates, saith the book, he hight";[136]

 Her body lyeth in strong castylle And Bulstene, seith the boke, it hight;[137]

 In the yer of ur lord of hevene Four hundred and eke ellevene Wandaly the province tok Of Aufrike--so seith the bok. [138]

Often, however, the reference to source is introduced apparently atrandom. On the whole, indeed, the comment which accompanies religiouswritings does not differ essentially in intelligibility or significancefrom that associated with romances; its interest lies mainly in the factthat it brings into greater relief tendencies more or less apparent inthe other form. 

One of these is the large proportion of borrowed comment. The constantcitation of authority in a work such as, for example, _The GoldenLegend_ was likely to be reproduced in the English with varying degreesof faithfulness. A _Life of St. Augustine_, to choose a fewillustrations from many, reproduces the Latin as in the followingexamples: "as the book telleth us" replaces "dicitur enim"; "of him itis said in Glosarie, " "ut dicitur in Glossario"; "in the book of hisconfessions the sooth is written for the nonce, " "ut legitur in libroiii. Confessionum. "[139] Robert of Brunne's _Handlyng Synne_, as printedby the Early English Text Society with its French original, affordsnumerous examples of translated references to authority. 

 The tale ys wrytyn, al and sum, In a boke of Vitas Patrum

corresponds with

 Car en vn liure ai troué Qe Vitas Patrum est apelé;

 Thus seyth seynt Anselme, that hit wrote To thys clerkys that weyl hit wote

with

 Ceo nus ad Seint Ancelme dit Qe en la fey fut clerk parfit. 

Yet there are variations in the English much more marked than in thelast example. "Cum l'estorie nus ad cunté" has become "Yn the byble menmow hyt se"; while for

 En ve liure qe est apelez La sume des vertuz & des pechiez

the translator has substituted

 Thys same tale tellyth seynt Bede Yn hys gestys that men rede. [140]

This attempt to give the origin of a tale or of a precept moreaccurately than it is given in the French or the Latin leads sometimesto strange confusion, more especially when a reference to the Scripturesis involved. It was admitted that the Bible was unusually difficult ofcomprehension and that, if the simple were to understand it, it must beannotated in various ways. Nicholas Love says that there have beenwritten "for lewd men and women . . . Devout meditations of Christ's lifemore plain in certain parts than is expressed in the gospels of the fourevangelists. "[141] With so much addition of commentary and legend, itwas often hard to tell what was and what was not in Holy Scripture, andconsequently while a narrative like _The Birth of Jesus_ cites correctlyenough the gospels for certain days, of which it gives a freerendering, [142] there are cases of amazing attributions, like that atthe end of the legend of _Ypotis_:

 Seynt Jon the Evangelist Ede on eorthe with Jhesu Crist, This tale he wrot in latin In holi bok in parchemin. [143]

After the fifteenth century is reached, the translator of religiousworks, like the translator of romances, becomes more garrulous in hiscomment and develops a good deal of interest in English style. As a fairrepresentative of the period we may take Osbern Bokenam, the translatorof various saint's legends, a man very much interested in thecontemporary development of literary expression. Two qualities, according to Bokenam, characterize his own style; he writes"compendiously" and he avoids "gay speech. " He repeatedly disclaims bothprolixity and rhetorical ornament. His

 . . . Form of procedyng artificyal Is in no wyse ner poetical. [144]

He cannot emulate the "first rhetoricians, " Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate;he comes too late; they have already gathered "the most fresh flowers. "Moreover the ornamental style would not become him; he does not desire

 . . . To have swych eloquence As sum curials han, ner swych asperence In utteryng of here subtyl conceytys In wych oft-tyme ful greth dysceyt is. [145]

To covet the craft of such language would be "great dotage" for an oldman like him. Yet like those of Lydgate and Caxton, Bokenam'sprotestations are not entirely convincing, and in them one catchesglimpses of a lurking fondness for the wordiness of fine writing. ThoughPallas has always refused to lead him

 Of Thully Rethoryk in-to the motlyd mede, Flourys to gadryn of crafty eloquens, [146]

yet he has often prayed her to show him some favor. Elsewhere he findsit necessary to apologize for the brevity of part of his work. 

 Now have I shewed more compendiously Than it owt have ben this noble pedigree; But in that myn auctour I follow sothly, And also to eschew prolixite, And for my wyt is schort, as ye may se, To the second part I wyl me hye. [147]

The conventionality, indeed, of Bokenam's phraseology and of hisliterary standards and the self-contradictory elements in his statementsleave one with the impression that he has brought little, if anything, that is fresh and individual to add to the theory of translation. 

Whether or not the medieval period made progress towards the developmentof a more satisfactory theory is a doubtful question. While men likeLydgate, Bokenam, and Caxton generally profess to have reproduced thecontent of their sources and make some mention of the original writers, their comment is confused and indefinite; they do not recognize anycompelling necessity for faithfulness; and one sometimes suspects thatthey excelled their predecessors only in articulateness. As comparedwith Layamon and Orm they show a development scarcely worthy of a lapseof more than two centuries. There is perhaps, as time goes on, somelittle advance towards the attainment of modern standards of scholarshipas regards confession of divergence from sources. In the early part ofthe period variations from the original are only vaguely implied andbecome evident only when the reader can place the English beside theFrench or Latin. In _Floris and Blancheflor_, for example, a muchcondensed version of a descriptive passage in the French is introducedby the words, "I ne can tell you how richly the saddle waswrought. "[148] The romance of _Arthur_ ends with the statement, He that will more look, Read in the French book, And he shall find there Things that I leete here. [149]

_The Northern Passion_ turns from the legendary history of the Cross tosomething more nearly resembling the gospel narrative with theexhortation, "Forget not Jesus for this tale. "[150] As compared withthis, writers like Nicholas Love or John Capgrave are noticeablyexplicit. Love pauses at various points to explain that he is omittinglarge sections of the original;[151] Capgrave calls attention to hisinterpolations and refers them to their sources. [152] On the other hand, there are constant implications that variation from source may be adesirable thing and that explanation and apology are unnecessary. Bokenam, for example, apologizes rather because _The Golden Legend_ doesnot supply enough material and he must leave out certain things "forignorance. "[153] Caxton says of his _Charles the Great_, "If I had beenmore largely informed . . . I had better made it. "[154]

On the whole, the greatest merit of the later medieval translatorsconsists in the quantity of their comment. In spite of the vagueness andthe absence of originality in their utterances, there is an advantage intheir very garrulity. Translators needed to become more conscious andmore deliberate in their work; different methods needed to be defined;and the habit of technical discussion had its value, even though thequality of the commentary was not particularly good. Apart from a fewconventional formulas, this habit of comment constituted the bequest ofmedieval translators to their sixteenth-century successors. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Trans. In _Gregory's Pastoral Care_, ed. Sweet, E. E. T. S. , p. 7. 

[2] Trans. In _King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius_, trans. Sedgefield, 1900. 

[3] Trans. In Hargrove, _King Alfred's Old English Version of St. Augustine's Soliloquies_, 1902, pp. Xliii-xliv. 

[4] Latin Preface of the _Catholic Homilies I_, Latin Preface of the _Livesof the Saints_, Preface of _Pastoral Letter for Archbishop Wulfstan_. Allof these are conveniently accessible in White, _Aelfric_, Chap. XIII. 

[5] Latin Preface to _Homilies II_. 

[6] _Ibid. _

[7] _Preface to Genesis. _

[8] Latin Preface of the _Grammar_. 

[9] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_. 

[10] In the selections from the Bible various passages, e. G. , genealogies, are omitted without comment. 

[11] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_. 

[12] Latin Preface. 

[13] For further comment, see Chapter II. 

[14] Trans. In Thorpe, _Caedmon's Metrical Pharaphrase_, London, 1832, p. Xxv. 

[15] Ll. 1238 ff. For trans. See _The Christ of Cynewulf_, ed. Cook, pp. Xlvi-xlviii. 

[16] Cf. Comment on l. 1, in Introduction to _Andreas_, ed. Krapp, 1906, p. Lii: "The Poem opens with the conventional formula of the epic, citingtradition as the source of the story, though it is all plainly of literaryorigin. "

[17] I. E. Laurent de Premierfait. 

[18] _Bochas' Falls of Princes_, 1558. 

[19] Ed. Ritson, ll. 1138-9. 

[20] A version, ll. 341-4. Cf. Puttenham, ". . . Many of his books be butbare translations out of the Latin and French . . . As his books of _Troilusand Cresseid_, and the _Romant of the Rose_, " Gregory Smith, _ElizabethanCritical Essays_, ii, 64. 

[21] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, ed. Horstmann, 1883, ll. 108-9, 124. 

[22] _The Life of St. Werburge_, E. E. T. S. , ll. 94. 127-130. 

[23] _Minor Poems of Lydgate_, E. E. T. S. , _Legend of St. Gyle_, ll. 9-10, 27-32. 

[24] _Ibid. _, _Legend of St. Margaret_, l. 74. 

[25] _St. Christiana_, l. 1028. 

[26] _Legend of Good Women_, ll. 425-6. 

[27] See the ballade by Eustache Deschamps, quoted in Chaucer, _Works_, ed. Morris, vol. 1, p. 82. 

[28] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS_, Pt. 1, E. E. T. S. , _The Castle of Love_, l. 72. 

[29] E. E. T. S. , _Cotton Vesp. MS. _ ll. 233-5. 

[30] E. E. T. S. , l. 457. 

[31] See _Cambridge History of English Literature_, v. 2, p. 313. 

[32] Preface to _The Image of Governance_, 1549. 

[33] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, ed. Horstmann, _Christine_, ll. 517-20. 

[34] Preface, E. E. T. S. 

[35] Capgrave, _St. Katherine of Alexandria_, E. E. T. S. , Bk. 3, l. 21. 

[36] In _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, l. 45. 

[37] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. _ Pt. 1, Appendix, p. 407. 

[38] Introduction to Capgrave, _Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert ofSempringham_, E. E. T. S. 

[39] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, p. 138, ll. 1183-8. 

[40] _Three Prose Versions of Secreta Secretorum_, E. E. T. S. , EpistleDedicatory to second. 

[41] _The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man_, E. E. T. S. 

[42] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, _St. Agnes_, ll. 680-2. 

[43] _Epistle of Sir John Trevisa_, in Pollard, _Fifteenth Century Proseand Verse_, p. 208. 

[44] In Sedgefield, _King Alfred's Version of Boethius_. 

[45] Ed. White, 1852, ll. 41-4. 

[46] Ll. 55-64. 

[47] E. E. T. S. , Preface. 

[48] Pollard, _ibid. _, p. 208. 

[49] E. E. T. S. , ll. 6553-7. 

[50] Ll. 6565-6. 

[51] E. E. T. S. , p. 125. 

[52] _Altenglische Sammlung, Neue Folge_, _St. Etheldred Eliensis_, l. 162. 

[53] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Erasmus_, l. 4. 

[54] _Ibid. _, _Magdalena_, l. 48. 

[55] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. _, Pt. 1, _St. Bernard's Lamentation_, ll. 21-2. 

[56] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Fragment of Canticum deCreatione_, ll. 49-50. 

[57] _Legends of the Holy Rood_, E. E. T. S. , _How the Holy Cross was found bySt. Helena_, ll. 684-7. 

[58] E. E. T. S. , Bk. 1, ll. 684-91. 

[59] Ed. Ritson, ll. 4027-8. 

[60] _Chevalier au Lyon_, ed. W. L. Holland, 1886, ll. 6805-6. 

[61] Ed. Kölbing, 1889, ll. 144, 4514. 

[62] E. E. T. S. , ll. 319, 405, 216. 

[63] See Chambers, _The Medieval Stage_, Appendix G. 

[64] _Chronicle of England_, ed. Furnivall, ll. 93-104. 

[65] _Altenglische Legenden_, _Vita St. Etheldredae Eliensis_, ll. 978-9, 1112. 

[66] Bk. 4, ll. 129-130. 

[67] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, ll. 435-7. 

[68] E. E. T. S. 

[69] Ed. Ritson. 

[70] _Ibid. _

[71] E. E. T. S. 

[72] _Thornton Romances_, l. 848. (Here the writer is probably confused bythe two words _grype_ and _griffin_. )

[73] E. E. T. S. , l. 1284. 

[74] E. E. T. S. , l. 318. 

[75] Ll. 6983-4. 

[76] Ll. 688-9. 

[77] L. 3643. 

[78] E. E. T. S. , ll. 523-4. 

[79] L. 6105. 

[80] E. E. T. S. , l. 4734. 

[81] L. 4133. 

[82] L. 5425. 

[83] L. 3894. 

[84] L. 2997. 

[85] L. 2170. 

[86] L. 2428. 

[87] _The Earl of Toulouse_, ed. Ritson, ll. 1213, 1197. 

[88] _Le Bone Florence of Rome_, ed. Ritson, ll. 2174, 643. 

[89] Ed. Sarrazin, 1885, note on l. 10 of the two versions in Northerndialect. 

[90] _Thornton Romances_, note on l. 718. 

[91] L. 1150. 

[92] Ll. 1275-6. 

[93] Ll. 2173-4. 

[94] See Miss Rickert's comment in E. E. T. S. Edition of _Emare_, p. Xlviii. 

[95] English version, ll. 1284, 2115, 5718-9; French version, _Mellusine_, ed. Michel, 1854, ll. 1446, 2302, 6150-2. 

[96] Ll. 407, 1359. 

[97] Ed. Vollmöller, 1883, ll. 5-6. 

[98] E. E. T. S. , l. 5522. 

[99] E. E. T. S. , Chap XLVI, ll. 496-9. 

[100] Chap. LVI, ll. 521-5. 

[101] Ll. 8-12. 

[102] Ll. 15-18. 

[103] See ll. 6581 ff. 

[104] Ed. E. E. T. S. , ll. 500-501. 

[105] Ll. 7742-6. 

[106] Ll. 2340-8. 

[107] Ll. 5144-8. 

[108] Ll. 6170-6. 

[109] Ed. E. E. T. S. , ll. 3200, 3218. 

[110] _King Alexander_, ed. Weber, 1810, ll. 2199-2202. 

[111] Alliterative romance of _Alisaunder_, E. E. T. S. , ll. 456-9. 

[112] Ed. Madden, 1847. 

[113] Ed. Furnivall, 1887, ll. 58-62. 

[114] L. 70. 

[115] Ll. 83-4. 

[116] Ll. 95-6. 

[117] Original Chronicle, ll. 6-13. 

[118] Ll. 16-17. 

[119] Ll. 18-23. 

[120] Ed. E. E. T. S. , ll. 1-7. 

[121] Prologue. 

[122] Ed. E. E. T. S. , ll. 29-33. 

[123] Ll. 54-8. 

[124] Ll. 217-20. 

[125] Ll. 361-7. 

[126] In _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, ll. 7-9. 

[127] _Ibid. _, ll. 33, 35. 

[128] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, _St. Agnes_, ll. 29-30. 

[129] _St. Katherine of Alexandria_, _Prologue_, ll. 61-2, 232-3, 64. 

[130] _Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert_, _Prologue_. 

[131] Oxford, Clarendon Press, _Prohemium_. 

[132] In _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_. 

[133] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. _, _De Festo Corporis Christi_, l. 170. 

[134] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _St. Bernard_, ll. 943-4. 

[135] _Ibid. _, _Erasmus_, l. 41. 

[136] _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, _St. Katherine_, p. 243, l. 451. 

[137] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Christine_, ll. 489-90. 

[138] _Ibid. _, _St. Augustine_, ll. 1137-40. 

[139] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _St. Augustine_, ll. 43, 57-8, 128. 

[140] Ll. 169-70, 785-6, 2475-6. 

[141] _Op. Cit. _, _Prohemium_. 

[142] _Altenglische Legenden_, _Geburt Jesu_, ll. 493, 527, 715, etc. 

[143] _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, _Ypotis_, ll. 613-16. 

[144] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden, St. Margaret_, ll. 84-5. 

[145] _Mary Magdalen_, ll. 245-8. 

[146] _St. Agnes_, ll. 13-14. 

[147] _Op. Cit. _, _St. Anne_, ll. 209-14. 

[148] E. E. T. S. , l. 382. 

[149] E. E. T. S. , ll. 633-6. 

[150] E. E. T. S. , p. 146, l. 1. 

[151] _Op. Cit. _, pp. 100, 115, 300. 

[152] _Life of St. Gilbert_, pp. 103, 135. 141. 

[153] _Op. Cit. _, _St. Katherine_, l. 49. 

[154] Preface. 

II. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

II

THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

The English Bible took its shape under unusual conditions, which hadtheir share in the excellence of the final result. Appealing, as it did, to all classes, from the scholar, alert for controversial detail, to theunlearned layman, concerned only for his soul's welfare, it had itsgrowth in the vital atmosphere of strong intellectual and spiritualactivity. It was not enough that it should bear the test of thescholar's criticism; it must also reach the understanding of Tyndale's"boy that driveth the plough, " demands difficult of satisfaction, butconducive theoretically to a fine development of the art of translation. To attain scholarly accuracy combined with practical intelligibilitywas, then, the task of the translator. 

From both angles criticism reached him. Tyndale refers to "mytranslation in which they affirm unto the lay people (as I have heardsay) to be I wot not how many thousand heresies, " and continues, "Forthey which in times past were wont to look on no more scripture thanthey found in their duns or such like devilish doctrine, have yet now sonarrowly looked on my translation that there is not so much as one Itherein if it lack a tittle over his head, but they have noted it, andnumber it unto the ignorant people for an heresy. "[155] Tunstall'sfamous reference in his sermon at Paul's Cross to the two thousanderrors in Tyndale's Testament suggests the undiscriminating criticism, addressed to the popular ear and basing its appeal largely on"numbering, " of which Tyndale complains. The prohibition of "openreasoning in your open Taverns and Alehouses"[156] concerning themeaning of Scripture, included in the draft of the proclamation for thereading of the Great Bible, also implies that there must have beenenough of popular oral discussion to count for something in the shapingof the English Bible. Of the serious comment of more competent judgesmany records remain, enough to make it clear that, although the realtechnical problems involved were often obscured by controversy and bythe common view that the divine quality of the original made humaneffort negligible, nevertheless the translator did not lack the stimuluswhich comes from intelligent criticism and discussion. 

The Bible also had an advantage over other translations in that the ideaof _progress_ towards an accurate version early arose. Unlike thetranslators of secular works, who frequently boast of the speed withwhich they have accomplished their tasks, the translators of the Bibleconstantly mention the long, careful labor which has gone to theirundertaking. Tyndale feels in his own work the need for revision, and sofar as opportunity serves, corrects and polishes his version. Latertranslators consciously based their renderings on those of theirpredecessors. St. Augustine's approval of diversity of translations wascited again and again. Tyndale urges "those that are better seen in thetongues than I" to "put to their hands to amend" any faults they mayfind in his work. [157] George Joye, his assistant, later his would-berival, declares that we must learn "to depend not whole on any man'stranslation. "[158] "Every one, " says Coverdale, "doth his best to benighest to the mark. And though they cannot all attain thereto yetshooteth one nigher than another";[159] and again, "Sure I am that therecometh more knowledge and understanding of the scripture by theirsundry translations than by all our sophistical doctors. For that onetranslateth something obscurely in one place, the same translatethanother, or else he himself, more manifestly by a more plainvocable. "[160] Occasionally the number of experimenters awakened somedoubts; Cromwell suggests that the bishops make a "perfectcorrection";[161] the patent granted him for the printing of the Bibleadvocates one translation since "the frailty of men is such that thediversity thereof may breed and bring forth manyfold inconveniences aswhen wilful and heady folks shall confer upon the diversity of the saidtranslations";[162] the translators of the version of 1611 have to"answer a third cavil . . . Against us, for altering and amending ourtranslations so oft";[163] but the conception of progress was generallyaccepted, and finds fit expression in the preface to the AuthorizedVersion: "Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at thesame time, and the later thoughts are thought to be wiser: so, if webuilding on their foundation that went before us, and being holpen bytheir labors, do endeavor to make that better which they left so good;no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us. "[164]

But the English translators had more far-reaching opportunities toprofit by the experiences of others. In other countries than England menwere engaged in similar labors. The sixteenth century was rich in newLatin versions of the Scriptures. The translations of Erasmus, Beza, Pagninus, Münster, Étienne, Montanus, and Tremellius had in turn theirinfluence on the English renderings, and Castalio's translation intoCiceronian Latin had at least its share of discussion. There wasconstant intercourse between those interested in Bible translation inEngland and on the Continent. English refugees during the persecutionsfled across the Channel, and towns such as Worms, Zurich, Antwerp, andGeneva saw the first printing of most of the early English versions ofthe Scriptures. The Great Bible was set up in Paris. Indeed foreignprinters had so large a share in the English Bible that it seemedsometimes advisable to limit their influence. Richard Grafton writesironically to Cromwell regarding the text of the Bible: "Yea and to makeit yet truer than it is, therefore Dutchmen dwelling within this realmgo about the printing of it, which can neither speak good English, noryet write none, and they will be both the printers and correctorsthereof";[165] and Coverdale and Grafton imply a similar fear in thecase of Regnault, the Frenchman, who has been printing service books, when they ask Cromwell that "henceforth he print no more in the Englishtongue, unless he have an Englishman that is learned to be hiscorrector. "[166] Moreover, versions of the Scriptures in other languagesthan English were not unknown in England. In 1530 Henry the Eighth wasled to prohibit "the having of holy scripture, translated into thevulgar tongues of English, _French_, or _Dutch_. "[167] Besides thisgeneral familiarity with foreign translations and foreign printers, amore specific indebtedness must be recognized. More's attack on the book"which whoso calleth the New Testament calleth it by a wrong name, except they will call it Tyndale's testament or Luther's testament"[168]is in some degree justified in its reference to German influence. Coverdale acknowledges the aid he has received from "the Dutchinterpreters: whom (because to their singular gifts and specialdiligence in the Bible) I have been the more glad to follow. "[169] Thepreface to the version of 1611 says, "Neither did we think much toconsult the translators or commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or Latin, no, nor the _Spanish_, _French_, _Italian_, or _Dutch_. "[170]Doubtless a great part of the debt lay in matters of exegesis, but inhis familiarity with so great a number of translations into otherlanguages and with the discussion centering around these translations, it is impossible that the English translator should have failed toobtain suggestions, both practical and theoretical, which applied totranslation rather than to interpretation. Comments on the general aimsand methods of translation, happy turns of expression in French orGerman which had their equivalents in English idiom, must frequentlyhave illuminated his difficulties. The translators of the Geneva Bibleshow a just realization of the truth when they speak of "the greatopportunity and occasions which God hath presented unto us in thisChurch, by reason of so many godly and learned men; and such diversitiesof translations in divers tongues. "[171]

Of the general history of Biblical translations, already so frequentlyand so adequately treated, only the barest outline is here necessary. The various Anglo-Saxon translations and the Wycliffite versions arelargely detached from the main line of development. From Tyndale'stranslations to the Authorized Version of 1611 the line is surprisinglyconsecutive, though in the matter of theory an early translatoroccasionally anticipates views which obtain general acceptance onlyafter a long period of experiment and discussion. Roughly speaking, thetheory of translation has as its two extremes, the Roman Catholic andthe Puritan positions, while the 1611 version, where its preface commitsitself, compromises on the points at issue. 

As is to be expected, the most definite statements of the problemsinvolved and of their solution are usually found in the comment of thosepractically engaged in the work of translation. The widely discussedquestion whether or not the people should have the Scriptures in thevulgar tongue scarcely ever comes down to the difficulties andpossibilities of the actual undertaking. More's lengthy attack onTyndale's New Testament is chiefly concerned with matters of doctrine. Apart from the prefaces to the various issues of the Bible, the mostelaborate discussion of technical matters is Fulke's _Defence of theSincere and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures into the EnglishTongue_, a Protestant reply to the claims of the Rhemish translators, published in 1589. Even the more definite comments are bound up with agreat mass of controversial or hortatory material, so that it is hard todisentangle the actual contribution which is being made to the theory oftranslation. Sometimes the translator settled vexed questions by usingmarginal glosses, a method which might make for accuracy but was liableto become cumbrous and confusing. Like the prefaces, the glossessometimes contained theological rather than linguistic comment, thusproving a special source of controversy. A proclamation of Henry theEighth forbids the printing or importation of "any books of divinescripture in the English tongue, with any additions in the margin or anyprologue . . . Except the same be first viewed, examined, and allowed bythe king's highness, or such of his majesty's council, or others, as itshall please his grace to assign thereto, but only the plain sentenceand text. "[172] The version of 1611 admitted only linguistic comment. 

Though the Anglo-Saxon renderings of the Scriptures are for the mostpart isolated from the main body of translations, there are some pointsof contact. Elizabethan translators frequently cited the example of theearlier period as an argument in favor of having the Bible in the vulgartongue. Nor were they entirely unfamiliar with the work of these remotepredecessors. Foxe, the martyrologist, published in 1571 an edition ofthe four gospels in Anglo-Saxon under the patronage of ArchbishopParker. Parker's well-known interest in Old English centeredparticularly around the early versions of the Scriptures. SecretaryCecil sends the Archbishop "a very ancient Bible written in Latin andold English or Saxon, " and Parker in reply comments on "the fairantique writing with the Saxon interpretation. "[173] Moreover the slightrecord which survives suggests that the problems which confronted theAnglo-Saxon translator were not unlike those which met the translator ofa later period. Aelfric's theory of translation in general is expressedin the Latin prefaces to the _Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church_ andthe _Lives of the Saints_. Above all things he desires that his work maybe clear and readable. Hence he has a peculiar regard for brevity. The_Homilies_ are rendered "non garrula verbositate"; the _Lives of theSaints_ are abbreviated on the principle that "non semper breuitassermonem deturpat sed multotiens honestiorem reddit. " Clear, idiomaticEnglish is essential even when it demands the sacrifice of verbalaccuracy. He presents not word for word but sense for sense, and prefersthe "pure and open words of the language of this people, " to a moreartificial style. His Anglo-Saxon _Preface to Genesis_ implies that hefelt the need of greater faithfulness in the case of the Bible: "We darewrite no more in English than the Latin has, nor change the orders(endebirdnisse)"; but it goes on to say that it is necessary that Latinidiom adapt itself to English idiom. [174]

Apart from Aelfric's prefaces Anglo-Saxon translators of the Scriptureshave left no comment on their methods. One of the versions of theGospels, however, links itself with later translations by employing aspreface three of St. Jerome's prologues, among them the _Preface toEusebius_. References to Jerome's and Augustine's theories oftranslation are frequent throughout the course of Biblical translationbut are generally vague. The _Preface to Eusebius_ and the _Epistle toPammachius_ contain the most complete statements of the principles whichguided Jerome. Both emphasize the necessity of giving sense for senserather than word for word, "except, " says the latter, "in the case ofthe Holy Scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery. "This corresponds closely with Aelfric's theory expressed in the prefaceto the _Lives of the Saints_: "Nec potuimus in ista translatione semperverbum ex verbo transferre, sed tamen sensum ex sensu, " and hisinsistence in the _Preface to Genesis_ on a faithfulness which extendseven to the _endebirdnisse_ or orders. 

The principle "word for word if possible; if not, sense for sense" iscommon in connection with medieval translations, but is susceptible ofvery different interpretations, as appears sometimes from its context. Richard Rolle's phrasing of the theory in the preface to his translationof the Psalter is: "I follow the letter as much as I may. And where Ifind no proper English I follow the wit of the words"; but he also makesthe contradictory statement, "In this work I seek no strange English, but lightest and commonest, and _such that is most like to theLatin_, "[175] a peculiar conception of the translator's obligation tohis own tongue! The Prologue to the second recension of the Wycliffiteversion, commonly attributed to Purvey, emphasizes, under cover of thesame apparent theory, the claims of the vernacular. "The besttranslating, " it runs, "is out of Latin into English, to translate afterthe sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be asopen, either opener, in English as in Latin, . . . And if the letter maynot be sued in the translating, let the sentence be ever whole and open, for the words owe to serve to the intent and sentence. "[176] The growingdistrust of the Vulgate in some quarters probably accounts in somemeasure for the translator's attempt to make the meaning if necessary"more true and more open than it is in the Latin. " In any case thesecontrasted theories represent roughly the position of the RomanCatholic and, to some extent, the Anglican party as compared with themore distinctly Protestant attitude throughout the period when theEnglish Bible was taking shape, the former stressing the difficulties oftranslation and consequently discouraging it, or, when permitting it, insisting on extreme faithfulness to the original; the latter profitingby experiment and criticism and steadily working towards a version whichwould give due heed not only to the claims of the original but to thegenius of the English language. 

