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diff --git a/22353-8.txt b/22353-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ac77da0 --- /dev/null +++ b/22353-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7191 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Early Theories of Translation, by Flora Ross Amos + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Early Theories of Translation + +Author: Flora Ross Amos + +Release Date: August 18, 2007 [EBook #22353] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION *** + + + + +Produced by David Starner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | + | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | + | this document. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +=Columbia University= + + +STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE +LITERATURE + +EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION + + + + +EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION + +BY + +FLORA ROSS AMOS + +OCTAGON BOOKS + +A Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux +New York 1973 + + +Copyright 1920 by Columbia University Press + + +_Reprinted 1973 +by special arrangement with Columbia University Press_ + + +OCTAGON BOOKS +A DIVISION OF FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, INC. +19 Union Square West +New 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 in +the theory of translation as it has been formulated by English writers. +I have confined myself, of necessity, to such opinions as have been put +into words, and avoided making use of deductions from practice other +than a few obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedure +involves, of course, the omission of some important elements in the +history of the theory of translation, in that it ignores the +discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which +practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it +confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable +limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, the +period of the most enthusiastic experimentation, when, though it was +still possible for the translator to rest in the comfortable medieval +conception of his art, the New Learning was offering new problems and +new ideals to every man who shared in the intellectual awakening of his +time. In the matter of theory, however, the age was one of beginnings, +of suggestions, rather than of finished, definitive results; even by the +end of the century there were still translators who had not yet +appreciated the immense difference between medieval and modern standards +of translation. To understand their position, then, it is necessary to +consider both the preceding period, with its incidental, +half-unconscious comment, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, +with their systematized, unified contribution. This last material, in +especial, is included chiefly because of the light which it throws in +retrospect on the views of earlier translators, and only the main +course of theory, by this time fairly easy to follow, is traced. + +The aim has in no case been to give bibliographical information. A +number of translations, important in themselves, have received no +mention because they have evoked no comment on methods. The references +given are not necessarily to first editions. Generally speaking, it has +been the prefaces to translations that have yielded material, and such +prefaces, especially during the Elizabethan period, are likely to be +included or omitted in different editions for no very clear reasons. +Quotations have been modernized, except in the case of Middle English +verse, 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 of +easily distinguishable, orderly progression. It shows an odd lack of +continuity. Those who give rules for translation ignore, in the great +majority of cases, the contribution of their predecessors and +contemporaries. Towards the beginning of Elizabeth's reign a small group +of critics bring to the problems of the translator both technical +scholarship and alert, original minds, but apparently the new and +significant ideas which they offer have little or no effect on the +general course of theory. Again, Tytler, whose _Essay on the Principles +on Translation_, published towards the end of the eighteenth century, +may with some reason claim to be the first detailed discussion of the +questions involved, declares that, with a few exceptions, he has "met +with nothing that has been written professedly on the subject," a +statement showing a surprising disregard for the elaborate prefaces that +accompanied the translations of his own century. + +This lack of consecutiveness in criticism is probably partially +accountable for the slowness with which translators attained the power +to put into words, clearly and unmistakably, their aims and methods. +Even if one were to leave aside the childishly vague comment of +medieval writers and the awkward attempts of Elizabethan translators to +describe their processes, there would still remain in the modern period +much that is careless or misleading. The very term "translation" is long +in defining itself; more difficult terms, like "faithfulness" and +"accuracy," have widely different meanings with different writers. The +various kinds of literature are often treated in the mass with little +attempt at discrimination between them, regardless of the fact that the +problems of the translator vary with the character of his original. +Tytler's book, full of interesting detail as it is, turns from prose to +verse, from lyric to epic, from ancient to modern, till the effect it +leaves on the reader is fragmentary and confusing. + +Moreover, there has never been uniformity of opinion with regard to the +aims 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 seemed +safely on the way to become standardized, one still hears the voices of +a few recalcitrants, voices which become louder and more numerous as the +century advances; in the nineteenth century the most casual survey +discovers conflicting views on matters of fundamental importance to the +translator. Who are to be the readers, who the judges, of a translation +are obviously questions of primary significance to both translator and +critic, but they are questions which have never been authoritatively +settled. When, for example, Caxton in the fifteenth century uses the +"curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk or a noble +gentleman, his critics complain because the common people cannot +understand his words. A similar situation appears in modern times when +Arnold lays down the law that the judges of an English version of Homer +must be "scholars, because scholars alone have the means of really +judging him," and Newman replies that "scholars are the tribunal of +Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public must be the +only rightful judge." + +Again, critics have been hesitant in defining the all-important term +"faithfulness." To one writer fidelity may imply a reproduction of his +original as nearly as possible word for word and line for line; to +another it may mean an attempt to carry over into English the spirit of +the original, at the sacrifice, where necessary, not only of the exact +words but of the exact substance of his source. The one extreme is +likely to result in an awkward, more or less unintelligible version; the +other, as illustrated, for example, by Pope's _Homer_, may give us a +work so modified by the personality of the translator or by the +prevailing taste of his time as to be almost a new creation. But while +it is easy to point out the defects of the two methods, few critics have +had the courage to give fair consideration to both possibilities; to +treat the two aims, not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary; to +realize that the spirit and the letter may be not two but one. In the +sixteenth century Sir Thomas North translated from the French Amyot's +wise observation: "The office of a fit translator consisteth not only in +the faithful expressing of his author's meaning, but also in a certain +resembling and shadowing forth of the form of his style and manner of +his speaking"; but few English critics, in the period under our +consideration, grasped thus firmly the essential connection between +thought and style and the consequent responsibility of the translator. + +Yet it is those critics who have faced all the difficulties boldly, and +who have urged upon the translator both due regard for the original and +due regard for English literary standards who have made the most +valuable contributions to theory. It is much easier to set the standard +of translation low, to settle matters as does Mr. Chesterton in his +casual disposition of Fitzgerald's _Omar_: "It is quite clear that +Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good translation." We can, it +is true, point to few realizations of the ideal theory, but in +approaching a literature which possesses the English Bible, that +marvelous union of faithfulness to source with faithfulness to the +genius of the English language, we can scarcely view the problem of +translation thus hopelessly. + +The most stimulating and suggestive criticism, indeed, has come from men +who have seen in the very difficulty of the situation opportunities for +achievement. While the more cautious grammarian has ever been doubtful +of the quality of the translator's English, fearful of the introduction +of foreign words, foreign idioms, to the men who have cared most about +the destinies of the vernacular,--men like Caxton, More, or +Dryden,--translation has appeared not an enemy to the mother tongue, but +a means of enlarging and clarifying it. In the time of Elizabeth the +translator often directed his appeal more especially to those who loved +their country's language and wished to see it become a more adequate +medium of expression. That he should, then, look upon translation as a +promising experiment, rather than a doubtful compromise, is an essential +characteristic of the good critic. + +The necessity for open-mindedness, indeed, in some degree accounts for +the tentative quality in so much of the theory of translation. +Translation fills too large a place, is too closely connected with the +whole course of literary development, to be disposed of easily. As each +succeeding period has revealed new fashions in literature, new avenues +of approach to the reader, there have been new translations and the +theorist has had to reverse or revise the opinions bequeathed to him +from a previous period. The theory of translation cannot be reduced to a +rule 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 has +significance both for those who love the English language and for those +who 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 University +I owe access to much useful material. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my +indebtedness to Professors Ashley H. Thorndike and William W. Lawrence +and to Professor William H. Hulme of Western Reserve University for +helpful criticism and suggestions. In especial I am deeply grateful to +Professor George Philip Krapp, who first suggested this study and who +has 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 inadequate +idea of the attitude generally prevailing in the medieval period with +regard to the treatment of material from foreign sources. Suggestive +statements appear in the prefaces to the works associated with the name +of Alfred. One method of translation is employed in producing an English +version of Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Care_. "I began," runs the preface, +"among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate +into English the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_, and in +English _Shepherd's Book_, sometimes word by word, and sometimes +according to the sense."[1] A similar practice is described in the +_Proem_ to _The Consolation of Philosophy_ of Boethius. "King Alfred was +the interpreter of this book, and turned it from book Latin into +English, as it is now done. Now he set forth word by word, now sense +from sense, as clearly and intelligently as he was able."[2] The preface +to _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_, the beginning of which, unfortunately, +seems to be lacking, suggests another possible treatment of borrowed +material. "I gathered for myself," writes the author, "cudgels, and +stud-shafts, and horizontal shafts, and helves for each of the tools +that I could work with, and bow-timbers and bolt-timbers for every work +that 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 all +the wood back, even if I could bear it. In each tree I saw something +that I needed at home; therefore I advise each one who can, and has many +wains, that he direct his steps to the same wood where I cut the +stud-shafts. Let him fetch more for himself, and load his wains with +fair beams, that he may wind many a neat wall, and erect many a rare +house, and build a fair town, and therein may dwell merrily and softly +both winter and summer, as I have not yet done."[3] + +Aelfric, writing a century later, develops his theories in greater +detail. Except in the _Preface to Genesis_, they are expressed in Latin, +the language of the lettered, a fact which suggests that, unlike the +translations themselves, the prefaces were addressed to readers who +were, for the most part, opposed to translation into the vernacular and +who, in addition to this, were in all probability especially suspicious +of the methods employed by Aelfric. These methods were strongly in the +direction of popularization. Aelfric's general practice is like that of +Alfred. He declares repeatedly[4] that he translates sense for sense, +not always word for word. Furthermore, he desires rather to be clear and +simple than to adorn his style with rhetorical ornament.[5] Instead of +unfamiliar terms, he uses "the pure and open words of the language of +this people."[6] In connection with the translation of the Bible he lays +down the principle that Latin must give way to English idiom.[7] For all +these things Aelfric has definite reasons. Keeping always in mind a +clear conception of the nature of his audience, he does whatever seems +to him necessary to make his work attractive and, consequently, +profitable. Preparing his _Grammar_ for "tender youths," though he knows +that words may be interpreted in many ways, he follows a simple method +of 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] that +he has abbreviated both the _Homilies_[11] and the _Lives of the +Saints_,[12] again of deliberate purpose, as appears in his preface to +the latter: "Hoc sciendum etiam quod prolixiores passiones breuiamus +verbis non adeo sensu, ne fastidiosis ingeratur tedium si tanta +prolixitas erit in propria lingua quanta est in latina." + +Incidentally, however, Aelfric makes it evident that his were not the +only theories of translation which the period afforded. In the preface +to the first collection of _Homilies_ he anticipates the disapproval of +those who demand greater closeness in following originals. He recognizes +the fact that his translation may displease some critics "quod non +semper verbum ex verbo, aut quod breviorem explicationem quam tractatus +auctorum habent, sive non quod per ordinem ecclesiastici ritus omnia +Evangelia percurrimus." The _Preface to Genesis_ suggests that the +writer was familiar with Jerome's insistence on the necessity for +unusual faithfulness in translating the Bible.[13] Such comment implies +a mind surprisingly awake to the problems of translation. + +The translator who left the narrow path of word for word reproduction +might, in this early period, easily be led into greater deviations from +source, especially if his own creative ability came into play. The +preface to _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_ quoted above carries with it a +stimulus, not only to translation or compilation, but to work like that +of Caedmon or Cynewulf, essentially original in many respects, though +based, in the main, on material already given literary shape in other +languages. Both characteristics are recognized in Anglo-Saxon comment. +Caedmon, according to the famous passage in Bede, "all that he could +learn by hearing meditated with himself, and, as a clean animal +ruminating, turned into the sweetest verse."[14] Cynewulf in his +_Elene_, gives us a remarkable piece of author's comment[15] which +describes the action of his own mind upon material already committed to +writing by others. On the other hand, it may be noted that the +_Andreas_, based like the _Elene_ on a single written source, contains +no hint that the author owes anything to a version of the story in +another language.[16] + +In the English literature which developed in course of time after the +Conquest the methods of handling borrowed material were similar in their +variety 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 and +such an individual creation as Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_, are +exemplified in the works appearing from the thirteenth century on. When +Lydgate, as late as the fifteenth century, describes one of the +processes by which literature is produced, we are reminded of +Anglo-Saxon comment. "Laurence,"[17] the poet's predecessor in +translating 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 within +themselves no clear statement as to which of the many possible methods +have been employed in their production. As in the case of the +Anglo-Saxon _Andreas_, a retelling in English of a story already +existing in another language often presents itself as if it were an +original composition. The author who puts into the vernacular of his +country 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 the +declaration, "Thomas Chestre made this tale."[19] The terms used to +characterize literary productions and literary processes often have not +their modern connotation. "Translate" and "translation" are applied +very loosely even as late as the sixteenth century. _The Legend of Good +Women_ 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," but +he still calls the work a "translation."[21] Henry Bradshaw, purposing +in 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 the +tenor only"; he presents his work as a kind of "brief compilation," but +he takes no exception to the word "translate."[23] That he should +designate 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 other +words. Osbern Bokenam speaks of the "translator" who "compiled" the +legend 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 modern +sense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitable +task. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider the +whole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of their +authors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondary +origin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his own +time was reckoned "grant translateur."[27] Of the books which Caxton a +century later issued from his printing press a large proportion were +English versions of Latin or French works. Our concern, indeed, is with +the larger and by no means the least valuable part of the literature +produced during the Middle English period. + +The theory which accompanies this nondescript collection of translations +is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to +misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before +proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain +phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar +difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to +the present-day reader. As regards the translator, existing +circumstances were not encouraging. In the early part of the period he +occupied a very lowly place. As compared with Latin, or even with +French, the English language, undeveloped and unstandardized, could make +its appeal only to the unlearned. It had, in the words of a +thirteenth-century translator of Bishop Grosseteste's _Castle of Love_, +"no savor before a clerk."[28] Sometimes, it is true, the English writer +had the stimulus of patriotism. The translator of _Richard Coeur de +Lion_ feels that Englishmen ought to be able to read in their own +tongue the exploits of the English hero. The _Cursor Mundi_ is +translated + + 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. His +audience, as compared with the learned and the refined, who read Latin +and French, was ignorant and undiscriminating; his crude medium was +entirely unequal to reproducing what had been written in more highly +developed languages. It is little wonder that in these early days his +English should be termed "dim and dark." Even after Chaucer had showed +that the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the writer of +less genius must often have felt that beside the more sophisticated +Latin or French, English could boast but scanty resources. + +There were difficulties and limitations also in the choice of material +to be translated. Throughout most of the period literature existed only +in manuscript; there were few large collections in any one place; travel +was not easy. Priests, according to the prologue to Mirk's _Festial_, +written in the early fifteenth century, complained of "default of +books." To aspire, as did Chaucer's Clerk, to the possession of "twenty +books" was to aspire high. Translators occasionally give interesting +details regarding the circumstances under which they read and +translated. The author of the life of St. Etheldred of Ely refers twice, +with a certain pride, to a manuscript preserved in the abbey of Godstow +which he himself has seen and from which he has drawn some of the facts +which he presents. The translator of the alliterative romance of +_Alexander_ "borrowed" various books when he undertook his English +rendering.[30] Earl Rivers, returning from the Continent, brought back a +manuscript which had been lent him by a French gentleman, and set about +the translation of his _Dictes and Sayings of the Old Philosophers_.[31] +It is not improbable that there was a good deal of borrowing, with its +attendant inconveniences. Even in the sixteenth century Sir Thomas +Elyot, if we may believe his story, was hampered by the laws of +property. He became interested in the acts and wisdom of Alexander +Severus, "which book," he says, "was first written in the Greek tongue +by his secretary Eucolpius and by good chance was lent unto me by a +gentleman of Naples called Padericus. In reading whereof I was +marvelously ravished, and as it hath ever been mine appetite, I wished +that it had been published in such a tongue as more men might understand +it. Wherefore with all diligence I endeavored myself whiles I had +leisure to translate it into English: albeit I could not so exactly +perform mine enterprise as I might have done, if the owner had not +importunately called for his book, whereby I was constrained to leave +some part of the work untranslated."[32] William Paris--to return to the +earlier period--has left on record a situation which stirs the +imagination. He translated the legend of St. Cristine while a prisoner +in the Isle of Man, the only retainer of his unfortunate lord, the Earl +of 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 circumstances +that provided him with the particular manuscript from which he worked. +It is easy, of course, to emphasize overmuch the scarcity and the +inaccessibility of texts, but it is obvious that the translator's +choice of subject was largely conditioned by opportunity. He did not +select from the whole range of literature the work which most appealed +to his genius. It is a far cry from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth +century, 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 what +was within his reach, and who, in many cases, could not sit down in +undisturbed possession of his source. + +The element of individual choice was also diminished by the intervention +of friends and patrons. In the fifteenth century, when translators were +becoming communicative about their affairs, there is frequent reference +to suggestion from without. Allowing for interest in the new craft of +printing, there is still so much mention in Caxton's prefaces of +commissions for translation as to make one feel that "ordering" an +English version of some foreign book had become no uncommon thing for +those who owned manuscripts and could afford such commodities as +translations. Caxton's list ranges from _The Fayttes of Armes_, +translated at the request of Henry VII from a manuscript lent by the +king himself, to _The Mirrour of the World_, "translated ... at the +request, 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 the +translator's conception. His references to it are generally vague or +confused, often positively misleading. Yet to designate with any +definiteness a French or Latin text was no easy matter. When one +considers the labor that, of later years, has gone to the classification +and identification of old manuscripts, the awkward elaboration of +nomenclature necessary to distinguish them, the complications resulting +from missing pages and from the undue liberties of copyists, one realizes +something of the position of the medieval translator. Even categories were +not forthcoming for his convenience. The religious legend of _St. +Katherine of Alexandria_ is derived from "chronicles";[35] the moral tale +of _The Incestuous Daughter_ has its source in "romance";[36] +Grosseteste's allegory, _The Castle of Love_, is presented as "a romance +of 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 would +permit. + +Moreover, part of the confusion had often arisen before the manuscript +came into the hands of the English translator. Often he was engaged in +translating something that was already a translation. Most frequently it +was a French version of a Latin original, but sometimes its ancestry was +complicated by the existence or the tradition of Greek or Hebrew +sources. The medieval Troy story, with its list of authorities, Dictys, +Dares, Guido delle Colonne--to cite the favorite names--shows the +situation in an aggravated form. In such cases the earlier translator's +blunders and omissions in describing his source were likely to be +perpetuated in the new rendering. + +Such, roughly speaking, were the circumstances under which the +translator did his work. Some of his peculiar difficulties are, +approached from another angle, the difficulties of the present-day +reader. The presence of one or more intermediary versions, a +complication especially noticeable in England as a result of the French +occupation after the Conquest, may easily mislead us. The originals of +many of our texts are either non-extant or not yet discovered, but in +cases where we do possess the actual source which the English writer +used, a disconcerting situation often becomes evident. What at first +seemed to be the English translator's comment on his own treatment of +source is frequently only a literal rendering of a comment already +present in his original. It is more convenient to discuss the details of +such cases in another context, but any general approach to the theory of +translation in Middle English literature must include this +consideration. If we are not in possession of the exact original of a +translation, our conclusions must nearly always be discounted by the +possibility that not only the subject matter but the comment on that +subject matter came from the French or Latin source. The pronoun of the +first person must be regarded with a slight suspicion. "I" may refer to +the Englishman, but it may also refer to his predecessor who made a +translation or a compilation in French or Latin. "Compilation" suggests +another difficulty. Sometimes an apparent reference to source is only an +appeal to authority for the confirmation of a single detail, an appeal +which, again, may be the work of the English translator, but may, on the +other hand, be the contribution of his predecessor. A fairly common +situation, for example, appears in John Capgrave's _Life of St. +Augustine_, produced, as its author says, in answer to the request of a +gentlewoman that he should "translate her truly out of Latin the life of +St. Augustine, great doctor of the church." Of the work, its editor, Mr. +Munro, says, "It looks at first sight as though Capgrave had merely +translated 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 as +Capgrave never refers to 'myn auctour,' and always alludes to himself +as handling the material, I incline to conclude that he is himself the +original composer, and that his reference to translation signifies his +use of Augustine's books, from which he translates whole passages."