Regarded merely as theory, however, a statement like the one just quotedobviously failed to give adequate recognition to what the original mightjustly demand, and in that respect justified the fears of those whoopposed translation. The high standard of accuracy set by such criticsdemanded of the translator an increasing consciousness of thedifficulties involved and an increasingly clear conception of whatthings were and were not permissible. Purvey himself contributes to thisend by a definite statement of certain changes which may be allowed theEnglish writer. [177] Ablative absolute or participial constructions maybe replaced by clauses of various kinds, "and this will, in many places, make the sentence open, where to English it after the word would be darkand doubtful. Also, " he continues, "a relative, _which_, may be resolvedinto his antecedent with a conjunction copulative, as thus, _whichrunneth_, and _he runneth_. Also when a word is once set in a reason, itmay be set forth as oft as it is understood, either as oft as reason andneed ask; and this word _autem_ either _vero_, may stand for _forsooth_either for _but_, and thus I use commonly; and sometimes it may standfor _and_, as old grammarians say. Also when rightful construction isletted by relation, I resolve it openly, thus, where this reason, _Dominum formidabunt adversarii ejus_, should be Englished thus by theletter, _the Lord his adversaries shall dread_, I English it thus byresolution, _the adversaries of the Lord shall dread him_; and so ofother reasons that be like. " In the later period of Biblicaltranslation, when grammatical information was more accessible, suchelementary comment was not likely to be committed to print, but echoesof similar technical difficulties are occasionally heard. Tyndale, speaking of the Hebraisms in the Greek Testament, asks his critics to"consider the Hebrew phrase . . . Whose preterperfect tense and presenttense is both one, and the future tense is the optative mood also, andthe future tense is oft the imperative mood in the active voice and inthe passive voice. Likewise person for person, number for number, andinterrogation for a conditional, and such like is with the Hebrews acommon usage. "[178] The men concerned in the preparation of the Bishops'Bible discuss the rendering of tenses in the Psalms. At the beginning ofthe first Psalm the Bishop of Rochester turns "the preterperfect tenseinto the present tense; because the sense is too harsh in thepreterperfect tense, " and the Bishop of Ely advises "the translation ofthe verbs in the Psalms to be used uniformly in one tense. "[179]

Purvey's explanations, however, suggest that his mind is occupied, notmerely with details, but with a somewhat larger problem. Medievaltranslators were frequently disturbed by the fact that it was almostimpossible to confine an English version to the same number of words asthe Latin. When they added to the number, they feared that they wereunfaithful to the original. The need for brevity, for avoidingsuperfluous words, is especially emphasized in connection with theBible. Conciseness, necessary for accuracy, is also an admirable qualityin itself. Aelfric's approval of this characteristic has already beennoted. The metrical preface to Rolle's Psalter reads: "This holy man inexpounding, he followeth holy doctors, and in all his Englishing rightafter the Latin taketh course, and makes it _compendious_, _short_, good, and profitable. " Purvey says, "Men might expound much openlier and_shortlier_ the Bible than the old doctors have expounded it in Latin. "Besides approving the avoidance of verbose commentary and exposition, critics and translators are always on their guard against the employmentof over many words in translation. Tyndale, in his revision, will "seekto bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at thelength. "[180] In certain cases, he says, English reproduces the Hebreworiginal more easily than does the Latin, because in Latin thetranslator must "seek a compass. "[181] Coverdale finds a correspondingdifficulty in turning Latin into English: "The figure called Eclipsisdivers times used in the scriptures . . . Though she do garnish thesentence in Latin will not so be admitted in other tongues. "[182] Thetranslator of the Geneva New Testament refers to the "Hebrew and Greekphrases, which are strange to render into other tongues, and also_short_. "[183] The preface to the Rhemish Testament accuses theProtestant translators of having in one place put into the text "threewords more . . . Than the Greek word doth signify. "[184] Strype says ofCheke in a passage chiefly concerned with Cheke's attempt at translationof the Bible, "He brought in a _short_ and expressive way of writingwithout long and intricate periods, "[185] a comment which suggests thatpossibly the appreciation of conciseness embraced sentence structure aswell as phrasing. As Tyndale suggests, careful revision made forbrevity. In Laurence's scheme for correcting his part of the Bishop'sBible was the heading "words superfluous";[186] the preface to theAuthorized Version says, "If anything be halting, or _superfluous_, ornot so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and thetruth set in place. "[187] As time went on, certain technical means wereemployed to meet the situation. Coverdale incloses in brackets words notin the Latin text; the Geneva translators put added words in italics;Fulke criticizes the Rhemish translators for neglecting thisdevice;[188] and the matter is finally settled by its employment in theAuthorized Version. Fulke, however, irritated by what he considers asuperstitious regard for the number of words in the original on the partof the Rhemish translators, puts the whole question on a common-sensebasis. He charges his opponents with making "many imperfect sentences. . . Because you will not seem to add that which in translation is noaddition, but a true translation. "[189] "For to translate out of onetongue into another, " he says in another place, "is a matter of greaterdifficulty than is commonly taken, I mean exactly to yield as much andno more than the original containeth, when the words and phrases are sodifferent, that few are found which in all points signify the samething, neither more nor less, in divers tongues. "[190] And again, "Mustnot such particles in translation be always expressed to make the senseplain, which in English without the particle hath no sense orunderstanding. To translate precisely out of the Hebrew is not toobserve the number of words, but the perfect sense and meaning, as thephrase of our tongue will serve to be understood. "[191]

For the distinguishing characteristics of the Authorized Version, thebeauty of its rhythm, the vigor of its native Saxon vocabulary, there islittle to prepare one in the comment of its translators or theirpredecessors. Apparently the faithful effort to render the originaltruly resulted in a perfection of style of which the translator himselfwas largely unconscious. The declaration in the preface to the versionof 1611 that "niceness in words was always counted the next step totrifling, "[192] and the general condemnation of Castalio's "lewdtranslation, "[193] point to a respect for the original which made thetranslator merely a mouthpiece and the English language merely a mediumfor a divine utterance. Possibly there is to be found in appreciation ofthe style of the original Hebrew, Greek, or Latin some hint of what gavethe English version its peculiar beauty, though even here it is hard todistinguish the tribute paid to style from that paid to content. Thecharacterization may be only a bit of vague comparison like that in thepreface to the Authorized Version, "Hebrew the ancientest, . . . Greek themost copious, . . . Latin the finest, "[194] or the reference in thepreface to the Rhemish New Testament to the Vulgate as the translation"of greatest majesty. "[195] The prefaces to the Geneva New Testament andthe Geneva Bible combine fairly definite linguistic comment with lessobvious references to style: "And because the Hebrew and Greek phrases, which are hard to render in other tongues, and also short, should not beso hard, I have sometimes interpreted them without any whit diminishingthe _grace_ of the sense, as our language doth use them";[196] "Now aswe have chiefly observed the sense, and labored always to restore it toall integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of thewords, considering that the Apostles who spoke and wrote to the Gentilesin the Greek tongue, rather constrained them to the lively phrase of theHebrew, than enterprised far by mollifying their language to speak asthe Gentiles did. And for this and other causes we have in many placesreserved the Hebrew phrases, notwithstanding that they may seem somewhathard in their ears that are not well practised and also _delight in thesweet sounding phrases_ of the holy Scriptures. "[197] On the other handthe Rhemish translators defend the retention of these Hebrew phrases onthe ground of stylistic beauty: "There is a certain majesty and moresignification in these speeches, and therefore both Greek and Latin keepthem, although it is no more the Greek or Latin phrase, than it is theEnglish. "[198] Of peculiar interest is Tyndale's estimate of therelative possibilities of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. Of theBible he writes: "They will say it cannot be translated into our tongue, it is so rude. It is not so rude as they are false liars. For the Greektongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And theproperties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with theEnglish than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one; so thatin a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into theEnglish word for word; when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, andyet shalt have much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it havethe same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it inthe Latin, and as it hath in the Hebrew. "[199] The implication that theEnglish version might possess the "grace and sweetness" of the Hebreworiginal suggests that Tyndale was not entirely unconscious of the charmwhich his own work possessed, and which it was to transmit to laterrenderings. 

The questions most definitely discussed by those concerned in thetranslation of the Bible were questions of vocabulary. Primarily most ofthese discussions centered around points of doctrine and were concernedas largely with the meaning of the word in the original as with itsconnotation in English. Yet though not in their first intentionlinguistic, these discussions of necessity had their bearing on thegeneral problems debated by rhetoricians of the day and occasionallyresulted in definite comment on English usage, as when, for example, More says: "And in our English tongue this word senior signifiethnothing at all, but is a French word used in English more than half inmockage, when one will call another my lord in scorn. " With theexception of Sir John Cheke few of the translators say anything whichcan be construed as advocacy of the employment of native English words. Of Cheke's attitude there can, of course, be no doubt. His theory isthus described by Strype: "And moreover, in writing any discourse, hewould allow no words, but such as were pure English, or of Saxonoriginal; suffering no adoption of any foreign word into the Englishspeech, which he thought was copious enough of itself, without borrowingwords of other countries. Thus in his own translations into English, hewould not use any but pure English phrase and expression, which indeedmade his style here and there a little affected and hard: and forced himto use sometimes odd and uncouth words. "[200] His Biblical translationwas a conscious attempt at carrying out these ideas. "Upon thisaccount, " writes Strype, "Cheke seemed to dislike the Englishtranslation of the Bible, because in it there were so many foreignwords. Which made him once attempt a new translation of the NewTestament, and he completed the gospel of St. Matthew. And made anentrance into St. Mark; wherein all along he labored to use only trueAnglo-Saxon words. "[201] Since Cheke's translation remained inmanuscript till long after the Elizabethan period, its influence wasprobably not far-reaching, but his uncompromising views must have hadtheir effect on his contemporaries. Taverner's Bible, a less extremeexample of the same tendency, seemingly had no influence on laterrenderings. [202]

Regarding the value of synonyms there is considerable comment, theprevailing tendency of which is not favorable to unnecessarydiscrimination between pairs of words. This seems to be the attitude ofCoverdale in two somewhat confused passages in which he attempts toconsider at the same time the signification of the original word, thepractice of other translators, and the facts of English usage. Defendingdiversities of translations, he says, "For that one interpretethsomething obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or elsehe himself, more manifestly by a more plain vocable of the same meaningin another place. "[203] As illustrations Coverdale mentions scribe andlawyer; elders, and father and mother; repentance, penance, andamendment; and continues: "And in this manner have I used in mytranslation, calling it in one place penance that in another place Icall repentance; and that not only because the interpreters have done sobefore me, but that the adversaries of the truth may see, how that weabhor not this word penance as they untruly report of us, no more thanthe interpreters of Latin abhor poenitare, when they read rescipiscere. "In the preface to the Latin-English Testament of 1535 he says: "Andthough I seem to be all too scrupulous calling it in one place penance, that in another I call repentance: and gelded that another callethchaste, this methinks ought not to offend the saying that the holy ghost(I trust) is the author of both our doings . . . And therefore I heartilyrequire thee think no more harm in me for calling it in one placepenance that in another I call repentance, than I think harm in him thatcalleth it chaste, which by the nature of this word _Eunuchus_ I callgelded . . . And for my part I ensure thee I am indifferent to call it aswell with one term as with the other, so long as I know that it is noprejudice nor injury to the meaning of the holy ghost. "[204] Fulke inhis answer to Gregory Martin shows the same tendency to ignoredifferences in meaning. Martin says: "Note also that they put the word'just, ' when faith is joined withal, as Rom. I, 'the just shall live byfaith, ' to signify that justification is by faith. But if works bejoined withal and keeping the commandments, as in the place alleged, Luke i, there they say 'righteous' to suppose justification by works. "Fulke replies: "This is a marvellous difference, never heard of (Ithink) in the English tongue before, between 'just' and 'righteous, ''justice' and 'righteousness. ' I am sure there is none of ourtranslators, no, nor any professor of justification by faith only, thatesteemeth it the worth of one hair, whether you say in any place ofscripture 'just' or 'righteous, ' 'justice' or 'righteousness'; andtherefore freely have they used sometimes the one word, sometimes theother. . . . Certain it is that no Englishman knoweth the differencebetween 'just' and 'righteous, ' 'unjust' and 'unrighteous, ' saving that'righteousness' and 'righteous' are the more familiar Englishwords. "[205] Martin and Fulke differ in the same way over the use of thewords "deeds" and "works. " The question whether the same English wordshould always be used to represent the same word in the original wasfrequently a matter of discussion. It was probably in the mind of theArchbishop of Ely when he wrote to Archbishop Parker, "And if yetranslate bonitas or misericordiam, to use it likewise in all places ofthe Psalms. "[206] The surprising amount of space devoted by the prefaceto the version of 1611 to explaining the usage followed by thetranslators gives some idea of the importance attaching to the matter. "We have not tied ourselves, " they say, "to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we haddone, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere, have beenas exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from thesense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified thesame in both places (for there be some words that be not of the samesense everywhere) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, according to our duty. But that we should express the same notion in thesame particular word; as for example, if we translate the _Hebrew_ or_Greek_ word once by _Purpose_, never to call it _Intent_; if one where_Journeying_, never _Travelling_; if one where _Think_, never _Suppose_;if one where _Pain_, never _Ache_; if one where _Joy_, never _Gladness_, etc. Thus to mince the matter, we thought to savor more of curiositythan wisdom. . . . For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? whyshould we be in bondage to them if we may be free, use one preciselywhen we may use another no less fit, as commodiously?"[207]

It was seldom, however, that the translator felt free to interchangewords indiscriminately. Of his treatment of the original Purvey writes:"But in translating of words equivocal, that is, that hath manysignifications under one letter, may lightly be peril, for Austin saithin the 2nd. Book of Christian Teaching, that if equivocal words be nottranslated into the sense, either understanding, of the author, it iserror; as in that place of the Psalm, _the feet of them be swift to shedout blood_, the Greek word is equivocal to _sharp_ and _swift_, and hethat translated _sharp feet_ erred, and a book that hath _sharp feet_ isfalse, and must be amended; as that sentence _unkind young trees shallnot give deep roots_ oweth to be thus, _the plantings of adultery shallnot give deep roots_. . . . Therefore a translator hath great need tostudy well the sentence, both before and after, and look that suchequivocal words accord with the sentence. "[208] Consideration of theconnotation of English words is required of the translators of theBishops' Bible. "Item that all such words as soundeth in the OldTestament to any offence of lightness or obscenity be expressed withmore convenient terms and phrases. "[209] Generally, however, it was thetheological connotation of words that was at issue, especially thequestion whether words were to be taken in their ecclesiastical or theirprofane sense, that is, whether certain words which through longassociation with the church had come to have a peculiar technicalmeaning should be represented in English by such words as the churchhabitually employed, generally words similar in form to the Latin. Thequestion was a large one, and affected other languages than English. Foxe, for example, has difficulty in turning into Latin the controversybetween Archbishop Cranmer and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. "TheEnglish style also stuck with him; which having so many ecclesiasticalphrases and manners of speech, no good Latin expressions could be foundto answer them. "[210] In England trouble arose with the appearance ofTyndale's New Testament. More accused him of mistranslating "three wordsof great weight, "[211] priests, church, and charity, for which he hadsubstituted _seniors_, _congregation_, and _love_. Robert Ridley, chaplain to the Bishop of London, wrote of Tyndale's version: "By thistranslation we shall lose all these Christian words, penance, charity, confession, grace, priest, church, which he always calleth acongregation. --Idolatria calleth he worshipping of images. "[212] Muchlonger is the list of words presented to Convocation some years later bythe Bishop of Winchester "which he desired for their germane and nativemeaning and for the majesty of their matter might be retained as far aspossible in their own nature or be turned into English speech as closelyas possible. "[213] It goes so far as to include words like Pontifex, Ancilla, Lites, Egenus, Zizania. This theory was largely put intopractice by the translators of the Rhemish New Testament, who say, "Weare very precise and religious in following our copy, the old vulgarapproved Latin: not only in sense, which we hope we always do, butsometimes in the very words also and phrases, "[214] and give asillustrations of their usage the retention of Corbana, Parasceve, Pasche, Azymes, and similar words. Between the two extreme positionsrepresented by Tyndale on the one hand and the Rhemish translators onthe other, is the attitude of Grindal, who thus advises Foxe in the casepreviously mentioned: "In all these matters, as also in most others, itwill be safe to hold a middle course. My judgment is the same withregard to style. For neither is the ecclesiastical style to befastidiously neglected, as it is by some, especially when the heads ofcontroversies cannot sometimes be perspicuously explained without it, nor, on the other hand, is it to be so superstitiously followed as toprevent us sometimes from sprinkling it with the ornaments oflanguage. "[215] The Authorized Version, following its custom, approvesthe middle course: "We have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity ofthe Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betakethemselves to other, as when they put _washing_ for _Baptism_, and_Congregation_ instead of _Church_: as also on the other side we haveshunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their _Azimes_, _Tunike_, _Rational_, _Holocausts_, _Praepuce_, _Pasche_, and a number of suchlike. "[216]

In the interval between Tyndale's translation and the appearance of theAuthorized Version the two parties shifted their ground ratheramusingly. More accuses Tyndale of taking liberties with the prevailingEnglish usage, especially when he substitutes congregation for church, and insists that the people understand by _church_ what they ought tounderstand. "This is true, " he says, "of the usual signification ofthese words themselves in the English tongue, by the common custom of usEnglish people, that either now do use these words in our language, orthat have used before our days. And I say that this common custom andusage of speech is the only thing by which we know the right and propersignification of any word, in so much that if a word were taken out ofLatin, French, or Spanish, and were for lack of understanding of thetongue from whence it came, used for another thing in English than itwas in the former tongue: then signifieth it in England none other thingthan as we use it and understand thereby, whatsoever it signify anywhereelse. Then say I now that in England this word congregation did neversignify the number of Christian people with a connotation orconsideration of their faith or christendom, no more than this wordassemble, which hath been taken out of the French, and now is by custombecome English, as congregation is out of the Latin. "[217] Later hereturns to the charge with the words, "And then must he with histranslation make us an English vocabulary too. "[218] In the laterperiod, however, the positions are reversed. The conservative party, represented by the Rhemish translators, admit that they are employingunfamiliar words, but say that it is a question of faithfulness tooriginals, and that the new words "will easily grow to be current andfamiliar, "[219] a contention not without basis when one considers howmuch acceptance or rejection by the English Bible could affect thestatus of a word. Moreover the introduction of new words into theScriptures had its parallel in the efforts being made elsewhere toenrich the language. The Rhemish preface, published in 1582, almostcontemporaneously with Lyly's _Euphues_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_, justifies its practice thus: "And why should we be squamish at new wordsor phrases in the Scripture, which are necessary: when we do easilyadmit and follow new words coined in court and in courtly or othersecular writings?"[220]

The points at issue received their most thorough consideration in thecontroversy between Gregory Martin and William Fulke. Martin, one of thetranslators of the Rhemish Testament, published, in 1582, _A Discoveryof the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics ofour Days_, a book in which apparently he attacked all the Protestanttranslations with which he was familiar, including Beza's LatinTestament and even attempting to involve the English translators in thesame condemnation with Castalio. Fulke, in his _Defence of the Sincereand True Translation of the Holy Scriptures_, reprinted Martin's_Discovery_ and replied to it section by section. Both discussions arefragmentary and inconsecutive, but there emerges from them at intervalsa clear statement of principles. Fundamentally the positions of the twomen are very different. Martin is not concerned with questions ofabstract scholarship, but with matters of religious belief. "But becausethese places concern no controversy, " he says, "I say no more. "[221] Hedoes not hesitate to place the authority of the Fathers before theresults of contemporary scholarship. "For were not he a wise man, thatwould prefer one Master Humfrey, Master Fulke, Master Whitakers, or someof us poor men, because we have a little smack of the three tongues, before St. Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, or St. Thomas, that understood well none but one?"[222] Since his field is thusnarrowed, he finds it easy to lay down definite rules for translation. Fulke, on the other hand, believes that translation may be dissociatedfrom matters of belief. "If the translator's purpose were evil, yet solong as the words and sense of the original tongue will bear him, hecannot justly be called a false and heretical translator, albeit he havea false and heretical meaning. "[223] He is not willing to acceptunsupported authority, even that of the leaders of his own party. "IfLuther misliked the Tigurine translation, " he says in another attack onthe Rhemish version, "it is not sufficient to discredit it, seeingtruth, and not the opinion or authority of men is to be followed in suchmatters, "[224] and again, in the _Defence_, "The Geneva bibles do notprofess to translate out of Beza's Latin, but out of the Hebrew andGreek; and if they agree not always with Beza, what is that to thepurpose, if they agree with the truth of the original text?"[225]Throughout the _Defence_ he is on his guard against Martin's attempts todrive him into unqualified acceptance of any set formula of translation. 

The crux of the controversy was the treatment of ecclesiastical words. Martin accuses the English translators of interpreting such words intheir "etymological" sense, and consulting profane writers, Homer, Pliny, Tully, Virgil, [226] for their meaning, instead of observing theecclesiastical use, which he calls "the usual taking thereof in allvulgar speech and writing. "[227] Fulke admits part of Martin's claim:"We have also answered before that words must not always be translatedaccording to their original and general signification, but according tosuch signification as by use they are appropried to be taken. We agreealso, that words taken by custom of speech into an ecclesiasticalmeaning are not to be altered into a strange or profanesignification. "[228] But ecclesiastical authority is not always a safeguide. "How the fathers of the church have used words, it is no rule fortranslators of the scriptures to follow; who oftentimes used words asthe people did take them, and not as they signified in the apostles'time. "[229] In difficult cases there is a peculiar advantage inconsulting profane writers, "who used the words most indifferently inrespect of our controversies of which they were altogetherignorant. "[230] Fulke refuses to be reduced to accept entirely eitherthe "common" or the "etymological" interpretation. "A translator thathath regard to interpret for the ignorant people's instruction, maysometimes depart from the etymology or common signification or preciseturning of word for word, and that for divers causes. "[231] To oneprinciple, however, he will commit himself: the translator must observecommon English usage. "We are not lords of the common speech of men, " hewrites, "for if we were, we would teach them to use their terms moreproperly; but seeing we cannot change the use of speech, we followAristotle's counsel, which is to speak and use words as the commonpeople useth. "[232] Consequently ecclesiastical must always give way topopular usage. "Our meaning is not, that if any Greek terms, or words ofany other language, have of long time been usurped in our Englishlanguage, the true meaning of which is unknown at this day to the commonpeople, but that the same terms may be either in translation orexposition set out plainly, to inform the simplicity of the ignorant, bysuch words as of them are better understood. Also when those terms areabused by custom of speech, to signify some other thing than they werefirst appointed for, or else to be taken ambiguously for divers things, we ought not to be superstitious in these cases, but to avoidmisunderstanding we may use words according to their originalsignification, as they were taken in such time as they were written bythe instruments of the Holy Ghost. "[233]

Fulke's support of the claims of the English language is not confined togeneral statements. Acquaintance with other languages has given him adefinite conception of the properties of his own, even in matters ofdetail. He resents the importation of foreign idiom. "If you ask for thereadiest and most proper English of these words, I must answer you, 'animage, a worshipper of images, and worshipping of images, ' as we havesometimes translated. The other that you would have, 'idol, idolater, and idolatry, ' be rather Greekish than English words; which though theybe used by many Englishmen, yet are they not understood of all as theother be. "[234] "You . . . Avoid the names of elders, calling themancients, and the wise men sages, as though you had rather speak Frenchthan English, as we do; like as you translate _confide_, 'have a goodheart, ' after the French phrase, rather than you would say as we do, 'beof good comfort. '"[235] Though he admits that English as compared witholder languages is defective in vocabulary, he insists that this cannotbe remedied by unwarranted coinage of words. "That we have no greaterchange of words to answer so many of the Hebrew tongue, it is of theriches of that tongue, and the poverty of our mother language, whichhath but two words, image and idol, and both of them borrowed of theLatin and Greek: as for other words equivalent, we know not any, and weare loth to make any new words of that signification, except themultitude of Hebrew words of the same sense coming together do sometimesperhaps seem to require it. Therefore as the Greek hath fewer words toexpress this thing than the Hebrew, so hath the Latin fewer than theGreek, and the English fewest of all, as will appear if you wouldundertake to give us English words for the thirteen Hebrew words:except you would coin such ridiculous inkhorn terms, as you do in theNew Testament, Azymes, prepuce, neophyte, sandale, parasceve, and suchlike. "[236] "When you say 'evangelized, ' you do not translate, but feigna new word, which is not understood of mere English ears. "[237]

Fulke describes himself as never having been "of counsel with any thattranslated the scriptures into English, "[238] but his works wereregarded with respect, and probably had considerable influence on theversion of 1611. [239] Ironically enough, they did much to familiarizethe revisers with the Rhemish version and its merits. On the other hand, Fulke's own views had a distinct value. Though on some points he isnarrowly conservative, and though some of the words which he condemnshave established themselves in the language nevertheless most of hisideas regarding linguistic usage are remarkably sound, and, like thoseof More, commend themselves to modern opinion. 

Between the translators of the Bible and the translators of other worksthere were few points of contact. Though similar problems confrontedboth groups, they presented themselves in different guises. The questionof increasing the vocabulary, for example, is in the case of biblicaltranslation so complicated by the theological connotation of words as torequire a treatment peculiar to itself. Translators of the Bible werescarcely ever translators of secular works and vice versa. The chieflink between the two kinds of translation is supplied by the metricalversions of the Psalms. Such verse translations were counted ofsufficient importance to engage the efforts of men like Parker andCoverdale, influential in the main course of Bible translation. Men likeThomas Norton, the translator of Calvin's _Institutes_, RichardStanyhurst, the translator of _Virgil_, and others of greater literaryfame, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Milton, Bacon, experimented, as time wenton, with these metrical renderings. The list even includes the name ofKing James. [240]

At first there was some idea of creating for such songs a vogue inEngland like that which the similar productions of Marot had enjoyed atthe French court. Translators felt free to choose what George Withercalls "easy and passionate Psalms, " and, if they desired, create"elegant-seeming paraphrases . . . Trimmed . . . Up with rhetoricalillustrations (suitable to their fancies, and the changeable garb ofaffected language). "[241] The expectations of courtly approbation were, however, largely disappointed, but the metrical Psalms came, in time, tohave a wider and more democratic employment. Complete versions of thePsalms in verse came to be regarded as a suitable accompaniment to theBible, until in the Scottish General Assembly of 1601 the propositionfor a new translation of the Bible was accompanied by a parallelproposition for a correction of the Psalms in metre. [242]

Besides this general realization of the practical usefulness of theseversions in divine service, there was in some quarters an appreciationof the peculiar literary quality of the Psalms which tended to expressitself in new attempts at translation. Arthur Golding, though nothimself the author of a metrical version, makes the following comment:"For whereas the other parts of holy writ (whether they be historical, moral, judicial, ceremonial, or prophetical) do commonly set down theirtreatises in open and plain declaration: this part consisting of themall, wrappeth up things in types and figures, describing them underborrowed personages, and oftentimes winding in matters of prevention, speaking of things to come as if they were past or present, and ofthings past as if they were in doing, and every man is made a betrayerof the secrets of his own heart. And forasmuch as it consisteth chieflyof prayer and thanksgiving, or (which comprehendeth them both) ofinvocation, which is a communication with God, and requireth rather anearnest and devout lifting up of the mind than a loud or curiousutterance of the voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many brokenspeeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed, was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interruptedwith vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity, that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by intermindingGod's former promises and benefits. "[243] George Wither finds that thestyle of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of theMuses, " he declares, "in which the Psalms were originally written, isnot so properly expressed in the prose dialect as in verse. " "I haveused some variety of verse, " he explains, "because prayers, praises, lamentations, triumphs, and subjects which are pastoral, heroical, elegiacal, and mixed (all which are found in the Psalms) are notproperly expressed in one sort of measure. "[244]

Besides such perception of the general poetic quality of the Psalms asis found in Wither's comment, there was some realization that metricalelements were present in various books of Scripture. Jerome, in his_Preface to Job_, had called attention to this, [245] but the regulartranslators, whose references to Jerome, though frequent, are somewhatvague, apparently made nothing of the suggestion. Elsewhere, however, there was an attempt to justify the inclusion of translations of thePsalms among other metrical experiments. Googe, defending the having ofthe Psalms in metre, declares that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other parts ofthe Bible "were written by the first authors in perfect and pleasanthexameter verses. "[246] Stanyhurst[247] and Fraunce[248] both triedputting the Psalms into English hexameters. There was, however, noaccurate knowledge of the Hebrew verse system. The preface to theAmerican _Bay Psalm Book_, published in 1640, [249] explains that "Thepsalms are penned in such verses as are suitable to the poetry of theHebrew language, and not in the common style of such other books of theOld Testament as are not poetical. . . . Then, as all our English songs(according to the course of our English poetry) do run in metre, soought David's psalms to be translated into metre, that we may sing theLord's songs, as in our English tongue so in such verses as are familiarto an English ear, which are commonly metrical. " It is not possible toreproduce the Hebrew metres. "As the Lord hath hid from us the Hebrewtunes, lest we should think ourselves bound to imitate them; so also thecourse and frame (for the most part) of their Hebrew poetry, that wemight not think ourselves bound to imitate that, but that every nationwithout scruple might follow as the grave sort of tunes of their owncountry, so the graver sort of verses of their own country's poetry. "This had already become the common solution of the difficulty, so thateven Wither keeps to the kinds of verse used in the old Psalm books inorder that the old tunes may be used. 

But though the metrical versions of the Psalms often inclined todoggerel, and though they probably had little, if any, influence on theAuthorized Version, they made their own claims to accuracy, and evenafter the appearance of the King James Bible sometimes demandedattention as improved renderings. George Wither, for example, believesthat in using verse he is being more faithful to the Hebrew than are theprose translations. "There is, " he says, "a poetical emphasis in manyplaces, which requires such an alteration in the grammatical expression, as will seem to make some difference in the judgment of the commonreader; whereas it giveth best life to the author's intention; and makesthat perspicuous which was made obscure by those mere grammaticalinterpreters, who were not acquainted with the proprieties and libertiesof this kind of writing. " His version is, indeed, "so easy to beunderstood, that some readers have confessed, it hath been instead of acomment unto them in sundry hard places. " His rendering is not basedmerely on existing English versions; he has "the warrant of best Hebrewgrammarians, the authority of the Septuagint, and Chaldean paraphrase, the example of the ancient and of the best modern prose translators, together with the general practice and allowance of all orthodoxexpositors. " Like Wither, other translators went back to originalsources and made their verse renderings real exercises in translationrather than mere variations on the accepted English text. From thispoint of view their work had perhaps some value; and though it seemsregrettable that practically nothing of permanent literary importanceshould have resulted from such repeated experiments, they areinteresting at least as affording some connection between the sphere ofthe regular translators and the literary world outside. 

FOOTNOTES:

[155] _Preface to Genesis_, in Pollard, _Records of the English Bible_, p. 94. 

[156] Pollard, p. 266. 

[157] _Ibid. _, p. 112. 

[158] _Ibid. _, p. 187. 

[159] _Ibid. _, p. 205. 

[160] Coverdale, _Prologue_ to Bible of 1535. 

[161] Pollard, p. 196. 

[162] _Ibid. _, p. 259. 

[163] _Ibid. _, p. 365. 

[164] _Ibid. _, p. 360. 

[165] Pollard, p. 220. 

[166] _Ibid. _, p. 239. 

[167] _Ibid. _, p. 163. 

[168] _Ibid. _, p. 126. 

[169] _Ibid. _, p. 203. 

[170] _Ibid. _, p. 371. 

[171] Pollard, p. 280. 

[172] Pollard, p. 241. 

[173] Strype, _Life of Parker_, London, 1711, p. 536. 

[174] For a further account of Aelfric's theories, see Chapter I. 

[175] _The Psalter translated by Richard Rolle of Hampole_, ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884. 

[176] Chapter 15, in Pollard, _Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse_. 

[177] _Prologue_, Chapter 15. 

[178] _Prologue to the New Testament_, printed in Matthew's Bible, 1551. 

[179] Strype, _Life of Parker_, p. 208. 

[180] Pollard, p. 116. 

[181] Preface to _The Obedience of a Christian Man_, in _DoctrinalTreatises_, Parker Society, 1848, p. 390. 

[182] Pollard, p. 211. 

[183] _Ibid. _, p. 277. 

[184] _Ibid. _, p. 306. 

[185] _Life of Cheke_, p. 212. 

[186] Strype, _Life of Parker_, p. 404. 

[187] Pollard, p. 361. 

[188] Fulke, _Defence_, Parker Society, p. 552. 

[189] _Defence_, p. 552. 

[190] _Ibid. _, p. 97. 

[191] _Ibid. _, p. 408. 

[192] Pollard, p. 375. 

[193] E. G. , Fulke, _Defence_, p. 163. 

[194] Pollard, p. 349. 

[195] _Ibid. _, p. 303. 

[196] _Ibid. _, p. 277. 

[197] Pollard, p. 281. 

[198] _Ibid. _, p. 309. 

[199] Preface to _The Obedience of a Christian Man, Doctrinal Treatises_, pp. 148-9. 

[200] _Life of Cheke_, p. 212. 

[201] _Ibid. _, p. 212. 

[202] An interesting comment of later date than the Authorized Version isfound in the preface to William L'Isle's _Divers Ancient Monuments of theSaxon Tongue_, published in 1638. L'Isle writes: "These monuments ofreverend antiquity, I mean the Saxon Bibles, to him that understandinglyreads and well considers the time wherein they were written, will in manyplaces convince of affected obscurity some late translations. " Aftercriticizing the inkhorn terms of the Rhemish translators, he says, "TheSaxon hath words for Trinity, Unity, and all such foreign words as we arenow fain to use, because we have forgot better of our own. " (In J. L. Moore, _Tudor-Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, and Destiny of theEnglish Language_. )

[203] _Prologue_ to Bible of 1535. 

[204] Pollard, p. 212. 

[205] Fulke, pp. 337-8. 

[206] Pollard, p. 291. 

[207] _Ibid. _, p. 374. 

[208] _Prologue_, Chapter 15. 

[209] Pollard, p. 298. 

[210] Strype, _Life of Grindal_, Oxford, 1821, p. 19. 

[211] Pollard, p. 127. 

[212] _Ibid. _, p. 124. 

[213] Pollard, p. 274. 

[214] _Ibid. _, p. 305. 

[215] Translated in _Remains of Archbishop Grindal_, Parker Society, 1843, p. 234. 

[216] Pollard, pp. 375-6. 

[217] More, _Confutation of Tyndale_, _Works_, p. 417. 

[218] _Ibid. _, p. 427. 

[219] Pollard, p. 307. 

[220] Pollard, p. 291. 

[221] _Defence_, p. 42. 

[222] _Ibid. _, p. 507. 

[223] _Defence_, p. 210. 

[224] _Confutation of the Rhemish Testament_, New York, 1834, p. 21. 

[225] _Defence_, p. 118. 

[226] _Ibid. _, p. 160. 

[227] _Ibid. _, p. 217. 

[228] _Defence_, p. 217. 

[229] _Ibid. _, p. 162. 

[230] _Ibid. _, p. 161. 

[231] _Ibid. _, p. 58. 

[232] _Ibid. _, p. 267. 

[233] _Defence_, p. 217. 

[234] _Ibid. _, p. 179. 

[235] _Ibid. _, p. 90. 

[236] _Defence_, p. 206. 

[237] _Ibid. _, p. 549. 

[238] _Ibid. _, p. 89. 

[239] Pollard, _Introduction_, p. 37. 

[240] See Holland, _The Psalmists of Britain_, London, 1843, for a detailedaccount of such translations. 

[241] Preface to _The Psalms of David translated into lyric verse_, 1632, reprinted by the Spenser Society, 1881. 

[242] Holland, p. 251. 

[243] _Epistle Dedicatory_, to _The Psalms with M. John Calvin'sCommentaries_, 1571. 

[244] _Op. Cit. _

[245] See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, ed. Schaff and Wace, NewYork, 1893, p. 491. 

[246] Holland, Note, p. 89. 

[247] Published at the end of his _Virgil_. 

[248] In _The Countess of Pembroke's Emanuell_, 1591. 

[249] Reprinted, New York, 1903. 

III. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

III

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

The Elizabethan period presents translations in astonishing number andvariety. As the spirit of the Renaissance began to inspire England, translators responded to its stimulus with an enthusiasm denied to latertimes. It was work that appealed to persons of varying ranks and ofvarying degrees of learning. In the early part of the century, accordingto Nash, "every private scholar, William Turner and who not, began tovaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions. "[250] ThomasNicholls, the goldsmith, translated Thucydides; Queen Elizabethtranslated Boethius. The mention of women in this connection suggestshow widely the impulse was diffused. Richard Hyrde says of thetranslation of Erasmus's _Treatise on the Lord's Prayer_, made byMargaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, "And as for thetranslation thereof, I dare be bold to say it, that whoso list and wellcan confer and examine the translation with the original, he shall notfail to find that she hath showed herself not only erudite and elegantin either tongue, but hath also used such wisdom, such discreet andsubstantial judgment, in expressing lively the Latin, as a man mayperadventure miss in many things translated and turned by them that bearthe name of right wise and very well learned men. "[251] Nicholas Udallwrites to Queen Katherine that there are a number of women in Englandwho know Greek and Latin and are "in the holy scriptures and theologyso ripe that they are able aptly, cunningly, and with much grace eitherto endite or translate into the vulgar tongue for the public instructionand edifying of the unlearned multitude. "[252]

The greatness of the field was fitted to arouse and sustain the ardor ofEnglish translators. In contrast with the number of manuscripts atcommand in earlier days, the sixteenth century must have seemedendlessly rich in books. Printing was making the Greek and Latinclassics newly accessible, and France and Italy, awake before England tothe new life, were storing the vernacular with translations and with newcreations. Translators might find their tasks difficult enough and theymight flag by the way, as Hoby confesses to have done at the end of thethird book of _The Courtier_, but plucking up courage, they went on tothe end. Hoby declares, with a vigor that suggests Bunyan's Pilgrim, "Iwhetted my style and settled myself to take in hand the other threebooks";[253] Edward Hellowes, after the hesitation which he describes inthe Dedication to the 1574 edition of Guevara's _Familiar Epistles_, "began to call to mind my God, my Prince, my country, and also yourworship, " and so adequately upheld, went on with his undertaking; ArthurGolding, with a breath of relief, sees his rendering of Ovid's_Metamorphoses_ at last complete. 

 Through Ovid's work of turned shapes I have with painful pace Passed on, until I had attained the end of all my race. And now I have him made so well acquainted with our tongue, As that he may in English verse as in his own be sung. [254]

Sometimes the toilsomeness of the journey was lightened bycompanionship. Now and then, especially in the case of religious works, there was collaboration. Luther's _Commentary on Galatians_ wasundertaken by "certain godly men, " of whom "some began it according tosuch skill as they had. Others godly affected, not suffering so good amatter in handling to be marred, put to their helping hands for thebetter framing and furthering of so worthy a work. "[255] From ThomasNorton's record of the conditions under which he translated Calvin's_Institution of the Christian Religion_, it is not difficult to feel theatmosphere of sympathy and encouragement in which he worked. "Thereforein the very beginning of the Queen's Majesty's most blessed reign, " hewrites, "I translated it out of Latin into English, for the commodity ofthe Church of Christ, at the special request of my dear friends ofworthy memory, Reginald Wolfe and Edward Whitchurch, the one HerMajesty's Printer for the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, the otherher Highness' Printer of the books of Common Prayer. I performed my workin the house of my said friend, Edward Whitchurch, a man well known ofupright heart and dealing, an ancient zealous Gospeller, as plain andtrue a friend as ever I knew living, and as desirous to do anything tocommon good, specially to the advancement of true religion. . . . In thedoing hereof I did not only trust mine own wit or ability, but examinedmy whole doing from sentence to sentence throughout the whole book withconference and overlooking of such learned men, as my translation beingallowed by their judgment, I did both satisfy mine own conscience that Ihad done truly, and their approving of it might be a good warrant to thereader that nothing should herein be delivered him but sound, unmingledand uncorrupted doctrine, even in such sort as the author himself hadfirst framed it. All that I wrote, the grave, learned, and virtuous man, M. David Whitehead (whom I name with honorable remembrance) did amongothers, compare with the Latin, examining every sentence throughout thewhole book. Beside all this, I privately required many, and generallyall men with whom I ever had any talk of this matter, that if they foundanything either not truly translated or not plainly Englished, theywould inform me thereof, promising either to satisfy them or to amendit. "[256] Norton's next sentence, "Since which time I have not beenadvertised by any man of anything which they would require to bealtered" probably expresses the fate of most of the many requests forcriticism that accompany translations, but does not essentially modifythe impression he conveys of unusually favorable conditions for suchwork. One remembers that Tyndale originally anticipated with someconfidence a residence in the Bishop of London's house while hetranslated the Bible. Thomas Wilson, again, says of his translation ofsome of the orations of Demosthenes that "even in these my smalltravails both Cambridge and Oxford men have given me their learnedadvice and in some things have set to their helping hand, "[257] andFlorio declares that it is owing to the help and encouragement of "twosupporters of knowledge and friendship, " Theodore Diodati and Dr. Gwinne, that "upheld and armed" he has "passed the pikes. "[258]

The translator was also sustained by a conception of the importance ofhis work, a conception sometimes exaggerated, but becoming, as thecentury progressed, clearly and truly defined. Between the lines of thededication which Henry Parker, Lord Morley, prefixes to his translationof Petrarch's _Triumphs_, [259] one reads a pathetic story of anappreciation which can hardly have equaled the hopes of the author. Hewrites of "one of late days that was groom of the chamber with thatrenowned and valiant prince of high memory, Francis the French king, whose name I have forgotten, that did translate these triumphs to thatsaid king, which he took so thankfully that he gave to him for his painsan hundred crowns, to him and to his heirs of inheritance to enjoy tothat value in land forever, and took such pleasure in it thatwheresoever he went, among his precious jewels that book always carriedwith him for his pastime to look upon, and as much esteemed by him asthe richest diamond he had. " Moved by patriotic emulation, Lord Morley"translated the said book to that most worthy king, our late sovereignlord of perpetual memory, King Henry the Eighth, who as he was a princeabove all others most excellent, so took he the work very thankfully, marvelling much that I could do it, and thinking verily I had not doneit without help of some other, better knowing in the Italian tongue thanI; but when he knew the very truth, that I had translated the workmyself, he was more pleased therewith than he was before, and so whathis highness did with it is to me unknown. "

Hyperbole in estimating the value of the translator's work is not commonamong Lord Morley's successors, but their very recognition of thesecondary importance of translation often resulted in a modest yetdignified insistence on its real value. Richard Eden says that he haslabored "not as an author but as a translator, lest I be injurious toany man in ascribing to myself the travail of other. "[260] NicholasGrimald qualifies a translation of Cicero as "my work, " and immediatelyadds, "I call it mine as Plautus and Terence called the comedies theirswhich they made out of Greek. "[261] Harrington, the translator of_Orlando Furioso_, says of his work: "I had rather men should see andknow that I borrow at all than that I steal any, and I would wish to becalled rather one of the worst translators than one of the meanermakers, specially since the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wiat, that areyet called the first refiners of the English tongue, were bothtranslators out of the Italian. Now for those that count it such acontemptible and trifling matter to translate, I will but say to them asM. Bartholomew Clarke, an excellent learned man and a right goodtranslator, said in a manner of pretty challenge, in his Preface (as Iremember) upon the Courtier, which book he translated out of Italianinto Latin. 'You, ' saith he, 'that think it such a toy, lay aside mybook, and take my author in hand, and try a leaf or such a matter, andcompare it with mine. '"[262] Philemon Holland, the "translator general"of his time, writes of his art: "As for myself, since it is neither myhap nor hope to attain to such perfection as to bring forth something ofmine own which may quit the pains of a reader, and much less to performany action that might minister matter to a writer, and yet so far boundunto my native country and the blessed state wherein I have lived, as torender an account of my years passed and studies employed, during thislong time of peace and tranquillity, wherein (under the most graciousand happy government of a peerless princess, assisted with so prudent, politic, and learned Counsel) all good literature hath had free progressand flourished in no age so much: methought I owed this duty, to leavefor my part also (after many others) some small memorial, that mightgive testimony another day what fruits generally this peaceable age ofours hath produced. Endeavored I have therefore to stand in the thirdrank, and bestowed those hours which might be spared from the practiceof my profession and the necessary cares of life, to satisfy mycountrymen now living and to gratify the age ensuing in thiskind. "[263] To Holland's simple acceptance of his rightful place, it ispleasant to add the lines of the poet Daniel, whose imagination wasstirred in true Elizabethan fashion by the larger relations of thetranslator. Addressing Florio, the interpreter of Montaigne to theEnglish people, he thanks him on behalf of both author and readers for

 . . . His studious care Who both of him and us doth merit much, Having as sumptuously as he is rare Placed him in the best lodging of our speech, And made him now as free as if born here, And as well ours as theirs, who may be proud To have the franchise of his worth allowed. It being the proportion of a happy pen, Not to b'invassal'd to one monarchy, But dwell with all the better world of men Whose spirits are of one community, Whom neither Ocean, Deserts, Rocks, nor Sands Can keep from th' intertraffic of the mind. [264]

In a less exalted strain come suggestions that the translator's work isvaluable enough to deserve some tangible recognition. Thomas Fortescueurges his reader to consider the case of workmen like himself, "assuringthyself that none in any sort do better deserve of their country, thatnone swink or sweat with like pain and anguish, that none in like sorthazard or adventure their credit, that none desire less stipend orsalary for their travail, that none in fine are worse in this agerecompensed. "[265] Nicholas Udall presents detailed reasons why it is tobe desired that "some able, worthy, and meet persons for doing suchpublic benefit to the commonweal as translating of good works andwriting of chronicles might by some good provision and means have somecondign sustentation in the same. "[266] "Besides, " he argues, "that sucha translator travaileth not to his own private commodity, but to thebenefit and public use of his country: besides that the thing is such asmust so thoroughly occupy and possess the doer, and must have him soattent to apply that same exercise only, that he may not during thatseason take in hand any other trade of business whereby to purchase hisliving: besides that the thing cannot be done without bestowing of longtime, great watching, much pains, diligent study, no small charges, aswell of meat, drink, books, as also of other necessaries, the labor selfis of itself a more painful and more tedious thing than for a man towrite or prosecute any argument of his own invention. A man hath his owninvention ready at his own pleasure without lets or stops, to make suchdiscourse as his argument requireth: but a translator must . . . At everyother word stay, and suspend both his cogitation and his pen to lookupon his author, so that he might in equal time make thrice as much ashe can be able to translate. "

The belief present in the comment of both Fortescue and Udall that thework of the translator is of peculiar service to the state is expressedin connection with translations of every sort. Richard Taverner declaresthat he has been incited to put into English part of the _Chiliades_ ofErasmus by "the love I bear to the furtherance and adornment of mynative country. "[267] William Warde translates _The Secrets of MaisterAlexis of Piemont_ in order that "as well Englishmen as Italians, Frenchmen, or Dutchmen may suck knowledge and profit hereof. "[268] JohnBrende, in the Dedication of his _History of Quintus Curtius_, insistson the importance of historical knowledge, his appreciation of which hasmade him desire "that we Englishmen might be found as forward in thatbehalf as other nations, which have brought all worthy histories intotheir natural language. "[269] Patriotic emulation of what has been donein other countries is everywhere present as a motive. Occasionally theEnglishman shows that he has studied foreign translations for his ownguidance. Adlington, in his preface to his rendering of _The Golden Ass_of Apuleius, says that he does not follow the original in certainrespects, "for so the French and Spanish translators have notdone";[270] Hoby says of his translation of _The Courtier_, "I haveendeavored myself to follow the very meaning and words of the author, without being misled by fantasy or leaving out any parcel one or other, whereof I know not how some interpreters of this book into otherlanguages can excuse themselves, and the more they be conferred, themore it will perchance appear. "[271] On the whole, however, the commentconfines itself to general statements like that of Grimald, who intranslating Cicero is endeavoring "to do likewise for my countrymen asItalians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and other foreigners haveliberally done for theirs. "[272] In spite of the remarkable outputEngland lagged behind other countries. Lord Morley complains that theprinting of a merry jest is more profitable than the putting forth ofsuch excellent works as those of Petrarch, of which England has "veryfew or none, which I do lament in my heart, considering that as well inFrench as in the Italian (in the which both tongues I have some littleknowledge) there is no excellent work in the Latin, but that straightwaythey set it forth in the vulgar. "[273] Morley wrote in the early daysof the movement for translation, but later translators made similarcomplaints. Hoby says in the preface to _The Courtier_: "In this point(I know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of allother nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves withan honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue notonly the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient tohave a perfect knowledge to no other end but to profit themselves and(as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less toclose it up again. " To the end of the century translation is encouragedor defended on the ground that it is a public duty. Thomas Danett isurged to translate the _History_ of Philip de Comines by certaingentlemen who think it "a great dishonor to our native land that soworthy a history being extant in all languages almost in Christendomshould be suppressed in ours";[274] Chapman writes indignantly of Homer, "And if Italian, French, and Spanish have not made it dainty, northought it any presumption to turn him into their languages, but a fitand honorable labor and (in respect of their country's profit and theirprince's credit) almost necessary, what curious, proud, and poorshamefastness should let an English muse to traduce him?"[275]

Besides all this, the translator's conception of his audience encouragedand guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend tothe strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible, nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associatedwith them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact withthe essential interests of mankind. The appeals on title pages and inprefaces to all kinds of people, from ladies and gentlemen of rank tothe common and simple sort, not infrequently resemble the calculatedpraises of the advertiser, but admitting this, there still remains muchthat implies a simple confidence in the response of friendly readers. Rightly or wrongly, the translator presupposes for himself in many casesan audience far removed from academic preoccupations. Richard Eden, translating from the Spanish Martin Cortes' _Arte de Navigar_, says, "Now therefore this work of the Art of Navigation being published in ourvulgar tongue, you may be assured to have more store of skilfulpilots. "[276] Golding's translations of Pomponius Mela and JuliusSolinus Polyhistor are described as, "Right pleasant and profitable forGentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers. "[277] Hellowes, with anexcess of rhetoric which takes from his convincingness, presentsGuevara's _Familiar Epistles_ as teaching "rules for kings to rule, counselors to counsel, prelates to practise, captains to execute, soldiers to perform, the married to follow, the prosperous to prosecute, and the poor in adversity to be comforted, how to write and talk withall men in all matters at large. "[278] Holland's honest simplicity givesgreater weight to a similarly sweeping characterization of Pliny's_Natural History_ as "not appropriate to the learned only, butaccommodate to the rude peasant of the country; fitted for the painfulartisan in town or city; pertinent to the bodily health of man, woman, or child; and in one word suiting with all sorts of people living in asociety and commonweal. "[279] In the same preface the need for replyingto those who oppose translation leads Holland to insist further on thepractical applicability of his matter. Alternating his own with hiscritics' position, he writes: "It is a shame (quoth one) that _Livy_speaketh English as he doth; Latinists only owe to be acquainted withhim: as who should say the soldier were to have recourse to theuniversity for military skill and knowledge, or the scholar to put onarms and pitch a camp. What should _Pliny_ (saith another) be read inEnglish and the mysteries couched in his books divulged; as if thehusbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, lapidary, and engraver, with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks or linguistsfor instructions in their several arts. " Wilson's translation ofDemosthenes, again, undertaken, it has been said, with a view to rousinga national resistance against Spain, is described on the title page as"most needful to be read in these dangerous days of all them that lovetheir country's liberty. "[280]

Naturally enough, however, especially in the case of translations fromthe Latin and Greek, the academic interest bulks largely in theaudience, and sometimes makes an unexpected demand for recognition inthe midst of the more practical appeal. Holland's _Pliny_, for example, addresses itself not only to peasants and artisans but to youngstudents, who "by the light of the English . . . Shall be able morereadily to go away with the dark phrase and obscure constructions of theLatin. " Chapman, refusing to be burdened with a popular audience, beginsa preface with the insidious compliment, "I suppose you to be no merereader, since you intend to read Homer. "[281] On the other hand, theacademic reader, whether student or critic, is, if one accepts thetranslator's view, very much on the alert, anxious to confer the Englishversion with the original, either that he may improve his own knowledgeof the foreign language or that he may pick faults in the new rendering. Wilson attacks the critics as "drones and no bees, lubbers and nolearners, " but the fault he finds in these "croaking paddocks andmanifest overweeners of themselves" is that they are "out of reasoncurious judges over the travail and painstaking of others" instead ofbeing themselves producers. [282] Apparently there was little fear of theindifference which is more discouraging than hostile criticism, andthough, as is to be expected, it is the hostile criticism that is mostoften reflected in prefaces, there must have been much kindly commentlike that of Webbe, who, after discussing the relations of Phaer's_Virgil_ to the Latin, concludes, "There is not one book among thetwelve which will not yield you most excellent pleasure in conferringthe translation with the copy and marking the gallant grace which ourEnglish speech affordeth. "[283]

Such encouragements and incentives are enough to awaken the envy of themodern translator. But the sixteenth century had also its peculiardifficulties. The English language was neither so rich in resources norso carefully standardized as it has become of later times. It was oftennecessary, indeed, to defend it against the charge that it was not equalto translation. Pettie is driven to reply to those who oppose the use ofthe vernacular because "they count it barren, they count it barbarous, they count it unworthy to be accounted of. "[284] Chapman says in hispreface to _Achilles' Shield_: "Some will convey their imperfectionsunder his Greek shield, and from thence bestow bitter arrows against thetraduction, affirming their want of admiration grows from the defect ofour language, not able to express the copiousness (coppie) and elegancyof the original. " Richard Greenway, who translated the _Annals_ ofTacitus, admits cautiously that his medium is "perchance not so fit toset out a piece drawn with so curious a pencil. "[285] One cannot, indeed, help recognizing that as compared with modern EnglishElizabethan English was weak in resources, limited in vocabulary, andsomewhat uncertain in sentence structure. These disadvantages probablyaccount in part for such explanations of the relative difficulty oftranslation as that of Nicholas Udall in his plea that translatorsshould be suitably recompensed or that of John Brende in his preface tothe translation of Quintus Curtius that "in translation a man cannotalways use his own vein, but shall be compelled to tread in the author'ssteps, which is a harder and more difficult thing to do, than to walkhis own pace. "[286]

Of his difficulties with sentence structure the translator says little, a fact rather surprising to the modern reader, conscious as he is of theawkwardness of the Elizabethan sentence. Now and then, however, he hintsat the problems which have arisen in the handling of the Latin period. Udall writes of his translation of Erasmus: "I have in some places beendriven to use mine own judgment in rendering the true sense of the book, to speak nothing of a great number of sentences, which by reason of somany members, or parentheses, or digressions as have come in places, areso long that unless they had been somewhat divided, they would have beentoo hard for an unlearned brain to conceive, much more hard to containand keep it still. "[287] Adlington, the translator of _The Golden Ass_of Apuleius, says, "I have not so exactly passed through the author asto point every sentence exactly as it is in the Latin. "[288] A commentof Foxe on his difficulty in translating contemporary English into Latinsuggests that he at least was conscious of the weakness of the Englishsentence as compared with the Latin. Writing to Peter Martyr of hisLatin version of the controversy between Cranmer and Gardiner, he saysof the latter: "In his periods, for the most part, he is so profuse, that he seems twice to forget himself, rather than to find his end. Thewhole phrase hath in effect that structure that consisting for the mostpart of relatives, it refuses almost all the grace of translation. "[289]