[38] +In a case like this it is evidently impossible to draw dogmatic +conclusions. It may be that Capgrave is using the word "translate" with +medieval looseness, but it is also possible that some of the comment +expressed in the first person is translated comment, and the editor adds +that, though the balance of probability is against it, "it is still +possible that a Latin life may have been used." Occasionally, it is +true, comment is stamped unmistakably as belonging to the English +translator. The translator of a _Canticum de Creatione_ declares that +there 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 the +situation remains confused. + +But this is not the only difficulty which confronts the reader. He +searches with disappointing results for such general and comprehensive +statements of the medieval translator's theory as may aid in the +interpretation of detail. Such statements are few, generally late in +date, and, even when not directly translated from a predecessor, are +obviously repetitions of the conventional rule associated with the name +of Jerome and adopted in Anglo-Saxon times by Alfred and Aelfric. An +early fifteenth-century translator of the _Secreta Secretorum_, for +example, carries over into English the preface of the Latin translator: +"I have translated with great travail into open understanding of Latin +out of the language of Araby ... sometimes expounding letter by letter, +and sometimes understanding of understanding, for other manner of +speaking is with Arabs and other with Latin."[40] Lydgate makes a +similar 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 this +principle fresh significance. The translator makes scarcely any effort +to define the extent to which he may diverge from the words of his +original or to explain why such divergence is necessary. John de +Trevisa, who translated so extensively in the later fourteenth century, +does give some account of his methods, elementary, it is true, but +honest and individual. His preface to his English prose version of +Higden's _Polychronicon_ explains: "In some place I shall set word for +word, and active for active, and passive for passive, a-row right as it +standeth, without changing of the order of words. But in some place I +must change the order of words, and set active for passive and +again-ward. And in some place I must set a reason for a word and tell +what it meaneth. But for all such changing the meaning shall stand and +not be changed."[43] An explanation like this, however, is unusual. + +Possibly the fact that the translation was in prose affected Trevisa's +theorizing. A prose rendering could follow its original so closely that +it was possible to describe the comparatively few changes consequent on +English usage. In verse, on the other hand, the changes involved were so +great as to discourage definition. There are, however, a few comments on +the methods to be employed in poetical renderings. According to the +_Proem_ to the _Boethius_, Alfred, in the Anglo-Saxon period, first +translated the book "from Latin into English prose," and then "wrought +it up once more into verse, as it is now done."[44] At the very +beginning of the history of Middle English literature Orm attacked the +problem of the verse translation very directly. He writes of his +Ormulum: + + 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 understand +the 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 few +comments connected with prose translations; the translator of _The Book +of the Knight of La Tour Landry_ quotes the explanation of his author +that he has chosen prose rather than verse "for to abridge it, and that +it might be better and more plainly to be understood";[47] the Lord in +Trevisa's _Dialogue_ prefixed to the _Polychronicon_ desires a +translation in prose, "for commonly prose is more clear than rhyme, more +easy and more plain to understand";[48] but apparently the only one of +Orm's successors to put into words his consciousness of the +complications which accompany a metrical rendering is the author of _The +Romance 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 the +peculiar 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 small +amount in connection with Middle English translations. Incidentally, +however, writers let fall a good deal of information regarding their +theories and methods. Such material must be interpreted with +considerable caution, for although the most casual survey makes it clear +that generally the translator felt bound to put into words something of +his debt and his responsibility to his predecessors, yet one does not +know how much significance should attach to this comment. He seldom +offers clear, unmistakable information as to his difficulties and his +methods of meeting them. It is peculiarly interesting to come upon such +explanation of processes as appears at one point in Capgrave's _Life of +St. Gilbert_. In telling the story of a miracle wrought upon a sick man, +Capgrave writes: "One of his brethren, which was his keeper, gave him +this counsel, that he should wind his head with a certain cloth of linen +which St. Gilbert wore. I suppose verily," continues the translator, "it +was his alb, for mine author here setteth a word 'subucula,' which is +both an alb and a shirt, and in the first part of this life the same +author saith that this holy man wore next his skin no hair as for the +hardest, nor linen as for the softest, but he went with wool, as with +the mean."[51] Such care for detail suggests the comparative methods +later employed by the translators of the Bible, but whether or not it +was common, it seldom found its way into words. The majority of writers +acquitted themselves of the translator's duty by introducing at +intervals somewhat conventional references to source, "in story as we +read," "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 the +book," "so saith the French tale," "as saith the Latin." Tags like these +are everywhere present, especially in verse, where they must often have +proved convenient in eking out the metre. Whether they are to be +interpreted literally is hard to determine. The reader of English +versions can seldom be certain whether variants on the more ordinary +forms are merely stylistic or result from actual differences in +situation; whether, for example, phrases like "as I have heard tell," +"as the book says," "as I find in parchment spell" are rewordings of the +same fact or represent real distinctions. + +One group of doubtful references apparently question the reliability of +the written source. In most cases the seeming doubt is probably the +result of awkward phrasing. Statements like "as the story doth us both +write and mean,"[52] "as the book says and true men tell us,"[53] "but +the book us lie,"[54] need have little more significance than the +slightly absurd declaration, + + The gospel nul I forsake nought + _Thaugh_ it be written in parchemyn.[55] + +Occasional more direct questionings incline one, however, to take the +matter a little more seriously. The translator of a _Canticum de +Creatione_, strangely fabulous in content, presents his material with +the 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 unmistakably +with 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 from +the original, these comments contribute little to our knowledge of the +medieval translator's methods and need concern us little. More needful +of explanation is the reference which implies that the English writer is +not working from a manuscript, but is reproducing something which he has +heard read or recounted, or which he has read for himself at some time +in the past. How is one to interpret phrases like that which introduces +the story of _Golagros and Gawain_, "as true men me told," or that which +appears at the beginning of _Rauf Coilyear_, "heard I tell"? One +explanation, obviously true in some cases, is that such references are +only 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_, which +follows its source with a closeness which precludes all possibility of +reproduction from memory, has tacked on two references to hearing,[61] +not only without a basis in the French but in direct contradiction to +Hue de Rotelande's account of the source of his material. In _Emare_, +"as I have heard minstrels sing in sawe" is apparently introduced as +the 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 compatible +with the theory of an oral source. + +One cannot always, however, dispose of the reference to hearing so +easily. Contemporary testimony shows that literature was often +transmitted 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 _Sir +Tristram_ do not repeat the story exactly as Thomas made it.[64] Even +though one must recognize the probability that sometimes the immediate +oral source of the minstrel's tale may have been English, one cannot +ignore the possibility that occasionally a "translated" saint's life or +romance may have been the result of hearing a French or Latin narrative +read or recited. A convincing example of reproduction from memory +appears in the legend of _St. Etheldred of Ely_, whose author recounts +certain 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 in +Capgrave'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 story +says," or "in tale as it is told," may signify hearing instead of +reading. But in general one turns from consideration of the references +to hearing with little more than an increased respect for the superior +definiteness 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 of +literature, one finds it possible to draw conclusions which are somewhat +more definite. The metrical romance--to choose one of the most popular +literary forms of the period--is nearly always garnished with references +to source scattered throughout its course in a manner that awakens +curiosity. Sometimes they do not appear at the beginning of the romance, +but are introduced in large numbers towards the end; sometimes, after a +long series of pages containing nothing of the sort, we begin to come +upon 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 _Ywain +and Gawin_ the references appear at ll. 9, 3209, and 3669;[70] in _The +Wars of Alexander_[71] there is a perpetual harping on source, one +phrase seeming to produce another. + +Occasionally one can find a reason for the insertion of the phrase in a +given place. Sometimes its presence suggests that the translator has +come upon an unfamiliar word. In _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, speaking of a +bird that has carried off a child, the author remarks, "a griffin, saith +the book, he hight";[72] in _Partenay_, in an attempt to give a vessel +its proper name, the writer says, "I found in scripture that it was a +barge."[73] This impression of accuracy is most common in connection +with geographical proper names. In _Torrent of Portyngale_ we have the +name of a forest, "of Brasill saith the book it was"; in _Partonope of +Blois_ we find "France was named those ilke days Galles, as mine author +says,"[74] or "Mine author telleth this church hight the church of +Albigis."[75] In this same romance the reference to source accompanies a +definite bit of detail, "The French book thus doth me tell, twenty +waters he passed full fell."[76] Bevis of Hamtoun kills "forty +Sarracens, the French saith."[77] As in the case of the last +illustration, the translator frequently needs to cite his authority +because the detail he gives is somewhat difficult of belief. In _The +Sege of Melayne_ the Christian warriors recover their horses +miraculously "through the prayer of St. Denys, thus will the chronicle +say";[78] in _The Romance of Partenay_ we read of a wondrous light +appearing about a tomb, "the French maker saith he saw it with eye."[79] +Sometimes these phrases suggest that metre and rhyme do not always flow +easily for the English writer, and that in such difficulties a stock +space-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 significance +and lack of significance of the appearance of these phrases in a given +context is the version of the Alexander story usually called _The Wars +of Alexander_. The frequent references to source in this romance occur +in sporadic groups. The author begins by putting them in with some +regularity at the beginnings of the _passus_ into which he divides his +narrative, but, as the story progresses, he ceases to do so, perhaps +forgets his first purpose. Sometimes the reference to source suggests +accuracy: "And five and thirty, as I find, were in the river +drowned."[80] "Rhinoceros, as I read, the book them calls."[81] The +strength of some authority is necessary to support the weight of the +incredible marvels which the story-teller recounts. He tells of a valley +full of serpents with crowns on their heads, who fed, "as the prose +tells," on pepper, cloves, and ginger;[82] of enormous crabs with backs, +"as the book says," bigger and harder than any common stone or +cockatrice scales;[83] of the golden image of Xerxes, which on the +approach of Alexander suddenly, "as tells the text," falls to +pieces.[84] He often has recourse to an authority for support when he +takes proper names from the Latin. "Luctus it hight, the lettre and the +line thus it calls."[85] The slayers of Darius are named Besan and +Anabras, "as the book tells."[86] On the other hand, the signification +of the reference in its context can be shown to be very slight. As was +said before, the writer soon forgets to insert it at the beginning of +the new _passus_; there are plenty of marvels without any citation of +authority to add to their credibility; and though the proper name +carries its reference to the Latin, it is usually strangely distorted +from its original form. So far as bearing on the immediate context is +concerned, most of the references to source have little more meaning +than the ordinary tags, "as I you say," "as you may hear," or "as I +understand." + +Apart, however, from the matter of context, one may make a rough +classification of the romances on the ground of these references. +Leaving aside the few narratives (e.g. _Sir Percival of Galles_, _King +Horn_) which contain no suggestion that they are of secondary origin, +one may distinguish two groups. There is, in the first place, a large +body of romances which refer in general terms to their originals, but do +not profess any responsibility for faithful reproduction; in the second +place, there are some romances whose authors do recognize the claims of +the original, which is in such cases nearly always definitely described, +and frequently go so far as to discuss its style or the style to be +adopted in the English rendering. The first group, which includes +considerably more than half the romances at present accessible in print, +affords a confused mass of references. As regards the least definite of +these, one finds phrases so vague as to suggest that the author himself +might have had difficulty in identifying his source, phrases where the +omission of the article ("in rhyme," "in romance," "in story") or the +use 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 their +significance. Other references are more definite; the writer mentions +"this book," "mine author," "the Latin book," "the French book." If +these phrases are to be trusted, we may conclude that the English +translator has his text before him; they aid little, however, in +identification of that text. The fifty-six references in Malory's _Morte +d'Arthur_ to "the French book" give no particular clue to discovery of +his sources. The common formula, "as the French book says," marks the +highest 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 some +of 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 book +written in the romance language, French, can easily be supported. In the +same poem _Rom_ alternates with _romance_: "In Rome this geste is +chronicled," "as the romance telleth,"[87] "in the chronicles of Rome is +the 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 the +other hand, there are peculiarities in the use of the word not so easy +of explanation. It appears in a certain group of romances, _Octavian_, +_Le Bone Florence of Rome_, _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, _Torrent of +Portyngale_, _The Earl of Toulouse_, all of which develop in some degree +the Constance story, familiar in _The Man of Law's Tale_. In all of them +there is reference to the city of Rome, sometimes very obvious, +sometimes slight, but perhaps equally significant in the latter case +because it is introduced in an unexpected, unnecessary way. In _Le Bone +Florence of Rome_ the heroine is daughter of the Emperor of Rome, and, +the tale of her wanderings done, the story ends happily with her +reinstatement in her own city. Octavian is Emperor of Rome, and here +again the happy conclusion finds place in that city. Sir Eglamour +belongs 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 "as +the book of Rome says."[90] Though the scenes of _Torrent of Portyngale_ +are Portugal, Norway, and Calabria, the Emperor of Rome comes to the +wedding 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 of +him during his disappearance, "Gone is he to his own land: he dwells +with the Pope of Rome."[91] The Emperor in this story is Emperor of +Almaigne, but his name, strangely enough, is Diocletian. Again, in +_Octavian_, one reads in the description of a feast, "there was many a +rich geste of Rome and of France,"[92] which suggests a distinction +between a geste of Rome and a geste of France. In _Le Bone Florence of +Rome_ appears the peculiar statement, "Pope Symonde this story wrote. In +the chronicles of Rome is the date."[93] In this case the word _Rome_ +seems to have been taken literally enough to cause attribution of the +story to the Pope. It is evident, then, that whether or not _Rome_ is a +corruption of _romance_, at any rate one or more of the persons who had +a hand in producing these narratives must have interpreted the word +literally, and believed that the book of Rome was a record of +occurrences 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 with +regard to source, are characteristic of many romances. It is not +difficult to find explanations for this. The writer may, as was +suggested before, be reproducing a story which he has only heard or +which he has read at some earlier time. Even if he has the book before +him, it does not necessarily bear its author's name and it is not easy +to describe it so that it can be recognized by others. Generally +speaking, his references to source are honest, so far as they go, and +can be taken at their face value. Even in cases of apparent falsity +explanations suggest themselves. There is nearly always the possibility +that false or contradictory attributions, as, for example, the mention +of "book" and "books" or "the French book" and "the Latin book" as +sources of the same romance, are merely stupidly literal renderings of +the original. In _The Romance of Partenay_, one of the few cases where +we have unquestionably the French original of the English romance, more +than once an apparent reference to source in the English is only a close +following of the French. "I found in scripture that it was a barge" +corresponds with "Je treuve que c'estoit une barge"; "as saith the +scripture" 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 saith +the Latin."[96] Here, however, the nearest analogue to the English +romance, which contains 1962 lines, is a French romance of 5371 lines, +which begins by mentioning the "grans merueilles qui sont faites, et de +latin en romanz traites."[97] It is not impossible that the English +writer used a shorter version which emphasized this reference to the +Latin, and that his too-faithful adherence to source had confusing +results. But even if such contradictions cannot be explained, in the +mass of undistinguished romances there is scarcely anything to suggest +that the writer is trying to give his work a factitious value by +misleading references to dignified sources. His faults, as in _Ywain and +Gawin_, 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 just +discussed and those of the second group, with their frequent and fairly +definite references to their sources and to their methods of reproducing +them. A rough chronological division between the two groups can be made +about the year 1400. _William of Palerne_, assigned by its editor to the +year 1350, contains a slight indication of the coming change in the +claim which its author makes to have accomplished his task "as fully as +the French fully would ask."[98] Poems like Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_ +and _Franklin's Tale_ have only the vague references to source of the +earlier period, though since they are presented as oral narratives, they +belong less obviously to the present discussion. The vexed question of +the signification of the references in _Troilus and Criseyde_ is outside +the scope of this discussion. Superficially considered, they are an odd +mingling of the new and the old. Phrases like "as to myn auctour listeth +to devise" (III, 1817), "as techen bokes olde" (III, 91), "as wryten +folk thorugh which it is in minde" (IV, 18) suggest the first group. The +puzzling references to Lollius have a certain definiteness, and +faithfulness 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 like +Lydgate 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 of +his work makes frequent, if perhaps mistaken, attribution of the French +romance 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 who +presents 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 an +exact rendering of the French in English metre, he has kept very closely +to 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 exactly +alike.[103] + +The translator of _Partonope of Blois_ does not profess such slavish +faithfulness, 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 confesses +to 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 many +English 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 as +regards the original describes the attitude of many other translators of +romances, less articulate in the expression of their theory. + +To deal fairly with many of the romances of this second group, one must +consider the relationship between romance and history and the uncertain +division between the two. The early chronicles of England generally +devoted an appreciable space to matters of romance, the stories of Troy, +of Aeneas, of Arthur. As in the case of the romance proper, such +chronicles were, even in the modern sense, "translated," for though the +historian usually compiled his material from more than one source, his +method was to put together long, consecutive passages from various +authors, with little attempt at assimilating them into a whole. The +distinction between history and romance was slow in arising. The _Morte +Arthure_ offers within a few lines both "romances" and "chronicles" as +authorities for its statements.[109] In Caxton's preface to _Godfrey of +Bullogne_ the enumeration of the great names of history includes Arthur +and Charlemagne, and the story of Godfrey is designated as "this noble +history which is no fable nor feigned thing." Throughout the period the +stories of Troy and of Alexander are consistently treated as history, +and their redactors frequently state that their material has come from +various places. Nearly all the English Troy stories are translations of +Guido delle Colonne's _Historia Trojana_, and they take over from their +original Guido's long discussion of authorities. The Alexander romances +present the same effect of historical accuracy in passages like the +following: + + 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 largest +factor in the development of the habit of expressing responsibility for +following the source or for noting divergence from it. Less easy of +explanation is the fact that comment on style so frequently appears in +this connection. There is perhaps a touch of it even in Layamon's +account of his originals, when he approaches his French source: "Layamon +began to journey wide over this land, and procured the noble books which +he 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, who +brought baptism hither; the third he took, (and) laid there in the +midst, that a French clerk made, who was named Wace, who well could +write.... Layamon laid before him these books, and turned the leaves ... +pen he took with fingers, and wrote on book skin, and the true words set +together, and the three books compressed into one."