Though the question of sentence structure was not given prominence, theproblem of rectifying deficiencies in vocabulary touched the translatorvery nearly. The possibility of augmenting the language was a vitalissue in the reign of Elizabeth, but it had a peculiar significancewhere translation was concerned. Here, if anywhere, the need for a largevocabulary was felt, and in translations many new words first made theirappearance. Sir Thomas Elyot early made the connection betweentranslation and the movement for increase in vocabulary. In the_Proheme_ to _The Knowledge which maketh a wise man_ he explains that in_The Governor_ he intended "to augment the English tongue, whereby menshould . . . Interpret out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue intoEnglish. "[290] Later in the century Peele praises the translatorHarrington, . . . Well-letter'd and discreet, That hath so purely naturalized Strange words, and made them all free denizens, [291]

and--to go somewhat outside the period--the fourth edition of Bullokar's_English Expositor_, originally designed to teach "the interpretation ofthe hardest words used in our language, " is recommended on the groundthat those who know no language but the mother tongue, but "are yetstudiously desirous to read those learned and elegant treatises whichfrom their native original have been rendered English (of which sort, thanks to the company of painful translators we have not a few) havehere a volume fit for their purposes, as carefully designed for theirassistance. "[292]

Whether, however, the translator should be allowed to add to thevocabulary and what methods he should employ were questions by no meanseasy of settlement. As in Caxton's time, two possible means of acquiringnew words were suggested, naturalization of foreign words and revival ofwords from older English sources. Against the first of these methodsthere was a good deal of prejudice. Grimald in his preface to histranslation of Cicero's _De Officiis_, protests against the translationthat is "uttered with inkhorn terms and not with usual words. " Othercritics are more specific in their condemnation of non-English words. Puttenham complains that Southern, in translating Ronsard's Frenchrendering of Pindar's hymns and Anacreon's odes, "doth so impudently robthe French poet both of his praise and also of his French terms, that Icannot so much pity him as be angry with him for his injurious dealing, our said maker not being ashamed to use these French words, _freddon_, _egar_, _suberbous_, _filanding_, _celest_, _calabrois_, _thebanois_ anda number of others, which have no manner of conformity with our languageeither by custom or derivation which may make them tolerable. "[293]Richard Willes, in his preface to the 1577 edition of Eden's _History ofTravel in the West and East Indies_, says that though English literatureowes a large debt to Eden, still "many of his English words cannot beexcused in my opinion for smelling too much of the Latin. "[294] The listappended is not so remote from the modern English vocabulary as thatwhich Puttenham supplies. Willes cites "_dominators_, _ponderous_, _ditionaries_, _portentous_, _antiques_, _despicable_, _solicitate_, _obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_, withother such like, in the stead of _lords_, _weighty_, _subjects_, _wonderful_, _ancient_, _low_, _careful_, _dutiful_, _man-slaughter_, _drunken_, _noisome_, _monstrous_, &c. " Yet there were some advocates ofthe use of foreign words. Florio admits with mock humility that he hasemployed "some uncouth terms as _entraine_, _conscientious_, _endear_, _tarnish_, _comport_, _efface_, _facilitate_, _amusing_, _debauching_, _regret_, _effort_, _emotion_, and such like, " and continues, "If youlike them not, take others most commonly set by them to expound them, since they were set to make such likely French words familiar with ourEnglish, which may well bear them, "[295] a contention which modern usagesupports. Nicholas Udall pronounces judicially in favor of both methodsof enriching the language. "Some there be, " he says, "which have a mindto renew terms that are now almost worn clean out of use, which I do notdisallow, so it be done with judgment. Some others would ampliate andenrich their native tongue with more vocables, which also I commend, ifit be aptly and wittily assayed. So that if any other do innovate andbring up to me a word afore not used or not heard, I would not dispraiseit: and that I do attempt to bring it into use, another man should notcavil at. "[296] George Pettie also defends the use of inkhorn terms. "Though for my part, " he says, "I use those words as little as any, yetI know no reason why I should not use them, for it is indeed the readyway to enrich our tongue and make it copious. "[297] On the whole, however, it was safer to advocate the formation of words fromAnglo-Saxon sources. Golding says of his translation of Philip ofMornay: "Great care hath been taken by forming and deriving of fit namesand terms out of the fountains of our own tongue, though not altogethermost usual yet always conceivable and easy to be understood; rather thanby usurping Latin terms, or by borrowing the words of any foreignlanguage, lest the matters, which in some cases are mystical enough ofthemselves by reason of their own profoundness, might have been mademore obscure to the unlearned by setting them down in terms utterlyunknown to them. "[298] Holland says in the preface to his translation ofLivy: "I framed my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a mean andpopular style. Wherein if I have called again into use some old words, let it be attributed to the love of my country's language. " Even in thismatter of vocabulary, it will be noted, there was something of thestimulus of patriotism, and the possibility of improving his nativetongue must have appealed to the translator's creative power. Phaer, indeed, alleges as one of his motives for translating Virgil "defence ofmy country's language, which I have heard discommended of many, andesteemed of some to be more than barbarous. "[299]

Convinced, then, that his undertaking, though difficult, meant much bothto the individual and to the state, the translator gladly set aboutmaking some part of the great field of foreign literature, ancient andmodern, accessible to English readers. Of the technicalities of his arthe has a good deal to say. At a time when prefaces and dedications sofrequently established personal relations between author and audience, it was natural that the translator also should take his readers into hisconfidence regarding his aims and methods. His comment, however, islargely incidental. Generally it is applicable only to the work in hand;it does not profess to be a statement, even on a small scale, of whattranslation in general ought to be. There is no discussion in Englishcorresponding to the small, but comprehensive treatise on _La manière debien traduire d'une langue en autre_ which Étienne Dolet published atLyons in 1540. This casual quality is evidenced by the peculiar way inwhich prefaces in different editions of the same book appear anddisappear for no apparent reason, possibly at the convenience of theprinter. It is scarcely fair to interpret as considered, deliberateformulation of principles, utterances so unpremeditated and fragmentary. The theory which accompanies secular translation is much less clear andconsecutive than that which accompanies the translation of the Bible. Though in the latter case the formulation of theories of translation wasalmost equally incidental, respect for the original, repeatedexperiment, and constant criticism and discussion united to make certainprinciples take very definite shape. Secular translation producednothing so homogeneous. The existence of so many translators, workingfor the most part independently of each other, resulted in a confusedmass of comment whose real value it is difficult to estimate. It is truethat the new scholarship with its clearer estimate of literary valuesand its appreciation of the individual's proprietary rights in his ownwritings made itself strongly felt in the sphere of secular translationand introduced new standards of accuracy, new definitions of thelatitude which might be accorded the translator; but much of the oldfreedom in handling material, with the accompanying vagueness as to thelimits of the translator's function, persisted throughout the time ofElizabeth. 

In many cases the standards recognized by sixteenth-century translatorswere little more exacting than those of the medieval period. With manywriters adequate recognition of source was a matter of choice ratherthan of obligation. The English translator might make suitableattribution of a work to its author and he might undertake to reproduceits substance in its entirety, but he might, on the other hand, fail toacknowledge any indebtedness to a predecessor or he might add or omitmaterial, since he was governed apparently only by the extent of his ownpowers or by his conception of what would be most pleasing or edifyingto his readers. To the theory of his art he gave little seriousconsideration. He did not attempt to analyse the style of the sourcewhich he had chosen. If he praised his author, it was in theconventional language of compliment, which showed no real discriminationand which, one suspects, often disguised mere advertising. His estimateof his own capabilities was only the repetition of the medieval formula, with its profession of inadequacy for the task and its claim to haveused simple speech devoid of rhetorical ornament. That it was nothingbut a formula was recognized at the time and is good-naturedly pointedout in the words of Harrington: "Certainly if I should confess or ratherprofess that my verse is unartificial, the style rude, the phrasebarbarous, the metre unpleasant, many more would believe it to be sothan would imagine that I thought them so. "[300]

This medieval quality, less excusable later in the century when the newlearning had declared itself, appears with more justification in thecomment of the early sixteenth century. Though the translator's fieldwas widening and was becoming more broadly European, the works chosenfor translation belonged largely to the types popular in the Middle Agesand the comment attached to them was a repetition of timeworn phrases. Alexander Barclay, who is best known as the author of _The Ship ofFools_, published in 1508, but who also has to his credit several othertranslations of contemporary moral and allegorical poems from Latin andFrench and even, in anticipation of the newer era, a version ofSallust's _Jugurthine War_, offers his translations of _The Ship ofFools_[301] and of Mancini's _Mirror of Good Manners_[302] not to thelearned, who might judge of their correctness, but to "rude people, " whomay hope to be benefited morally by perusing them. He has written _TheShip of Fools_ in "common and rural terms"; he does not follow theauthor "word by word"; and though he professes to have reproduced forthe most part the "sentence" of the original, he admits "sometimesadding, sometimes detracting and taking away such things as seemeth meunnecessary and superfluous. "[303] His contemporary, Lord Berners, writes for a more courtly audience, but he professes much the samemethods. He introduces his _Arthur of Little Britain_, "not presumingthat I have reduced it into fresh, ornate, polished English, for I knowmyself insufficient in the facundious art of rhetoric, and also I am buta learner of the language of French: howbeit I trust my simple reasonhath led me to the understanding of the true sentence of thematter. "[304] Of his translation of Froissart he says, "And in that Ihave not followed mine author word by word, yet I trust I have ensuedthe true report of the sentence of the matter. "[305] Sir Francis Bryan, under whose direction Berners' translation of _The Golden Book of MarcusAurelius_ was issued in 1535, the year after its author's death, expresses his admiration of the "high and sweet styles"[306] of theversions in other languages which have preceded this English rendering, but similar phrases had been used so often in the characterization ofundistinguished writings that this comment hardly suggests the new andpeculiar quality of Guevara's style. 

As the century advanced, these older, easier standards were maintainedespecially among translators who chose material similar to that ofBarclay and Berners, the popular work of edification, the novella, whichtook the place of the romance. The purveyors of entertaining narrative, indeed, realized in some degree the minor importance of their work ascompared with that of more serious scholars and acted accordingly. Thepreface to Turbervile's _Tragical Tales_ throws some light on theauthor's idea of the comparative values of translations. He thought oftranslating Lucan, but Melpomene appeared to warn him against soambitious an enterprise, and admitting his unfitness for the task, heapplied himself instead to this translation "out of sundryItalians. "[307] Anthony Munday apologizes for his "simple translation"of _Palmerin d'Oliva_ by remarking that "to translate allows littleoccasion of fine pen work, "[308] a comment which goes far to account forthe doubtful quality of his productions in this field. 

Even when the translator of pleasant tales ranked his work high, it wasgenerally on the ground that his readers would receive from it profit aswell as amusement; he laid no claim to academic correctness. Hementioned or refrained from mentioning his sources at his owndiscretion. Painter, in inaugurating the vogue of the novella, isexceptionally careful in attributing each story to its author, [309] butWhetstone's _Rock of Regard_ contains no hint that it is translated, and_The Petit Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_ conveys the impression oforiginal work. "I dare not compare, " runs the prefatory _Letter toGentlewomen Readers_ by R. B. , "this work with the former Palaces ofPleasure, because comparisons are odious, and because they containhistories, translated out of grave authors and learned writers; and thiscontaineth discourses devised by a green youthful capacity, andrepeated in a manner extempore. "[310] It was, again, the personalpreference of the individual or the extent of his linguistic knowledgethat determined whether the translator should employ the originalItalian or Spanish versions of some collections or should contenthimself with an intermediary French rendering. Painter, accurate as heis in describing his sources, confesses that he has often used theFrench version of Boccaccio, though, or perhaps because, it is lessfinely written than its original. Thomas Fortescue uses the Frenchversion for his translation of _The Forest_, a collection of histories"written in three sundry tongues, in the Spanish first by Petrus Mexia, and thence done into the Italian, and last into the French by ClaudiusGringet, late citizen of Paris. "[311] The most regrettable latitude ofall, judging by theoretic standards of translation, was the carelessfreedom which writers of this group were inclined to appropriate. Anthony Munday, to take an extreme case, translating _Palmerin ofEngland_ from the French, makes a perfunctory apology in his EpistleDedicatory for his inaccuracies: "If you find the translation altered, or the true sense in some place of a matter impaired, let this excuseanswer in default in that case. A work so large is sufficient to tire sosimple a workman in himself. Beside the printer may in some place let anerror escape. "[312] Fortescue justifies, adequately enough, his omissionof various tales by the plea that "the lack of one annoyeth not ormaimeth not the other, " but incidentally he throws light on the practiceof others, less conscientious, who "add or change at their pleasure. "

There is perhaps danger of underrating the value of the theory whichaccompanies translations of this sort. The translators have leftcomparatively little comment on their methods, and it may be that nowand then more satisfactory principles were implicit. Yet even when thetranslator took his task seriously, his prefatory remarks almost alwaysbetrayed that there was something defective in his theory or careless inhis execution. Bartholomew Young translates Montemayor's _Diana_ fromthe Spanish after a careful consideration of texts. "Having compared theFrench copies with the Spanish original, " he writes, "I judge the firstpart to be exquisite, the other two corruptly done, with a confusion ofverse into prose, and leaving out in many places divers hard sentences, and some leaves at the end of the third part, wherefore they are butblind guides of any to be imitated. "[313] After this, unhappily, in thepress of greater affairs he lets the work come from the printerunsupervised and presumably full of errors, "the copy being very darkand interlined, and I loath to write it out again. " Robert Tofteaddresses his _Honor's Academy or the Famous Pastoral of the FairShepherdess Julietta_ "to the courteous and judicious reader and to noneother"; he explains that he refuses to write for "the sottishmultitude, " that monster "who knows not when aught well is or amiss";and blames "such idle thieves as do purloin from others' mint what'snone of their own coin. "[314] In spite of this, his preface makes nomention of Nicholas de Montreux, the original author, and if it were notfor the phrase on the title page, "done into English, " one would notsuspect that the book was a translation. The apology of the printer, Thomas Creede, "Some faults no doubt there be, especially in the verses, and to speak truth, how could it be otherwise, when he wrote all thisvolume (as it were) cursorily and in haste, never having so much leisureas to overlook one leaf after he had scribbled the same, " stamps Tofteas perhaps a facile, but certainly not a conscientious workman. 

Another fashionable form of literature, the popular religious ordidactic work, was governed by standards of translation not unlike thosewhich controlled the fictitious narrative. In the work of Lord Bernersthe romance had not yet made way for its more sophisticated rival, thenovella. His translation from Guevara, however, marked the beginning ofa new fashion. While Barclay's _Ship of Fools_ and _Mirror of GoodManners_ were addressed, like their medieval predecessors, to "lewd"people, with _The Golden Book_ began the vogue of a new type of didacticliterature, similar in its moral purpose and in its frequent employmentof narrative material to the religious works of the Middle Ages, butwith new stylistic elements that made their appeal, as did the novella, not to the rustic and unlearned, but to courtly readers. The prefaces to_The Golden Book_ and to the translations which succeeded it throwlittle light on the theory of their authors, but what comment there ispoints to methods like those employed by the translators of the romanceand the novella. Though later translators like Hellowes went to theoriginal Spanish, Berners, Bryan, and North employ instead theintermediary French rendering. Praise of Guevara's style becomes awearisome repetition of conventional phrases, a rhetorical exercise forthe English writer rather than a serious attempt to analyze thepeculiarities of the Spanish. Exaggeratedly typical is the comment ofHellowes in the 1574 edition of Guevara's _Epistles_, where he repeatswith considerable complacency the commendation of the original workwhich was "contained in my former preface, as followeth. Being furnishedso fully with sincere doctrine, so unused eloquence, so high a style, soapt similitudes, so excellent discourses, so convenient examples, soprofound sentences, so old antiquities, so ancient histories, suchvariety of matter, so pleasant recreations, so strange things alleged, and certain parcels of Scripture with such dexterity handled, that itmay hardly be discerned, whether shall be greater, either thy pleasureby reading, or profit by following the same. "[315]

Guevara himself was perhaps responsible for the failure of histranslators to make any formal recognition of responsibility forreproducing his style. His fictitious account of the sources of _TheGolden Book_ is medieval in tone. He has translated, not word for word, but thought for thought, and for the rudeness of his original he hassubstituted a more lofty style. [316] His English translators reverse thelatter process. Hellowes affirms that his translation of the _Epistles_"goeth agreeable unto the Author thereof, " but confesses that he wants"both gloss and hue of rare eloquence, used in the polishing of the restof his works. " North later translated from the French Amyot'sepoch-making principle: "the office of a fit translator consisteth notonly in the faithful expressing of his author's meaning, but also in acertain resembling and shadowing out of the form of his style and mannerof his speaking, "[317] but all that he has to say of his _Dial ofPrinces_ is that he has reduced it into English "according to my smallknowledge and tender years. "[318] Here again, though the translator maysometimes have tried to adopt newer and more difficult standards, hedoes not make this explicit in his comment. 

Obviously, however, academic standards of accuracy were not likely tomake their first appearance in connection with fashionable courtliterature; one expects to find them associated rather with thetranslations of the great classical literature, which Renaissancescholars approached with such enthusiasm and respect. One of the firstof these, the translation of the _Aeneid_ made by the Scotch poet, GavinDouglas, appeared, like the translations of Barclay and Berners, in theearly sixteenth century. Douglas's comment, [319] which shows a good dealof conscious effort at definition of the translator's duties, is an oddmingling of the medieval and the modern. He begins with a eulogy ofVirgil couched in the undiscriminating, exaggerated terms of theprevious period. Unlike the many medieval redactors of the Troy story, however, he does not assume the historian's liberty of selection andcombination from a variety of sources. He regards Virgil as "a per se, "and waxes indignant over Caxton's _Eneydos_, whose author represented itas based on a French rendering of the great poet. It is, says Douglas, "no more like than the devil and St. Austin. " In proof of this he citesCaxton's treatment of proper names. Douglas claims, reasonably enough, that if he followed his original word for word, the result would beunintelligible, and he appeals to St. Gregory and Horace in support ofthis contention. All his plea, however, is for freedom rather thanaccuracy, and one scarcely knows how to interpret his profession offaithfulness:

 And thus I am constrenyt, as neir I may, To hald his vers & go nane other way, Les sum history, subtill word, or the ryme Causith me make digressione sum tyme. 

Yet whether or not Douglas's "digressions" are permissible, suchrenderings as he illustrates involve no more latitude than is sanctionedby the schoolboy's Latin Grammar. He is disturbed by the necessity forusing more words in English than the Latin has, and he feels itincumbent upon him to explain, . . . Sum tyme of a word I mon mak thre, In witness of this term _oppetere_. 

English, he says in another place, cannot without the use of additionalwords reproduce the difference between synonymous terms like _animal_and _homo_; _genus_, _sexus_, and _species_; _objectum_ and _subjectum_;_arbor_ and _lignum_. Such comment, interesting because definite, isnevertheless no more significant than that which had appeared in thePurvey preface to the Bible more than a hundred years earlier. One isreminded that most of the material which the present-day translatorfinds in grammars of foreign languages was not yet in existence in anygenerally accessible form. 

Such elementary aids were, however, in process of formulation during thesixteenth century. Mr. Foster Watson quotes from an edition of Mancinus, published as early probably as 1520, the following directions forputting Latin into English: "Whoso will learn to turn Latin intoEnglish, let him first take of the easiest Latin, and when heunderstandeth clearly what the Latin meaneth, let him say the English ofevery Latin word that way, as the sentence may appear most clearly tohis ear, and where the English of the Latin words of the text will notmake the sentence fair, let him take the English of those Latin words bywhom (which) the Latin words of the text should be expounded and if that(they) will not be enough to make the sentence perfect, let him add moreEnglish, and that not only words, but also when need requireth, wholeclauses such as will agree best to the sentence. "[320] By the newmethods of study advocated by men like Cheke and Ascham translation aspracticed by students must have become a much more intelligent process, and the literary man who had received such preparatory training musthave realized that variations from the original such as had troubledDouglas needed no apology, but might be taken for granted. 

Further help was offered to students in the shape of various literaltranslations from the classics. The translator of Seneca's _HerculesFurens_ undertook the work "to conduct by some means to furtherunderstanding the unripened scholars of this realm to whom I thought itshould be no less thankful for me to interpret some Latin work into thisour own tongue than for Erasmus in Latin to expound the Greek. "[321]"Neither could I satisfy myself, " he continues, "till I had throughoutthis whole tragedy of Seneca so travailed that I had in English givenverse for verse (as far as the English tongue permits) and word for wordthe Latin, whereby I might both make some trial of myself and as it wereteach the little children to go that yet can but creep. " AbrahamFleming, translating Virgil's _Georgics_ "grammatically, " expresses hisoriginal "in plain words applied to blunt capacities, considering theexpositor's drift to consist in delivering a direct order ofconstruction for the relief of weak grammatists, not in attempting bycurious device and disposition to content courtly humanists, whosedesire he hath been more willing at this time to suspend, because hewould in some exact sort satisfy such as need the supply of histravail. "[322] William Bullokar prefaces his translation of Esop's_Fables_ with the words: "I have translated out of Latin into English, but not in the best phrase of English, though English be capable of theperfect sense thereof, and might be used in the best phrase, had not mycare been to keep it somewhat nearer the Latin phrase, that the Englishlearner of Latin, reading over these authors in both languages, mightthe more easily confer them together in their sense, and the betterunderstand the one by the other: and for that respect of easyconference, I have kept the like course in my translation of Tully's_Offices_ out of Latin into English to be imprinted shortly also. "[323]

Text books like these, valuable and necessary as they were, can scarcelyclaim a place in the history of literature. Bullokar himself, recognizing this, promises that "if God lend me life and ability totranslate any other author into English hereafter, I will bend myself tofollow the excellency of English in the best phrase thereof, more than Iwill bend it to the phrases of the language to be translated. " Inavoiding the overliteral method, however, the translator of the classicssometimes assumed a regrettable freedom, not only with the words butwith the substance of his source. With regard to his translation of the_Aeneid_ Phaer represents himself as "Trusting that you, my rightworshipful masters and students of universities and such as be teachersof children and readers of this author in Latin, will not be too muchoffended though every verse answer not to your expectation. For (besidesthe diversity between a construction and a translation) you know therebe many mystical secrets in this writer, which uttered in English wouldshow little pleasure and in my opinion are better to be untouched thanto diminish the grace of the rest with tediousness and darkness. I havetherefore followed the counsel of Horace, touching the duty of a goodinterpreter, _Qui quae desperat nitescere posse, relinquit_, by whichoccasion somewhat I have in places omitted, somewhat altered, and somethings I have expounded, and all to the ease of inferior readers, foryou that are learned need not to be instructed. "[324] Though JasperHeywood's version of _Hercules Furens_ is an example of the literaltranslation for the use of students, most of the other members of thegroup of young men who in 1581 published their translations of Senecaprotest that they have reproduced the meaning, not the words of theirauthor. Alexander Neville, a precocious youth who translated the fifthtragedy in "this sixteenth year of mine age, " determined "not to beprecise in following the author word for word, but sometimes byaddition, sometimes by subtraction, to use the aptest phrases in givingthe sense that I could invent. "[325] Neville's translation is"oftentimes rudely increased with mine own simple invention";[326] JohnStudley has changed the first chorus of the _Medea_, "because in it Isaw nothing but an heap of profane stories and names of profaneidols";[327] Heywood himself, since the existing text of the _Troas_ isimperfect, admits having "with addition of mine own pen supplied thewant of some things, "[328] and says that he has also replaced the thirdchorus, because much of it is "heaped number of far and strangecountries. " Most radical of all is the theory according to which ThomasDrant translated the _Satires_ of Horace. That Drant could be faithfuleven to excess is evident from his preface to _The Wailings of Jeremiah_included in the same volume with his version of Horace. "That thoumightest have this rueful parcel of Scripture pure and sincere, notswerved or altered, I laid it to the touchstone, the native tongue. Iweighed it with the Chaldee Targum and the Septuaginta. I desired tojump so nigh with the Hebrew, that it doth erewhile deform the vein ofthe English, the proprieties of that language and ours being in somespeeches so much dissemblable. " But with Horace Drant pursues adifferent course. As a moralist it is justifiable for him to translateHorace because the Latin poet satirizes that wickedness which Jeremiahmourned over. Horace's satire, however, is not entirely applicable toconditions in England; "he never saw that with the view of his eye whichhis pensive translator cannot but overview with the languish of hissoul. " Moreover Horace's style is capable of improvement, an improvementwhich Drant is quite ready to provide. "His eloquence is sometimes toosharp, and therefore I have blunted it, and sometimes too dull, andtherefore I have whetted it, helping him to ebb and helping him torise. " With his reader Drant is equally high-handed. "I dare not warrantthe reader to understand him in all places, " he writes, "no more than hedid me. Howbeit I have made him more lightsome well nigh by one half (asmall accomplishment for one of my continuance) and if thou canst notnow in all points perceive him (thou must bear with me) in sooth thedefault is thine own. " After this one is somewhat prepared for Drant'sremarkable summary of his methods. "First I have now done as the peopleof God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsomeand beautiful: I have shaved off his hair and pared off his nails, thatis, I have wiped away all his vanity and superfluity of matter. Further, I have for the most part drawn his private carpings of this or that manto a general moral. I have Englished things not according to the vein ofthe Latin propriety, but of his own vulgar tongue. I have interfered (toremove his obscurity and sometimes to better his matter) much of mineown devising. I have pieced his reason, eked and mended his similitudes, mollified his hardness, prolonged his cortall kind of speeches, changedand much altered his words, but not his sentence, or at least (I daresay) not his purpose. "[329] Even the novella does not afford examples ofsuch deliberate justification of undue liberty with source. 

Why such a situation existed may be partially explained. The Elizabethanwriter was almost as slow as his medieval predecessor to makedistinctions between different kinds of literature. Both the novella andthe epic might be classed as "histories, " and "histories" were valuablebecause they aided the reader in the actual conduct of life. ArthurGolding tells in the preface to his translation of Justin the story ofhow Alexander the Great "coming into a school and finding not Homer'sworks there . . . Gave the master a buffet with his fist: meaning that theknowledge of _Histories_ was a thing necessary to all estates anddegrees. "[330] It was the content of a work that was most important, andcomment like that of Drant makes us realize how persistent was theconception that such content was common property which might be adjustedto the needs of different readers. The lesser freedoms of the translatorwere probably largely due to the difficulties inherent in a metricalrendering. It is "ryme" that partially accounts for some of Douglas's"digressions. " Seneca's _Hercules Furens_, literal as the translationpurports to be, is reproduced "verse for verse, as far as the Englishtongue permits. " Thomas Twyne, who completed the work which Phaer began, calls attention to the difficulty "in this kind of translation toenforce their rime to another man's meaning. "[331] Edward Hake, it isnot unlikely, expresses a common idea when he gives as one of hisreasons for employing verse rather than prose "that prose requireth amore exact labor than metre doth. "[332] If one is to believe AbrahamFleming, one of the adherents of Gabriel Harvey, matters may be improvedby the adoption of classical metres. Fleming has translated Virgil's_Bucolics_ and _Georgics_ "not in foolish rhyme, the nice observancewhereof many times darkeneth, corrupteth, perverteth, and falsifiethboth the sense and the signification, but with due proportion andmeasure. "[333]

Seemingly, however, the translators who advocated the employment of thehexameter made little use of the argument that to do so made it possibleto reproduce the original more faithfully. Stanyhurst, who says that inhis translation of the first four books of the _Aeneid_ he is carryingout Ascham's wish that the university students should "apply their witsin beautifying our English language with heroical verses, " choosesVirgil as the subject of his experiment for "his peerless style andmatchless stuff, "[334] leaving his reader with the impression that theclaims of his author were probably subordinate in the translator's mindto his interest in Ascham's theories. Possibly he shared his master'sbelief that "even the best translation is for mere necessity but an evilimped wing to fly withal, or a heavy stump leg of wood to gowithal. "[335] In discussion of the style to be employed in the metricalrendering there was the same failure to make explicit the connectionbetween the original and the translation. Many critics accepted theprinciple that "decorum" of style was essential in the translation ofcertain kinds of poetry, but they based their demand for this quality onits extrinsic suitability much more than on its presence in the work tobe translated. In Turbervile's elaborate comment on the style which hehas used in his translation of the _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, there is thesame baffling vagueness in his references to the quality of the originalthat is felt in the prefaces of Lydgate and Caxton. "Though I havealtered the tongue, " he says, "I trust I have not changed the author'smeaning or sense in anything, but played the part of a true interpreter, observing that we call Decorum in each respect, as far as the poet's andour mother tongue will give me leave. For as the conference betweenshepherds is familiar stuff and homely, so have I shaped my style andtempered it with such common and ordinary phrase of speech as countrymendo use in their affairs; alway minding the saying of Horace, whosesentence I have thus Englished:

 To set a manly head upon a horse's neck And all the limbs with divers plumes of divers hue to deck, Or paint a woman's face aloft to open show, And make the picture end in fish with scaly skin below, I think (my friends) would cause you laugh and smile to see How ill these ill-compacted things and numbers would agree. 

For indeed he that shall translate a shepherd's tale and use the talkand style of an heroical personage, expressing the silly man's meaningwith lofty thundering words, in my simple judgment joins (as Horacesaith) a horse's neck and a man's head together. For as the one weremonstrous to see, so were the other too fond and foolish to read. Wherefore I have (I say) used the common country phrase according to theperson of the speakers in every Eclogue, as though indeed the manhimself should tell his tale. If there be anything herein that thoushalt happen to mistake, neither blame the learned poet, nor control theclownish shepherd (good reader) but me that presumed rashly to offer sounworthy matter to thy survey. "[336] Another phase of "decorum, " thenecessity for employing a lofty style in dealing with the affairs ofgreat persons, comes in for discussion in connection with translationsof Seneca and Virgil. Jasper Heywood makes his excuses in case histranslation of the _Troas_ has "not kept the royalty of speech meet fora tragedy";[337] Stanyhurst praises Phaer for his "picked and loftywords";[338] but he himself is blamed by Puttenham because his own wordslack dignity. "In speaking or writing of a prince's affairs andfortunes, " writes Puttenham, "there is a certain decorum, that we maynot use the same terms in their business as we might very well do in ameaner person's, the case being all one, such reverence is due to theirestates. "[339] He instances Stanyhurst's renderings, "Aeneas was fain to_trudge_ out of Troy" and "what moved Juno to _tug_ so great a captainas Aeneas, " and declares that the term _trudge_ is "better to be spokenof a beggar, or of a rogue, or of a lackey, " and that the word _tug_"spoken in this case is so undecent as none other could have beendevised, and took his first original from the cart. " A similar objectionto the employment of a "plain" style in telling the Troy story was made, it will be remembered, in the early fifteenth century by Wyntoun. 

The matter of decorum was to receive further attention in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In general, however, the commentassociated with verse translations does not anticipate that of latertimes and is scarcely more significant than that which accompanies thenovella. So long, indeed, as the theory of translation was so largelyconcerned with the claims of the reader, there was little room forinitiative. It was no mark of originality to say that the translationmust be profitable or entertaining, clear and easily understood; theserules had already been laid down by generations of translators. The realopportunity for a fresh, individual approach to the problems oftranslation lay in consideration of the claims of the original author. Renaissance scholarship was bringing a new knowledge of texts andauthors and encouraging a new alertness of mind in approaching textswritten in foreign languages. It was now possible, while makingfaithfulness to source obligatory instead of optional, to put the matteron a reasonable basis. The most vigorous and suggestive comment camefrom a small number of men of scholarly tastes and of active minds, whobrought to the subject both learning and enthusiasm, and who were notcontent with vague, conventional forms of words. 

It was prose rather than verse renderings that occupied the attention ofthese theorists, and in the works which they chose for translation theintellectual was generally stronger than the artistic appeal. Theirtranslations, however, showed a variety peculiarly characteristic of theEnglish Renaissance. Interest in classical scholarship was nearly alwaysassociated with interest in the new religious doctrines, and hence thenew theories of translation were attached impartially either torenderings of the classics or to versions of contemporary theologicalworks, valuable on account of the close, careful thinking which theycontained, as contrasted with the more superficial charm of writingslike those of Guevara. An Elizabethan scholar, indeed, might havehesitated if asked which was the more important, the Greek or Latinclassic or the theological treatise. Nash praises Goldingindiscriminately "for his industrious toil in Englishing Ovid's_Metamorphoses_, besides many other exquisite editions of divinityturned by him out of the French tongue into our own. "[340] Goldinghimself, translating one of these "exquisite editions of divinity, "Calvin's _Sermons on the Book of Job_, insists so strongly on the"substance, importance, and travail"[341] which belong to the work thatone is ready to believe that he ranked it higher than any of his othertranslations. Nor was the contribution from this field to be despised. Though the translation of the Bible was an isolated task which had fewrelations with other forms of translation, what few affiliations itdeveloped were almost entirely with theological works like those ofErasmus, Melanchthon, Calvin, and to the translation of such writingsBiblical standards of accuracy were transferred. On the other hand thetranslator of Erasmus or Calvin was likely to have other and verydifferent interests, which did much to save him from a narrow pedantry. Nicholas Udall, for example, who had a large share in the translation ofErasmus's _Paraphrase on the New Testament_, also translated parts ofTerence and is best known as the author of _Ralph Roister Doister_. Thomas Norton, who translated Calvin's _Institution of the ChristianReligion_, has been credited with a share in _Gorboduc_. 

It was towards the middle of the century that these translators began toformulate their views, and probably the decades immediately before andafter the accession of Elizabeth were more fruitful in theory than anyother part of the period. Certain centers of influence may be ratherclearly distinguished. In contemporary references to the early part of thecentury Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir Thomas More are generally coupled togetheras authorities on translation. Slightly later St. John's College, Cambridge, "that most famous and fortunate nurse of all learning, "[342]exerted through its masters and students a powerful influence. Much of thefame of the college was due to Sir John Cheke, "a man of men, " according toNash, "supernaturally traded in all tongues. " Cheke is associated, in oneway and another, with an odd variety of translations--Nicholls' translationof a French version of _Thucydides_, [343] Hoby's _Courtier_, [344] Wilson's_Demosthenes_[345]--suggesting something of the range of his sympathies. 

Though little of his own comment survives, the echoes of his opinions inAscham's _Schoolmaster_ and the preface to Wilson's _Demosthenes_ makeone suspect that his teaching was possibly the strongest force at workat the time to produce higher standards for translation. As the centuryprogressed Sir William Cecil, in his early days a distinguished studentat St. John's and an intimate associate of Cheke's, maintained, in spiteof the cares of state, the tradition of his college as the patron ofvarious translators and the recipient of numerous dedications prefixedto their productions. It is from the midcentury translators, however, that the most distinctive comment emanates. United in variouscombinations, now by religious sympathies, now by a common enthusiasmfor learning, now by the influence of an individual, they form a groupfairly homogeneous so far as their theories of translation areconcerned, appreciative of academic correctness, but ready to consideralso the claims of the reader and the nature of the vernacular. 

The earlier translators, Elyot and More, have left small but significantcomment on methods. More's expression of theory was elicited byTyndale's translation of the Bible; of the technical difficultiesinvolved in his own translation of _The Life of Pico della Mirandola_ hesays nothing. Elyot is one of the first translators to approach his taskfrom a new angle. Translating from Greek to English, he observed, likeTyndale, the differences and correspondences between the two languages. His _Doctrinal of Princes_ was translated "to the intent only that Iwould assay if our English tongue might receive the quick and propersentences pronounced by the Greeks. "[346] The experiment had interestingresults. "And in this experience, " he continues, "I have found (if I benot much deceived) that the form of speaking, called in Greek and alsoin English _Phrasis_, much nearer approacheth to that which at this daywe use, than the order of the Latin tongue. I mean in the sentences andnot in the words. "

A peculiarly good exponent of the new vitality which was takingpossession of the theory of translation is Nicholas Udall, whoseopinions have been already cited in this chapter. The versatility ofintellect evinced by the list of his varied interests, dramatic, academic, religious, showed itself also in his views regardingtranslation. In the various prefaces and dedications which hecontributed to the translation of Erasmus's _Paraphrase_ he touches onproblems of all sorts--stipends for translators, the augmentation of theEnglish vocabulary, sentence structure in translation, the style ofErasmus, the individual quality in the style of every writer--but allthese questions he treats lightly and undogmatically. Translation, according to Udall, should not conform to iron rules. He is notdisturbed by the diversity of methods exhibited in the _Paraphrase_. "Though every translator, " he writes, "follow his own vein in turningthe Latin into English, yet doth none willingly swerve or dissent fromthe mind and sense of his author, albeit some go more near to the wordsof the author, and some use the liberty of translating at large, not soprecisely binding themselves to the strait interpretation of every wordand syllable. "[347] In his own share of the translation Udall inclinesrather to the free than to the literal method. He has not been able"fully to discharge the office of a good translator, "[348] partlybecause of the ornate quality of Erasmus's style, partly because hewishes to be understood by the unlearned. He does not feel so scrupulousas he would if he were translating the text of Scripture, though even inthe latter connection he is guilty of the heretical opinion that "if thetranslators were not altogether so precise as they are, but had somemore regard to expressing of the sense, I think in my judgment theyshould do better. " It will be noted, however, that Udall's advocacy offreedom is an individual reaction, not the repetition of a formula. Thepreface to his translation of the _Apophthegmes_ of Erasmus helps toredress the balance in favor of accuracy. "I have labored, " he says, "todischarge the duty of a translator, that is, keeping and following thesense of my book, to interpret and turn the Latin into English, with asmuch grace of our vulgar tongue as in my slender power and knowledgehath lain. "[349] The rest of the preface shows that Udall, in hisconcern for the quality of the English, did not make "following thesense" an excuse for undue liberties. Writing "with a regard for youngscholars and students, who get great value from comparing languages, " heis most careful to note such slight changes and omissions as he has madein the text. Explanations and annotations have been printed "in a smallletter with some directory mark, " and "any Greek or Latin verse or word, whereof the pith and grace of the saying dependeth" has been retained, asacrifice to scholarship for which he apologizes to the unlearnedreader. 

Nicholas Grimald, who published his translation of Cicero's _Offices_shortly after the accession of Elizabeth, is much more dogmatic in hisrules for translation than is Udall. "Howbeit look, " runs the preface, "what rule the Rhetorician gives in precept, to be observed of an Oratorin telling of his tale: that it be short, and without idle words: thatit be plain, and without dark sense: that it be provable, and withoutany swerving from the truth: the same rule should be used in examiningand judging of translation. For if it be not as brief as the veryauthor's text requireth, what so is added to his perfect style shallappear superfluous, and to serve rather to the making of some paraphraseor commentary. Thereto if it be uttered with inkhorn terms, and not withusual words: or if it be phrased with wrested or far-fetched forms ofspeech, not fair but harsh, not easy but hard, not natural but violentit shall seem to be. Then also, in case it yield not the meaning of theauthor, but either following fancy or misled by error forsakes the truepattern, it cannot be approved for a faithful and sure interpretation, which ought to be taken for the greatest praise of all. "[350] InGrimald's insistence on a brevity equal to that of the original and inhis unmodified opposition to innovations in vocabulary, there issomething of pedantic narrowness. His criticism of Cicero is notilluminating and his estimate, in this connection, of his ownaccomplishment is amusingly complacent. In Cicero's work "marvellous isthe matter, flowing the eloquence, rich the store of stuff, and fullartificial the enditing: but how I, " he continues, "have expressed thesame, the more the book be perused, the better it may chance to appear. None other translation in our tongue have I seen but one, which is ofall men of any learning so well liked that they repute it and considerit as none: yet if ye list to compare this somewhat with that nothing, peradventure this somewhat will serve somewhat the more. " Yet in spiteof his limitations Grimald has some breadth of outlook. A work like hisown, he believes, can help the reader to a greater command of thevernacular. "Here is for him occasion both to whet his wit and also tofile his tongue. For although an Englishman hath his mother tongue andcan talk apace as he learned of his dame, yet is it one thing to tittletattle, I wot not how, or to chatter like a jay, and another to bestowhis words wisely, orderly, pleasantly, and pithily. " The writer knowsmen who could speak Latin "readily and well-favoredly, who to have doneas much in our language and to have handled the same matter, would havebeen half black. " Careful study of this translation will help a man "aswell in the English as the Latin, to weigh well properties of words, fashions of phrases, and the ornaments of both. "

Another interesting document is the preface entitled _The Translator tothe Reader_ which appeared in 1578 in the fourth edition of ThomasNorton's translation of Calvin's _Institution of the ChristianReligion_. The opinions which it contains took shape some years earlier, for the author expressly states that the translation has not beenchanged at all from what it was in the first impression, published in1561, and that the considerations which he now formulates governed himin the beginning. Norton, like Grimald, insists on extreme accuracy infollowing the original, but he bases his demand on a truth largelyignored by translators up to this time, the essential relationshipbetween thought and style. He makes the following surprisinglypenetrative comment on the nature and significance of Calvin's Latinstyle: "I considered how the author thereof had of long time purposelylabored to write the same most exactly, and to pack great plenty ofmatter in small room of words, yea and those so circumspectly andprecisely ordered, to avoid the cavillations of such, as for enmity tothe truth therein contained, would gladly seek and abuse all advantageswhich might be found by any oversight in penning of it, that thesentences were thereby become so full as nothing might well be addedwithout idle superfluity, and again so nighly pared that nothing mightbe minished without taking away some necessary substance of mattertherein expressed. This manner of writing, beside the peculiar terms ofarts and figures, and the difficulty of the matters themselves, beingthroughout interlaced with the schoolmen's controversies, made a greathardness in the author's own book, in that tongue wherein otherwise heis both plentiful and easy, insomuch that it sufficeth not to read himonce, unless you can be content to read in vain. " Then follows Norton'sestimate of the translator's duty in such a case: "I durst not presumeto warrant myself to have his meaning without his words. And they thatwot well what it is to translate well and faithfully, specially inmatters of religion, do know that not only the grammatical constructionof words sufficeth, but the very building and order to observe alladvantages of vehemence or grace, by placing or accent of words, makethmuch to the true setting forth of a writer's mind. " Norton, however, didnot entirely forget his readers. He approached his task with "greatdoubtfulness, " fully conscious of the dilemma involved. "If I shouldfollow the words, I saw that of necessity the hardness of thetranslation must needs be greater than was in the tongue wherein it wasoriginally written. If I should leave the course of words, and grantmyself liberty after the natural manner of my own tongue, to say that inEnglish which I conceived to be his meaning in Latin, I plainlyperceived how hardly I might escape error. " In the end he determined "tofollow the words so near as the phrase of the English tongue wouldsuffer me. " Unhappily Norton, like Grimald and like some of thetranslators of the Bible, has an exaggerated regard for brevity. Heclaims that "if the English book were printed in such paper and letteras the Latin is, it should not exceed the Latin in quantity, " and thatstudents "shall not find any more English than shall suffice to construethe Latin withal, except in such few places where the great differenceof the phrases of the languages enforced me. " Yet he believes that hisversion is not unnecessarily hard to understand, and he urges readerswho have found it difficult to "read it ofter, in which doing you shallfind (as many have confessed to me that they have found by experience)that those things which at first reading shall displease you forhardness shall be found so easy as so hard matter would suffer, and forthe most part more easy than some other phrase which should with greaterlooseness and smoother sliding away deceive your understanding. "

Thomas Wilson, who dedicated his translation of Demosthenes to SirWilliam Cecil in 1570, links himself with the earlier group oftranslators by his detailed references to Cheke. Like Norton he is veryconscious of the difficulty of translation. "I never found in my life, "he writes of this piece of work, "anything so hard for me to do. " "Sucha hard thing it is, " he adds later, "to bring matter out of any onelanguage into another. " A vigorous advocate of translation, however, hedoes not despise his own tongue. "The cunning is no less, " he declares, "and the praise as great in my judgment, to translate anythingexcellently into English, as into any other language, " and he hopesthat, if his own attempt proves unsuccessful, others will make thetrial, "that such an orator as this is might be so framed to speak ourtongue as none were able to amend him, and that he might be found to bemost like himself. " Wilson comes to his task with all the equipment thatthe period could afford; his preface gives evidence of a criticalacquaintance with numerous Latin renderings of his author. From Cheke, however, he has gained something more valuable, the power to feel thevital, permanent quality in the work of Demosthenes. Cheke, he says, "was moved greatly to like Demosthenes above all others, for that hesaw him so familiarly applying himself to the sense and understanding ofthe common people, that he sticked not to say that none ever was morefit to make an Englishman tell his tale praiseworthily in any openhearing either in parliament or in pulpit or otherwise, than this onlyorator was. " Wilson shares this opinion and, representative of thechanging standards of Elizabethan scholarship, prefers Demosthenes toCicero. "Demosthenes used a plain, familiar manner of writing andspeaking in all his actions, " he says in his _Preface to the Reader_, "applying himself to the people's nature and to their understandingwithout using of proheme to win credit or devising conclusion to moveaffections and to purchase favor after he had done his matters. . . . Andwere it not better and more wisdom to speak plainly and nakedly afterthe common sort of men in few words, than to overflow with unnecessaryand superfluous eloquence as Cicero is thought sometimes to do. " "Neverdid glass so truly represent man's face, " he writes later, "asDemosthenes doth show the world to us, and as it was then, so is it now, and will be so still, till the consummation and end of all things shallbe. " From Cheke Wilson has received also training in methods oftranslation and especially in the handling of the vernacular. "MasterCheke's judgment was great, " he recalls, "in translating out of onetongue into another, and better skill he had in our English speech tojudge of the phrases and properties of words and to divide sentencesthan any one else that I have known. And often he would English hismatters out of the Latin or Greek upon the sudden, by looking of thebook only, without reading or construing anything at all, an usage rightworthy and very profitable for all men, as well for the understanding ofthe book, as also for the aptness of framing the author's meaning, andbettering thereby their judgment, and therewithal perfecting theirtongue and utterance of speech. " In speaking of his own methods, however, Wilson's emphasis is on his faithfulness to the original. "Butperhaps, " he writes, "whereas I have been somewhat curious to followDemosthenes' natural phrase, it may be thought that I do speak over bareEnglish. Well I had rather follow his vein, the which was to speaksimply and plainly to the common people's understanding, than tooverflourish with superfluous speech, although I might thereby becounted equal with the best that ever wrote English. "

Though now and then the comment of these men is slightly vague orinconsistent, in general they describe their methods clearly and fully. Other translators, expressing themselves with less sureness andadequacy, leave the impression that they have adopted similarstandards. Translations, for example, of Calvin's _Commentary onActs_[351] and Luther's _Commentary on Galatians_[352] are described ontheir title pages as "faithfully translated" from the Latin. B. R. 'spreface to his translation of Herodotus, though its meaning is somewhatobscured by rhetoric, suggests a suitable regard for the original. "Neither of these, " he writes of the two books which he has completed, "are braved out in their colors as the use is nowadays, and yet soseemly as either you will love them because they are modest, or notmislike them because they are not impudent, since in refusing idlepearls to make them seem gaudy, they reject not modest apparel to causethem to go comely. The truth is (Gentlemen) in making the new attire, Iwas fain to go by their old array, cutting out my cloth by anotherman's measure, being great difference whether we invent a fashion ofour own, or imitate a pattern set down by another. Which I speak not tothis end, for that myself could have done more eloquently than ourauthor hath in Greek, but that the course of his writing being mostsweet in Greek, converted into English loseth a great part of hisgrace. "[353] Outside of the field of theology or of classical prosethere were translators who strove for accuracy. Hoby, profitingdoubtless by his association with Cheke, endeavored in translating _TheCourtier_ "to follow the very meaning and words of the author, withoutbeing misled by fantasy, or leaving out any parcel one or other. "[354]Robert Peterson claims that his version of Della Casa's _Galateo_ is"not cunningly but faithfully translated. "[355] The printer of Carew'stranslation of Tasso explains: "In that which is done, I have causedthe Italian to be printed together with the English, for the delightand benefit of those gentlemen that love that most lively language. Andthereby the learned reader shall see how strict a course the translatorhath tied himself in the whole work, usurping as little liberty as anywhatsoever as ever wrote with any commendations. "[356] Even translatorswho do not profess to be overfaithful display a consciousness of theexistence of definite standards of accuracy. Thomas Chaloner, anotherof the friends of Cheke, translating Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_ for"mean men of baser wits and condition, " chooses "to be counted a scanttrue interpreter. " "I have not pained myself, " he says, "to render wordfor word, nor proverb for proverb . . . Which may be thought by somecunning translators a deadly sin. "[357] To the author of the _Menechmi_the word "translation" has a distinct connotation. The printer of thework has found him "very loath and unwilling to hazard this to thecurious view of envious detraction, being (as he tells me) neither soexactly written as it may carry any name of translation, nor suchliberty therein used as that he would notoriously differ from thepoet's own order. "[358] Richard Knolles, whose translation of Bodin's_Six Books of a Commonweal_ was published in 1606, employed both theFrench and the Latin versions of the treatise, and describes himself ason this account "seeking therein the true sense and meaning of theauthor, rather than precisely following the strict rules of a nicetranslator, in observing the very words of the author. "[359] Thetranslators of this later time, however, seldom put into words theoriesso scholarly as those formulated earlier in the period, when, eventhough the demand for accuracy might sometimes be exaggerated, it wasnevertheless the result of thoughtful discrimination. There was somereason why a man like Gabriel Harvey, living towards the end ofElizabeth's reign, should look back with regret to the time whenEngland produced men like Cheke and his contemporaries. [360]

One must frequently remind oneself, however, that the absence ofexpressed theory need not involve the absence of standards. Amongtranslators as among original writers a fondness for analyzing anddescribing processes did not necessarily accompany literary skill. Muchmore activity of mind and respect for originals may have existed amongverse translators than is evident from their scanty comment. The mostfamous prose translators have little to say about their methods. Golding, who produced so much both in verse and prose, and who usuallywrote prefaces to his translations, scarcely ever discussestechnicalities. Now and then, however, he lets fall an incidental remarkwhich suggests very definite ideals. In translating Caesar, for example, though at first he planned merely to complete Brend's translation, heended by taking the whole work into his own hands, because, as he says, "I was desirous to have the body of the whole story compacted uniformand of one style throughout, "[361] a comment worthy of a much moremodern critic. Philemon Holland, again, contributes almost nothing totheory, though his vigorous defense of his art and his appreciation ofthe stylistic qualities of his originals bear witness to true scholarlyenthusiasm. On the whole, however, though the distinctive contributionof the period is the plea of the renaissance scholars that a reasonablefaithfulness should be displayed, the comment of the mass of translatorsshows little grasp of the new principles. When one considers, inaddition to their very inadequate expression of theory, the prevailingcharacteristics of their practice, the balance turns unmistakably infavor of a careless freedom in translation. 

Some of the deficiencies in sixteenth-century theory are supplied byChapman, who applies himself with considerable zest to laying down theprinciples which in his opinion should govern poetical translations. Producing his versions of Homer in the last years of the sixteenth andearly years of the seventeenth century, he forms a link between the twoperiods. In some respects he anticipates later critics. He attacks boththe overstrict and the overloose methods of translation:

 the brake That those translators stick in, that affect Their word for word traductions (where they lose The free grace of their natural dialect, And shame their authors with a forced gloss) I laugh to see; and yet as much abhor More license from the words than may express Their full compression, and make clear the author. [362]

It is literalism, however, which bears the brunt of his attack. He isalways conscious, "how pedantical and absurd an affectation it is in theinterpretation of any author (much more of Homer) to turn him word forword, when (according to Horace and other best lawgivers to translators)it is the part of every knowing and judicial interpreter, not to followthe number and order of words, but the material things themselves, andsentences to weigh diligently, and to clothe and adorn them with words, and such a style and form of oration, as are most apt for the languagein which they are converted. "[363] Strangely enough, he thinks thisliteralism the prevailing fault of translators. He hardly dares presenthis work

 To reading judgments, since so gen'rally, Custom hath made ev'n th'ablest agents err In these translations; all so much apply Their pains and cunnings word for word to render Their patient authors, when they may as well Make fish with fowl, camels with whales, engender, Or their tongues' speech in other mouths compell. [364]

Chapman, however, believes that it is possible to overcome thedifficulties of translation. Although the "sense and elegancy" of Greekand English are of "distinguished natures, " he holds that it requires

 Only a judgment to make both consent In sense and elocution; and aspire, As well to reach the spirit that was spent In his example, as with art to pierce His grammar, and etymology of words. 

This same theory was taken up by numerous seventeenth and eighteenthcentury translators. Avoiding as it does the two extremes, it easilycommended itself to the reason. Unfortunately it was frequentlyappropriated by critics who were not inclined to labor strenuously withthe problems of translation. One misses in much of the later comment thevigorous thinking of the early Renaissance translators. The theory oftranslation was not yet regarded as "a common work of building" to whicheach might contribute, and much that was valuable in sixteenth-centurycomment was lost by forgetfulness and neglect. 

FOOTNOTES:

[250] Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan Critical Essays_, vol. I, p. 313. 

[251] _Introduction_, in Foster Watson, _Vives and the RenaissanceEducation of Women_, 1912. 

[252] Letter prefixed to John, in _Paraphrase of Erasmus on the NewTestament_, London, 1548. 

[253] _Dedication_, 1588. 

[254] _To the Reader_, in _Shakespeare's Ovid_, ed. W. H. D. Rouse, 1904. 

[255] Bishop of London's preface _To the Reader_, in _A Commentary of Dr. Martin Luther upon the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians_, London, 1577. 

[256] Preface to _The Institution of the Christian Religion_, London, 1578. 

[257] Preface to _The Three Orations of Demosthenes_, London, 1570. 

[258] Dedication of _Montaigne's Essays_, London, 1603. 

[259] Reprinted, Roxburghe Club, 1887. 

[260] Preface to _The Book of Metals_, in Arber, _The First Three EnglishBooks on America_, 1885. 

[261] Dedication of _Marcus Tullius Cicero's Three Books of Duties_, 1558. 

[262] _A Brief Apology for Poetry_, in Gregory Smith, vol. 2, p. 219. 

[263] Preface to _The Natural History of C. Plinius Secundus_, London, 1601. 

[264] _Letter to John Florio_, in _Florio's Montaigne_, Tudor Translations. 

[265] _To the Reader_, in _The Forest_, London, 1576. 

[266] Dedication to Edward VI, in _Paraphrase of Erasmus_. 

[267] _Prologue to Proverbs or Adagies with new additions gathered out ofthe Chiliades of Erasmus by Richard Taverner_, London, 1539. 

[268] _Epistle_ prefixed to translation, 1568. 

[269] Published, Tottell, 1561. 

[270] Reprinted, London, 1915. 

[271] _Dedication_, in edition of 1588. 

[272] _Op. Cit. _

[273] _Dedication_, _op. Cit. _

[274] _Dedication_, dated 1596, of _The History of Philip de Comines_, London, 1601. 

[275] _Dedication_ of _Achilles' Shield_ in Gregory Smith, vol. 2, p. 300. 

[276] _Preface_ in Arber, _op. Cit. _

[277] _Preface_, dated 1584, to translation published 1590. 

[278] Title page, 1574. 

[279] _To the Reader_, _op. Cit. _

[280] London, 1570. 

[281] Preface to _Seven Books of the Iliad of Homer_, in Gregory Smith, vol. 2, p. 293. 

[282] _Op. Cit. _

[283] Gregory Smith, vol. 1, p. 262. 