[112] Robert of +Brunne, in his _Chronicle of England_, dated as early as 1338, combines +a lengthy discussion of style with a clear statement of the extent to +which 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," and +Pers, of whose style he says, "feyrer language non ne redis"; but he is +especially concerned with his own manner of expression. He does not +aspire 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 into +fashion, "ryme cowee," "straungere," or "enterlace." He does not write +for the "disours," "seggers," and "harpours" of his own day, who tell +the 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 he +considers the fault of contemporary renderings. Possibly it is that +affectation of an obsolete style to which Caxton refers in the preface +to the _Eneydos_. In any case, he himself rejects "straunge Inglis" for +"simple speche." + +Unlike Robert of Brunne, Andrew of Wyntoun, writing at the beginning of +the next century, delights in the ornamental style which has added a +charm 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 such +subject 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 to +English style, but he has perhaps suggested the reason why the question +of style counted for so much in connection with this pseudo-historical +material. In the introduction to Barbour's _Bruce_, though the point at +issue 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. In +translating Boccaccio's _Falls of Princes_ he dispenses with stylistic +ornament. + + 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 different +treatment. 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 who +have 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 the +original and the style to be employed in the English rendering. Caxton, +the last writer to be considered in this connection, remarks in his +preface to _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_ on the "fair language +of the French, which was in prose so well and compendiously set and +written," and in the prologue to the _Eneydos_ tells how he was +attracted by the "fair and honest terms and words in French," and how, +after writing a leaf or two, he noted that his English was characterized +by "fair and strange terms." While it may be that both Caxton and +Lydgate were trying to reproduce in English the peculiar quality of +their originals, it is more probable that they beautified their own +versions as best they could, without feeling it incumbent upon them to +make their rhetorical devices correspond with those of their +predecessors. Elsewhere Caxton expresses concern only for his own +language, as it is to be judged by English readers without regard for +the qualities of the French. In most cases he characterizes his +renderings of romance as "simple and rude"; in the preface to _Charles +the Great_ he says that he uses "no gay terms, nor subtle, nor new +eloquence"; and in the preface to _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_ he +declares that he does not know "the art of rhetoric nor of such gay +terms as now be said in these days and used," and that his only desire +is to be understood by his readers. The prologue to the _Eneydos_, +however, tells a different story. According to this he has been blamed +for expressing himself in "over curious terms which could not be +understood of the common people" and requested to use "old and homely +terms." But Caxton objects to the latter as being also unintelligible. +"In my judgment," he says, "the common terms that be daily used, are +lighter to be understood than the old and ancient English." He is +writing, not for the ignorant man, but "only for a clerk and a noble +gentleman that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in love, and +in noble chivalry." For this reason, he concludes, "in a mean have I +reduced and translated this said book into our English, not over rude +nor curious, but in such terms as shall be understood, by God's grace, +according to the copy." Though Caxton does not avail himself of +Wyntoun's theory that the Troy story must be told in "curious and +subtle" words, it is probable that, like other translators of his +century, he felt the attraction of the new aureate diction while he +professed the simplicity of language which existing standards demanded +of the translator. + +Turning from the romance and the history and considering religious +writings, the second large group of medieval productions, one finds the +most significant translator's comment associated with the saint's +legend, though occasionally the short pious tale or the more abstract +theological treatise makes some contribution. These religious works +differ from the romances in that they are more frequently based on Latin +than on French originals, and in that they contain more deliberate and +more repeated references to the audiences to which they have been +adapted. The translator does not, like Caxton, write for "a clerk and a +noble gentleman"; instead he explains repeatedly that he has striven to +make 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 at +Hayles_ presents a version in English, "for plainly this the truth will +tell";[127] Osbern Bokenam will speak and write "plainly, after the +language of Southfolk speech";[128] John Capgrave, finding that the +earlier translator of the life of St. Katherine has made the work "full +hard ... right for the strangeness of his dark language," undertakes to +translate it "more openly" and "set it more plain."[129] This conception +of the audience, together with the writer's consciousness that even in +presenting narrative he is conveying spiritual truths of supreme +importance to his readers, probably increases the tendency of the +translator to incorporate into his English version such running +commentary as at intervals suggests itself to him. He may add a line or +two of explanation, of exhortation, or, if he recognizes a quotation +from the Scriptures or from the Fathers, he may supply the authority for +it. John Capgrave undertakes to translate the life of St. Gilbert "right +as I find before me, save some additions will I put thereto which men of +that order have told me, and eke other things that shall fall to my mind +in the writing which be pertinent to the matter."[130] Nicholas Love +puts into English _The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ_, +"with more put to in certain parts, and also with drawing out of divers +authorities and matters as it seemeth to the writer hereof most speedful +and edifying to them that be of simple understanding."[131] Such +incidental citation of authority is evident in _St. Paula_, published +by Dr. Horstmann side by side with its Latin original.[132] With more +simplicity and less display of learning, the translator of religious +works sometimes vaguely adduces authority, as did the translator of +romances, in connection with an unfamiliar name. One finds such +statements as: "Manna, so it is written";[133] "Such a fiend, as the +book tells us, is called Incubus";[134] "In the country of Champagne, as +the 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 at +random. On the whole, indeed, the comment which accompanies religious +writings does not differ essentially in intelligibility or significance +from that associated with romances; its interest lies mainly in the fact +that it brings into greater relief tendencies more or less apparent in +the other form. + +One of these is the large proportion of borrowed comment. The constant +citation of authority in a work such as, for example, _The Golden +Legend_ was likely to be reproduced in the English with varying degrees +of faithfulness. A _Life of St. Augustine_, to choose a few +illustrations from many, reproduces the Latin as in the following +examples: "as the book telleth us" replaces "dicitur enim"; "of him it +is said in Glosarie," "ut dicitur in Glossario"; "in the book of his +confessions the sooth is written for the nonce," "ut legitur in libro +iii. confessionum."[139] Robert of Brunne's _Handlyng Synne_, as printed +by the Early English Text Society with its French original, affords +numerous 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 the +last example. "Cum l'estorie nus ad cunté" has become "Yn the byble men +mow 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 more +accurately than it is given in the French or the Latin leads sometimes +to strange confusion, more especially when a reference to the Scriptures +is involved. It was admitted that the Bible was unusually difficult of +comprehension and that, if the simple were to understand it, it must be +annotated in various ways. Nicholas Love says that there have been +written "for lewd men and women ... devout meditations of Christ's life +more plain in certain parts than is expressed in the gospels of the four +evangelists."[141] With so much addition of commentary and legend, it +was often hard to tell what was and what was not in Holy Scripture, and +consequently while a narrative like _The Birth of Jesus_ cites correctly +enough the gospels for certain days, of which it gives a free +rendering,[142] there are cases of amazing attributions, like that at +the 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 religious +works, like the translator of romances, becomes more garrulous in his +comment and develops a good deal of interest in English style. As a fair +representative of the period we may take Osbern Bokenam, the translator +of various saint's legends, a man very much interested in the +contemporary development of literary expression. Two qualities, +according to Bokenam, characterize his own style; he writes +"compendiously" and he avoids "gay speech." He repeatedly disclaims both +prolixity 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 old +man like him. Yet like those of Lydgate and Caxton, Bokenam's +protestations are not entirely convincing, and in them one catches +glimpses of a lurking fondness for the wordiness of fine writing. Though +Pallas 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 finds +it 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 his +literary standards and the self-contradictory elements in his statements +leave 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 development +of a more satisfactory theory is a doubtful question. While men like +Lydgate, Bokenam, and Caxton generally profess to have reproduced the +content of their sources and make some mention of the original writers, +their comment is confused and indefinite; they do not recognize any +compelling necessity for faithfulness; and one sometimes suspects that +they excelled their predecessors only in articulateness. As compared +with Layamon and Orm they show a development scarcely worthy of a lapse +of more than two centuries. There is perhaps, as time goes on, some +little advance towards the attainment of modern standards of scholarship +as regards confession of divergence from sources. In the early part of +the period variations from the original are only vaguely implied and +become evident only when the reader can place the English beside the +French or Latin. In _Floris and Blancheflor_, for example, a much +condensed version of a descriptive passage in the French is introduced +by the words, "I ne can tell you how richly the saddle was +wrought."[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 to +something more nearly resembling the gospel narrative with the +exhortation, "Forget not Jesus for this tale."[150] As compared with +this, writers like Nicholas Love or John Capgrave are noticeably +explicit. Love pauses at various points to explain that he is omitting +large sections of the original;[151] Capgrave calls attention to his +interpolations and refers them to their sources.[152] On the other hand, +there are constant implications that variation from source may be a +desirable thing and that explanation and apology are unnecessary. +Bokenam, for example, apologizes rather because _The Golden Legend_ does +not supply enough material and he must leave out certain things "for +ignorance."[153] Caxton says of his _Charles the Great_, "If I had been +more largely informed ... I had better made it."[154] + +On the whole, the greatest merit of the later medieval translators +consists in the quantity of their comment. In spite of the vagueness and +the absence of originality in their utterances, there is an advantage in +their very garrulity. Translators needed to become more conscious and +more deliberate in their work; different methods needed to be defined; +and the habit of technical discussion had its value, even though the +quality of the commentary was not particularly good. Apart from a few +conventional formulas, this habit of comment constituted the bequest of +medieval 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 _Lives +of the Saints_, Preface of _Pastoral Letter for Archbishop Wulfstan_. All +of 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, citing +tradition as the source of the story, though it is all plainly of literary +origin." + +[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 but +bare translations out of the Latin and French ... as his books of _Troilus +and Cresseid_, and the _Romant of the Rose_," Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan +Critical 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 of +Sempringham_, E.E.T.S. + +[39] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, p. 138, ll. 1183-8. + +[40] _Three Prose Versions of Secreta Secretorum_, E.E.T.S., Epistle +Dedicatory 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 Prose +and 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 de +Creatione_, ll. 49-50. + +[57] _Legends of the Holy Rood_, E.E.T.S., _How the Holy Cross was found by +St. 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 by +the 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 Northern +dialect. + +[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 had +their share in the excellence of the final result. Appealing, as it did, +to all classes, from the scholar, alert for controversial detail, to the +unlearned layman, concerned only for his soul's welfare, it had its +growth in the vital atmosphere of strong intellectual and spiritual +activity. It was not enough that it should bear the test of the +scholar's criticism; it must also reach the understanding of Tyndale's +"boy that driveth the plough," demands difficult of satisfaction, but +conducive theoretically to a fine development of the art of translation. +To attain scholarly accuracy combined with practical intelligibility +was, then, the task of the translator. + +From both angles criticism reached him. Tyndale refers to "my +translation in which they affirm unto the lay people (as I have heard +say) to be I wot not how many thousand heresies," and continues, "For +they which in times past were wont to look on no more scripture than +they found in their duns or such like devilish doctrine, have yet now so +narrowly looked on my translation that there is not so much as one I +therein if it lack a tittle over his head, but they have noted it, and +number it unto the ignorant people for an heresy."[155] Tunstall's +famous reference in his sermon at Paul's Cross to the two thousand +errors 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 "open +reasoning in your open Taverns and Alehouses"[156] concerning the +meaning of Scripture, included in the draft of the proclamation for the +reading of the Great Bible, also implies that there must have been +enough of popular oral discussion to count for something in the shaping +of the English Bible. Of the serious comment of more competent judges +many records remain, enough to make it clear that, although the real +technical problems involved were often obscured by controversy and by +the common view that the divine quality of the original made human +effort negligible, nevertheless the translator did not lack the stimulus +which comes from intelligent criticism and discussion. + +The Bible also had an advantage over other translations in that the idea +of _progress_ towards an accurate version early arose. Unlike the +translators of secular works, who frequently boast of the speed with +which they have accomplished their tasks, the translators of the Bible +constantly mention the long, careful labor which has gone to their +undertaking. Tyndale feels in his own work the need for revision, and so +far as opportunity serves, corrects and polishes his version. Later +translators consciously based their renderings on those of their +predecessors. St. Augustine's approval of diversity of translations was +cited again and again. Tyndale urges "those that are better seen in the +tongues than I" to "put to their hands to amend" any faults they may +find in his work.[157] George Joye, his assistant, later his would-be +rival, declares that we must learn "to depend not whole on any man's +translation."[158] "Every one," says Coverdale, "doth his best to be +nighest to the mark. And though they cannot all attain thereto yet +shooteth one nigher than another";[159] and again, "Sure I am that there +cometh more knowledge and understanding of the scripture by their +sundry translations than by all our sophistical doctors. For that one +translateth something obscurely in one place, the same translateth +another, or else he himself, more manifestly by a more plain +vocable."[160] Occasionally the number of experimenters awakened some +doubts; Cromwell suggests that the bishops make a "perfect +correction";[161] the patent granted him for the printing of the Bible +advocates one translation since "the frailty of men is such that the +diversity thereof may breed and bring forth manyfold inconveniences as +when wilful and heady folks shall confer upon the diversity of the said +translations";[162] the translators of the version of 1611 have to +"answer a third cavil ... against us, for altering and amending our +translations so oft";[163] but the conception of progress was generally +accepted, and finds fit expression in the preface to the Authorized +Version: "Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the +same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be wiser: so, if we +building on their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by +their 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 to +profit by the experiences of others. In other countries than England men +were engaged in similar labors. The sixteenth century was rich in new +Latin versions of the Scriptures. The translations of Erasmus, Beza, +Pagninus, Münster, Étienne, Montanus, and Tremellius had in turn their +influence on the English renderings, and Castalio's translation into +Ciceronian Latin had at least its share of discussion. There was +constant intercourse between those interested in Bible translation in +England and on the Continent. English refugees during the persecutions +fled across the Channel, and towns such as Worms, Zurich, Antwerp, and +Geneva saw the first printing of most of the early English versions of +the Scriptures. The Great Bible was set up in Paris. Indeed foreign +printers had so large a share in the English Bible that it seemed +sometimes advisable to limit their influence. Richard Grafton writes +ironically to Cromwell regarding the text of the Bible: "Yea and to make +it yet truer than it is, therefore Dutchmen dwelling within this realm +go about the printing of it, which can neither speak good English, nor +yet write none, and they will be both the printers and correctors +thereof";[165] and Coverdale and Grafton imply a similar fear in the +case of Regnault, the Frenchman, who has been printing service books, +when they ask Cromwell that "henceforth he print no more in the English +tongue, unless he have an Englishman that is learned to be his +corrector."[166] Moreover, versions of the Scriptures in other languages +than English were not unknown in England. In 1530 Henry the Eighth was +led to prohibit "the having of holy scripture, translated into the +vulgar tongues of English, _French_, or _Dutch_."[167] Besides this +general familiarity with foreign translations and foreign printers, a +more 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 Dutch +interpreters: whom (because to their singular gifts and special +diligence in the Bible) I have been the more glad to follow."[169] The +preface to the version of 1611 says, "Neither did we think much to +consult 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 in +his familiarity with so great a number of translations into other +languages and with the discussion centering around these translations, +it is impossible that the English translator should have failed to +obtain suggestions, both practical and theoretical, which applied to +translation rather than to interpretation. Comments on the general aims +and methods of translation, happy turns of expression in French or +German which had their equivalents in English idiom, must frequently +have illuminated his difficulties. The translators of the Geneva Bible +show a just realization of the truth when they speak of "the great +opportunity and occasions which God hath presented unto us in this +Church, by reason of so many godly and learned men; and such diversities +of translations in divers tongues."[171] + +Of the general history of Biblical translations, already so frequently +and so adequately treated, only the barest outline is here necessary. +The various Anglo-Saxon translations and the Wycliffite versions are +largely detached from the main line of development. From Tyndale's +translations to the Authorized Version of 1611 the line is surprisingly +consecutive, though in the matter of theory an early translator +occasionally anticipates views which obtain general acceptance only +after a long period of experiment and discussion. Roughly speaking, the +theory of translation has as its two extremes, the Roman Catholic and +the Puritan positions, while the 1611 version, where its preface commits +itself, compromises on the points at issue. + +As is to be expected, the most definite statements of the problems +involved and of their solution are usually found in the comment of those +practically engaged in the work of translation. The widely discussed +question whether or not the people should have the Scriptures in the +vulgar tongue scarcely ever comes down to the difficulties and +possibilities of the actual undertaking. More's lengthy attack on +Tyndale's New Testament is chiefly concerned with matters of doctrine. +Apart from the prefaces to the various issues of the Bible, the most +elaborate discussion of technical matters is Fulke's _Defence of the +Sincere and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures into the English +Tongue_, a Protestant reply to the claims of the Rhemish translators, +published in 1589. Even the more definite comments are bound up with a +great mass of controversial or hortatory material, so that it is hard to +disentangle the actual contribution which is being made to the theory of +translation. Sometimes the translator settled vexed questions by using +marginal glosses, a method which might make for accuracy but was liable +to become cumbrous and confusing. Like the prefaces, the glosses +sometimes contained theological rather than linguistic comment, thus +proving a special source of controversy. A proclamation of Henry the +Eighth forbids the printing or importation of "any books of divine +scripture in the English tongue, with any additions in the margin or any +prologue ... except the same be first viewed, examined, and allowed by +the king's highness, or such of his majesty's council, or others, as it +shall please his grace to assign thereto, but only the plain sentence +and text."[172] The version of 1611 admitted only linguistic comment. + +Though the Anglo-Saxon renderings of the Scriptures are for the most +part isolated from the main body of translations, there are some points +of contact. Elizabethan translators frequently cited the example of the +earlier period as an argument in favor of having the Bible in the vulgar +tongue. Nor were they entirely unfamiliar with the work of these remote +predecessors. Foxe, the martyrologist, published in 1571 an edition of +the four gospels in Anglo-Saxon under the patronage of Archbishop +Parker. Parker's well-known interest in Old English centered +particularly around the early versions of the Scriptures. Secretary +Cecil sends the Archbishop "a very ancient Bible written in Latin and +old English or Saxon," and Parker in reply comments on "the fair +antique writing with the Saxon interpretation."[173] Moreover the slight +record which survives suggests that the problems which confronted the +Anglo-Saxon translator were not unlike those which met the translator of +a later period. Aelfric's theory of translation in general is expressed +in the Latin prefaces to the _Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church_ and +the _Lives of the Saints_. Above all things he desires that his work may +be clear and readable. Hence he has a peculiar regard for brevity. The +_Homilies_ are rendered "non garrula verbositate"; the _Lives of the +Saints_ are abbreviated on the principle that "non semper breuitas +sermonem deturpat sed multotiens honestiorem reddit." Clear, idiomatic +English is essential even when it demands the sacrifice of verbal +accuracy. He presents not word for word but sense for sense, and prefers +the "pure and open words of the language of this people," to a more +artificial style. His Anglo-Saxon _Preface to Genesis_ implies that he +felt the need of greater faithfulness in the case of the Bible: "We dare +write no more in English than the Latin has, nor change the orders +(endebirdnisse)"; but it goes on to say that it is necessary that Latin +idiom adapt itself to English idiom.[174] + +Apart from Aelfric's prefaces Anglo-Saxon translators of the Scriptures +have left no comment on their methods. One of the versions of the +Gospels, however, links itself with later translations by employing as +preface three of St. Jerome's prologues, among them the _Preface to +Eusebius_. References to Jerome's and Augustine's theories of +translation are frequent throughout the course of Biblical translation +but are generally vague. The _Preface to Eusebius_ and the _Epistle to +Pammachius_ contain the most complete statements of the principles which +guided Jerome. Both emphasize the necessity of giving sense for sense +rather than word for word, "except," says the latter, "in the case of +the Holy Scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery." +This corresponds closely with Aelfric's theory expressed in the preface +to the _Lives of the Saints_: "Nec potuimus in ista translatione semper +verbum ex verbo transferre, sed tamen sensum ex sensu," and his +insistence in the _Preface to Genesis_ on a faithfulness which extends +even to the _endebirdnisse_ or orders. + +The principle "word for word if possible; if not, sense for sense" is +common in connection with medieval translations, but is susceptible of +very different interpretations, as appears sometimes from its context. +Richard Rolle's phrasing of the theory in the preface to his translation +of the Psalter is: "I follow the letter as much as I may. And where I +find no proper English I follow the wit of the words"; but he also makes +the contradictory statement, "In this work I seek no strange English, +but lightest and commonest, and _such that is most like to the +Latin_,"[175] a peculiar conception of the translator's obligation to +his own tongue! The Prologue to the second recension of the Wycliffite +version, commonly attributed to Purvey, emphasizes, under cover of the +same apparent theory, the claims of the vernacular. "The best +translating," it runs, "is out of Latin into English, to translate after +the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as +open, either opener, in English as in Latin, ... and if the letter may +not 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 growing +distrust of the Vulgate in some quarters probably accounts in some +measure 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 these +contrasted theories represent roughly the position of the Roman +Catholic and, to some extent, the Anglican party as compared with the +more distinctly Protestant attitude throughout the period when the +English Bible was taking shape, the former stressing the difficulties of +translation and consequently discouraging it, or, when permitting it, +insisting on extreme faithfulness to the original; the latter profiting +by experiment and criticism and steadily working towards a version which +would give due heed not only to the claims of the original but to the +genius of the English language. + +Regarded merely as theory, however, a statement like the one just quoted +obviously failed to give adequate recognition to what the original might +justly demand, and in that respect justified the fears of those who +opposed translation. The high standard of accuracy set by such critics +demanded of the translator an increasing consciousness of the +difficulties involved and an increasingly clear conception of what +things were and were not permissible. Purvey himself contributes to this +end by a definite statement of certain changes which may be allowed the +English writer.[177] Ablative absolute or participial constructions may +be 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 dark +and doubtful. Also," he continues, "a relative, _which_, may be resolved +into his antecedent with a conjunction copulative, as thus, _which +runneth_, and _he runneth_. Also when a word is once set in a reason, it +may be set forth as oft as it is understood, either as oft as reason and +need ask; and this word _autem_ either _vero_, may stand for _forsooth_ +either for _but_, and thus I use commonly; and sometimes it may stand +for _and_, as old grammarians say. Also when rightful construction is +letted by relation, I resolve it openly, thus, where this reason, +_Dominum formidabunt adversarii ejus_, should be Englished thus by the +letter, _the Lord his adversaries shall dread_, I English it thus by +resolution, _the adversaries of the Lord shall dread him_; and so of +other reasons that be like." In the later period of Biblical +translation, when grammatical information was more accessible, such +elementary comment was not likely to be committed to print, but echoes +of 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 present +tense is both one, and the future tense is the optative mood also, and +the future tense is oft the imperative mood in the active voice and in +the passive voice. Likewise person for person, number for number, and +interrogation for a conditional, and such like is with the Hebrews a +common usage."[178] The men concerned in the preparation of the Bishops' +Bible discuss the rendering of tenses in the Psalms. At the beginning of +the first Psalm the Bishop of Rochester turns "the preterperfect tense +into the present tense; because the sense is too harsh in the +preterperfect tense," and the Bishop of Ely advises "the translation of +the verbs in the Psalms to be used uniformly in one tense."[179] + +Purvey's explanations, however, suggest that his mind is occupied, not +merely with details, but with a somewhat larger problem. Medieval +translators were frequently disturbed by the fact that it was almost +impossible to confine an English version to the same number of words as +the Latin. When they added to the number, they feared that they were +unfaithful to the original. The need for brevity, for avoiding +superfluous words, is especially emphasized in connection with the +Bible. Conciseness, necessary for accuracy, is also an admirable quality +in itself. Aelfric's approval of this characteristic has already been +noted. The metrical preface to Rolle's Psalter reads: "This holy man in +expounding, he followeth holy doctors, and in all his Englishing right +after 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 employment +of over many words in translation. Tyndale, in his revision, will "seek +to bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at the +length."[180] In certain cases, he says, English reproduces the Hebrew +original more easily than does the Latin, because in Latin the +translator must "seek a compass."[181] Coverdale finds a corresponding +difficulty in turning Latin into English: "The figure called Eclipsis +divers times used in the scriptures ... though she do garnish the +sentence in Latin will not so be admitted in other tongues."[182] The +translator of the Geneva New Testament refers to the "Hebrew and Greek +phrases, which are strange to render into other tongues, and also +_short_."[183] The preface to the Rhemish Testament accuses the +Protestant translators of having in one place put into the text "three +words more ... than the Greek word doth signify."[184] Strype says of +Cheke in a passage chiefly concerned with Cheke's attempt at translation +of the Bible, "He brought in a _short_ and expressive way of writing +without long and intricate periods,"[185] a comment which suggests that +possibly the appreciation of conciseness embraced sentence structure as +well as phrasing. As Tyndale suggests, careful revision made for +brevity. In Laurence's scheme for correcting his part of the Bishop's +Bible was the heading "words superfluous";[186] the preface to the +Authorized Version says, "If anything be halting, or _superfluous_, or +not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the +truth set in place."[187] As time went on, certain technical means were +employed to meet the situation. Coverdale incloses in brackets words not +in the Latin text; the Geneva translators put added words in italics; +Fulke criticizes the Rhemish translators for neglecting this +device;[188] and the matter is finally settled by its employment in the +Authorized Version. Fulke, however, irritated by what he considers a +superstitious regard for the number of words in the original on the part +of the Rhemish translators, puts the whole question on a common-sense +basis. He charges his opponents with making "many imperfect sentences +... because you will not seem to add that which in translation is no +addition, but a true translation."[189] "For to translate out of one +tongue into another," he says in another place, "is a matter of greater +difficulty than is commonly taken, I mean exactly to yield as much and +no more than the original containeth, when the words and phrases are so +different, that few are found which in all points signify the same +thing, neither more nor less, in divers tongues."[190] And again, "Must +not such particles in translation be always expressed to make the sense +plain, which in English without the particle hath no sense or +understanding. To translate precisely out of the Hebrew is not to +observe the number of words, but the perfect sense and meaning, as the +phrase of our tongue will serve to be understood."[191] + +For the distinguishing characteristics of the Authorized Version, the +beauty of its rhythm, the vigor of its native Saxon vocabulary, there is +little to prepare one in the comment of its translators or their +predecessors. Apparently the faithful effort to render the original +truly resulted in a perfection of style of which the translator himself +was largely unconscious. The declaration in the preface to the version +of 1611 that "niceness in words was always counted the next step to +trifling,"[192] and the general condemnation of Castalio's "lewd +translation,"[193] point to a respect for the original which made the +translator merely a mouthpiece and the English language merely a medium +for a divine utterance. Possibly there is to be found in appreciation of +the style of the original Hebrew, Greek, or Latin some hint of what gave +the English version its peculiar beauty, though even here it is hard to +distinguish the tribute paid to style from that paid to content. The +characterization may be only a bit of vague comparison like that in the +preface to the Authorized Version, "Hebrew the ancientest, ... Greek the +most copious, ... Latin the finest,"[194] or the reference in the +preface to the Rhemish New Testament to the Vulgate as the translation +"of greatest majesty."[195] The prefaces to the Geneva New Testament and +the Geneva Bible combine fairly definite linguistic comment with less +obvious references to style: "And because the Hebrew and Greek phrases, +which are hard to render in other tongues, and also short, should not be +so hard, I have sometimes interpreted them without any whit diminishing +the _grace_ of the sense, as our language doth use them";[196] "Now as +we have chiefly observed the sense, and labored always to restore it to +all integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of the +words, considering that the Apostles who spoke and wrote to the Gentiles +in the Greek tongue, rather constrained them to the lively phrase of the +Hebrew, than enterprised far by mollifying their language to speak as +the Gentiles did. And for this and other causes we have in many places +reserved the Hebrew phrases, notwithstanding that they may seem somewhat +hard in their ears that are not well practised and also _delight in the +sweet sounding phrases_ of the holy Scriptures."[197] On the other hand +the Rhemish translators defend the retention of these Hebrew phrases on +the ground of stylistic beauty: "There is a certain majesty and more +signification in these speeches, and therefore both Greek and Latin keep +them, although it is no more the Greek or Latin phrase, than it is the +English."[198] Of peculiar interest is Tyndale's estimate of the +relative possibilities of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. Of the +Bible 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 Greek +tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And the +properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the +English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one; so that +in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the +English word for word; when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and +yet shalt have much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it have +the same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in +the Latin, and as it hath in the Hebrew."[199] The implication that the +English version might possess the "grace and sweetness" of the Hebrew +original suggests that Tyndale was not entirely unconscious of the charm +which his own work possessed, and which it was to transmit to later +renderings. + +The questions most definitely discussed by those concerned in the +translation of the Bible were questions of vocabulary. Primarily most of +these discussions centered around points of doctrine and were concerned +as largely with the meaning of the word in the original as with its +connotation in English. Yet though not in their first intention +linguistic, these discussions of necessity had their bearing on the +general problems debated by rhetoricians of the day and occasionally +resulted in definite comment on English usage, as when, for example, +More says: "And in our English tongue this word senior signifieth +nothing at all, but is a French word used in English more than half in +mockage, when one will call another my lord in scorn." With the +exception of Sir John Cheke few of the translators say anything which +can be construed as advocacy of the employment of native English words. +Of Cheke's attitude there can, of course, be no doubt. His theory is +thus described by Strype: "And moreover, in writing any discourse, he +would allow no words, but such as were pure English, or of Saxon +original; suffering no adoption of any foreign word into the English +speech, which he thought was copious enough of itself, without borrowing +words of other countries. Thus in his own translations into English, he +would not use any but pure English phrase and expression, which indeed +made his style here and there a little affected and hard: and forced him +to use sometimes odd and uncouth words."[200] His Biblical translation +was a conscious attempt at carrying out these ideas. "Upon this +account," writes Strype, "Cheke seemed to dislike the English +translation of the Bible, because in it there were so many foreign +words. Which made him once attempt a new translation of the New +Testament, and he completed the gospel of St. Matthew. And made an +entrance into St. Mark; wherein all along he labored to use only true +Anglo-Saxon words."[201] Since Cheke's translation remained in +manuscript till long after the Elizabethan period, its influence was +probably not far-reaching, but his uncompromising views must have had +their effect on his contemporaries. Taverner's Bible, a less extreme +example of the same tendency, seemingly had no influence on later +renderings.[202] + +Regarding the value of synonyms there is considerable comment, the +prevailing tendency of which is not favorable to unnecessary +discrimination between pairs of words. This seems to be the attitude of +Coverdale in two somewhat confused passages in which he attempts to +consider at the same time the signification of the original word, the +practice of other translators, and the facts of English usage. Defending +diversities of translations, he says, "For that one interpreteth +something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or else +he himself, more manifestly by a more plain vocable of the same meaning +in another place."[203] As illustrations Coverdale mentions scribe and +lawyer; elders, and father and mother; repentance, penance, and +amendment; and continues: "And in this manner have I used in my +translation, calling it in one place penance that in another place I +call repentance; and that not only because the interpreters have done so +before me, but that the adversaries of the truth may see, how that we +abhor not this word penance as they untruly report of us, no more than +the interpreters of Latin abhor poenitare, when they read rescipiscere." +In the preface to the Latin-English Testament of 1535 he says: "And +though I seem to be all too scrupulous calling it in one place penance, +that in another I call repentance: and gelded that another calleth +chaste, this methinks ought not to offend the saying that the holy ghost +(I trust) is the author of both our doings ... and therefore I heartily +require thee think no more harm in me for calling it in one place +penance that in another I call repentance, than I think harm in him that +calleth it chaste, which by the nature of this word _Eunuchus_ I call +gelded ... And for my part I ensure thee I am indifferent to call it as +well with one term as with the other, so long as I know that it is no +prejudice nor injury to the meaning of the holy ghost."[204] Fulke in +his answer to Gregory Martin shows the same tendency to ignore +differences in meaning. Martin says: "Note also that they put the word +'just,' when faith is joined withal, as Rom. i, 'the just shall live by +faith,' to signify that justification is by faith. But if works be +joined 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 (I +think) in the English tongue before, between 'just' and 'righteous,' +'justice' and 'righteousness.' I am sure there is none of our +translators, no, nor any professor of justification by faith only, that +esteemeth it the worth of one hair, whether you say in any place of +scripture 'just' or 'righteous,' 'justice' or 'righteousness'; and +therefore freely have they used sometimes the one word, sometimes the +other.... Certain it is that no Englishman knoweth the difference +between 'just' and 'righteous,' 'unjust' and 'unrighteous,' saving that +'righteousness' and 'righteous' are the more familiar English +words."[205] Martin and Fulke differ in the same way over the use of the +words "deeds" and "works." The question whether the same English word +should always be used to represent the same word in the original was +frequently a matter of discussion. It was probably in the mind of the +Archbishop of Ely when he wrote to Archbishop Parker, "And if ye +translate bonitas or misericordiam, to use it likewise in all places of +the Psalms."[206] The surprising amount of space devoted by the preface +to the version of 1611 to explaining the usage followed by the +translators 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 had +done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere, have been +as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from the +sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the +same in both places (for there be some words that be not of the same +sense everywhere) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, +according to our duty. But that we should express the same notion in the +same 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 curiosity +than wisdom.... For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? why +should we be in bondage to them if we may be free, use one precisely +when we may use another no less fit, as commodiously?"[207] + +It was seldom, however, that the translator felt free to interchange +words indiscriminately. Of his treatment of the original Purvey writes: +"But in translating of words equivocal, that is, that hath many +significations under one letter, may lightly be peril, for Austin saith +in the 2nd. book of Christian Teaching, that if equivocal words be not +translated into the sense, either understanding, of the author, it is +error; as in that place of the Psalm, _the feet of them be swift to shed +out blood_, the Greek word is equivocal to _sharp_ and _swift_, and he +that translated _sharp feet_ erred, and a book that hath _sharp feet_ is +false, and must be amended; as that sentence _unkind young trees shall +not give deep roots_ oweth to be thus, _the plantings of adultery shall +not give deep roots_.... Therefore a translator hath great need to +study well the sentence, both before and after, and look that such +equivocal words accord with the sentence."[208] Consideration of the +connotation of English words is required of the translators of the +Bishops' Bible. "Item that all such words as soundeth in the Old +Testament to any offence of lightness or obscenity be expressed with +more convenient terms and phrases."[209] Generally, however, it was the +theological connotation of words that was at issue, especially the +question whether words were to be taken in their ecclesiastical or their +profane sense, that is, whether certain words which through long +association with the church had come to have a peculiar technical +meaning should be represented in English by such words as the church +habitually employed, generally words similar in form to the Latin. The +question was a large one, and affected other languages than English. +Foxe, for example, has difficulty in turning into Latin the controversy +between Archbishop Cranmer and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. "The +English style also stuck with him; which having so many ecclesiastical +phrases and manners of speech, no good Latin expressions could be found +to answer them."[210] In England trouble arose with the appearance of +Tyndale's New Testament. More accused him of mistranslating "three words +of great weight,"[211] priests, church, and charity, for which he had +substituted _seniors_, _congregation_, and _love_. Robert Ridley, +chaplain to the Bishop of London, wrote of Tyndale's version: "By this +translation we shall lose all these Christian words, penance, charity, +confession, grace, priest, church, which he always calleth a +congregation.--Idolatria calleth he worshipping of images."[212] Much +longer is the list of words presented to Convocation some years later by +the Bishop of Winchester "which he desired for their germane and native +meaning and for the majesty of their matter might be retained as far as +possible in their own nature or be turned into English speech as closely +as possible."[213] It goes so far as to include words like Pontifex, +Ancilla, Lites, Egenus, Zizania. This theory was largely put into +practice by the translators of the Rhemish New Testament, who say, "We +are very precise and religious in following our copy, the old vulgar +approved Latin: not only in sense, which we hope we always do, but +sometimes in the very words also and phrases,"[214] and give as +illustrations of their usage the retention of Corbana, Parasceve, +Pasche, Azymes, and similar words. Between the two extreme positions +represented by Tyndale on the one hand and the Rhemish translators on +the other, is the attitude of Grindal, who thus advises Foxe in the case +previously mentioned: "In all these matters, as also in most others, it +will be safe to hold a middle course. My judgment is the same with +regard to style. For neither is the ecclesiastical style to be +fastidiously neglected, as it is by some, especially when the heads of +controversies cannot sometimes be perspicuously explained without it, +nor, on the other hand, is it to be so superstitiously followed as to +prevent us sometimes from sprinkling it with the ornaments of +language."[215] The Authorized Version, following its custom, approves +the middle course: "We have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of +the Puritans, who leave the old Ecclesiastical words, and betake +themselves to other, as when they put _washing_ for _Baptism_, and +_Congregation_ instead of _Church_: as also on the other side we have +shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their _Azimes_, _Tunike_, +_Rational_, _Holocausts_, _Praepuce_, _Pasche_, and a number of such +like."[216] + +In the interval between Tyndale's translation and the appearance of the +Authorized Version the two parties shifted their ground rather +amusingly. More accuses Tyndale of taking liberties with the prevailing +English usage, especially when he substitutes congregation for church, +and insists that the people understand by _church_ what they ought to +understand. "This is true," he says, "of the usual signification of +these words themselves in the English tongue, by the common custom of us +English people, that either now do use these words in our language, or +that have used before our days. And I say that this common custom and +usage of speech is the only thing by which we know the right and proper +signification of any word, in so much that if a word were taken out of +Latin, French, or Spanish, and were for lack of understanding of the +tongue from whence it came, used for another thing in English than it +was in the former tongue: then signifieth it in England none other thing +than as we use it and understand thereby, whatsoever it signify anywhere +else. Then say I now that in England this word congregation did never +signify the number of Christian people with a connotation or +consideration of their faith or christendom, no more than this word +assemble, which hath been taken out of the French, and now is by custom +become English, as congregation is out of the Latin."[217] Later he +returns to the charge with the words, "And then must he with his +translation make us an English vocabulary too."[218] In the later +period, however, the positions are reversed. The conservative party, +represented by the Rhemish translators, admit that they are employing +unfamiliar words, but say that it is a question of faithfulness to +originals, and that the new words "will easily grow to be current and +familiar,"[219] a contention not without basis when one considers how +much acceptance or rejection by the English Bible could affect the +status of a word. Moreover the introduction of new words into the +Scriptures had its parallel in the efforts being made elsewhere to +enrich the language. The Rhemish preface, published in 1582, almost +contemporaneously with Lyly's _Euphues_ and Sidney's _Arcadia_, +justifies its practice thus: "And why should we be squamish at new words +or phrases in the Scripture, which are necessary: when we do easily +admit and follow new words coined in court and in courtly or other +secular writings?"[220] + +The points at issue received their most thorough consideration in the +controversy between Gregory Martin and William Fulke. Martin, one of the +translators of the Rhemish Testament, published, in 1582, _A Discovery +of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics of +our Days_, a book in which apparently he attacked all the Protestant +translations with which he was familiar, including Beza's Latin +Testament and even attempting to involve the English translators in the +same condemnation with Castalio. Fulke, in his _Defence of the Sincere +and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures_, reprinted Martin's +_Discovery_ and replied to it section by section. Both discussions are +fragmentary and inconsecutive, but there emerges from them at intervals +a clear statement of principles. Fundamentally the positions of the two +men are very different. Martin is not concerned with questions of +abstract scholarship, but with matters of religious belief. "But because +these places concern no controversy," he says, "I say no more."[221] He +does not hesitate to place the authority of the Fathers before the +results of contemporary scholarship. "For were not he a wise man, that +would prefer one Master Humfrey, Master Fulke, Master Whitakers, or some +of 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 thus +narrowed, he finds it easy to lay down definite rules for translation. +Fulke, on the other hand, believes that translation may be dissociated +from matters of belief. "If the translator's purpose were evil, yet so +long as the words and sense of the original tongue will bear him, he +cannot justly be called a false and heretical translator, albeit he have +a false and heretical meaning."[223] He is not willing to accept +unsupported authority, even that of the leaders of his own party. "If +Luther misliked the Tigurine translation," he says in another attack on +the Rhemish version, "it is not sufficient to discredit it, seeing +truth, and not the opinion or authority of men is to be followed in such +matters,"[224] and again, in the _Defence_, "The Geneva bibles do not +profess to translate out of Beza's Latin, but out of the Hebrew and +Greek; and if they agree not always with Beza, what is that to the +purpose, if they agree with the truth of the original text?"[225] +Throughout the _Defence_ he is on his guard against Martin's attempts to +drive 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 in +their "etymological" sense, and consulting profane writers, Homer, +Pliny, Tully, Virgil,[226] for their meaning, instead of observing the +ecclesiastical use, which he calls "the usual taking thereof in all +vulgar speech and writing."