[284] Preface to _Civile Conversation of Stephen Guazzo_, 1586. 

[285] Dedication of _The End of Nero and Beginning of Galba_, 1598. 

[286] _Op. Cit. _

[287] _Address to Queen Katherine_, prefixed to Luke. 

[288] _Preface. _

[289] Translated in Strype, _Life of Grindal_, Oxford, 1821, p. 22. 

[290] Preface to _The Governor_, ed. Croft. 

[291] _Ad Maecenatem Prologus to Order of the Garter_, in _Works_, ed. Dyce, p. 584. 

[292] Quoted in J. L. Moore, _Tudor-Stuart Views on the Growth, Status, andDestiny of the English Language_. 

[293] In Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan Critical Essays_, vol. 2, p. 171. 

[294] Quoted in Moore, _op. Cit. _

[295] _To the Reader_, in 1603 edition of Montaigne's _Essays_. 

[296] _Address to Queen Katherine_, prefixed to Luke. 

[297] _To the Reader_ in _Civile Conversation of Stephen Guazzo_, 1586. 

[298] _Preface_, 1587. 

[299] _Master Phaer's Conclusion to his Interpretation of the Aeneidos ofVirgil_, in edition of 1573. 

[300] _A Brief Apology for Poetry_, in Gregory Smith, vol. 1, pp. 217-18. 

[301] Ed. T. H. Jamieson, Edinburgh, 1874. 

[302] Reprinted, Spenser Society, 1885. 

[303] _The Argument. _

[304] Reprinted, London, 1814, _Prologue_. 

[305] Ed. E. V. Utterson, London, 1812, _Preface_. 

[306] _The Golden Book_, London, 1538, _Conclusion_. 

[307] Title page, in Turbervile, _Tragical Tales_, Edinburgh, 1837. 

[308] _To the Reader_, in _Palmerin d'Oliva_, London, 1637. 

[309] See Painter, _Palace of Pleasure_, ed. Jacobs, 1890. 

[310] _The Petit Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_, ed. Gollancz, 1908. 

[311] _Dedication. _

[312] _Palmerin of England_, ed. Southey, London, 1807. 

[313] _Preface to divers learned gentlemen_, in _Diana of George ofMontemayor_, London, 1598. 

[314] _To the Reader_, in _Honor's Academy_, London, 1610. 

[315] _The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthony of Guevara_, London, 1574, _Tothe Reader_. 

[316] _Prologue_ and _Argument_ of Guevara, translated in North, _Dial ofPrinces_, 1619. 

[317] In North, _The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans_, 1579. 

[318] _Dedication_ in edition of 1568. 

[319] _Prologue_ to Book I, _Aeneid_, reprinted Bannatyne Club. 

[320] Foster Watson, _The English Grammar Schools to 1660_, Cambridge, 1908, pp. 405-6. 

[321] _Dedication_, in Spearing, _The Elizabethan Translations of Seneca'sTragedies_, Cambridge, 1912. 

[322] _To the Reader_, in _The Georgics translated by A. F. _, London, 1589. 

[323] _Preface_, reprinted in Plessow, _Fabeldichtung in England_, Berlin, 1906. 

[324] _Conclusion_, edition of 1573. 

[325] _Seneca His Ten Tragedies_, 1581, _Dedication_ of Fifth. 

[326] _To the Reader. _

[327] _Agamemnon and Medea_ from edition of 1556, ed. Spearing, 1913, _Preface_ of _Medea_. 

[328] _To the Readers_, prefixed to _Troas_, in Spearing, _The ElizabethanTranslations of Seneca's Tragedies_. 

[329] _A Medicinable Moral, that is, the two books of Horace his satiresEnglished acccording to the prescription of St. Hierome_, London, 1566, _Tothe Reader_. 

[330] _Preface_ to the Earl of Oxford, in _The Abridgment of the Historiesof Trogus Pompeius collected and written in the Latin tongue by Justin_, London, 1563. 

[331] _To the Gentle Reader_, in Phaer's Virgil, 1583. 

[332] _Epistle Dedicatory_ to _A Compendious Form of Living_, quoted inIntroduction to _News out of Powles Churchyard_, reprinted London, 1872, p. Xxx. 

[333] _The Bucolics of Virgil together with his Georgics_, London, 1589, _The Argument_. 

[334] _Preface_ in Gregory Smith, vol. 1, p. 137. 

[335] _The Schoolmaster_, in _Works_, London, 1864, vol. 3, p. 226. 

[336] _To the Reader_, prefixed to translation of _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, 1567. 

[337] _To the Reader_, in _The Elizabethan Translations of Seneca'sTragedies_. 

[338] Stanyhurst's _Aeneid_, in _Arber's Scholar's Library_, p. 5. 

[339] _Ibid. _, _Introduction_, p. Xix, quoted from _The Art of EnglishPoesy_. 

[340] Preface to Greene's _Menaphon_, in Gregory Smith, vol. 1, p. 315. 

[341] _Dedication_, dated 1573, in edition of 1584. 

[342] Gregory Smith, vol. 1, p. 313. 

[343] Dedicated to Cheke. 

[344] See Cheke's Letter in _The Courtier_, Tudor Translations, London, 1900. 

[345] See _Epistle_ prefixed to translation. 

[346] Quoted in _Life_ prefixed to _The Governor_, ed. Croft. 

[347] _Address to Queen Katherine_ prefixed to _Paraphrase_. 

[348] _Address to Katharine_ prefixed to Luke. 

[349] _To the Reader_, in edition of 1564, literally reprinted Boston, Lincolnshire, 1877. 

[350] _To the Reader_, in _Marcus Tullius Cicero's Three Books of Duties_, 1558. 

[351] Translated by Christopher Featherstone, reprinted, Edinburgh, 1844. 

[352] London, 1577. 

[353] _To the Gentlemen Readers_, in _Herodotus_, translated by B. R. , London, 1584. 

[354] _Op. Cit. _

[355] _Dedication_, in edition of 1576, reprinted, ed. Spingarn, Boston, 1914. 

[356] _Preface_, in _Godfrey of Bulloigne_, London, 1594, reprinted inGrosart, _Occasional Issues_, 1881. 

[357] _To the Reader_, in edition of 1549. 

[358] _The Printer to the Reader_, reprinted in _Shakespeare's Library_, 1875. 

[359] _To the Reader. _

[360] See _Works_, ed. Grosart, II, 50. 

[361] _Dedication_, London, 1590. 

[362] _To the Reader_, in _The Iliads of Homer_, Charles Scribner's Sons, p. Xvi. 

[363] P. Xxv. 

[364] P. Xv. 

IV. FROM COWLEY TO POPE

IV

FROM COWLEY TO POPE

Although the ardor of the Elizabethan translator as he approached thevast, almost unbroken field of foreign literature may well awaken theenvy of his modern successor, in many respects the period of Dryden andPope has more claim to be regarded as the Golden Age of the Englishtranslator. Patriotic enthusiasm had, it is true, lost something of itsearlier fire, but national conditions were in general not unfavorable totranslation. Though the seventeenth century, torn by civil discords, wasvery unlike the period which Holland had lovingly described as "thislong time of peace and tranquillity, wherein . . . All good literaturehath had free course and flourished, "[365] yet, despite the rise andfall of governments, the stream of translation flowed on almostuninterruptedly. Sandys' _Ovid_ is presented by its author, after hisvisit to America, as "bred in the New World, of the rudeness whereof itcannot but participate; especially having wars and tumults to bring itto light instead of the Muses, "[366] but the more ordinary translation, bred at home in England during the seventeenth century, apparentlysuffered little from the political strife which surrounded it, while theeighteenth century afforded a "peace and tranquillity" even greater thanthat which had prevailed under Elizabeth. 

Throughout the period translation was regarded as an important labor, deserving of every encouragement. As in the sixteenth century, friendsand patrons united to offer advice and aid to the author who engaged inthis work. Henry Brome, dedicating a translation of Horace to SirWilliam Backhouse, writes of his own share of the volume, "to thetranslation whereof my pleasant retirement and conveniencies at yourdelightsome habitation have liberally contributed. "[367] Doctor BartenHoliday includes in his preface to a version of Juvenal and Persius aninteresting list of "worthy friends" who have assisted him. "My honoredfriend, Mr. John Selden (of such eminency in the studies of antiquitiesand languages) and Mr. Farnaby . . . Procured me a fair copy from thefamous library of St. James's, and a manuscript copy from our herald oflearning, Mr. Camden. My dear friend, the patriarch of our poets, BenJonson, sent in an ancient manuscript partly written in the Saxoncharacter. " Then follow names of less note, Casaubon, Anyan, Price. [368]Dryden tells the same story. He has been permitted to consult the Earlof Lauderdale's manuscript translation of Virgil. "Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable, " he writes, "Mr. Congreve has done me thefavor to review the _Aeneis_, and compare my version with theoriginal. "[369] Later comes his recognition of indebtedness of a morematerial character. "Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir WilliamBowyer, to Denham Court, I translated the First Georgic at his house, and the greatest part of the last Aeneid. A more friendly entertainmentno man ever found. . . . The Seventh Aeneid was made English at Burleigh, the magnificent abode of the Earl of Exeter. "[370]

While private individuals thus rallied to the help of the translator, the world in general regarded his work with increasing respect. Thegreat Dryden thought it not unworthy of his powers to engage in puttingclassical verse into English garb. His successor Pope early turned tothe same pleasant and profitable task. Johnson, the literary dictator ofthe next age, described Rowe's version of Lucan as "one of the greatestproductions of English poetry. "[371] The comprehensive editions of theworks of British poets which began to appear towards the end of theeighteenth century regularly included English renderings, generallycontemporaneous, of the great poetry of other countries. 

The growing dignity of this department of literature and the Augustanfondness for literary criticism combined to produce a large body ofcomment on methods of translation. The more ambitious translations ofthe eighteenth century, for example, were accompanied by long prefaces, containing, in addition to the elaborate paraphernalia of contemporaryscholarship, detailed discussion of the best rules for putting a foreignclassic into English. Almost every possible phase of the art had beenbroached in one place and another before the century ended. In its lastdecade there appeared the first attempt in English at a complete anddetailed treatment of the theory of translation as such, Tytler's _Essayon the Principles of Translation_. 

From the sixteenth-century theory of translation, so much of which isincidental and uncertain in expression, it is a pleasure to come to thedeliberate, reasoned statements, unmistakable in their purpose andmeaning, of the earlier critics of our period, men like Denham, Cowley, and Dryden. In contrast to the mass of unrelated individual opinionsattached to the translations of Elizabeth's time, the criticism of theseventeenth century emanates, for the most part, from a small group ofmen, who supply standards for lesser commentators and who, if they donot invariably agree with one another, are yet thoroughly familiar withone another's views. The field of discussion also has narrowedconsiderably, and theory has gained by becoming less scattering. Translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed certainnew developments, the most marked of which was the tendency amongtranslators who aspired to the highest rank to confine their efforts toverse renderings of the Greek and Latin classics. A favorite remark wasthat it is the greatest poet who suffers most in being turned from onelanguage into another. In spite of this, or perhaps for this reason, thecommon ambition was to undertake Virgil, who was generally regarded asthe greatest of epic poets, and attempts to translate at least a part ofthe _Aeneid_ were astonishingly frequent. As early as 1658 the FourthBook is described as "translated . . . In our day at least ten times intoEnglish. "[372] Horace came next in popularity; by the beginning of theeighteenth century, according to one translator, he had been"translated, paraphrased, or criticized on by persons of all conditionsand both sexes. "[373] As the century progressed, Homer usurped the placeformerly occupied by Virgil as the object of the most ambitious effortand the center of discussion. But there were other translations of theclassics. Cooke, dedicating his translation of Hesiod to the Duke ofArgyll, says to his patron: "You, my lord, know how the works of geniuslift up the head of a nation above her neighbors, and give as much honoras success in arms; among these we must reckon our translations of theclassics; by which when we have naturalized all Greece and Rome, weshall be so much richer than they by so many original productions as wehave of our own. "[374] Seemingly there was an attempt to naturalize "allGreece and Rome. " Anacreon, Pindar, Apollonius Rhodius, Lucretius, Tibullus, Statius, Juvenal, Persius, Ovid, Lucan, are names taken almostat random from the list of seventeenth and eighteenth-centurytranslations. Criticism, however, was ready to concern itself with thetranslation of any classic, ancient or modern. Denham's two famouspronouncements are connected, the one with his own translation of theSecond Book of the _Aeneid_, the other with Sir Richard Fanshaw'srendering of _Il Pastor Fido_. In the later eighteenth centuryvoluminous comment accompanied Hoole's _Ariosto_ and Mickle's _Camoens_. 

At present, however, we are concerned not with the number and variety ofthese translations, but with their homogeneity. As translators showedthemselves less inclined to wander over the whole field of literature, the theory of translation assumed much more manageable proportions. Afurther limitation of the area of discussion was made by Denham, whoexpressly excluded from his consideration "them who deal in matters offact or matters of faith, "[375] thus disposing of the theologicaltreatises which had formerly divided attention with the classics. 

The aims of the translator were also clarified by definition of hisaudience. John Vicars, publishing in 1632 _The XII. Aeneids of Virgiltranslated into English decasyllables_, adduces as one of his motives"the common good and public utility which I hoped might accrue to youngstudents and grammatical tyros, "[376] but later writers seldom repeatthis appeal to the learner. The next year John Brinsley issued _Virgil'sEclogues, with his book De Apibus, translated grammatically, and alsoaccording to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar andthe verse will permit_. A significant comment in the "Directions" runs:"As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceitwhich arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intendedfor this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in timedrive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the mindsof all. " Apparently the schoolmaster's ban upon the unauthorized use oftranslations was establishing the distinction between the Englishversion which might claim to be ranked as literature and that whichJohnson later designated as "the clandestine refuge of schoolboys. "[377]

Another limitation of the audience was, however, less admirable. For thewidely democratic appeal of the Elizabethan translator was substitutedan appeal to a class, distinguished, if one may believe the philosopherHobbes, as much by social position as by intellect. In discussing thevocabulary to be employed by the translator, Hobbes professes opinionsnot unlike those of the sixteenth-century critics. Like Puttenham, hemakes a distinction between words as suited or unsuited for the epicstyle. "The names of instruments and tools of artificers, and words ofart, " he says in the preface to his _Homer_, "though of use in theschools, are far from being fit to be spoken by a hero. He may delightin the arts themselves, and have skill in some of them, but his glorylies not in that, but in courage, nobility, and other virtues of nature, or in the command he has over other men. " In Hobbes' objection to theuse of unfamiliar words, also, there is nothing new; but in thestandards by which he tries such terms there is something amusinglycharacteristic of his time. In the choice of words, "the firstindiscretion is in the use of such words as to the readers of poesy(which are commonly Persons of the best Quality)"--it is only fair toreproduce Hobbes' capitalization--"are not sufficiently known. For thework of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for threevirtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the reading whereof women no lessthan men have a just pretence though their skill in language be not souniversal. And therefore foreign words, till by long use they becomevulgar, are unintelligible to them. " Dryden is similarly restrained bythe thought of his readers. He does not try to reproduce the "Doricdialect" of Theocritus, "for Theocritus writ to Sicilians, who spokethat dialect; and I direct this part of my translations to our ladies, who neither understand, nor will take pleasure in such homelyexpressions. "[378] In translating the _Aeneid_ he follows what heconceives to have been Virgil's practice. "I will not give the reasons, "he declares, "why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say thatVirgil has avoided those properties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, etc. , but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have beenbetter bred than to be too nicely knowing in such things. "[379]

Another element in theory which displays the strength and weakness ofthe time is the treatment of the work of other countries and otherperiods. A changed attitude towards the achievements of foreigntranslators becomes evident early in the seventeenth century. In theprefaces to an edition of the works of Du Bartas in English there aresigns of a growing satisfaction with the English language as a mediumand an increasing conviction that England can surpass the rest of Europein the work of translation. Thomas Hudson, in an address to James VI ofScotland, attached to his translation of _The History of Judith_, quotesan interesting conversation which he held on one occasion with thatpedantic monarch. "It pleased your Highness, " he recalls, "not only toesteem the peerless style of the Greek Homer and the Latin Virgil to beinimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted), but also toallege (partly through delight your majesty took in the haughty style ofthose most famous writers, and partly to sound the opinion of others)that also the lofty phrases, the grave inditement, the facund terms ofthe French Salust (for the like resemblance) could not be followed norsufficiently expressed in our rough and unpolished Englishlanguage. "[380] It was to prove that he could reproduce the French poet"succinctly and sensibly in our vulgar speech" that Hudson undertook the_Judith_. According to the complimentary verses addressed to the famousSylvester on his translations from the same author, the English tonguehas responded nobly to the demands put upon it. Sylvester has shown

 . . . That French tongue's plenty to be such. And yet that ours can utter full as much. [381]

John Davies of Hereford, writing of another of Sylvester's translations, describes English as acquitting itself well when it competes withFrench, and continues

 If French to English were so strictly bound It would but passing lamely strive with it; And soon be forc'd to lose both grace and ground, Although they strove with equal skill and wit. [382]

An opinion characteristic of the latter part of the century is that ofthe Earl of Roscommon, who, after praising the work of the earlierFrench translators, says, From hence our generous emulation came, We undertook, and we performed the same: But now we show the world another way, And in translated verse do more than they. [383]

Dryden finds little to praise in the French and Italian renderings ofVirgil. "Segrais . . . Is wholly destitute of elevation, though hisversion is much better than that of the two brothers, or any of the restwho have attempted Virgil. Hannibal Caro is a great name among theItalians; yet his translation is most scandalously mean. "[384] "What Ihave said, " he declares somewhat farther on, "though it has the face ofarrogance, yet is intended for the honor of my country; and therefore Iwill boldly own that this English translation has more of Virgil'sspirit in it than either the French or Italian. "[385]

On translators outside their own period seventeenth-century criticsbestowed even less consideration than on their French or Italiancontemporaries. Earlier writers were forgotten, or remembered only to becondemned. W. L. , Gent. , who in 1628 published a translation of Virgil's_Eclogues_, expresses his surprise that a poet like Virgil "should yetstand still as a _noli me tangere_, whom no man either durst or wouldundertake; only Master Spenser long since translated the _Gnat_ (alittle fragment of Virgil's excellence), giving the world peradventureto conceive that he would at one time or other have gone through withthe rest of this poet's work. "[386] Vicars' translation of the _Aeneid_is accompanied by a letter in which the author's cousin, Thomas Vicars, congratulates him on his "great pains in transplanting this worthiest ofLatin poets into a mellow and neat English soil (a thing not donebefore). "[387] Denham announces, "There are so few translations whichdeserve praise, that I scarce ever saw any which deserved pardon; thosewho travail in that kind being for the most part so unhappy as to robothers without enriching themselves, pulling down the fame of goodauthors without raising their own. " Brome, [388] writing in 1666, rejoices in the good fortune of Horace's "good friend Virgil . . . Whobeing plundered of all his ornaments by the old translators, wasrestored to others with double lustre by those standard-bearers of witand judgment, Denham and Waller, "[389] and in proof of his statementsputs side by side translations of the same passage by Phaer and Denham. Later, in 1688, an anonymous writer recalls the work of Phaer andStanyhurst only to disparage it. Introducing his translation of Virgil, "who has so long unhappily continued a stranger to tolerable English, "he says that he has "observed how _Player_ and _Stainhurst_ of old . . . Had murdered the most absolute of poets. "[390] One dissenting note isfound in Robert Gould's lines prefixed to a 1687 edition of Fairfax's_Godfrey of Bulloigne_. 

 See here, you dull translators, look with shame Upon this stately monument of fame, And to amaze you more, reflect how long It is, since first 'twas taught the English tongue: In what a dark age it was brought to light; Dark? No, our age is dark, and that was bright. Of all these versions which now brightest shine, Most, Fairfax, are but foils to set off thine: Ev'n Horace can't of too much justice boast, His unaffected, easy style is lost: And Ogilby's the lumber of the stall; But thy translation does atone for all. [391]

Dryden, too, approves of Fairfax, considered at least as a metrist. Heincludes him with Spenser among the "great masters of our language, " andadds, "many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that hederived the harmony of his numbers from _Godfrey of Bulloign_, which wasturned into English by Mr. Fairfax. "[392] But even Dryden, who sometimessaw beyond his own period, does not share the admiration which some ofhis friends entertain for Chapman. "The Earl of Mulgrave and Mr. Waller, " he writes in the _Examen Poeticum_, "two of the best judges ofour age, have assured me that they could never read over the translationof Chapman without incredible pleasure and extreme transport. Thisadmiration of theirs must needs proceed from the author himself, for thetranslator has thrown him down as far as harsh numbers, improperEnglish, and a monstrous length of verse could carry him. "[393]

In this satisfaction with their own country and their own era therelurked certain dangers for seventeenth-century writers. The qualitybecomes, as we shall see, more noticeable in the eighteenth century, when the shackles which English taste laid upon original poetry wereimposed also upon translated verse. The theory of translation washampered in its development by the narrow complacency of its exponents, and the record of this time is by no means one of uniform progress. Theseventeenth century shows clearly marked alternations of opinion; now itsanctions extreme methods; now, by reaction, it inclines towards moremoderate views. The eighteenth century, during the greater part of itscourse, produces little that is new in the way of theory, and adopts, without much attempt to analyze them, the formulas left by the precedingperiod. We may now resume the history of these developments at the pointwhere it was dropped in Chapter III, at the end of Elizabeth's reign. 

In the first part of the new century the few minor translators whodescribed their methods held theories much like those of Chapman. W. L. , Gent. , in the extremely flowery and discursive preface to his version ofVirgil's _Eclogues_, says, "Some readers I make no doubt they (thetranslations) will meet with in these dainty mouthed times, that willtax me with not coming resolved word for word and line for line with theauthor. . . . I used the freedom of a translator, not tying myself to thetyranny of a grammatical construction but breaking the shell into manypieces, was only careful to preserve the kernel safe and whole from theviolence of a wrong or wrested interpretation. " After a long similedrawn from the hunting field he concludes, "No more do I conceive mycourse herein to be faulty though I do not affect to follow my author soclose as to tread upon his heels. " John Vicars, who professes to haverobed Virgil in "a homespun English gray-coat plain, " says of hismanner, "I have aimed at these three things, perspicuity of the matter, fidelity to the author, and facility or smoothness to recreate thee myreader. Now if any critical or curious wit tax me with a _Frustra fitper plura &c. _ and blame my not curious confinement to my author linefor line, I answer (and I hope this answer will satisfy the moderate andingenuous) that though peradventure I could (as in my Babel's Balm Ihave done throughout the whole translation) yet in regard of the loftymajesty of this my author's style, I would not adventure so to pinch hisspirits, as to make him seem to walk like a lifeless ghost. But onthinking on that of Horace, _Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio_, Ipresumed (yet still having an eye to the genuine sense as I was able)to expatiate with poetical liberty, where necessity of matter and phraseenforced. " Vicars' warrant for his practice is the oftquoted caution ofHorace, _Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere_. 

But the seventeenth century was not disposed to continue uninterruptedlythe tradition of previous translators. In translated, as in originalverse a new era was to begin, acclaimed as such in its own day, andassociated like the new poetry, with the names of Denham and Cowley asboth poets and critics and with that of Waller as poet. Peculiarlycharacteristic of the movement was its hostility towards literaltranslation, a hostility apparent also, as we have seen, in Chapman. "Iconsider it a vulgar error in translating poets, " writes Denham in thepreface to his _Destruction of Troy_, "to affect being Fidus Interpres, "and again in his lines to Fanshaw:

 That servile path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word by word, and line by line. Those are the labored births of slavish brains, Not the effect of poetry but pains; Cheap, vulgar arts, whose narrowness affords No flight for thoughts, but poorly sticks at words. 

Sprat is anxious to claim for Cowley much of the credit for introducing"this way of leaving verbal translations and chiefly regarding the senseand genius of the author, " which "was scarce heard of in England beforethis present age. "[394]

Why Chapman and later translators should have fixed upon extremeliteralness as the besetting fault of their predecessors andcontemporaries, it is hard to see. It is true that the recognition ofthe desirability of faithfulness to the original was the mostdistinctive contribution that sixteenth-century critics made to thetheory of translation, but this principle was largely associated withprose renderings of a different type from that now under discussion. If, like Denham, one excludes "matters of fact and matters of faith, "the body of translation which remains is scarcely distinguished byslavish adherence to the letter. As a matter of fact, however, sixteenth-century translation was obviously an unfamiliar field to mostseventeenth-century commentators, and although their generalizationsinclude all who have gone before them, their illustrations are usuallydrawn from the early part of their own century. Ben Jonson, whosetranslation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_ is cited by Dryden as anexample of "metaphrase, or turning an author word by word and line byline from one language to another, "[395] is perhaps largely responsiblefor the mistaken impression regarding the earlier translators. ThomasMay and George Sandys are often included in the same category. Sandys'translation of Ovid is regarded by Dryden as typical of its time. Itsliteralism, its resulting lack of poetry, "proceeded from the wrongjudgment of the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse norloved it; they were scholars, 'tis true, but they were pedants; and forall their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translatedinto English. "[396]

But neither Jonson, Sandys, nor May has much to say with regard to theproper methods of translation. The most definite utterance of the groupis found in the lines which Jonson addressed to May on his translationof Lucan:

 But who hath them interpreted, and brought Lucan's whole frame unto us, and so wrought As not the smallest joint or gentlest word In the great mass or machine there is stirr'd? The self same genius! so the world will say The sun translated, or the son of May. [397]

May's own preface says nothing of his theories. Sandys says of his Ovid, "To the translation I have given what perfection my pen could bestow, bypolishing, altering, or restoring the harsh, improper, or mistaken witha nicer exactness than perhaps is required in so long a labor, "[398] acomment open to various interpretations. His metrical version of thePsalms is described as "paraphrastically translated, " and it is worthyof note that Cowley, in his attack on the practice of too literaltranslation, should have chosen this part of Sandys' work asillustrative of the methods which he condemns. For the translators ofthe new school, though professedly the foes of the word for word method, carried their hostility to existing theories of translation muchfarther. Cowley begins, reasonably enough, by pointing out the absurdityof translating a poet literally. "If a man should undertake to translatePindar word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translatedanother; as may appear when a person who understands not the originalreads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothingseems more raving. . . . And I would gladly know what applause our bestpieces of English poesy could expect from a Frenchman or Italian, ifconverted faithfully and word for word into French or Italianprose. "[399] But, ignoring the possibility of a reasonable regard forboth the original and the English, such as had been advocated by Chapmanor by minor translators like W. L. And Vicars, Cowley suggests a moreradical method. Since of necessity much of the beauty of a poem is lostin translation, the translator must supply new beauties. "For menresolving in no case to shoot beyond the mark, " he says, "it is athousand to one if they shoot not short of it. " "We must needs confessthat after all these losses sustained by Pindar, all we can add to himby our wit or invention (not deserting still his subject) is not likelyto make him a richer man than he was in his own country. " Finally comesa definite statement of Cowley's method: "Upon this ground I have inthese two Odes of Pindar taken, left out and added what I please; normake it so much my aim to let the reader know precisely what he spoke aswhat was his way and manner of speaking, which has not been yet (that Iknow of) introduced into English, though it be the noblest and highestkind of writing in verse. " Denham, in his lines on Fanshaw's translationof Guarini, had already approved of a similar method:

 A new and nobler way thou dost pursue To make translations and translators too. They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame, True to his sense, but truer to his fame. Feeding his current, where thou find'st it low Let'st in thine own to make it rise and flow; Wisely restoring whatsoever grace Is lost by change of times, or tongues, or place. 