[227] Fulke admits part of Martin's claim: +"We have also answered before that words must not always be translated +according to their original and general signification, but according to +such signification as by use they are appropried to be taken. We agree +also, that words taken by custom of speech into an ecclesiastical +meaning are not to be altered into a strange or profane +signification."[228] But ecclesiastical authority is not always a safe +guide. "How the fathers of the church have used words, it is no rule for +translators of the scriptures to follow; who oftentimes used words as +the people did take them, and not as they signified in the apostles' +time."[229] In difficult cases there is a peculiar advantage in +consulting profane writers, "who used the words most indifferently in +respect of our controversies of which they were altogether +ignorant."[230] Fulke refuses to be reduced to accept entirely either +the "common" or the "etymological" interpretation. "A translator that +hath regard to interpret for the ignorant people's instruction, may +sometimes depart from the etymology or common signification or precise +turning of word for word, and that for divers causes."[231] To one +principle, however, he will commit himself: the translator must observe +common English usage. "We are not lords of the common speech of men," he +writes, "for if we were, we would teach them to use their terms more +properly; but seeing we cannot change the use of speech, we follow +Aristotle's counsel, which is to speak and use words as the common +people useth."[232] Consequently ecclesiastical must always give way to +popular usage. "Our meaning is not, that if any Greek terms, or words of +any other language, have of long time been usurped in our English +language, the true meaning of which is unknown at this day to the common +people, but that the same terms may be either in translation or +exposition set out plainly, to inform the simplicity of the ignorant, by +such words as of them are better understood. Also when those terms are +abused by custom of speech, to signify some other thing than they were +first appointed for, or else to be taken ambiguously for divers things, +we ought not to be superstitious in these cases, but to avoid +misunderstanding we may use words according to their original +signification, as they were taken in such time as they were written by +the instruments of the Holy Ghost."[233] + +Fulke's support of the claims of the English language is not confined to +general statements. Acquaintance with other languages has given him a +definite conception of the properties of his own, even in matters of +detail. He resents the importation of foreign idiom. "If you ask for the +readiest and most proper English of these words, I must answer you, 'an +image, a worshipper of images, and worshipping of images,' as we have +sometimes translated. The other that you would have, 'idol, idolater, +and idolatry,' be rather Greekish than English words; which though they +be used by many Englishmen, yet are they not understood of all as the +other be."[234] "You ... avoid the names of elders, calling them +ancients, and the wise men sages, as though you had rather speak French +than English, as we do; like as you translate _confide_, 'have a good +heart,' after the French phrase, rather than you would say as we do, 'be +of good comfort.'"[235] Though he admits that English as compared with +older languages is defective in vocabulary, he insists that this cannot +be remedied by unwarranted coinage of words. "That we have no greater +change of words to answer so many of the Hebrew tongue, it is of the +riches of that tongue, and the poverty of our mother language, which +hath but two words, image and idol, and both of them borrowed of the +Latin and Greek: as for other words equivalent, we know not any, and we +are loth to make any new words of that signification, except the +multitude of Hebrew words of the same sense coming together do sometimes +perhaps seem to require it. Therefore as the Greek hath fewer words to +express this thing than the Hebrew, so hath the Latin fewer than the +Greek, and the English fewest of all, as will appear if you would +undertake to give us English words for the thirteen Hebrew words: +except you would coin such ridiculous inkhorn terms, as you do in the +New Testament, Azymes, prepuce, neophyte, sandale, parasceve, and such +like."[236] "When you say 'evangelized,' you do not translate, but feign +a new word, which is not understood of mere English ears."[237] + +Fulke describes himself as never having been "of counsel with any that +translated the scriptures into English,"[238] but his works were +regarded with respect, and probably had considerable influence on the +version of 1611.[239] Ironically enough, they did much to familiarize +the 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 is +narrowly conservative, and though some of the words which he condemns +have established themselves in the language nevertheless most of his +ideas regarding linguistic usage are remarkably sound, and, like those +of More, commend themselves to modern opinion. + +Between the translators of the Bible and the translators of other works +there were few points of contact. Though similar problems confronted +both groups, they presented themselves in different guises. The question +of increasing the vocabulary, for example, is in the case of biblical +translation so complicated by the theological connotation of words as to +require a treatment peculiar to itself. Translators of the Bible were +scarcely ever translators of secular works and vice versa. The chief +link between the two kinds of translation is supplied by the metrical +versions of the Psalms. Such verse translations were counted of +sufficient importance to engage the efforts of men like Parker and +Coverdale, influential in the main course of Bible translation. Men like +Thomas Norton, the translator of Calvin's _Institutes_, Richard +Stanyhurst, the translator of _Virgil_, and others of greater literary +fame, Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Milton, Bacon, experimented, as time went +on, with these metrical renderings. The list even includes the name of +King James.[240] + +At first there was some idea of creating for such songs a vogue in +England like that which the similar productions of Marot had enjoyed at +the French court. Translators felt free to choose what George Wither +calls "easy and passionate Psalms," and, if they desired, create +"elegant-seeming paraphrases ... trimmed ... up with rhetorical +illustrations (suitable to their fancies, and the changeable garb of +affected language)."[241] The expectations of courtly approbation were, +however, largely disappointed, but the metrical Psalms came, in time, to +have a wider and more democratic employment. Complete versions of the +Psalms in verse came to be regarded as a suitable accompaniment to the +Bible, until in the Scottish General Assembly of 1601 the proposition +for a new translation of the Bible was accompanied by a parallel +proposition for a correction of the Psalms in metre.[242] + +Besides this general realization of the practical usefulness of these +versions in divine service, there was in some quarters an appreciation +of the peculiar literary quality of the Psalms which tended to express +itself in new attempts at translation. Arthur Golding, though not +himself 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 their +treatises in open and plain declaration: this part consisting of them +all, wrappeth up things in types and figures, describing them under +borrowed personages, and oftentimes winding in matters of prevention, +speaking of things to come as if they were past or present, and of +things past as if they were in doing, and every man is made a betrayer +of the secrets of his own heart. And forasmuch as it consisteth chiefly +of prayer and thanksgiving, or (which comprehendeth them both) of +invocation, which is a communication with God, and requireth rather an +earnest and devout lifting up of the mind than a loud or curious +utterance of the voice: there be many imperfect sentences, many broken +speeches, and many displaced words: according as the party that prayed, +was either prevented with the swiftness of his thoughts, or interrupted +with vehemency of joy or grief, or forced to surcease through infirmity, +that he might recover more strength and cheerfulness by interminding +God's former promises and benefits."[243] George Wither finds that the +style of the Psalms demands a verse translation. "The language of the +Muses," he declares, "in which the Psalms were originally written, is +not so properly expressed in the prose dialect as in verse." "I have +used 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 not +properly expressed in one sort of measure."[244] + +Besides such perception of the general poetic quality of the Psalms as +is found in Wither's comment, there was some realization that metrical +elements were present in various books of Scripture. Jerome, in his +_Preface to Job_, had called attention to this,[245] but the regular +translators, whose references to Jerome, though frequent, are somewhat +vague, apparently made nothing of the suggestion. Elsewhere, however, +there was an attempt to justify the inclusion of translations of the +Psalms among other metrical experiments. Googe, defending the having of +the Psalms in metre, declares that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other parts of +the Bible "were written by the first authors in perfect and pleasant +hexameter verses."[246] Stanyhurst[247] and Fraunce[248] both tried +putting the Psalms into English hexameters. There was, however, no +accurate knowledge of the Hebrew verse system. The preface to the +American _Bay Psalm Book_, published in 1640,[249] explains that "The +psalms are penned in such verses as are suitable to the poetry of the +Hebrew language, and not in the common style of such other books of the +Old Testament as are not poetical.... Then, as all our English songs +(according to the course of our English poetry) do run in metre, so +ought David's psalms to be translated into metre, that we may sing the +Lord's songs, as in our English tongue so in such verses as are familiar +to an English ear, which are commonly metrical." It is not possible to +reproduce the Hebrew metres. "As the Lord hath hid from us the Hebrew +tunes, lest we should think ourselves bound to imitate them; so also the +course and frame (for the most part) of their Hebrew poetry, that we +might not think ourselves bound to imitate that, but that every nation +without scruple might follow as the grave sort of tunes of their own +country, so the graver sort of verses of their own country's poetry." +This had already become the common solution of the difficulty, so that +even Wither keeps to the kinds of verse used in the old Psalm books in +order that the old tunes may be used. + +But though the metrical versions of the Psalms often inclined to +doggerel, and though they probably had little, if any, influence on the +Authorized Version, they made their own claims to accuracy, and even +after the appearance of the King James Bible sometimes demanded +attention as improved renderings. George Wither, for example, believes +that in using verse he is being more faithful to the Hebrew than are the +prose translations. "There is," he says, "a poetical emphasis in many +places, which requires such an alteration in the grammatical expression, +as will seem to make some difference in the judgment of the common +reader; whereas it giveth best life to the author's intention; and makes +that perspicuous which was made obscure by those mere grammatical +interpreters, who were not acquainted with the proprieties and liberties +of this kind of writing." His version is, indeed, "so easy to be +understood, that some readers have confessed, it hath been instead of a +comment unto them in sundry hard places." His rendering is not based +merely on existing English versions; he has "the warrant of best Hebrew +grammarians, 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 orthodox +expositors." Like Wither, other translators went back to original +sources and made their verse renderings real exercises in translation +rather than mere variations on the accepted English text. From this +point of view their work had perhaps some value; and though it seems +regrettable that practically nothing of permanent literary importance +should have resulted from such repeated experiments, they are +interesting at least as affording some connection between the sphere of +the 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 _Doctrinal +Treatises_, 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 is +found in the preface to William L'Isle's _Divers Ancient Monuments of the +Saxon Tongue_, published in 1638. L'Isle writes: "These monuments of +reverend antiquity, I mean the Saxon Bibles, to him that understandingly +reads and well considers the time wherein they were written, will in many +places convince of affected obscurity some late translations." After +criticizing the inkhorn terms of the Rhemish translators, he says, "The +Saxon hath words for Trinity, Unity, and all such foreign words as we are +now 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 the +English 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 detailed +account 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's +Commentaries_, 1571. + +[244] _Op. cit._ + +[245] See _The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers_, ed. Schaff and Wace, New +York, 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 and +variety. As the spirit of the Renaissance began to inspire England, +translators responded to its stimulus with an enthusiasm denied to later +times. It was work that appealed to persons of varying ranks and of +varying degrees of learning. In the early part of the century, according +to Nash, "every private scholar, William Turner and who not, began to +vaunt their smattering of Latin in English impressions."[250] Thomas +Nicholls, the goldsmith, translated Thucydides; Queen Elizabeth +translated Boethius. The mention of women in this connection suggests +how widely the impulse was diffused. Richard Hyrde says of the +translation of Erasmus's _Treatise on the Lord's Prayer_, made by +Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, "And as for the +translation thereof, I dare be bold to say it, that whoso list and well +can confer and examine the translation with the original, he shall not +fail to find that she hath showed herself not only erudite and elegant +in either tongue, but hath also used such wisdom, such discreet and +substantial judgment, in expressing lively the Latin, as a man may +peradventure miss in many things translated and turned by them that bear +the name of right wise and very well learned men."[251] Nicholas Udall +writes to Queen Katherine that there are a number of women in England +who know Greek and Latin and are "in the holy scriptures and theology +so ripe that they are able aptly, cunningly, and with much grace either +to endite or translate into the vulgar tongue for the public instruction +and edifying of the unlearned multitude."[252] + +The greatness of the field was fitted to arouse and sustain the ardor of +English translators. In contrast with the number of manuscripts at +command in earlier days, the sixteenth century must have seemed +endlessly rich in books. Printing was making the Greek and Latin +classics newly accessible, and France and Italy, awake before England to +the new life, were storing the vernacular with translations and with new +creations. Translators might find their tasks difficult enough and they +might flag by the way, as Hoby confesses to have done at the end of the +third book of _The Courtier_, but plucking up courage, they went on to +the end. Hoby declares, with a vigor that suggests Bunyan's Pilgrim, "I +whetted my style and settled myself to take in hand the other three +books";[253] Edward Hellowes, after the hesitation which he describes in +the Dedication to the 1574 edition of Guevara's _Familiar Epistles_, +"began to call to mind my God, my Prince, my country, and also your +worship," and so adequately upheld, went on with his undertaking; Arthur +Golding, 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 by +companionship. Now and then, especially in the case of religious works, +there was collaboration. Luther's _Commentary on Galatians_ was +undertaken by "certain godly men," of whom "some began it according to +such skill as they had. Others godly affected, not suffering so good a +matter in handling to be marred, put to their helping hands for the +better framing and furthering of so worthy a work."[255] From Thomas +Norton's record of the conditions under which he translated Calvin's +_Institution of the Christian Religion_, it is not difficult to feel the +atmosphere of sympathy and encouragement in which he worked. "Therefore +in the very beginning of the Queen's Majesty's most blessed reign," he +writes, "I translated it out of Latin into English, for the commodity of +the Church of Christ, at the special request of my dear friends of +worthy memory, Reginald Wolfe and Edward Whitchurch, the one Her +Majesty's Printer for the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, the other +her Highness' Printer of the books of Common Prayer. I performed my work +in the house of my said friend, Edward Whitchurch, a man well known of +upright heart and dealing, an ancient zealous Gospeller, as plain and +true a friend as ever I knew living, and as desirous to do anything to +common good, specially to the advancement of true religion.... In the +doing hereof I did not only trust mine own wit or ability, but examined +my whole doing from sentence to sentence throughout the whole book with +conference and overlooking of such learned men, as my translation being +allowed by their judgment, I did both satisfy mine own conscience that I +had done truly, and their approving of it might be a good warrant to the +reader that nothing should herein be delivered him but sound, unmingled +and uncorrupted doctrine, even in such sort as the author himself had +first framed it. All that I wrote, the grave, learned, and virtuous man, +M. David Whitehead (whom I name with honorable remembrance) did among +others, compare with the Latin, examining every sentence throughout the +whole book. Beside all this, I privately required many, and generally +all men with whom I ever had any talk of this matter, that if they found +anything either not truly translated or not plainly Englished, they +would inform me thereof, promising either to satisfy them or to amend +it."[256] Norton's next sentence, "Since which time I have not been +advertised by any man of anything which they would require to be +altered" probably expresses the fate of most of the many requests for +criticism that accompany translations, but does not essentially modify +the impression he conveys of unusually favorable conditions for such +work. One remembers that Tyndale originally anticipated with some +confidence a residence in the Bishop of London's house while he +translated the Bible. Thomas Wilson, again, says of his translation of +some of the orations of Demosthenes that "even in these my small +travails both Cambridge and Oxford men have given me their learned +advice and in some things have set to their helping hand,"[257] and +Florio declares that it is owing to the help and encouragement of "two +supporters 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 of +his work, a conception sometimes exaggerated, but becoming, as the +century progressed, clearly and truly defined. Between the lines of the +dedication which Henry Parker, Lord Morley, prefixes to his translation +of Petrarch's _Triumphs_,[259] one reads a pathetic story of an +appreciation which can hardly have equaled the hopes of the author. He +writes of "one of late days that was groom of the chamber with that +renowned and valiant prince of high memory, Francis the French king, +whose name I have forgotten, that did translate these triumphs to that +said king, which he took so thankfully that he gave to him for his pains +an hundred crowns, to him and to his heirs of inheritance to enjoy to +that value in land forever, and took such pleasure in it that +wheresoever he went, among his precious jewels that book always carried +with him for his pastime to look upon, and as much esteemed by him as +the richest diamond he had." Moved by patriotic emulation, Lord Morley +"translated the said book to that most worthy king, our late sovereign +lord of perpetual memory, King Henry the Eighth, who as he was a prince +above all others most excellent, so took he the work very thankfully, +marvelling much that I could do it, and thinking verily I had not done +it without help of some other, better knowing in the Italian tongue than +I; but when he knew the very truth, that I had translated the work +myself, he was more pleased therewith than he was before, and so what +his highness did with it is to me unknown." + +Hyperbole in estimating the value of the translator's work is not common +among Lord Morley's successors, but their very recognition of the +secondary importance of translation often resulted in a modest yet +dignified insistence on its real value. Richard Eden says that he has +labored "not as an author but as a translator, lest I be injurious to +any man in ascribing to myself the travail of other."[260] Nicholas +Grimald qualifies a translation of Cicero as "my work," and immediately +adds, "I call it mine as Plautus and Terence called the comedies theirs +which they made out of Greek."[261] Harrington, the translator of +_Orlando Furioso_, says of his work: "I had rather men should see and +know that I borrow at all than that I steal any, and I would wish to be +called rather one of the worst translators than one of the meaner +makers, specially since the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wiat, that are +yet called the first refiners of the English tongue, were both +translators out of the Italian. Now for those that count it such a +contemptible and trifling matter to translate, I will but say to them as +M. Bartholomew Clarke, an excellent learned man and a right good +translator, said in a manner of pretty challenge, in his Preface (as I +remember) upon the Courtier, which book he translated out of Italian +into Latin. 'You,' saith he, 'that think it such a toy, lay aside my +book, and take my author in hand, and try a leaf or such a matter, and +compare it with mine.'"[262] Philemon Holland, the "translator general" +of his time, writes of his art: "As for myself, since it is neither my +hap nor hope to attain to such perfection as to bring forth something of +mine own which may quit the pains of a reader, and much less to perform +any action that might minister matter to a writer, and yet so far bound +unto my native country and the blessed state wherein I have lived, as to +render an account of my years passed and studies employed, during this +long time of peace and tranquillity, wherein (under the most gracious +and happy government of a peerless princess, assisted with so prudent, +politic, and learned Counsel) all good literature hath had free progress +and flourished in no age so much: methought I owed this duty, to leave +for my part also (after many others) some small memorial, that might +give testimony another day what fruits generally this peaceable age of +ours hath produced. Endeavored I have therefore to stand in the third +rank, and bestowed those hours which might be spared from the practice +of my profession and the necessary cares of life, to satisfy my +countrymen now living and to gratify the age ensuing in this +kind."[263] To Holland's simple acceptance of his rightful place, it is +pleasant to add the lines of the poet Daniel, whose imagination was +stirred in true Elizabethan fashion by the larger relations of the +translator. Addressing Florio, the interpreter of Montaigne to the +English 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 is +valuable enough to deserve some tangible recognition. Thomas Fortescue +urges his reader to consider the case of workmen like himself, "assuring +thyself that none in any sort do better deserve of their country, that +none swink or sweat with like pain and anguish, that none in like sort +hazard or adventure their credit, that none desire less stipend or +salary for their travail, that none in fine are worse in this age +recompensed."[265] Nicholas Udall presents detailed reasons why it is to +be desired that "some able, worthy, and meet persons for doing such +public benefit to the commonweal as translating of good works and +writing of chronicles might by some good provision and means have some +condign sustentation in the same."[266] "Besides," he argues, "that such +a translator travaileth not to his own private commodity, but to the +benefit and public use of his country: besides that the thing is such as +must so thoroughly occupy and possess the doer, and must have him so +attent to apply that same exercise only, that he may not during that +season take in hand any other trade of business whereby to purchase his +living: besides that the thing cannot be done without bestowing of long +time, great watching, much pains, diligent study, no small charges, as +well of meat, drink, books, as also of other necessaries, the labor self +is of itself a more painful and more tedious thing than for a man to +write or prosecute any argument of his own invention. A man hath his own +invention ready at his own pleasure without lets or stops, to make such +discourse as his argument requireth: but a translator must ... at every +other word stay, and suspend both his cogitation and his pen to look +upon his author, so that he might in equal time make thrice as much as +he can be able to translate." + +The belief present in the comment of both Fortescue and Udall that the +work of the translator is of peculiar service to the state is expressed +in connection with translations of every sort. Richard Taverner declares +that he has been incited to put into English part of the _Chiliades_ of +Erasmus by "the love I bear to the furtherance and adornment of my +native country."[267] William Warde translates _The Secrets of Maister +Alexis of Piemont_ in order that "as well Englishmen as Italians, +Frenchmen, or Dutchmen may suck knowledge and profit hereof."[268] John +Brende, in the Dedication of his _History of Quintus Curtius_, insists +on the importance of historical knowledge, his appreciation of which has +made him desire "that we Englishmen might be found as forward in that +behalf as other nations, which have brought all worthy histories into +their natural language."[269] Patriotic emulation of what has been done +in other countries is everywhere present as a motive. Occasionally the +Englishman shows that he has studied foreign translations for his own +guidance. Adlington, in his preface to his rendering of _The Golden Ass_ +of Apuleius, says that he does not follow the original in certain +respects, "for so the French and Spanish translators have not +done";[270] Hoby says of his translation of _The Courtier_, "I have +endeavored 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 other +languages can excuse themselves, and the more they be conferred, the +more it will perchance appear."[271] On the whole, however, the comment +confines itself to general statements like that of Grimald, who in +translating Cicero is endeavoring "to do likewise for my countrymen as +Italians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Dutchmen, and other foreigners have +liberally done for theirs."[272] In spite of the remarkable output +England lagged behind other countries. Lord Morley complains that the +printing of a merry jest is more profitable than the putting forth of +such excellent works as those of Petrarch, of which England has "very +few or none, which I do lament in my heart, considering that as well in +French as in the Italian (in the which both tongues I have some little +knowledge) there is no excellent work in the Latin, but that straightway +they set it forth in the vulgar."[273] Morley wrote in the early days +of the movement for translation, but later translators made similar +complaints. Hoby says in the preface to _The Courtier_: "In this point +(I know not by what destiny) Englishmen are most inferior to most of all +other nations: for where they set their delight and bend themselves with +an honest strife of matching others to turn into their mother tongue not +only the witty writings of other languages but also of all philosophers, +and all sciences both Greek and Latin, our men ween it sufficient to +have 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 to +close it up again." To the end of the century translation is encouraged +or defended on the ground that it is a public duty. Thomas Danett is +urged to translate the _History_ of Philip de Comines by certain +gentlemen who think it "a great dishonor to our native land that so +worthy a history being extant in all languages almost in Christendom +should be suppressed in ours";[274] Chapman writes indignantly of Homer, +"And if Italian, French, and Spanish have not made it dainty, nor +thought it any presumption to turn him into their languages, but a fit +and honorable labor and (in respect of their country's profit and their +prince's credit) almost necessary, what curious, proud, and poor +shamefastness should let an English muse to traduce him?"[275] + +Besides all this, the translator's conception of his audience encouraged +and guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend to +the strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible, +nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associated +with them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact with +the essential interests of mankind. The appeals on title pages and in +prefaces to all kinds of people, from ladies and gentlemen of rank to +the common and simple sort, not infrequently resemble the calculated +praises of the advertiser, but admitting this, there still remains much +that implies a simple confidence in the response of friendly readers. +Rightly or wrongly, the translator presupposes for himself in many cases +an 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 our +vulgar tongue, you may be assured to have more store of skilful +pilots."[276] Golding's translations of Pomponius Mela and Julius +Solinus Polyhistor are described as, "Right pleasant and profitable for +Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers."[277] Hellowes, with an +excess of rhetoric which takes from his convincingness, presents +Guevara'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 with +all men in all matters at large."[278] Holland's honest simplicity gives +greater weight to a similarly sweeping characterization of Pliny's +_Natural History_ as "not appropriate to the learned only, but +accommodate to the rude peasant of the country; fitted for the painful +artisan 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 a +society and commonweal."[279] In the same preface the need for replying +to those who oppose translation leads Holland to insist further on the +practical applicability of his matter. Alternating his own with his +critics' position, he writes: "It is a shame (quoth one) that _Livy_ +speaketh English as he doth; Latinists only owe to be acquainted with +him: as who should say the soldier were to have recourse to the +university for military skill and knowledge, or the scholar to put on +arms and pitch a camp. What should _Pliny_ (saith another) be read in +English and the mysteries couched in his books divulged; as if the +husbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, lapidary, and engraver, +with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks or linguists +for instructions in their several arts." Wilson's translation of +Demosthenes, again, undertaken, it has been said, with a view to rousing +a national resistance against Spain, is described on the title page as +"most needful to be read in these dangerous days of all them that love +their country's liberty."[280] + +Naturally enough, however, especially in the case of translations from +the Latin and Greek, the academic interest bulks largely in the +audience, and sometimes makes an unexpected demand for recognition in +the midst of the more practical appeal. Holland's _Pliny_, for example, +addresses itself not only to peasants and artisans but to young +students, who "by the light of the English ... shall be able more +readily to go away with the dark phrase and obscure constructions of the +Latin." Chapman, refusing to be burdened with a popular audience, begins +a preface with the insidious compliment, "I suppose you to be no mere +reader, since you intend to read Homer."[281] On the other hand, the +academic reader, whether student or critic, is, if one accepts the +translator's view, very much on the alert, anxious to confer the English +version with the original, either that he may improve his own knowledge +of the foreign language or that he may pick faults in the new rendering. +Wilson attacks the critics as "drones and no bees, lubbers and no +learners," but the fault he finds in these "croaking paddocks and +manifest overweeners of themselves" is that they are "out of reason +curious judges over the travail and painstaking of others" instead of +being themselves producers.[282] Apparently there was little fear of the +indifference which is more discouraging than hostile criticism, and +though, as is to be expected, it is the hostile criticism that is most +often reflected in prefaces, there must have been much kindly comment +like that of Webbe, who, after discussing the relations of Phaer's +_Virgil_ to the Latin, concludes, "There is not one book among the +twelve which will not yield you most excellent pleasure in conferring +the translation with the copy and marking the gallant grace which our +English speech affordeth."[283] + +Such encouragements and incentives are enough to awaken the envy of the +modern translator. But the sixteenth century had also its peculiar +difficulties. The English language was neither so rich in resources nor +so carefully standardized as it has become of later times. It was often +necessary, indeed, to defend it against the charge that it was not equal +to translation. Pettie is driven to reply to those who oppose the use of +the vernacular because "they count it barren, they count it barbarous, +they count it unworthy to be accounted of."[284] Chapman says in his +preface to _Achilles' Shield_: "Some will convey their imperfections +under his Greek shield, and from thence bestow bitter arrows against the +traduction, affirming their want of admiration grows from the defect of +our language, not able to express the copiousness (coppie) and elegancy +of the original." Richard Greenway, who translated the _Annals_ of +Tacitus, admits cautiously that his medium is "perchance not so fit to +set out a piece drawn with so curious a pencil."[285] One cannot, +indeed, help recognizing that as compared with modern English +Elizabethan English was weak in resources, limited in vocabulary, and +somewhat uncertain in sentence structure. These disadvantages probably +account in part for such explanations of the relative difficulty of +translation as that of Nicholas Udall in his plea that translators +should be suitably recompensed or that of John Brende in his preface to +the translation of Quintus Curtius that "in translation a man cannot +always use his own vein, but shall be compelled to tread in the author's +steps, which is a harder and more difficult thing to do, than to walk +his 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 the +awkwardness of the Elizabethan sentence. Now and then, however, he hints +at the problems which have arisen in the handling of the Latin period. +Udall writes of his translation of Erasmus: "I have in some places been +driven 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 so +many members, or parentheses, or digressions as have come in places, are +so long that unless they had been somewhat divided, they would have been +too hard for an unlearned brain to conceive, much more hard to contain +and keep it still."[287] Adlington, the translator of _The Golden Ass_ +of Apuleius, says, "I have not so exactly passed through the author as +to point every sentence exactly as it is in the Latin."[288] A comment +of Foxe on his difficulty in translating contemporary English into Latin +suggests that he at least was conscious of the weakness of the English +sentence as compared with the Latin. Writing to Peter Martyr of his +Latin version of the controversy between Cranmer and Gardiner, he says +of 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. The +whole phrase hath in effect that structure that consisting for the most +part of relatives, it refuses almost all the grace of translation."[289] + +Though the question of sentence structure was not given prominence, the +problem of rectifying deficiencies in vocabulary touched the translator +very nearly. The possibility of augmenting the language was a vital +issue in the reign of Elizabeth, but it had a peculiar significance +where translation was concerned. Here, if anywhere, the need for a large +vocabulary was felt, and in translations many new words first made their +appearance. Sir Thomas Elyot early made the connection between +translation 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 men +should ... interpret out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue into +English."[290] Later in the century Peele praises the translator +Harrington, + + ... 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 of +the hardest words used in our language," is recommended on the ground +that those who know no language but the mother tongue, but "are yet +studiously desirous to read those learned and elegant treatises which +from their native original have been rendered English (of which sort, +thanks to the company of painful translators we have not a few) have +here a volume fit for their purposes, as carefully designed for their +assistance."[292] + +Whether, however, the translator should be allowed to add to the +vocabulary and what methods he should employ were questions by no means +easy of settlement. As in Caxton's time, two possible means of acquiring +new words were suggested, naturalization of foreign words and revival of +words from older English sources. Against the first of these methods +there was a good deal of prejudice. Grimald in his preface to his +translation of Cicero's _De Officiis_, protests against the translation +that is "uttered with inkhorn terms and not with usual words." Other +critics are more specific in their condemnation of non-English words. +Puttenham complains that Southern, in translating Ronsard's French +rendering of Pindar's hymns and Anacreon's odes, "doth so impudently rob +the French poet both of his praise and also of his French terms, that I +cannot 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_ and +a number of others, which have no manner of conformity with our language +either by custom or derivation which may make them tolerable."[293] +Richard Willes, in his preface to the 1577 edition of Eden's _History of +Travel in the West and East Indies_, says that though English literature +owes a large debt to Eden, still "many of his English words cannot be +excused in my opinion for smelling too much of the Latin."[294] The list +appended is not so remote from the modern English vocabulary as that +which Puttenham supplies. Willes cites "_dominators_, _ponderous_, +_ditionaries_, _portentous_, _antiques_, _despicable_, _solicitate_, +_obsequious_, _homicide_, _imbibed_, _destructive_, _prodigious_, with +other 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 of +the use of foreign words. Florio admits with mock humility that he has +employed "some uncouth terms as _entraine_, _conscientious_, _endear_, +_tarnish_, _comport_, _efface_, _facilitate_, _amusing_, _debauching_, +_regret_, _effort_, _emotion_, and such like," and continues, "If you +like them not, take others most commonly set by them to expound them, +since they were set to make such likely French words familiar with our +English, which may well bear them,"[295] a contention which modern usage +supports. Nicholas Udall pronounces judicially in favor of both methods +of enriching the language. "Some there be," he says, "which have a mind +to renew terms that are now almost worn clean out of use, which I do not +disallow, so it be done with judgment. Some others would ampliate and +enrich their native tongue with more vocables, which also I commend, if +it be aptly and wittily assayed. So that if any other do innovate and +bring up to me a word afore not used or not heard, I would not dispraise +it: and that I do attempt to bring it into use, another man should not +cavil 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, yet +I know no reason why I should not use them, for it is indeed the ready +way to enrich our tongue and make it copious."[297] On the whole, +however, it was safer to advocate the formation of words from +Anglo-Saxon sources. Golding says of his translation of Philip of +Mornay: "Great care hath been taken by forming and deriving of fit names +and terms out of the fountains of our own tongue, though not altogether +most usual yet always conceivable and easy to be understood; rather than +by usurping Latin terms, or by borrowing the words of any foreign +language, lest the matters, which in some cases are mystical enough of +themselves by reason of their own profoundness, might have been made +more obscure to the unlearned by setting them down in terms utterly +unknown to them."[298] Holland says in the preface to his translation of +Livy: "I framed my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a mean and +popular 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 this +matter of vocabulary, it will be noted, there was something of the +stimulus of patriotism, and the possibility of improving his native +tongue must have appealed to the translator's creative power. Phaer, +indeed, alleges as one of his motives for translating Virgil "defence of +my country's language, which I have heard discommended of many, and +esteemed of some to be more than barbarous."[299] + +Convinced, then, that his undertaking, though difficult, meant much both +to the individual and to the state, the translator gladly set about +making some part of the great field of foreign literature, ancient and +modern, accessible to English readers. Of the technicalities of his art +he has a good deal to say. At a time when prefaces and dedications so +frequently established personal relations between author and audience, +it was natural that the translator also should take his readers into his +confidence regarding his aims and methods. His comment, however, is +largely 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 what +translation in general ought to be. There is no discussion in English +corresponding to the small, but comprehensive treatise on _La maničre de +bien traduire d'une langue en autre_ which Étienne Dolet published at +Lyons in 1540. This casual quality is evidenced by the peculiar way in +which prefaces in different editions of the same book appear and +disappear for no apparent reason, possibly at the convenience of the +printer. It is scarcely fair to interpret as considered, deliberate +formulation of principles, utterances so unpremeditated and fragmentary. +The theory which accompanies secular translation is much less clear and +consecutive than that which accompanies the translation of the Bible. +Though in the latter case the formulation of theories of translation was +almost equally incidental, respect for the original, repeated +experiment, and constant criticism and discussion united to make certain +principles take very definite shape. Secular translation produced +nothing so homogeneous. The existence of so many translators, working +for the most part independently of each other, resulted in a confused +mass of comment whose real value it is difficult to estimate. It is true +that the new scholarship with its clearer estimate of literary values +and its appreciation of the individual's proprietary rights in his own +writings made itself strongly felt in the sphere of secular translation +and introduced new standards of accuracy, new definitions of the +latitude which might be accorded the translator; but much of the old +freedom in handling material, with the accompanying vagueness as to the +limits of the translator's function, persisted throughout the time of +Elizabeth. + +In many cases the standards recognized by sixteenth-century translators +were little more exacting than those of the medieval period. With many +writers adequate recognition of source was a matter of choice rather +than of obligation. The English translator might make suitable +attribution of a work to its author and he might undertake to reproduce +its substance in its entirety, but he might, on the other hand, fail to +acknowledge any indebtedness to a predecessor or he might add or omit +material, since he was governed apparently only by the extent of his own +powers or by his conception of what would be most pleasing or edifying +to his readers. To the theory of his art he gave little serious +consideration. He did not attempt to analyse the style of the source +which he had chosen. If he praised his author, it was in the +conventional language of compliment, which showed no real discrimination +and which, one suspects, often disguised mere advertising. His estimate +of his own capabilities was only the repetition of the medieval formula, +with its profession of inadequacy for the task and its claim to have +used simple speech devoid of rhetorical ornament. That it was nothing +but a formula was recognized at the time and is good-naturedly pointed +out in the words of Harrington: "Certainly if I should confess or rather +profess that my verse is unartificial, the style rude, the phrase +barbarous, the metre unpleasant, many more would believe it to be so +than would imagine that I thought them so."[300] + +This medieval quality, less excusable later in the century when the new +learning had declared itself, appears with more justification in the +comment of the early sixteenth century. Though the translator's field +was widening and was becoming more broadly European, the works chosen +for translation belonged largely to the types popular in the Middle Ages +and the comment attached to them was a repetition of timeworn phrases. +Alexander Barclay, who is best known as the author of _The Ship of +Fools_, published in 1508, but who also has to his credit several other +translations of contemporary moral and allegorical poems from Latin and +French and even, in anticipation of the newer era, a version of +Sallust's _Jugurthine War_, offers his translations of _The Ship of +Fools_[301] and of Mancini's _Mirror of Good Manners_[302] not to the +learned, who might judge of their correctness, but to "rude people," who +may hope to be benefited morally by perusing them. He has written _The +Ship of Fools_ in "common and rural terms"; he does not follow the +author "word by word"; and though he professes to have reproduced for +the most part the "sentence" of the original, he admits "sometimes +adding, sometimes detracting and taking away such things as seemeth me +unnecessary and superfluous."[303] His contemporary, Lord Berners, +writes for a more courtly audience, but he professes much the same +methods. He introduces his _Arthur of Little Britain_, "not presuming +that I have reduced it into fresh, ornate, polished English, for I know +myself insufficient in the facundious art of rhetoric, and also I am but +a learner of the language of French: howbeit I trust my simple reason +hath led me to the understanding of the true sentence of the +matter."[304] Of his translation of Froissart he says, "And in that I +have not followed mine author word by word, yet I trust I have ensued +the true report of the sentence of the matter."[305] Sir Francis Bryan, +under whose direction Berners' translation of _The Golden Book of Marcus +Aurelius_ was issued in 1535, the year after its author's death, +expresses his admiration of the "high and sweet styles"[306] of the +versions in other languages which have preceded this English rendering, +but similar phrases had been used so often in the characterization of +undistinguished writings that this comment hardly suggests the new and +peculiar quality of Guevara's style. + +As the century advanced, these older, easier standards were maintained +especially among translators who chose material similar to that of +Barclay and Berners, the popular work of edification, the novella, which +took the place of the romance. The purveyors of entertaining narrative, +indeed, realized in some degree the minor importance of their work as +compared with that of more serious scholars and acted accordingly. The +preface to Turbervile's _Tragical Tales_ throws some light on the +author's idea of the comparative values of translations. He thought of +translating Lucan, but Melpomene appeared to warn him against so +ambitious an enterprise, and admitting his unfitness for the task, he +applied himself instead to this translation "out of sundry +Italians."[307] Anthony Munday apologizes for his "simple translation" +of _Palmerin d'Oliva_ by remarking that "to translate allows little +occasion of fine pen work,"[308] a comment which goes far to account for +the doubtful quality of his productions in this field. + +Even when the translator of pleasant tales ranked his work high, it was +generally on the ground that his readers would receive from it profit as +well as amusement; he laid no claim to academic correctness. He +mentioned or refrained from mentioning his sources at his own +discretion. Painter, in inaugurating the vogue of the novella, is +exceptionally careful in attributing each story to its author,[309] but +Whetstone's _Rock of Regard_ contains no hint that it is translated, and +_The Petit Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_ conveys the impression of +original work. "I dare not compare," runs the prefatory _Letter to +Gentlewomen Readers_ by R. B., "this work with the former Palaces of +Pleasure, because comparisons are odious, and because they contain +histories, translated out of grave authors and learned writers; and this +containeth discourses devised by a green youthful capacity, and +repeated in a manner extempore."[310] It was, again, the personal +preference of the individual or the extent of his linguistic knowledge +that determined whether the translator should employ the original +Italian or Spanish versions of some collections or should content +himself with an intermediary French rendering. Painter, accurate as he +is in describing his sources, confesses that he has often used the +French version of Boccaccio, though, or perhaps because, it is less +finely written than its original. Thomas Fortescue uses the French +version 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 Claudius +Gringet, late citizen of Paris."[311] The most regrettable latitude of +all, judging by theoretic standards of translation, was the careless +freedom which writers of this group were inclined to appropriate. +Anthony Munday, to take an extreme case, translating _Palmerin of +England_ from the French, makes a perfunctory apology in his Epistle +Dedicatory for his inaccuracies: "If you find the translation altered, +or the true sense in some place of a matter impaired, let this excuse +answer in default in that case. A work so large is sufficient to tire so +simple a workman in himself. Beside the printer may in some place let an +error escape."[312] Fortescue justifies, adequately enough, his omission +of various tales by the plea that "the lack of one annoyeth not or +maimeth not the other," but incidentally he throws light on the practice +of others, less conscientious, who "add or change at their pleasure." + +There is perhaps danger of underrating the value of the theory which +accompanies translations of this sort. The translators have left +comparatively little comment on their methods, and it may be that now +and then more satisfactory principles were implicit. Yet even when the +translator took his task seriously, his prefatory remarks almost always +betrayed that there was something defective in his theory or careless in +his execution. Bartholomew Young translates Montemayor's _Diana_ from +the Spanish after a careful consideration of texts. "Having compared the +French copies with the Spanish original," he writes, "I judge the first +part to be exquisite, the other two corruptly done, with a confusion of +verse into prose, and leaving out in many places divers hard sentences, +and some leaves at the end of the third part, wherefore they are but +blind guides of any to be imitated."[313] After this, unhappily, in the +press of greater affairs he lets the work come from the printer +unsupervised and presumably full of errors, "the copy being very dark +and interlined, and I loath to write it out again." Robert Tofte +addresses his _Honor's Academy or the Famous Pastoral of the Fair +Shepherdess Julietta_ "to the courteous and judicious reader and to none +other"; he explains that he refuses to write for "the sottish +multitude," that monster "who knows not when aught well is or amiss"; +and blames "such idle thieves as do purloin from others' mint what's +none of their own coin."