Denham, however, justifies the procedure for reasons which must have hadtheir appeal for the translator who was conscious of real creativepower. "Poesy, " he says in the preface to his translation from the_Aeneid_, "is of so subtle a spirit that in the pouring out of onelanguage into another it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be notadded in transfusion, there will remain nothing but a _caput mortuum_. "The new method, which Cowley is willing to designate as _imitation_ ifthe critics refuse to it the name of translation, is described by Drydenwith his usual clearness. "I take imitation of an author in theirsense, " he says, "to be an endeavor of a later poet to write like onewho has written before him, on the same subject; that is, not totranslate his words, or be confined to his sense, but only to set him asa pattern, and to write as he supposes that author would have done, hadhe lived in our age, and in our country. "[400]

Yet, after all, the new fashion was far from revolutionizing either thetheory or the practice of translation. Dryden says of Denham that "headvised more liberty than he took himself, " and of both Denham andCowley, "I dare not say that either of them have carried this libertineway of rendering authors (as Mr Cowley calls it) so far as my definitionreaches; for in the _Pindaric Odes_ the customs and ceremonies ofancient Greece are still observed. "[401] In the theory of the lessdistinguished translators of the second and third quarters of thecentury, the influence of Denham and Cowley shows itself, if at all, inthe claim to have translated paraphrastically and the complacency withwhich translators describe their practice as "new, " a condition ofthings which might have prevailed without the intervention of the methodof imitation. About the year 1680 there comes a definite reactionagainst too great liberty in the treatment of foreign authors. ThomasCreech, defining what may justly be expected of the translator ofHorace, says, "If the sense of the author is delivered, the variety ofexpression kept (which I must despair of after Quintillian hath assuredus that he is most happily bold in his words) and his fancy notdebauched (for I cannot think myself able to improve Horace) 'tis allthat can be expected from a version. "[402] After quoting with approvalwhat Cowley has said of the inadequacy of any translation, he continues:"'Tis true he (Cowley) improves this consideration, and urges it asconcluding against all strict and faithful versions, in which I must begleave to dissent, thinking it better to convey down the learning of theancients than their empty sound suited to the present times, and showthe age their whole substance, rather than their ghost embodied in somelight air of my own. " An anonymous writer presents a group of criticswho are disgusted with contemporary fashions in translation and wish togo back to those which prevailed in the early part of the century. [403]

 Acer, incensed, exclaimed against the age, Said some of our new poets had of late Set up a lazy fashion to translate, Speak authors how they please, and if they call Stuff they make paraphrase, that answers all. Pedantic verse, effeminately smooth, Racked through all little rules of art to soothe, The soft'ned age industriously compile, Main wit and cripple fancy all the while. A license far beyond poetic use Not to translate old authors but abuse The wit of Romans; and their lofty sense Degrade into new poems made from thence, Disguise old Rome in our new eloquence. 

Aesculape shares the opinion of Acer. 

 And thought it fit wits should be more confined To author's sense, and to their periods too, Must leave out nothing, every sense must do, And though they cannot render verse for verse, Yet every period's sense they must rehearse. 

Finally Metellus, speaking for the group, orders Laelius, one of theirnumber, to translate the Fourth Book of the _Aeneid_, keeping himself indue subordination to Virgil. 

 We all bid then translate it the old way Not a-la-mode, but like George Sandys or May; Show Virgil's every period, not steal sense To make up a new-fashioned poem thence. 

Other translators, though not defending the literal method, do notadvocate imitation. Roscommon, in the _Essay on Translated Verse_, demands fidelity to the substance of the original when he says, The genuine sense, intelligibly told, Shows a translator both discreet and bold. Excursions are inexpiably bad, And 'tis much safer to leave out than add, but, unlike Phaer, he forbids the omission of difficult passages:

 Abstruse and mystic thoughts you must express, With painful care and seeming easiness. 

Dryden considers the whole situation in detail. [404] He admires Cowley's_Pindaric Odes_ and admits that both Pindar and his translator do notcome under ordinary rules, but he fears the effect of Cowley's example"when writers of unequal parts to him shall imitate so bold anundertaking, " and believes that only a poet so "wild and ungovernable"as Pindar justifies the method of Cowley. "If Virgil, or Ovid, or anyregular intelligible authors be thus used, 'tis no longer to be calledtheir work, when neither the thoughts nor words are drawn from theoriginal; but instead of them there is something new produced, which isalmost the creation of another hand. . . . He who is inquisitive to know anauthor's thoughts will be disappointed in his expectation; and 'tis notalways that a man will be contented to have a present made him, when heexpects the payment of a debt. To state it fairly; imitation is the mostadvantageous way for a translator to show himself, but the greatestwrong which can be done to the memory and reputation of the dead. "

Though imitation was not generally accepted as a standard method oftranslation, certain elements in the theory of Denham and Cowleyremained popular throughout the seventeenth and even the eighteenthcentury. A favorite comment in the complimentary verses attached totranslations is the assertion that the translator has not only equaledbut surpassed his original. An extreme example of this is Dryden'sfatuous reference to the Earl of Mulgrave's translation of Ovid:

 How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear His fame augmented by an English peer, How he embellishes his Helen's loves, Outdoes his softness, and his sense improves. [405]

His earlier lines to Sir Robert Howard on the latter's translation ofthe _Achilleis_ of Statius are somewhat less bald:

 To understand how much we owe to you, We must your numbers with your author's view; Then shall we see his work was lamely rough, Each figure stiff as if designed in buff; His colours laid so thick on every place, As only showed the paint, but hid the face; But as in perspective we beauties see Which in the glass, not in the picture be, So here our sight obligingly mistakes That wealth which his your bounty only makes. Thus vulgar dishes are by cooks disguised, More for their dressing than their substance prized. [406]

It was especially in cases where the original lacked smoothness andperspicuity, the qualities which appealed most strongly to the century, that the claim to improvement was made. Often, however, it wasassociated with notably accurate versions. Cartwright calls upon thereaders of Holiday's _Persius_, who when they shall view How truly with thine author thou dost pace, How hand in hand ye go, what equal grace Thou dost observe with him in every term, They cannot but, if just, justly affirm That did your times as do your lines agree, He might be thought to have translated thee, But that he's darker, not so strong; wherein Thy greater art more clearly may be seen, Which does thy Persius' cloudy storms display With lightning and with thunder; both which lay Couched perchance in him, but wanted force To break, or light from darkness to divorce, Till thine exhaled skill compressed it so, That forced the clouds to break, the light to show, The thunder to be heard. That now each child Can prattle what was meant; whilst thou art styled Of all, with titles of true dignity For lofty phrase and perspicuity. [407]

J. A. Addresses Lucretius in lines prefixed to Creech's translation, But Lord, how much you're changed, how much improv'd! Your native roughness all is left behind, But still the same good man tho' more refin'd, [408]

and Otway says to the translator:

 For when the rich original we peruse, And by it try the metal you produce, Though there indeed the purest ore we find, Yet still by you it something is refined; Thus when the great Lucretius gives a loose And lashes to her speed his fiery Muse, Still with him you maintain an equal pace, And bear full stretch upon him all the race; But when in rugged way we find him rein His verse, and not so smooth a stroke maintain, There the advantage he receives is found, By you taught temper, and to choose his ground. [409]

So authoritative a critic as Roscommon, however, seems to opposeattempts at improvement when he writes, Your author always will the best advise, Fall when he falls, and when he rises, rise, a precept which Tytler, writing at the end of the next century, considers the one doubtful rule in _The Essay on Translated Verse_. "Farfrom adopting the former part of this maxim, " he declares, "I considerit to be the duty of a poetical translator, never to suffer his originalto fall. He must maintain with him a perpetual contest of genius; hemust attend him in his highest flights, and soar, if he can, beyond him:and when he perceives, at any time a diminution of his powers, when hesees a drooping wing, he must raise him on his own pinions. "[410]

The influence of Denham and Cowley is also seen in what is perhaps themost significant element in the seventeenth-century theory oftranslation. These men advocated freedom in translation, not becausesuch freedom would give the translator a greater opportunity to displayhis own powers, but because it would enable him to reproduce more trulythe spirit of the original. A good translator must, first of all, knowhis author intimately. Where Denham's expressions are fuller thanVirgil's, they are, he says, "but the impressions which the oftenreading of him hath left upon my thoughts. " Possessing this intimateacquaintance, the English writer must try to think and write as if hewere identified with his author. Dryden, who, in spite of his generalprinciples, sometimes practised something uncommonly like imitation, says in the preface to _Sylvae_: "I must acknowledge that I have manytimes exceeded my commission; for I have both added and omitted, andeven sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my authors as noDutch commentator will forgive me. . . . Where I have enlarged them, Idesire the false critics would not always think that those thoughts arewholly mine, but either that they are secretly in the poet, or may befairly deduced from him; or at least, if both these considerationsshould fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he wereliving, and an Englishman, they are such as he would probably havewritten. "[411]

By a sort of irony the more faithful translator came in time torecognize this as one of the precepts of his art, and sometimes to useit as an argument against too much liberty. The Earl of Roscommon saysin the preface to his translation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_, "I havekept as close as I could both to the meaning and the words of theauthor, and done nothing but what I believe he would forgive if he werealive; and I have often asked myself this question. " Dryden follows hisprotest against imitation by saying: "Nor must we understand thelanguage only of the poet, but his particular turn of thoughts andexpression, which are the characters that distinguish, and, as it were, individuate him from all other writers. When we come thus far, 'tistime to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to give histhought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or if not, tovary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance. "[412] Suchfaithfulness, according to Dryden, involves the appreciation and thereproduction of the qualities in an author which distinguish him fromothers, or, to use his own words, "the maintaining the character of anauthor which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appearthat individual poet whom you would interpret. "[413] Dryden thinks thatEnglish translators have not sufficiently recognized the necessity forthis. "For example, not only the thoughts, but the style andversification of Virgil and Ovid are very different: yet I see, even inour best poets who have translated some parts of them, that they haveconfounded their several talents, and, by endeavoring only at thesweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them so much alike that, ifI did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by thecopies which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was objected against alate noble painter that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of themwere like. And this happened because he always studied himself more thanthose who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish thehand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet fromanother. "

But critics recognized that study and pains alone could not furnish thetranslator for his work. "To be a thorough translator, " says Dryden, "hemust be a thorough poet, "[414] or to put it, as does Roscommon, somewhatmore mildly, he must by nature possess the more essentialcharacteristics of his author. Admitting this, Creech writes with aslight air of apology, "I cannot choose but smile to think that I, whohave . . . Too little ill nature (for that is commonly thought anecessary ingredient) to be a satirist, should venture uponHorace. "[415] Dryden finds by experience that he can more easilytranslate a poet akin to himself. His translations of Ovid please him. "Whether it be the partiality of an old man to his youngest child I knownot; but they appear to me the best of all my endeavors in this kind. Perhaps this poet is more easy to be translated than some others whom Ihave lately attempted; perhaps, too, he was more according to mygenius. "[416] He looks forward with pleasure to putting the whole of the_Iliad_ into English. "And this I dare assure the world beforehand, thatI have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil, though Isay not the translation will be less laborious; for the Grecian is moreaccording to my genius than the Latin poet. "[417] The insistence on thenecessity for kinship between the author and the translator is theprincipal idea in Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_. According toRoscommon, Each poet with a different talent writes, One praises, one instructs, another bites. Horace could ne'er aspire to epic bays, Nor lofty Maro stoop to lyric lays. 

This, then, is his advice to the would-be translator:

 Examine how your humour is inclined, And which the ruling passion of your mind; Then, seek a poet who your way does bend, And choose an author as you choose a friend. United by this sympathetic bond, You grow familiar, intimate, and fond; Your thoughts, your words, your styles, your souls agree, No longer his interpreter but he. 

Though the plea of reproducing the spirit of the original was sometimesmade a pretext for undue latitude, it is evident that there was here animportant contribution to the theory of translation. In another respect, also, the consideration of metrical effects, the seventeenth centuryshows some advance, --an advance, however, which must be laid chiefly tothe credit of Dryden. Apparently there was no tendency towardsinnovation and experiment in the matter of verse forms. Seventeenth-century translators, satisfied with the couplet and kindredmeasures, did not consider, as the Elizabethans had done, thepossibility of introducing classical metres. Creech says of Horace, "'Tis certain our language is not capable of the numbers of thepoet, "[418] and leaves the matter there. Holiday says of his translationof the same poet: "But many, no doubt, will say Horace is by meforsaken, his lyric softness and emphatical Muse maimed; that there is ageneral defection from his genuine harmony. Those I must tell, I have inthis translation rather sought his spirit than numbers; yet the music ofverse not neglected neither, since the English ear better heareth thedistich, and findeth that sweetness and air which the Latin affectethand (questionless) attaineth in sapphics or iambic measures. "[419]Dryden frequently complains of the difficulty of translation intoEnglish metre, especially when the poet to be translated is Virgil. Theuse of rhyme causes trouble. It "is certainly a constraint even to thebest poets, and those who make it with most ease. . . . What it adds tosweetness, it takes away from sense; and he who loses the least by itmay be called a gainer. It often makes us swerve from an author'smeaning; as, if a mark be set up for an archer at a great distance, lethim aim as exactly as he can, the least wind will take his arrow, anddivert it from the white. "[420] The line of the heroic couplet is notlong enough to reproduce the hexameter, and Virgil is especiallysuccinct. "To make him copious is to alter his character; and totranslate him line for line is impossible, because the Latin isnaturally a more succinct language than either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its monosyllables, is far the most compendious of them. Virgil is much the closest of anyRoman poet, and the Latin hexameter has more feet than the Englishheroic. "[421] Yet though Dryden admits that Caro, the Italiantranslator, who used blank verse, made his task easier thereby, he doesnot think of abandoning the couplet for any of the verse forms whichearlier translators had tried. He finds Chapman's _Homer_ characterizedby "harsh numbers . . . And a monstrous length of verse, " and thinks hisown period "a much better age than was the last . . . For versificationand the art of numbers. "[422] Roscommon, whose version of Horace's _Artof Poetry_ is in blank verse, says that Jonson's translation lacksclearness as a result not only of his literalness but of "the constraintof rhyme, "[423] but makes no further attack on the couplet as theregular vehicle for translation. 

Dryden, however, is peculiarly interested in the general effect of hisverse as compared with that of his originals. "I have attempted, " hesays in the _Examen Poeticum_, "to restore Ovid to his native sweetness, easiness, and smoothness, and to give my poetry a kind of cadence and, as we call it, a run of verse, as like the original as the English cancome to the Latin. "[424] In his study of Virgil previous to translatingthe _Aeneid_ he observed "above all, the elegance of his expressionsand the harmony of his numbers. "[425] Elsewhere he says of his author, "His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears whosesense it bears, yet the numbers are perpetually varied to increase thedelight of the reader; so that the same sounds are never repeated twicetogether. "[426] These metrical effects he has tried to reproduce inEnglish. "The turns of his verse, his breakings, his numbers, and hisgravity, I have as far imitated as the poverty of our language and thehastiness of my performance would allow, " he says in the preface to_Sylvae_. [427] In his translation of the whole _Aeneid_ he was guided bythe same considerations. "Virgil . . . Is everywhere elegant, sweet, andflowing in his hexameters. His words are not only chosen, but the placesin which he ranks them for the sound. He who removes them from thestation wherein their master set them spoils the harmony. What he saysof the Sibyl's prophecies may be as properly applied to every word ofhis: they must be read in order as they lie; the least breathdiscomposes them and somewhat of their divinity is lost. I cannot boastthat I have been thus exact in my verses; but I have endeavored tofollow the example of my master, and am the first Englishman, perhaps, who made it his design to copy him in his numbers, his choice of words, and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound. On this lastconsideration I have shunned the _caesura_ as much as possibly I could:for, wherever that is used, it gives a roughness to the verse; of whichwe have little need in a language which is overstocked withconsonants. "[428] Views like these contribute much to an adequateconception of what faithfulness in translation demands. 

From the lucid, intelligent comment of Dryden it is disappointing toturn to the body of doctrine produced by his successors. In spite of thewidespread interest in translation during the eighteenth century, littleprogress was made in formulating the theory of the art, and many of thevoluminous prefaces of translators deserve the criticism which Johnsonapplied to Garth, "his notions are half-formed. " So far as concerns thegeneral method of translation, the principles laid down by critics areoften mere repetitions of the conclusions already reached in thepreceding century. Most theorists were ready to adopt Dryden's view thatthe translator should strike a middle course between the very free andthe very close method. Put into words by a recognized authority, soreasonable an opinion could hardly fail of acceptance. It appealed tothe eighteenth-century mind as adequate, and more than one translator, professing to give rules for translation, merely repeated in his ownwords what Dryden had already said. Garth declares in the prefacecondemned by Johnson: "Translation is commonly either verbal, aparaphrase, or an imitation. . . . The manner that seems most suitable forthis present undertaking is neither to follow the author too close outof a critical timorousness, nor abandon him too wantonly through apoetic boldness. The original should always be kept in mind, without tooapparent a deviation from the sense. Where it is otherwise, it is not aversion but an imitation. "[429] Grainger says in the introduction to his_Tibullus_: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because alwaysdestitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to anauthor's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the otherhand, a too wanton departure from the letter often varies the sense andalters the manner. The translator chose the middle way, and meantneither to tread on the heels of Tibullus nor yet to lose sight ofhim. "[430] The preface to Fawkes' _Theocritus_ harks back to Dryden: "Atoo faithful translation, Mr. Dryden says, must be a pedantic one. . . . And as I have not endeavored to give a verbal translation, so neitherhave I indulged myself in a rash paraphrase, which always loses thespirit of an ancient by degenerating into the modern manners ofexpression. "[431]

Yet behind these well-sounding phrases there lay, one suspects, littlevigorous thought. Both the clarity and the honesty which belong toDryden's utterances are absent from much of the comment of theeighteenth century. The apparent judicial impartiality of Garth, Fawkes, Grainger, and their contemporaries disappears on closer examination. Inreality the balance of opinion in the time of Pope and Johnson inclinesvery perceptibly in favor of freedom. Imitation, it is true, soon ceasesto enter into the discussion of translation proper, but literalism isattacked again and again, till one is ready to ask, with Dryden, "Whodefends it?" Mickle's preface to _The Lusiad_ states with unusualfrankness what was probably the underlying idea in most of the theory ofthe time. Writing "not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasureis to see what the author exactly says, " but "to give a poem that mightlive in the English language, " Mickle puts up a vigorous defense of hismethods. "Literal translation of poetry, " he insists, "is a solecism. You may construe your author, indeed, but if with some translators youboast that you have left your author to speak for himself, that you haveneither added nor diminished, you have in reality grossly abused him, and deceived yourself. Your literal translations can have no claim tothe original felicities of expression, the energy, elegance, and fire ofthe original poetry. It may bear, indeed, a resemblance, but such anone as a corpse in the sepulchre bears to the former man, when he movedin the bloom and vigor of life. 

 Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere, fidus Interpres--

was the taste of the Augustan age. None but a poet can translate a poet. The freedom which this precept gives will, therefore, in a poet's hands, not only infuse the energy, elegance, and fire of the author's poetryinto his own version, but will give it also the spirit of anoriginal. "[432] A similarly clear statement of the real facts of thesituation appears in Johnson's remarks on translators. His test for atranslation is its readability, and to attain this quality he thinks itpermissible for the translator to improve on his author. "To a thousandcavils, " he writes in the course of his comments on Pope's _Homer_, "oneanswer is necessary; the purpose of a writer is to be read, and thecriticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blownaside. "[433] The same view comes forward in his estimate of Cowley'swork. "The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted thedecoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly moreamiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declaretheir own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesyand ignorance are content to style the learned. "[434]

In certain matters, however, the translator claimed especial freedom. "Awork of this nature, " says Trapp of his translation of the _Aeneid_, "isto be regarded in two different views, both as a poem and as atranslated poem. " This gives the translator some latitude. "The thoughtand contrivance are his author's, but his language and the turn of hisversification are his own. "[435] Pope holds the same opinion. Atranslator must "give his author entire and unmaimed" but for the restthe diction and versification are his own province. [436] Such a dictumwas sure to meet with approval, for dignity of language and smoothnessof verse were the very qualities on which the period prided itself. Itwas in these respects that translators hoped to improve on the work ofthe preceding age. Fawkes, the translator of Theocritus, believes thatmany lines in Dryden's _Miscellany_ "will sound very harshly in thepolished ears of the present age, " and that Creech's translation of hisauthor can be popular only with those who "having no ear for poeticalnumbers, are better pleased with the rough music of the last age thanthe refined harmony of this. " Johnson, who strongly approved of Dryden'sperformance, accepts it as natural that there should be other attemptsat the translation of Virgil, "since the English ear has been accustomedto the mellifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction of poetry hasbecome more splendid. "[437] There was something of poetic justice inthis attitude towards the seventeenth century, itself so unappreciativeof the achievements of earlier translators, but exemplified in practice, it showed the peculiar limitations of the age of Pope. 

As in the seventeenth century, the heroic couplet was the predominantform in translations. Blank verse, when employed, was generallyassociated with a protest against the prevailing methods of translators. Trapp and Brady, both of whom early in the century attempted blank verserenderings of the _Aeneid_, justify their use of this form on the groundthat it permits greater faithfulness to the original. Brady intends toavoid the rock upon which other translators have split, "and that seemsto me to be their translating this noble and elegant poet into rhyme; bywhich they were sometimes forced to abandon the sense, and at othertimes to cramp it very much, which inconveniences may probably beavoided in blank verse. "[438] Trapp makes a more violent onslaught uponearlier translations, which he finds "commonly so very licentious thatthey can scarce be called so much as paraphrases, " and presents theemployment of blank verse as in some degree a remedy for this. "Thefetters of rhyme often cramp the expression and spoil the verse, and soyou can both translate more closely and also more fully express thespirit of your author without it than with it. "[439] Neither versionhowever was kindly received, and though there continued to be occasionalefforts to break away from what Warton calls "the Gothic shackles ofrhyme"[440] or from the oversmoothness of Augustan verse, the morepopular translators set the stamp of their approval on the couplet inits classical perfection. Grainger, who translated Tibullus, discussesthe possibility of using the "alternate" stanza, but ends by saying thathe has generally "preferred the heroic measure, which is not bettersuited to the lofty sound of the epic muse than to the complaining toneof the elegy. "[441] Hoole chooses the couplet for his version ofAriosto, because it occupies the same place in English that the octavestanza occupies in Italian, and because it is capable of great variety. "Of all the various styles used by the best poets, " he says, "none seemsso well adapted to the mixed and familiar narrative as that of Dryden inhis last production, known by the name of his _Fables_, which by theirharmony, spirit, ease, and variety of versification, exhibit anadmirable model for a translation of Ariosto. "[442] It was, however, tothe regularity of Pope's couplet that most translators aspired. Francis, the translator of Horace, who succeeded in pleasing his readers in spiteof his failure to conform with popular standards, puts the situationwell in a comment which recalls a similar utterance of Dryden. "Themisfortune of our translators, " he says, "is that they have only onestyle; and consequently all their authors, Homer, Virgil, Horace, andOvid, are compelled to speak in the same numbers, and the same unvariedexpression. The free-born spirit of poetry is confined in twentyconstant syllables, and the sense regularly ends with every second line, as if the writer had not strength enough to support himself or courageenough to venture into a third. "[443]

Revolts against the couplet, then, were few and generally unsuccessful. Prose translations of the epic, such as have in our own day attainedsome popularity, were in the eighteenth century regarded with especialdisfavor. It was known that they had some vogue in France, but that wasnot considered a recommendation. The English translation of MadameDacier's prose Homer, issued by Ozell, Oldisworth, and Broome, wasgreeted with scorn. Trapp, in the preface to his Virgil, refers to thenew French fashion with true insular contempt. Segrais' translation is"almost as good as the French language will allow, which is just as fitfor an epic poem as an ambling nag is for a war horse. . . . Their languageis excellent for prose, but quite otherwise for verse, especiallyheroic. And therefore tho' the translating of poems into prose is astrange modern invention, yet the French transprosers are so far in theright because their language will not bear verse. " Mickle, mentioning inhis _Dissertation on the Lusiad_ that "M. Duperron de Castera, in 1735, gave in French prose a loose unpoetical paraphrase of the Lusiad, "feels it necessary to append in a note his opinion that "a literal prosetranslation of poetry is an attempt as absurd as to translate fire intowater. "

If there was little encouragement for the translator to experiment withnew solutions of the problems of versification, there was equally littlelatitude allowed him in the other division of his peculiar province, diction. In accordance with existing standards, critics doubled theirinsistence on Decorum, a quality in which they found the productions offormer times lacking. Johnson criticizes Dryden's _Juvenal_ on theground that it wants the dignity of its original. [444] Fawkes findsCreech "more rustic than any of the rustics in the Sicilian bard, " andadduces in proof many illustrations, from his calling a "noble pastoralcup a fine two-handled pot" to his dubbing his characters "Tawney Bess, Tom, Will, Dick" in vulgar English style. [445] Fanshaw, says Mickle inthe preface to his translation of Camoens, had not "the least idea ofthe dignity of the epic style. " The originals themselves, however, presented obstacles to suitable rendering. Preston finds this so in thecase of Apollonius Rhodius, and offers this explanation of the matter:"Ancient terms of art, even if they can be made intelligible, cannot berendered, with any degree of grace, into a modern language, where thecorresponding terms are debased into vulgarity by low and familiar use. Many passages of this kind are to be found in Homer. They are frequentalso in Apollonius Rhodius; particularly so, from the exactness which heaffects in describing everything. "[446] Warton, unusually tolerant ofAugustan taste in this respect, finds the same difficulty in the_Eclogues_ and _Georgics_ of Virgil. "A poem whose excellence peculiarlyconsists in the graces of diction, " his preface runs, "is far moredifficult to be translated, than a work where sentiment, or passion, orimagination is chiefly displayed. . . . Besides, the meanness of the termsof husbandry is concealed and lost in a dead language, and they conveyno low and despicable image to the mind; but the coarse and common wordsI was necessitated to use in the following translation, viz. _plough andsow_, _wheat_, _dung_, _ashes_, _horse and cow_, etc. , will, I fear, unconquerably disgust many a delicate reader, if he doth not make properallowance for a modern compared with an ancient language. "[447]According to Hoole, the English language confines the translator withinnarrow limits. A translation of Berni's _Orlando Innamorato_ intoEnglish verse would be almost impossible, "the narrative descending tosuch familiar images and expressions as would by no means suit thegenius of our language and poetry. "[448] The task of translatingAriosto, though not so hopeless, is still arduous on this account. "There is a certain easy negligence in his muse that often assumes aplayful mode of expression incompatible with the nature of our presentpoetry. . . . An English translator will have frequent reason to regret themore rigid genius of the language, that rarely permits him in thisrespect, to attempt even an imitation of his author. "

The comments quoted in the preceding pages make one realize that, whilethe translator was left astonishingly free as regarded his treatment ofthe original, it was at his peril that he ran counter to contemporaryliterary standards. The discussion centering around Pope's _Homer_, atonce the most popular and the most typical translation of the period, may be taken as presenting the situation in epitome. Like other prefacesof the time, Pope's introductory remarks are, whether intentionally orunintentionally, misleading. He begins, in orthodox fashion, byadvocating the middle course approved by Dryden. "It is certain, " hewrites, "no literal translation can be just to an excellent original ina superior language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many havedone) that a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect;which is no less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, bydeviating into the modern manners of expression. " Continuing, however, he urges an unusual degree of faithfulness. The translator must notthink of improving upon his author. "I will venture to say, " hedeclares, "there have not been more men misled in former times by aservile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours bya chimerical insolent hope of raising and improving their author. . . . 'Tis a great secret in writing to know when to be plain, and whenpoetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us, if we willbut follow modestly in his footsteps. Where his diction is bold andlofty, let us raise ours as high as we can; but where his is plain andhumble, we ought not to be deterred from imitating him by the fear ofincurring the censure of a mere English critic. " The translator ought toendeavor to "copy him in all the variations of his style, and thedifferent modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active ordescriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate ornarrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches a fullness andperspicuity; in the sentences a shortness and gravity: not to neglecteven the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the verycast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound any rites and customsof antiquity. "

Declarations like this would, if taken alone, make one rate Pope as apioneer in the art of translation. Unfortunately the comment of hiscritics, even of those who admired him, tells a different story. "To sayof this noble work that it is the best which ever appeared of the kind, would be speaking in much lower terms than it deserves, " writesMelmoth, himself a successful translator, in _Fitzosborne's Letters_. Melmoth's description of Pope's method is, however, very different fromthat offered by Pope himself. "Mr. Pope, " he says, "seems, in mostplaces, to have been inspired with the same sublime spirit that animateshis original; as he often takes fire from a single hint in his author, and blazes out even with a stronger and brighter flame of poetry. Thusthe character of Thersites, as it stands in the English _Iliad_, isheightened, I think, with more masterly strokes of satire than appear inthe Greek; as many of those similes in Homer, which would appear, perhaps, to a modern eye too naked and unornamented, are painted by Popein all the beautiful drapery of the most graceful metaphor"--a statementbacked by citation of the famous moonlight passage, which Melmoth findsfiner than the corresponding passage in the original. There is no doubtin the critic's mind as to the desirability of improving upon Homer. "There is no ancient author, " he declares, "more likely to betray aninjudicious interpreter into meannesses than Homer. . . . But a skilfulartist knows how to embellish the most ordinary subject; and what wouldbe low and spiritless from a less masterly pencil, becomes pleasing andgraceful when worked up by Mr. Pope. "[449]

Melmoth's last comment suggests Matthew Arnold's remark, "Pope composeswith his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whateverit may be, "[450] but in intention the two criticisms are very different. To the average eighteenth-century reader Homer was entirely acceptable"when worked up by Mr. Pope. " Slashing Bentley might declare that it"must not be called Homer, " but he admitted that "it was a pretty poem. "Less competent critics, unhampered by Bentley's scholarly doubts, thought the work adequate both as a poem and as a translated poem. Dennis, in his _Remarks upon Pope's Homer_, quotes from a recent reviewsome characteristic phrases. "I know not which I should most admire, "says the reviewer, "the justness of the original, or the force andbeauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers. "[451]Prior, with more honesty, refuses to bother his head over "the justnessof the original, " and gratefully welcomes the English version. 