[314] In spite of this, his preface makes no +mention of Nicholas de Montreux, the original author, and if it were not +for the phrase on the title page, "done into English," one would not +suspect 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 this +volume (as it were) cursorily and in haste, never having so much leisure +as to overlook one leaf after he had scribbled the same," stamps Tofte +as perhaps a facile, but certainly not a conscientious workman. + +Another fashionable form of literature, the popular religious or +didactic work, was governed by standards of translation not unlike those +which controlled the fictitious narrative. In the work of Lord Berners +the romance had not yet made way for its more sophisticated rival, the +novella. His translation from Guevara, however, marked the beginning of +a new fashion. While Barclay's _Ship of Fools_ and _Mirror of Good +Manners_ were addressed, like their medieval predecessors, to "lewd" +people, with _The Golden Book_ began the vogue of a new type of didactic +literature, similar in its moral purpose and in its frequent employment +of narrative material to the religious works of the Middle Ages, but +with 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 throw +little light on the theory of their authors, but what comment there is +points to methods like those employed by the translators of the romance +and the novella. Though later translators like Hellowes went to the +original Spanish, Berners, Bryan, and North employ instead the +intermediary French rendering. Praise of Guevara's style becomes a +wearisome repetition of conventional phrases, a rhetorical exercise for +the English writer rather than a serious attempt to analyze the +peculiarities of the Spanish. Exaggeratedly typical is the comment of +Hellowes in the 1574 edition of Guevara's _Epistles_, where he repeats +with considerable complacency the commendation of the original work +which was "contained in my former preface, as followeth. Being furnished +so fully with sincere doctrine, so unused eloquence, so high a style, so +apt similitudes, so excellent discourses, so convenient examples, so +profound sentences, so old antiquities, so ancient histories, such +variety of matter, so pleasant recreations, so strange things alleged, +and certain parcels of Scripture with such dexterity handled, that it +may hardly be discerned, whether shall be greater, either thy pleasure +by reading, or profit by following the same."[315] + +Guevara himself was perhaps responsible for the failure of his +translators to make any formal recognition of responsibility for +reproducing his style. His fictitious account of the sources of _The +Golden Book_ is medieval in tone. He has translated, not word for word, +but thought for thought, and for the rudeness of his original he has +substituted a more lofty style.[316] His English translators reverse the +latter 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 rest +of his works." North later translated from the French Amyot's +epoch-making principle: "the office of a fit translator consisteth not +only in the faithful expressing of his author's meaning, but also in a +certain resembling and shadowing out of the form of his style and manner +of his speaking,"[317] but all that he has to say of his _Dial of +Princes_ is that he has reduced it into English "according to my small +knowledge and tender years."[318] Here again, though the translator may +sometimes have tried to adopt newer and more difficult standards, he +does not make this explicit in his comment. + +Obviously, however, academic standards of accuracy were not likely to +make their first appearance in connection with fashionable court +literature; one expects to find them associated rather with the +translations of the great classical literature, which Renaissance +scholars approached with such enthusiasm and respect. One of the first +of these, the translation of the _Aeneid_ made by the Scotch poet, Gavin +Douglas, appeared, like the translations of Barclay and Berners, in the +early sixteenth century. Douglas's comment,[319] which shows a good deal +of conscious effort at definition of the translator's duties, is an odd +mingling of the medieval and the modern. He begins with a eulogy of +Virgil couched in the undiscriminating, exaggerated terms of the +previous period. Unlike the many medieval redactors of the Troy story, +however, he does not assume the historian's liberty of selection and +combination from a variety of sources. He regards Virgil as "a per se," +and waxes indignant over Caxton's _Eneydos_, whose author represented it +as 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 cites +Caxton's treatment of proper names. Douglas claims, reasonably enough, +that if he followed his original word for word, the result would be +unintelligible, and he appeals to St. Gregory and Horace in support of +this contention. All his plea, however, is for freedom rather than +accuracy, and one scarcely knows how to interpret his profession of +faithfulness: + + 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, such +renderings as he illustrates involve no more latitude than is sanctioned +by the schoolboy's Latin Grammar. He is disturbed by the necessity for +using more words in English than the Latin has, and he feels it +incumbent 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 additional +words 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, is +nevertheless no more significant than that which had appeared in the +Purvey preface to the Bible more than a hundred years earlier. One is +reminded that most of the material which the present-day translator +finds in grammars of foreign languages was not yet in existence in any +generally accessible form. + +Such elementary aids were, however, in process of formulation during the +sixteenth century. Mr. Foster Watson quotes from an edition of Mancinus, +published as early probably as 1520, the following directions for +putting Latin into English: "Whoso will learn to turn Latin into +English, let him first take of the easiest Latin, and when he +understandeth clearly what the Latin meaneth, let him say the English of +every Latin word that way, as the sentence may appear most clearly to +his ear, and where the English of the Latin words of the text will not +make the sentence fair, let him take the English of those Latin words by +whom (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 more +English, and that not only words, but also when need requireth, whole +clauses such as will agree best to the sentence."[320] By the new +methods of study advocated by men like Cheke and Ascham translation as +practiced by students must have become a much more intelligent process, +and the literary man who had received such preparatory training must +have realized that variations from the original such as had troubled +Douglas needed no apology, but might be taken for granted. + +Further help was offered to students in the shape of various literal +translations from the classics. The translator of Seneca's _Hercules +Furens_ undertook the work "to conduct by some means to further +understanding the unripened scholars of this realm to whom I thought it +should be no less thankful for me to interpret some Latin work into this +our own tongue than for Erasmus in Latin to expound the Greek."[321] +"Neither could I satisfy myself," he continues, "till I had throughout +this whole tragedy of Seneca so travailed that I had in English given +verse for verse (as far as the English tongue permits) and word for word +the Latin, whereby I might both make some trial of myself and as it were +teach the little children to go that yet can but creep." Abraham +Fleming, translating Virgil's _Georgics_ "grammatically," expresses his +original "in plain words applied to blunt capacities, considering the +expositor's drift to consist in delivering a direct order of +construction for the relief of weak grammatists, not in attempting by +curious device and disposition to content courtly humanists, whose +desire he hath been more willing at this time to suspend, because he +would in some exact sort satisfy such as need the supply of his +travail."[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 the +perfect sense thereof, and might be used in the best phrase, had not my +care been to keep it somewhat nearer the Latin phrase, that the English +learner of Latin, reading over these authors in both languages, might +the more easily confer them together in their sense, and the better +understand the one by the other: and for that respect of easy +conference, 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 scarcely +claim a place in the history of literature. Bullokar himself, +recognizing this, promises that "if God lend me life and ability to +translate any other author into English hereafter, I will bend myself to +follow the excellency of English in the best phrase thereof, more than I +will bend it to the phrases of the language to be translated." In +avoiding the overliteral method, however, the translator of the classics +sometimes assumed a regrettable freedom, not only with the words but +with the substance of his source. With regard to his translation of the +_Aeneid_ Phaer represents himself as "Trusting that you, my right +worshipful masters and students of universities and such as be teachers +of children and readers of this author in Latin, will not be too much +offended though every verse answer not to your expectation. For (besides +the diversity between a construction and a translation) you know there +be many mystical secrets in this writer, which uttered in English would +show little pleasure and in my opinion are better to be untouched than +to diminish the grace of the rest with tediousness and darkness. I have +therefore followed the counsel of Horace, touching the duty of a good +interpreter, _Qui quae desperat nitescere posse, relinquit_, by which +occasion somewhat I have in places omitted, somewhat altered, and some +things I have expounded, and all to the ease of inferior readers, for +you that are learned need not to be instructed."[324] Though Jasper +Heywood's version of _Hercules Furens_ is an example of the literal +translation for the use of students, most of the other members of the +group of young men who in 1581 published their translations of Seneca +protest that they have reproduced the meaning, not the words of their +author. Alexander Neville, a precocious youth who translated the fifth +tragedy in "this sixteenth year of mine age," determined "not to be +precise in following the author word for word, but sometimes by +addition, sometimes by subtraction, to use the aptest phrases in giving +the sense that I could invent."[325] Neville's translation is +"oftentimes rudely increased with mine own simple invention";[326] John +Studley has changed the first chorus of the _Medea_, "because in it I +saw nothing but an heap of profane stories and names of profane +idols";[327] Heywood himself, since the existing text of the _Troas_ is +imperfect, admits having "with addition of mine own pen supplied the +want of some things,"[328] and says that he has also replaced the third +chorus, because much of it is "heaped number of far and strange +countries." Most radical of all is the theory according to which Thomas +Drant translated the _Satires_ of Horace. That Drant could be faithful +even to excess is evident from his preface to _The Wailings of Jeremiah_ +included in the same volume with his version of Horace. "That thou +mightest have this rueful parcel of Scripture pure and sincere, not +swerved or altered, I laid it to the touchstone, the native tongue. I +weighed it with the Chaldee Targum and the Septuaginta. I desired to +jump so nigh with the Hebrew, that it doth erewhile deform the vein of +the English, the proprieties of that language and ours being in some +speeches so much dissemblable." But with Horace Drant pursues a +different course. As a moralist it is justifiable for him to translate +Horace because the Latin poet satirizes that wickedness which Jeremiah +mourned over. Horace's satire, however, is not entirely applicable to +conditions in England; "he never saw that with the view of his eye which +his pensive translator cannot but overview with the languish of his +soul." Moreover Horace's style is capable of improvement, an improvement +which Drant is quite ready to provide. "His eloquence is sometimes too +sharp, and therefore I have blunted it, and sometimes too dull, and +therefore I have whetted it, helping him to ebb and helping him to +rise." With his reader Drant is equally high-handed. "I dare not warrant +the reader to understand him in all places," he writes, "no more than he +did me. Howbeit I have made him more lightsome well nigh by one half (a +small accomplishment for one of my continuance) and if thou canst not +now in all points perceive him (thou must bear with me) in sooth the +default is thine own." After this one is somewhat prepared for Drant's +remarkable summary of his methods. "First I have now done as the people +of God were commanded to do with their captive women that were handsome +and beautiful: I have shaved off his hair and pared off his nails, that +is, 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 man +to a general moral. I have Englished things not according to the vein of +the Latin propriety, but of his own vulgar tongue. I have interfered (to +remove his obscurity and sometimes to better his matter) much of mine +own devising. I have pieced his reason, eked and mended his similitudes, +mollified his hardness, prolonged his cortall kind of speeches, changed +and much altered his words, but not his sentence, or at least (I dare +say) not his purpose."[329] Even the novella does not afford examples of +such deliberate justification of undue liberty with source. + +Why such a situation existed may be partially explained. The Elizabethan +writer was almost as slow as his medieval predecessor to make +distinctions between different kinds of literature. Both the novella and +the epic might be classed as "histories," and "histories" were valuable +because they aided the reader in the actual conduct of life. Arthur +Golding tells in the preface to his translation of Justin the story of +how Alexander the Great "coming into a school and finding not Homer's +works there ... gave the master a buffet with his fist: meaning that the +knowledge of _Histories_ was a thing necessary to all estates and +degrees."[330] It was the content of a work that was most important, and +comment like that of Drant makes us realize how persistent was the +conception that such content was common property which might be adjusted +to the needs of different readers. The lesser freedoms of the translator +were probably largely due to the difficulties inherent in a metrical +rendering. It is "ryme" that partially accounts for some of Douglas's +"digressions." Seneca's _Hercules Furens_, literal as the translation +purports to be, is reproduced "verse for verse, as far as the English +tongue permits." Thomas Twyne, who completed the work which Phaer began, +calls attention to the difficulty "in this kind of translation to +enforce their rime to another man's meaning."[331] Edward Hake, it is +not unlikely, expresses a common idea when he gives as one of his +reasons for employing verse rather than prose "that prose requireth a +more exact labor than metre doth."[332] If one is to believe Abraham +Fleming, one of the adherents of Gabriel Harvey, matters may be improved +by the adoption of classical metres. Fleming has translated Virgil's +_Bucolics_ and _Georgics_ "not in foolish rhyme, the nice observance +whereof many times darkeneth, corrupteth, perverteth, and falsifieth +both the sense and the signification, but with due proportion and +measure."[333] + +Seemingly, however, the translators who advocated the employment of the +hexameter made little use of the argument that to do so made it possible +to reproduce the original more faithfully. Stanyhurst, who says that in +his translation of the first four books of the _Aeneid_ he is carrying +out Ascham's wish that the university students should "apply their wits +in beautifying our English language with heroical verses," chooses +Virgil as the subject of his experiment for "his peerless style and +matchless stuff,"[334] leaving his reader with the impression that the +claims of his author were probably subordinate in the translator's mind +to his interest in Ascham's theories. Possibly he shared his master's +belief that "even the best translation is for mere necessity but an evil +imped wing to fly withal, or a heavy stump leg of wood to go +withal."[335] In discussion of the style to be employed in the metrical +rendering there was the same failure to make explicit the connection +between the original and the translation. Many critics accepted the +principle that "decorum" of style was essential in the translation of +certain kinds of poetry, but they based their demand for this quality on +its extrinsic suitability much more than on its presence in the work to +be translated. In Turbervile's elaborate comment on the style which he +has used in his translation of the _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, there is the +same baffling vagueness in his references to the quality of the original +that is felt in the prefaces of Lydgate and Caxton. "Though I have +altered the tongue," he says, "I trust I have not changed the author's +meaning 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 and +our mother tongue will give me leave. For as the conference between +shepherds is familiar stuff and homely, so have I shaped my style and +tempered it with such common and ordinary phrase of speech as countrymen +do use in their affairs; alway minding the saying of Horace, whose +sentence 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 talk +and style of an heroical personage, expressing the silly man's meaning +with lofty thundering words, in my simple judgment joins (as Horace +saith) a horse's neck and a man's head together. For as the one were +monstrous to see, so were the other too fond and foolish to read. +Wherefore I have (I say) used the common country phrase according to the +person of the speakers in every Eclogue, as though indeed the man +himself should tell his tale. If there be anything herein that thou +shalt happen to mistake, neither blame the learned poet, nor control the +clownish shepherd (good reader) but me that presumed rashly to offer so +unworthy matter to thy survey."[336] Another phase of "decorum," the +necessity for employing a lofty style in dealing with the affairs of +great persons, comes in for discussion in connection with translations +of Seneca and Virgil. Jasper Heywood makes his excuses in case his +translation of the _Troas_ has "not kept the royalty of speech meet for +a tragedy";[337] Stanyhurst praises Phaer for his "picked and lofty +words";[338] but he himself is blamed by Puttenham because his own words +lack dignity. "In speaking or writing of a prince's affairs and +fortunes," writes Puttenham, "there is a certain decorum, that we may +not use the same terms in their business as we might very well do in a +meaner person's, the case being all one, such reverence is due to their +estates."[339] He instances Stanyhurst's renderings, "Aeneas was fain to +_trudge_ out of Troy" and "what moved Juno to _tug_ so great a captain +as Aeneas," and declares that the term _trudge_ is "better to be spoken +of 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 been +devised, and took his first original from the cart." A similar objection +to 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 the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In general, however, the comment +associated with verse translations does not anticipate that of later +times and is scarcely more significant than that which accompanies the +novella. So long, indeed, as the theory of translation was so largely +concerned with the claims of the reader, there was little room for +initiative. It was no mark of originality to say that the translation +must be profitable or entertaining, clear and easily understood; these +rules had already been laid down by generations of translators. The real +opportunity for a fresh, individual approach to the problems of +translation lay in consideration of the claims of the original author. +Renaissance scholarship was bringing a new knowledge of texts and +authors and encouraging a new alertness of mind in approaching texts +written in foreign languages. It was now possible, while making +faithfulness to source obligatory instead of optional, to put the matter +on a reasonable basis. The most vigorous and suggestive comment came +from a small number of men of scholarly tastes and of active minds, who +brought to the subject both learning and enthusiasm, and who were not +content with vague, conventional forms of words. + +It was prose rather than verse renderings that occupied the attention of +these theorists, and in the works which they chose for translation the +intellectual was generally stronger than the artistic appeal. Their +translations, however, showed a variety peculiarly characteristic of the +English Renaissance. Interest in classical scholarship was nearly always +associated with interest in the new religious doctrines, and hence the +new theories of translation were attached impartially either to +renderings of the classics or to versions of contemporary theological +works, valuable on account of the close, careful thinking which they +contained, as contrasted with the more superficial charm of writings +like those of Guevara. An Elizabethan scholar, indeed, might have +hesitated if asked which was the more important, the Greek or Latin +classic or the theological treatise. Nash praises Golding +indiscriminately "for his industrious toil in Englishing Ovid's +_Metamorphoses_, besides many other exquisite editions of divinity +turned by him out of the French tongue into our own."[340] Golding +himself, 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 that +one is ready to believe that he ranked it higher than any of his other +translations. Nor was the contribution from this field to be despised. +Though the translation of the Bible was an isolated task which had few +relations with other forms of translation, what few affiliations it +developed were almost entirely with theological works like those of +Erasmus, Melanchthon, Calvin, and to the translation of such writings +Biblical standards of accuracy were transferred. On the other hand the +translator of Erasmus or Calvin was likely to have other and very +different interests, which did much to save him from a narrow pedantry. +Nicholas Udall, for example, who had a large share in the translation of +Erasmus's _Paraphrase on the New Testament_, also translated parts of +Terence and is best known as the author of _Ralph Roister Doister_. +Thomas Norton, who translated Calvin's _Institution of the Christian +Religion_, has been credited with a share in _Gorboduc_. + +It was towards the middle of the century that these translators began to +formulate their views, and probably the decades immediately before and +after the accession of Elizabeth were more fruitful in theory than any +other part of the period. Certain centers of influence may be rather +clearly distinguished. In contemporary references to the early part of the +century Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir Thomas More are generally coupled together +as 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 the +fame of the college was due to Sir John Cheke, "a man of men," according to +Nash, "supernaturally traded in all tongues." Cheke is associated, in one +way and another, with an odd variety of translations--Nicholls' translation +of 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 in +Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ and the preface to Wilson's _Demosthenes_ make +one suspect that his teaching was possibly the strongest force at work +at the time to produce higher standards for translation. As the century +progressed Sir William Cecil, in his early days a distinguished student +at St. John's and an intimate associate of Cheke's, maintained, in spite +of the cares of state, the tradition of his college as the patron of +various translators and the recipient of numerous dedications prefixed +to their productions. It is from the midcentury translators, however, +that the most distinctive comment emanates. United in various +combinations, now by religious sympathies, now by a common enthusiasm +for learning, now by the influence of an individual, they form a group +fairly homogeneous so far as their theories of translation are +concerned, appreciative of academic correctness, but ready to consider +also the claims of the reader and the nature of the vernacular. + +The earlier translators, Elyot and More, have left small but significant +comment on methods. More's expression of theory was elicited by +Tyndale's translation of the Bible; of the technical difficulties +involved in his own translation of _The Life of Pico della Mirandola_ he +says nothing. Elyot is one of the first translators to approach his task +from a new angle. Translating from Greek to English, he observed, like +Tyndale, the differences and correspondences between the two languages. +His _Doctrinal of Princes_ was translated "to the intent only that I +would assay if our English tongue might receive the quick and proper +sentences pronounced by the Greeks."[346] The experiment had interesting +results. "And in this experience," he continues, "I have found (if I be +not much deceived) that the form of speaking, called in Greek and also +in English _Phrasis_, much nearer approacheth to that which at this day +we use, than the order of the Latin tongue. I mean in the sentences and +not in the words." + +A peculiarly good exponent of the new vitality which was taking +possession of the theory of translation is Nicholas Udall, whose +opinions have been already cited in this chapter. The versatility of +intellect evinced by the list of his varied interests, dramatic, +academic, religious, showed itself also in his views regarding +translation. In the various prefaces and dedications which he +contributed to the translation of Erasmus's _Paraphrase_ he touches on +problems of all sorts--stipends for translators, the augmentation of the +English vocabulary, sentence structure in translation, the style of +Erasmus, the individual quality in the style of every writer--but all +these questions he treats lightly and undogmatically. Translation, +according to Udall, should not conform to iron rules. He is not +disturbed by the diversity of methods exhibited in the _Paraphrase_. +"Though every translator," he writes, "follow his own vein in turning +the Latin into English, yet doth none willingly swerve or dissent from +the mind and sense of his author, albeit some go more near to the words +of the author, and some use the liberty of translating at large, not so +precisely binding themselves to the strait interpretation of every word +and syllable."