 Hang Homer and Virgil; their meaning to seek, A man must have pok'd into Latin and Greek; Those who love their own tongue, we have reason to hope, Have read them translated by Dryden and Pope. [452]

In general, critics, whether men of letters or Grub Street reviewers, saw both Pope's _Iliad_ and Homer's _Iliad_ through the medium ofeighteenth-century taste. Even Dennis's onslaught, which begins with aviolent contradiction of the hackneyed tribute quoted above, leaves theimpression that its vigor comes rather from personal animus than fromdistrust of existing literary standards or from any new and individualtheory of translation. 

With the romantic movement, however, comes criticism which presents tous Pope's _Iliad_ as seen in the light of common day instead of throughthe flattering illusions which had previously veiled it. New translatorslike Macpherson and Cowper, though too courteous to direct their attackspecifically against the great Augustan, make it evident that they haveadopted new standards of faithfulness and that they no longer admireeither the diction or the versification which made Pope supreme amonghis contemporaries. Macpherson gives it as his opinion that, althoughHomer has been repeatedly translated into most of the languages ofmodern Europe, "these versions were rather paraphrases than faithfultranslations, attempts to give the spirit of Homer, without thecharacter and peculiarities of his poetry and diction, " and thattranslators have failed especially in reproducing "the magnificentsimplicity, if the epithet may be used, of the original, which can neverbe characteristically expressed in the antithetical quaintness of modernfine writing. "[453] Cowper's prefaces show that he has given seriousconsideration to all the opinions of the theorists of his century, andthat his own views are fundamentally opposed to those generallyprofessed. His own basic principle is that of fidelity to his author, and, like every sensible critic, he sees that the translator mustpreserve a mean between the free and the close methods. This approval ofcompromise is not, however, a mere formula; Cowper attempts to throwlight upon it from various angles. The couplet he immediately repudiatesas an enemy to fidelity. "I will venture to assert that a justtranslation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible, " he declares. "No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every coupletwith sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense ofhis original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomesitself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, themore likely he is to be betrayed into the wildest departures from theguide whom he professes to follow. "[454] The popular idea that thetranslator should try to imagine to himself the style which his authorwould have used had he been writing in English is to Cowper "a directionwhich wants nothing but practicability to recommend it. For suppose sixpersons, equally qualified for the task, employed to translate the sameAncient into their own language, with this rule to guide them. In theevent it would be found that each had fallen on a manner different fromthat of all the rest, and by probable inference it would follow thatnone had fallen on the right. "[455]

Cowper's advocacy of Miltonic blank verse as a suitable vehicle for atranslation of Homer need not concern us here, but another innovation onwhich he lays considerable stress in his prefaces helps to throw lighton the practice and the standards of his immediate predecessors. Withmore veracity than Pope, he represents himself as having followed hisauthor even in his "plainer" passages. "The passages which will be leastnoticed, and possibly not at all, except by those who shall wish to findme at a fault, " he writes in the preface to the first edition, "arethose which have cost me abundantly the most labor. It is difficult tokill a sheep with dignity in a modern language, to slay and prepare itfor the table, detailing every circumstance in the process. Difficultalso, without sinking below the level of poetry, to harness mules to awagon, particularizing every article of their furniture, straps, rings, staples, and even the tying of the knots that kept all together. Homer, who writes always to the eye with all his sublimity and grandeur, hasthe minuteness of a Flemish painter. " In the preface to his secondedition he recurs to this problem and makes a significant comment onPope's method of solving it. "There is no end of passages in Homer, " herepeats, "which must creep unless they be lifted; yet in all such, allembellishment is out of the question. The hero puts on his clothes, orrefreshes himself with food and wine, or he yokes his steeds, takes ajourney, and in the evening preparation is made for his repose. To giverelief to subjects prosaic as these without seeming unseasonably tumidis extremely difficult. Mr. Pope abridges some of them, and others heomits; but neither of these liberties was compatible with the nature ofmy undertaking. "[456]

That Cowper's reaction against Pope's ideals was not a thing of suddengrowth is evident from a letter more outspoken than the prefaces. "Notmuch less than thirty years since, " he writes in 1788, "Alston and Iread Homer through together. The result was a discovery that there ishardly a thing in the world of which Pope is so entirely destitute as ataste for Homer. . . . I remembered how we had been disgusted; how often wehad sought the simplicity and majesty of Homer in his Englishrepresentative, and had found instead of them puerile conceits, extravagant metaphors, and the tinsel of modern embellishment in everypossible position. "[457]

Cowper's "discovery, " startling, almost heretical at the time when itwas made, is now little more than a commonplace. We have long recognizedthat Pope's Homer is not the real Homer; it is scarcely an exaggerationto say, as does Mr. Andrew Lang, "It is almost as if he had takenHomer's theme and written the poem himself. "[458] Yet it is surprisingto see how nearly the eighteenth-century ambition, "to write a poem thatwill live in the English language" has been answered in the case ofPope. Though the "tinsel" of his embellishment is no longer even"modern, " his translation seems able to hold its own against later verserenderings based on sounder theories. The Augustan translator strove togive his work "elegance, energy, and fire, " and despite the falseelegance, we can still feel something of true energy and fire as we readthe _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. 

The truth is that, in translated as in original literature thepermanent and the transitory elements are often oddly mingled. The fateof Pope's Homer helps us to reconcile two opposed views regarding thefuture history of verse translations. Our whole study of the varyingstandards set for translators makes us feel the truth of Mr. Lang'sconclusion: "There can be then, it appears, no final English translationof Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is Greek andeternal, the element of what is modern, personal, and fleeting. "[459]The translator, it is obvious, must speak in the dialect and move in themeasures of his own day, thereby very often failing to attract theattention of a later day. Yet there must be some place in our scheme forthe faith expressed by Matthew Arnold in his essays on translatingHomer, that "the task of translating Homer into English verse both willbe re-attempted, and may be re-attempted successfully. "[460] For intranslation there is involved enough of creation to supply theincalculable element which cheats the theorist. Possibly some day themiracle may be wrought, and, in spite of changing literary fashions, wemay have our English version of Homer in a form sufficient not only foran age but for all time. 

It is this incalculable quality in creative work that has madetheorizing on the methods of translation more than a mere academicexercise. Forced to adjust itself to the facts of actual production, theory has had to follow new paths as literature has followed new paths, and in the process it has acquired fresh vigor and flexibility. Even aswe leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of aworn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individualapproach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry, " says Dryden aproposof Roscommon's rules for translation, "is like a seeming demonstrationin the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in themechanic operation. "[461] Confronted by such discrepancies, the theoristhas again and again had to modify his "specious" rules, with the resultthat the theory of translation, though a small, is yet a living andgrowing element in human thought. 

FOOTNOTES:

[365] _Preface to the Reader_, in _The Natural History of C. PliniusSecundus_, London, 1601. 

[366] _Dedication_, in _Ovid's Metamorphosis, Englished by G. S. _, London, 1640. 

[367] _Dedication_, in _The Poems of Horace rendered into Verse by SeveralPersons_, London, 1666. 

[368] _Juvenal and Persius_, translated by Barten Holyday, Oxford, 1673(published posthumously). 

[369] _Dedication of the Aeneis_, in _Essays of John Dryden_, ed. W. P. Ker, v. 2, p. 235. 

[370] _Postscript to the Reader_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 243. 

[371] _Rowe_, in _Lives of the Poets_, Dublin, 1804, p. 284. 

[372] _The Argument_, in _The Passion of Dido for Aeneas_, translated byEdmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin, London, 1658. 

[373] _Dedication_, in _Translations of Horace_. John Hanway, 1730. 

[374] _Dedication_, dated 1728, reprinted in _The English Poets_, London, 1810, v. 20. 

[375] _Preface_ to _The Destruction of Troy_, in Denham, _Poems andTranslations_, London, 1709. 

[376] _To the courteous not curious reader. _

[377] Comment on Trapp's "blank version" of Virgil, in _Life of Dryden_. 

[378] _Preface to Sylvae_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 266. 

[379] _Dedication of the Aeneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 236. 

[380] In _Du Bartas, His Divine Words and Works_, translated by Sylvester, London, 1641. 

[381] Lines by E. G. , same edition. 

[382] Same edition, p. 322. 

[383] _An Essay on Translated Verse. _

[384] _Dedication of the Aeneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 220. 

[385] P. 222. 

[386] _To the worthy reader. _

[387] _To the courteous not curious reader_, in _The XII. Aeneids ofVirgil_, 1632. 

[388] Preface to _The Destruction of Troy_. 

[389] Dedication of _The Poems of Horace_. 

[390] _To the Reader_, in _The First Book of Virgil's Aeneis_, London, 1688. 

[391] Reprinted in _Godfrey of Bulloigne_, translated by Fairfax, New York, 1849. 

[392] _Essays_, v. 2, p. 249. 

[393] _Essays_, v. 2, p. 14. 

[394] Sprat, _Life of Cowley_, in _Prose Works of Abraham Cowley_, London, 1826. 

[395] _Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 237. 

[396] _Dedication of Examen Poeticum_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 10. Johnson, writing of the latter part of the seventeenth century, says, "The authorityof Jonson, Sandys, and Holiday had fixed the judgment of the nation" (_TheIdler_, 69), and Tytler, in his _Essay on the Principles of Translation_, 1791, says, "In poetical translation the English writers of the sixteenth, and the greatest part of the seventeenth century, seem to have had no othercare than (in Denham's phrase) to translate language into language, and tohave placed their whole merit in presenting a literal and serviletranscript of their original. "

[397] In Lucan's _Pharsalia_, translated May, 1659. 

[398] _To the Reader_, in Ovid's _Metamorphosis_, translated Sandys, London, 1640. 

[399] _Preface_ to _Pindaric Odes_, reprinted in _Essays and other ProseWritings_, Oxford, 1915. 

[400] _Preface to Ovid's Epistles_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 239. 

[401] Pp. 239-40. 

[402] Dedication to Dryden, 1684, in _The Odes, Satires, and Epistles ofHorace done into English_, London, 1688. 

[403] _Metellus his Dialogues, Relation of a Journey to Tunbridge Wells, with the Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid in English_, London, 1693. 

[404] _Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles_, _Essays_, vol. 1, p. 240. 

[405] _To the Earl of Roscommon on his excellent Essay on TranslatedVerse. _

[406] In Sir Robert Howard's _Poems_, London, 1660. 

[407] In Holiday's _Persius_, Fifth Edition, 1650. 

[408] In Creech's _Lucretius_, Third Edition, Oxford, 1683. 

[409] In Creech's _Lucretius_, Third Edition, Oxford, 1683. 

[410] _Essay on the Principles of Translation_, Everyman's Library, pp. 45-6. 

[411] _Essays_, v. 1, p. 252. 

[412] _Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 241. 

[413] _Preface to Sylvae_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 254. 

[414] _Ibid. _, p. 264. 

[415] _Preface_, in Second Edition of _Odes of Horace_, London, 1688. 

[416] _Examen Poeticum_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 9. 

[417] _Preface to the Fables_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 251. 

[418] _To the Reader_, in _The Odes, Satires, and Epistles of Horace_, London, 1688. 

[419] _Preface_ to translation of Horace, 1652. 

[420] _Dedication of the Eneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, pp. 220-1. 

[421] _Preface to Sylvae_, _Essays_, v. 1, pp. 256-7. 

[422] _Examen Poeticum_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 14. 

[423] _Preface. _

[424] _Essays_, v. 2, p. 10. 

[425] _Dedication of the Eneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 223. 

[426] _Preface to Sylvae_, _Essays_, v. 1, p. 255. 

[427] _Essays_, v. 1, p. 258. 

[428] _Dedication of the Eneis_, _Essays_, v. 2, p. 215. 

[429] In _Ovid's Metamorphoses translated by Dryden, Addison, Garth_, etc. , reprinted in _The English Poets_, v. 20. 

[430] _Advertisement_ to _Elegies of Tibullus_, reprinted in same volume. 

[431] _Preface_ to _Idylliums of Theocritus_, reprinted in same volume. 

[432] _Dissertation on The Lusiad_, reprinted in _The English Poets_, v. 21. 

[433] _Pope_, in _Lives of the Poets_, p. 568. 

[434] _Cowley_, in _Lives_, p. 25. 

[435] Preface of 1718, reprinted in _The Works of Virgil translated intoEnglish blank verse by Joseph Trapp_, London, 1735. 

[436] _Preface to Homer's Iliad. _

[437] _Dryden_ in _Lives of the Poets_, p. 226. 

[438] _Proposals for a translation of Virgil's Aeneis in Blank Verse_, London, 1713. 

[439] _Preface_, _op. Cit. _

[440] _Prefatory Dedication_, in _The Works of Virgil in English Verse_, London, 1763. 

[441] _Advertisement_, _op. Cit. _

[442] _Preface_ to _Ariosto_, reprinted in _The English Poets_, v. 21. 

[443] _Preface_, reprinted in _The English Poets_, v. 19. 

[444] _Dryden_, in _Lives_, p. 226. 

[445] _Op. Cit. _

[446] _Preface_, reprinted in _The British Poets_, Chiswick, 1822, v. 90. 

[447] _Prefatory Dedication_, in _The Works of Virgil in English Verse_, London, 1763. 

[448] _Preface_ to _Ariosto_, reprinted in _The English Poets_, v. 21. 

[449] Pp. 53-4. 

[450] _Essays_, Oxford Edition, p. 258. 

[451] _Mr. Dennis's Remarks upon Pope's Homer_, London, 1717, p. 9. 

[452] In _Down Hall, a Ballad_. 

[453] Preface to _The Iliad of Homer_, translated by James Macpherson, London, 1773. 

[454] Preface to first edition, taken from _The Iliad of Homer, translatedby the late William Cowper_, London, 1802. 

[455] Preface to first edition, taken from _The Iliad of Homer, translatedby the late William Cowper_, London, 1802. 

[456] _Preface prepared by Mr. Cowper for a Second Edition_, in edition of1802. 

[457] _Letters_, ed. Wright, London, 1904, v. 3, p. 233. 

[458] _History of English Literature_, p. 384. 

[459] Preface to _The Odyssey of Homer done into English Prose_. 

[460] Lecture, III, in _Essays_, p. 311. 

[461] _Preface to Sylvae_, in _Essays_, v. 1, p. 252. 

INDEX

INDEX

Adlington, William, 89, 94. 

Aelfric, 4-5, 15, 55, 56, 58. 

Alfred, 3-4, 15, 17. 

_Alexander_, 10, 34. 

Amyot, Jacques, xii, 106. 

_Andreas_, 6, 7. 

Andrew of Wyntoun, 35-6, 39, 116. 

Arnold, Matthew, xi, 172, 177. 

_Arthur_, 45. 

Ascham, Roger, 109, 114. 

Augustine, St. , 50, 55. 

_Authorized Version of 1611_, 51, 52, 54, 60, 61, 66, 68. 

Bacon, Francis, 75. 

Barbour, John, 36-7. 

Barclay, Alexander, 100-1. 

_Bay Psalm Book_, 77. 

Bentley, Richard, 172. 

Berners, Lord, 101, 105. 

_Bevis of Hamtoun_, 23, 24. 

_Birth of Jesus_, 43. 

_Bishops' Bible_, 58, 59, 67. 

_Blood of Hayles_, 40. 

Bokenam, Osbern, 8, 16, 40, 43-4, 46. 

_Book of the Knight of La Tour Landry_, 18. 

B. R. , 127-8. 

Bradshaw, Henry, 8. 

Brady, N. , 166-7. 

Brende, John, 88-9, 94, 129. 

Brinsley, John, 140. 

Brome, Henry, 136, 144. 

Bryan, Sir Francis, 101, 105. 

Bullokar, John, 95. 

Bullokar, William, 109-10. 

Caedmon, 6. 

_Canticum de Creatione_, 15, 20. 

Capgrave, John, 14, 19, 20-1, 22, 40, 45. 

Carew, Richard, 128. 

Cartwright, William, 155. 

Castalio, 51, 61, 70. 

_Castle of Love_, Grosseteste's, 9, 13. 

Caxton, William, 9, 12, 31, 44, 96, 115. 

 _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_, 38. 

 _Charles the Great_, 38, 46. 

 _Eneydos_, 35, 38, 39. 

 _Fayttes of Arms_, 12. 

 _Godfrey of Bullogne_, 33. 

 _Mirror of the World_, 12. 

 _Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_, 38. 

Cecil, Sir William, 119, 125. 

Chaloner, Sir Thomas, 128. 

Chapman, George, 90, 92, 93, 130-1, 145, 146, 147, 150, 161. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9, 10, 30. 

 _Franklin's Tale_, 30. 

 _Knight's Tale_, 30. 

 _Legend of Good Women_, 8. 

 _Life of St. Cecilia_, 8. 

 _Man of Law's Tale_, 27, 28. 

 _Romance of the Rose_, 8. 

 _Sir Thopas_, 24. 

 _Troilus and Criseyde_, 6, 8, 30-1. 

Cheke, Sir John, 59, 63, 108, 119, 125-6, 128. 

_Child of Bristow_, 39-40. 

Chrétien de Troyes, 30. 

Cooke, Thomas, 138-9. 

Coverdale, Miles, 50-1, 52, 59, 60, 64-5, 74. 

Cowley, Abraham, 137, 147, 149-50, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 165. 

Cowper, William, 173, 174 ff. 

Creech, Thomas, 151-2, 155-6, 158-9, 160, 166, 169. 

Cromwell, Thomas, 51. 

_Cursor Mundi_, 10. 

Cynewulf, 6. 

Dacier, Mme. , 168. 

Danett, Thomas, 90. 

Daniel, Samuel, 87. 

Davies of Hereford, John, 142. 

Denham, Sir John, 137, 139, 144, 147, 150-1, 154, 156, 157. 

Dennis, John, 173. 

Dolet, Étienne, 99. 

Douglas, Gavin, 107-8. 

Drant, Thomas, 111 ff. 

Dryden, John, 136-7, 141, 143, 145, 148, 151, 153-4, 154-5, 157-8, 159, 160-1, 162, 163, 166, 169, 177-8. 

_Earl of Toulouse_, 23, 27. 

Eden, Richard, 85, 91, 96. 

_Elene_, 6. 

Ely, Bishop of, 65. 

Elyot, Sir Thomas, 11, 95, 118, 119-20. 

_Emare_, 21. 

Fairfax, Edward, 144-5. 

_Falls of Princes_, Boccaccio's, 7, 37. 

Fanshaw, Sir Richard, 139, 147, 169. 

Fawkes, Francis, 164, 166, 169. 

Fleming, Abraham, 109, 114. 

Florio, John, 84, 87, 97. 

_Floris and Blancheflor_, 45. 

Fortescue, Thomas, 87, 103. 

Foxe, John, 54, 67, 68, 94-5. 

Francis, Philip, 168. 

Fraunce, Abraham, 77. 

Fulke, William, 54, 60, 65, 70 ff. 

Garth, Sir Samuel, 163. 

_Geneva Bible_, 53, 60, 61. 

_Geneva New Testament_, 59, 61. 

_Gesta Romanorum_, 28. 

_Golagros and Gawain_, 21. 

_Golden Legend_, 41. 

Golding, Arthur, 75-6, 82, 91, 97-8, 113, 117-8, 129-30. 

Googe, Barnaby, 77. 

Gould, Robert, 144. 

Grainger, James, 163-4, 167. 

Greenway, Richard, 93. 

Grimald, Nicholas, 85, 89, 96, 121-3. 

Grindal, Archbishop, 68. 

Guevara, 106. 

Guido delle Colonne, 34. 

Hake, Edward, 113-4. 

_Handlyng Synne_, 42. 

Harrington, Sir John, 85-6, 95, 100. 

Harvey, Gabriel, 114, 129. 

Hellowes, Edward, 82, 91, 105-6. 

Heywood, Jasper, 111, 116. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 140-1. 

Hoby, Sir Thomas, 82, 89, 90, 119, 128. 

Holiday, Barten, 136, 155, 160. 

_Holy Grail_, 31. 

Holland, Philemon, 86, 91-2, 98, 130, 135. 

Hoole, John, 139, 167, 170. 

Howard, Sir Robert, 154. 

Hudson, Thomas, 142. 

Hue de Rotelande, 21. 

Hyrde, Richard, 81. 

_Incestuous Daughter_, 13. 

_Ipomadon_, 21. 

James VI of Scotland, 75, 142. 

Jerome, St. , 5, 15, 55-6, 76. 

Johnson, Samuel, 137, 140, 148, note, 163, 165, 166, 169. 

Jonson, Ben, 136, 148, 149, 161. 

Joye, George, 50. 

_King Alexander_, 34. 

_King Horn_, 26. 

Knolles, Richard, 129. 

Lang, Andrew, 176, 177. 

_Launfal_, 7. 

Laurent de Premierfait, 7. 

Layamon, 34. 

_Le Bone Florence of Rome_, 27, 28. 

_Life of St. Augustine_, 41-2. 

L'Isle, William, 63, note. 

Lonelich, Harry, 31. 

Love, Nicholas, 41, 43, 45. 

Lydgate, John, 7, 8, 16, 31, 37-8, 44, 115. 

Macpherson, James, 173-4. 

Malory, Sir Thomas, 26. 

Mancinus, 108. 

Marot, Clement, 75. 

Martin, Gregory, 65, 70-1. 

May, Thomas, 148, 149. 

Melmoth, William, 171, 172. 

_Menechmi_, trans. Of, 128. 

_Metellus his Dialogues_, 152-3. 

Mickle, William Julius, 139, 164-5, 168-9. 

Milton, John, 75. 

Mirk, John, 10. 

More, Sir Thomas, 52, 53, 63, 67, 69, 118, 119. 

Morley, Lord, 84-5, 89. 

_Morte Arthur_, 33. 

Mulgrave, Earl of, 154. 

Munday, Anthony, 102, 103. 

Nash, Thomas, 81, 117. 

Neville, Alexander, 111. 

Nicholls, Thomas, 81, 119. 

North, Sir Thomas, 105, 106. 

_Northern Passion_, 45. 

Norton, Thomas, 74, 83-4, 118, 123-5. 

_Octavian_, 27, 28, 29. 

Orm, 17. 

Otway, Thomas, 156. 

Painter, William, 102, 103. 

Paris, William, 11. 

Parker, Archbishop, 54-5, 74. 

_Partonope of Blois_, 24, 32-3. 

Peele, George, 95. 

Peterson, Robert, 128. 

Pettie, George, 93, 97. 

Phaer, Thomas, 93, 98, 110-1, 116, 144, 153. 

_Polychronicon_, 16. 

Pope, Alexander, 137, 165, 166, 170 ff. 

Preston, W. , 169. 

Prior, Matthew, 173. 

Purvey, John, 56, 57-8, 59, 66-7. 

Puttenham, (?) Richard, 96, 116, 140, 144, 153. 

_Rauf Coilyear_, 21. 

_Rhemish Testament_, 59, 61, 62, 68, 70. 

_Richard Coeur de Lion_, 9-10. 

Ridley, Robert, 67. 

Rivers, Earl, 10-1. 

_Roberd of Cisyle_, 22-3. 

Robert of Brunne, 22, 34-5, 42. 

Rolle, Richard, 56, 58-9. 

_Romance of Partenay_, 18, 24, 29, 31-2. 

Roscommon, Earl of, 12, 143, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 177. 

Rowe, Nicholas, 137. 

Sandys, George, 135, 148, 149. 

_Secreta Secretorum_, 15-16. 

_Sege of Melayne_, 24. 

Seneca's Tragedies, trans. Of, 109, 111, 113. 

Sidney, Sir Philip, 75. 

_Sir Eglamour of Artois_, 23, 27. 

_Sir Percival of Galles_, 26. 

Southern, John, 96. 

Sprat, Thomas, 146. 

_St. Etheldred of Ely_, 10, 22. 

_St. Katherine of Alexandria_, 13. 

_St. Paula_, 41. 

Stanyhurst, Richard, 74, 77, 114, 116, 144. 

Studley, John, 111. 

Surrey, Earl of, 75. 

Sylvester, Joshua, 142. 

Taverner, Richard, 63, 88. 

Thomas de Cabham, 22. 

Tofte, Robert, 104. 

_Torrent of Portyngale_, 24, 27. 

Trapp, Joseph, 165, 167, 168. 

Trevisa, John de, 16-17, 18. 

Turbervile, George, 102, 115-6. 

Twyne, Thomas, 113. 

Tyndale, William, 49, 50, 58, 59, 62, 67, 84, 119. 

Tytler, Alexander, x, 137, 148, note, 156. 

Udall, Nicholas, 81-2, 87-8, 94, 97, 118, 120-1. 

Vicars, John, 139-40, 143-4, 146-7, 150. 

W. L. , Gent. , 143, 146, 150. 

Waller, Edmund, 144, 145. 

Warde, William, 88. 

_Wars of Alexander_, 23, 25. 

Warton, Joseph, 167, 169-70. 

Webbe, William, 93. 

Whetstone, George, 102. 

Willes, Richard, 96-7. 

_William of Palerne_, 30. 

Wilson, Thomas, 84, 92-3, 119, 125 ff. 

Winchester, Bishop of, 67-8. 

Wither, George, 75, 76, 77, 78. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 75. 

Young, Bartholomew, 104. 

_Ypotis_, 43. 

_Ywain and Gawin_, 21, 23, 29, 30. 

 +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes: | | | | Page 14: Double quotes inside double quotes amended to | | single quotes. | | Page 26: Beween amended to between. | | Page 43: Saint's legends _sic_. | | Page 56: Insistance amended to insistence. | | Page 82: Double quotes at the end of the Golding quote | | removed. | | Page 87: Double quotes at the end of the Daniel quote | | removed. | | Page 97: Comma added after _amusing_. | | Page 109: Esop _sic_. | | Page 142: Facund _sic_. | | Page 144: Closing quotes added to the Denham quote. | | Page 184: Bartholemew corrected to Bartholomew. | | | | Note 41: Comma at the end of the footnote removed. The | | comma might indicate that additional information is | | missing from the footnote. | | Note 329: Acccording _sic_. | | | | The variant spellings of Bulloign, Bulloigne and Bullogne | | have been retained. | | | | References in the notes to Ovid's _Metamormorphosis_ | | are as per the original. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+