[347] In his own share of the translation Udall inclines +rather to the free than to the literal method. He has not been able +"fully to discharge the office of a good translator,"[348] partly +because of the ornate quality of Erasmus's style, partly because he +wishes to be understood by the unlearned. He does not feel so scrupulous +as he would if he were translating the text of Scripture, though even in +the latter connection he is guilty of the heretical opinion that "if the +translators were not altogether so precise as they are, but had some +more regard to expressing of the sense, I think in my judgment they +should do better." It will be noted, however, that Udall's advocacy of +freedom is an individual reaction, not the repetition of a formula. The +preface to his translation of the _Apophthegmes_ of Erasmus helps to +redress the balance in favor of accuracy. "I have labored," he says, "to +discharge the duty of a translator, that is, keeping and following the +sense of my book, to interpret and turn the Latin into English, with as +much grace of our vulgar tongue as in my slender power and knowledge +hath lain."[349] The rest of the preface shows that Udall, in his +concern for the quality of the English, did not make "following the +sense" an excuse for undue liberties. Writing "with a regard for young +scholars and students, who get great value from comparing languages," he +is most careful to note such slight changes and omissions as he has made +in the text. Explanations and annotations have been printed "in a small +letter with some directory mark," and "any Greek or Latin verse or word, +whereof the pith and grace of the saying dependeth" has been retained, a +sacrifice to scholarship for which he apologizes to the unlearned +reader. + +Nicholas Grimald, who published his translation of Cicero's _Offices_ +shortly after the accession of Elizabeth, is much more dogmatic in his +rules for translation than is Udall. "Howbeit look," runs the preface, +"what rule the Rhetorician gives in precept, to be observed of an Orator +in telling of his tale: that it be short, and without idle words: that +it be plain, and without dark sense: that it be provable, and without +any swerving from the truth: the same rule should be used in examining +and judging of translation. For if it be not as brief as the very +author's text requireth, what so is added to his perfect style shall +appear superfluous, and to serve rather to the making of some paraphrase +or commentary. Thereto if it be uttered with inkhorn terms, and not with +usual words: or if it be phrased with wrested or far-fetched forms of +speech, not fair but harsh, not easy but hard, not natural but violent +it shall seem to be. Then also, in case it yield not the meaning of the +author, but either following fancy or misled by error forsakes the true +pattern, it cannot be approved for a faithful and sure interpretation, +which ought to be taken for the greatest praise of all."[350] In +Grimald's insistence on a brevity equal to that of the original and in +his unmodified opposition to innovations in vocabulary, there is +something of pedantic narrowness. His criticism of Cicero is not +illuminating and his estimate, in this connection, of his own +accomplishment is amusingly complacent. In Cicero's work "marvellous is +the matter, flowing the eloquence, rich the store of stuff, and full +artificial the enditing: but how I," he continues, "have expressed the +same, 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 of +all men of any learning so well liked that they repute it and consider +it as none: yet if ye list to compare this somewhat with that nothing, +peradventure this somewhat will serve somewhat the more." Yet in spite +of his limitations Grimald has some breadth of outlook. A work like his +own, he believes, can help the reader to a greater command of the +vernacular. "Here is for him occasion both to whet his wit and also to +file his tongue. For although an Englishman hath his mother tongue and +can talk apace as he learned of his dame, yet is it one thing to tittle +tattle, I wot not how, or to chatter like a jay, and another to bestow +his words wisely, orderly, pleasantly, and pithily." The writer knows +men who could speak Latin "readily and well-favoredly, who to have done +as much in our language and to have handled the same matter, would have +been half black." Careful study of this translation will help a man "as +well 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 to +the Reader_ which appeared in 1578 in the fourth edition of Thomas +Norton's translation of Calvin's _Institution of the Christian +Religion_. The opinions which it contains took shape some years earlier, +for the author expressly states that the translation has not been +changed at all from what it was in the first impression, published in +1561, and that the considerations which he now formulates governed him +in the beginning. Norton, like Grimald, insists on extreme accuracy in +following the original, but he bases his demand on a truth largely +ignored by translators up to this time, the essential relationship +between thought and style. He makes the following surprisingly +penetrative comment on the nature and significance of Calvin's Latin +style: "I considered how the author thereof had of long time purposely +labored to write the same most exactly, and to pack great plenty of +matter in small room of words, yea and those so circumspectly and +precisely ordered, to avoid the cavillations of such, as for enmity to +the truth therein contained, would gladly seek and abuse all advantages +which might be found by any oversight in penning of it, that the +sentences were thereby become so full as nothing might well be added +without idle superfluity, and again so nighly pared that nothing might +be minished without taking away some necessary substance of matter +therein expressed. This manner of writing, beside the peculiar terms of +arts and figures, and the difficulty of the matters themselves, being +throughout interlaced with the schoolmen's controversies, made a great +hardness in the author's own book, in that tongue wherein otherwise he +is both plentiful and easy, insomuch that it sufficeth not to read him +once, unless you can be content to read in vain." Then follows Norton's +estimate of the translator's duty in such a case: "I durst not presume +to warrant myself to have his meaning without his words. And they that +wot well what it is to translate well and faithfully, specially in +matters of religion, do know that not only the grammatical construction +of words sufficeth, but the very building and order to observe all +advantages of vehemence or grace, by placing or accent of words, maketh +much to the true setting forth of a writer's mind." Norton, however, did +not entirely forget his readers. He approached his task with "great +doubtfulness," fully conscious of the dilemma involved. "If I should +follow the words, I saw that of necessity the hardness of the +translation must needs be greater than was in the tongue wherein it was +originally written. If I should leave the course of words, and grant +myself liberty after the natural manner of my own tongue, to say that in +English which I conceived to be his meaning in Latin, I plainly +perceived how hardly I might escape error." In the end he determined "to +follow the words so near as the phrase of the English tongue would +suffer me." Unhappily Norton, like Grimald and like some of the +translators of the Bible, has an exaggerated regard for brevity. He +claims that "if the English book were printed in such paper and letter +as the Latin is, it should not exceed the Latin in quantity," and that +students "shall not find any more English than shall suffice to construe +the Latin withal, except in such few places where the great difference +of the phrases of the languages enforced me." Yet he believes that his +version is not unnecessarily hard to understand, and he urges readers +who have found it difficult to "read it ofter, in which doing you shall +find (as many have confessed to me that they have found by experience) +that those things which at first reading shall displease you for +hardness shall be found so easy as so hard matter would suffer, and for +the most part more easy than some other phrase which should with greater +looseness and smoother sliding away deceive your understanding." + +Thomas Wilson, who dedicated his translation of Demosthenes to Sir +William Cecil in 1570, links himself with the earlier group of +translators by his detailed references to Cheke. Like Norton he is very +conscious 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." "Such +a hard thing it is," he adds later, "to bring matter out of any one +language into another." A vigorous advocate of translation, however, he +does not despise his own tongue. "The cunning is no less," he declares, +"and the praise as great in my judgment, to translate anything +excellently into English, as into any other language," and he hopes +that, if his own attempt proves unsuccessful, others will make the +trial, "that such an orator as this is might be so framed to speak our +tongue as none were able to amend him, and that he might be found to be +most like himself." Wilson comes to his task with all the equipment that +the period could afford; his preface gives evidence of a critical +acquaintance with numerous Latin renderings of his author. From Cheke, +however, he has gained something more valuable, the power to feel the +vital, permanent quality in the work of Demosthenes. Cheke, he says, +"was moved greatly to like Demosthenes above all others, for that he +saw him so familiarly applying himself to the sense and understanding of +the common people, that he sticked not to say that none ever was more +fit to make an Englishman tell his tale praiseworthily in any open +hearing either in parliament or in pulpit or otherwise, than this only +orator was." Wilson shares this opinion and, representative of the +changing standards of Elizabethan scholarship, prefers Demosthenes to +Cicero. "Demosthenes used a plain, familiar manner of writing and +speaking in all his actions," he says in his _Preface to the Reader_, +"applying himself to the people's nature and to their understanding +without using of proheme to win credit or devising conclusion to move +affections and to purchase favor after he had done his matters.... And +were it not better and more wisdom to speak plainly and nakedly after +the common sort of men in few words, than to overflow with unnecessary +and superfluous eloquence as Cicero is thought sometimes to do." "Never +did glass so truly represent man's face," he writes later, "as +Demosthenes 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 shall +be." From Cheke Wilson has received also training in methods of +translation and especially in the handling of the vernacular. "Master +Cheke's judgment was great," he recalls, "in translating out of one +tongue into another, and better skill he had in our English speech to +judge of the phrases and properties of words and to divide sentences +than any one else that I have known. And often he would English his +matters out of the Latin or Greek upon the sudden, by looking of the +book only, without reading or construing anything at all, an usage right +worthy and very profitable for all men, as well for the understanding of +the book, as also for the aptness of framing the author's meaning, and +bettering thereby their judgment, and therewithal perfecting their +tongue and utterance of speech." In speaking of his own methods, +however, Wilson's emphasis is on his faithfulness to the original. "But +perhaps," he writes, "whereas I have been somewhat curious to follow +Demosthenes' natural phrase, it may be thought that I do speak over bare +English. Well I had rather follow his vein, the which was to speak +simply and plainly to the common people's understanding, than to +overflourish with superfluous speech, although I might thereby be +counted equal with the best that ever wrote English." + +Though now and then the comment of these men is slightly vague or +inconsistent, in general they describe their methods clearly and fully. +Other translators, expressing themselves with less sureness and +adequacy, leave the impression that they have adopted similar +standards. Translations, for example, of Calvin's _Commentary on +Acts_[351] and Luther's _Commentary on Galatians_[352] are described on +their title pages as "faithfully translated" from the Latin. B. R.'s +preface to his translation of Herodotus, though its meaning is somewhat +obscured 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 so +seemly as either you will love them because they are modest, or not +mislike them because they are not impudent, since in refusing idle +pearls to make them seem gaudy, they reject not modest apparel to cause +them to go comely. The truth is (Gentlemen) in making the new attire, I +was fain to go by their old array, cutting out my cloth by another +man's measure, being great difference whether we invent a fashion of +our own, or imitate a pattern set down by another. Which I speak not to +this end, for that myself could have done more eloquently than our +author hath in Greek, but that the course of his writing being most +sweet in Greek, converted into English loseth a great part of his +grace."[353] Outside of the field of theology or of classical prose +there were translators who strove for accuracy. Hoby, profiting +doubtless by his association with Cheke, endeavored in translating _The +Courtier_ "to follow the very meaning and words of the author, without +being 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's +translation of Tasso explains: "In that which is done, I have caused +the Italian to be printed together with the English, for the delight +and benefit of those gentlemen that love that most lively language. And +thereby the learned reader shall see how strict a course the translator +hath tied himself in the whole work, usurping as little liberty as any +whatsoever as ever wrote with any commendations."[356] Even translators +who do not profess to be overfaithful display a consciousness of the +existence of definite standards of accuracy. Thomas Chaloner, another +of the friends of Cheke, translating Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_ for +"mean men of baser wits and condition," chooses "to be counted a scant +true interpreter." "I have not pained myself," he says, "to render word +for word, nor proverb for proverb ... which may be thought by some +cunning translators a deadly sin."[357] To the author of the _Menechmi_ +the word "translation" has a distinct connotation. The printer of the +work has found him "very loath and unwilling to hazard this to the +curious view of envious detraction, being (as he tells me) neither so +exactly written as it may carry any name of translation, nor such +liberty therein used as that he would notoriously differ from the +poet's own order."[358] Richard Knolles, whose translation of Bodin's +_Six Books of a Commonweal_ was published in 1606, employed both the +French and the Latin versions of the treatise, and describes himself as +on this account "seeking therein the true sense and meaning of the +author, rather than precisely following the strict rules of a nice +translator, in observing the very words of the author."[359] The +translators of this later time, however, seldom put into words theories +so scholarly as those formulated earlier in the period, when, even +though the demand for accuracy might sometimes be exaggerated, it was +nevertheless the result of thoughtful discrimination. There was some +reason why a man like Gabriel Harvey, living towards the end of +Elizabeth's reign, should look back with regret to the time when +England produced men like Cheke and his contemporaries.[360] + +One must frequently remind oneself, however, that the absence of +expressed theory need not involve the absence of standards. Among +translators as among original writers a fondness for analyzing and +describing processes did not necessarily accompany literary skill. Much +more activity of mind and respect for originals may have existed among +verse translators than is evident from their scanty comment. The most +famous prose translators have little to say about their methods. +Golding, who produced so much both in verse and prose, and who usually +wrote prefaces to his translations, scarcely ever discusses +technicalities. Now and then, however, he lets fall an incidental remark +which suggests very definite ideals. In translating Caesar, for example, +though at first he planned merely to complete Brend's translation, he +ended 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 uniform +and of one style throughout,"[361] a comment worthy of a much more +modern critic. Philemon Holland, again, contributes almost nothing to +theory, though his vigorous defense of his art and his appreciation of +the stylistic qualities of his originals bear witness to true scholarly +enthusiasm. On the whole, however, though the distinctive contribution +of the period is the plea of the renaissance scholars that a reasonable +faithfulness should be displayed, the comment of the mass of translators +shows little grasp of the new principles. When one considers, in +addition to their very inadequate expression of theory, the prevailing +characteristics of their practice, the balance turns unmistakably in +favor of a careless freedom in translation. + +Some of the deficiencies in sixteenth-century theory are supplied by +Chapman, who applies himself with considerable zest to laying down the +principles which in his opinion should govern poetical translations. +Producing his versions of Homer in the last years of the sixteenth and +early years of the seventeenth century, he forms a link between the two +periods. In some respects he anticipates later critics. He attacks both +the 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 is +always conscious, "how pedantical and absurd an affectation it is in the +interpretation of any author (much more of Homer) to turn him word for +word, when (according to Horace and other best lawgivers to translators) +it is the part of every knowing and judicial interpreter, not to follow +the number and order of words, but the material things themselves, and +sentences 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 language +in which they are converted."[363] Strangely enough, he thinks this +literalism the prevailing fault of translators. He hardly dares present +his 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 the +difficulties of translation. Although the "sense and elegancy" of Greek +and 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 eighteenth +century translators. Avoiding as it does the two extremes, it easily +commended itself to the reason. Unfortunately it was frequently +appropriated by critics who were not inclined to labor strenuously with +the problems of translation. One misses in much of the later comment the +vigorous thinking of the early Renaissance translators. The theory of +translation was not yet regarded as "a common work of building" to which +each might contribute, and much that was valuable in sixteenth-century +comment 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 Renaissance +Education of Women_, 1912. + +[252] Letter prefixed to John, in _Paraphrase of Erasmus on the New +Testament_, 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 English +Books 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 of +the 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, and +Destiny 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 of +Virgil_, 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 of +Montemayor_, London, 1598. + +[314] _To the Reader_, in _Honor's Academy_, London, 1610. + +[315] _The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthony of Guevara_, London, 1574, _To +the Reader_. + +[316] _Prologue_ and _Argument_ of Guevara, translated in North, _Dial of +Princes_, 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's +Tragedies_, 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 Elizabethan +Translations of Seneca's Tragedies_. + +[329] _A Medicinable Moral, that is, the two books of Horace his satires +Englished acccording to the prescription of St. Hierome_, London, 1566, _To +the Reader_. + +[330] _Preface_ to the Earl of Oxford, in _The Abridgment of the Histories +of 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 in +Introduction 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's +Tragedies_. + +[338] Stanyhurst's _Aeneid_, in _Arber's Scholar's Library_, p. 5. + +[339] _Ibid._, _Introduction_, p. xix, quoted from _The Art of English +Poesy_. + +[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 in +Grosart, _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 the +vast, almost unbroken field of foreign literature may well awaken the +envy of his modern successor, in many respects the period of Dryden and +Pope has more claim to be regarded as the Golden Age of the English +translator. Patriotic enthusiasm had, it is true, lost something of its +earlier fire, but national conditions were in general not unfavorable to +translation. Though the seventeenth century, torn by civil discords, was +very unlike the period which Holland had lovingly described as "this +long time of peace and tranquillity, wherein ... all good literature +hath had free course and flourished,"[365] yet, despite the rise and +fall of governments, the stream of translation flowed on almost +uninterruptedly. Sandys' _Ovid_ is presented by its author, after his +visit to America, as "bred in the New World, of the rudeness whereof it +cannot but participate; especially having wars and tumults to bring it +to light instead of the Muses,"[366] but the more ordinary translation, +bred at home in England during the seventeenth century, apparently +suffered little from the political strife which surrounded it, while the +eighteenth century afforded a "peace and tranquillity" even greater than +that which had prevailed under Elizabeth. + +Throughout the period translation was regarded as an important labor, +deserving of every encouragement. As in the sixteenth century, friends +and patrons united to offer advice and aid to the author who engaged in +this work. Henry Brome, dedicating a translation of Horace to Sir +William Backhouse, writes of his own share of the volume, "to the +translation whereof my pleasant retirement and conveniencies at your +delightsome habitation have liberally contributed."[367] Doctor Barten +Holiday includes in his preface to a version of Juvenal and Persius an +interesting list of "worthy friends" who have assisted him. "My honored +friend, Mr. John Selden (of such eminency in the studies of antiquities +and languages) and Mr. Farnaby ... procured me a fair copy from the +famous library of St. James's, and a manuscript copy from our herald of +learning, Mr. Camden. My dear friend, the patriarch of our poets, Ben +Jonson, sent in an ancient manuscript partly written in the Saxon +character." Then follow names of less note, Casaubon, Anyan, Price.[368] +Dryden tells the same story. He has been permitted to consult the Earl +of Lauderdale's manuscript translation of Virgil. "Besides this help, +which was not inconsiderable," he writes, "Mr. Congreve has done me the +favor to review the _Aeneis_, and compare my version with the +original."[369] Later comes his recognition of indebtedness of a more +material character. "Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir William +Bowyer, to Denham Court, I translated the First Georgic at his house, +and the greatest part of the last Aeneid. A more friendly entertainment +no 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. The +great Dryden thought it not unworthy of his powers to engage in putting +classical verse into English garb. His successor Pope early turned to +the same pleasant and profitable task. Johnson, the literary dictator of +the next age, described Rowe's version of Lucan as "one of the greatest +productions of English poetry."[371] The comprehensive editions of the +works of British poets which began to appear towards the end of the +eighteenth century regularly included English renderings, generally +contemporaneous, of the great poetry of other countries. + +The growing dignity of this department of literature and the Augustan +fondness for literary criticism combined to produce a large body of +comment on methods of translation. The more ambitious translations of +the eighteenth century, for example, were accompanied by long prefaces, +containing, in addition to the elaborate paraphernalia of contemporary +scholarship, detailed discussion of the best rules for putting a foreign +classic into English. Almost every possible phase of the art had been +broached in one place and another before the century ended. In its last +decade there appeared the first attempt in English at a complete and +detailed treatment of the theory of translation as such, Tytler's _Essay +on the Principles of Translation_. + +From the sixteenth-century theory of translation, so much of which is +incidental and uncertain in expression, it is a pleasure to come to the +deliberate, reasoned statements, unmistakable in their purpose and +meaning, of the earlier critics of our period, men like Denham, Cowley, +and Dryden. In contrast to the mass of unrelated individual opinions +attached to the translations of Elizabeth's time, the criticism of the +seventeenth century emanates, for the most part, from a small group of +men, who supply standards for lesser commentators and who, if they do +not invariably agree with one another, are yet thoroughly familiar with +one another's views. The field of discussion also has narrowed +considerably, and theory has gained by becoming less scattering. +Translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed certain +new developments, the most marked of which was the tendency among +translators who aspired to the highest rank to confine their efforts to +verse renderings of the Greek and Latin classics. A favorite remark was +that it is the greatest poet who suffers most in being turned from one +language into another. In spite of this, or perhaps for this reason, the +common ambition was to undertake Virgil, who was generally regarded as +the greatest of epic poets, and attempts to translate at least a part of +the _Aeneid_ were astonishingly frequent. As early as 1658 the Fourth +Book is described as "translated ... in our day at least ten times into +English."[372] Horace came next in popularity; by the beginning of the +eighteenth century, according to one translator, he had been +"translated, paraphrased, or criticized on by persons of all conditions +and both sexes."[373] As the century progressed, Homer usurped the place +formerly occupied by Virgil as the object of the most ambitious effort +and the center of discussion. But there were other translations of the +classics. Cooke, dedicating his translation of Hesiod to the Duke of +Argyll, says to his patron: "You, my lord, know how the works of genius +lift up the head of a nation above her neighbors, and give as much honor +as success in arms; among these we must reckon our translations of the +classics; by which when we have naturalized all Greece and Rome, we +shall be so much richer than they by so many original productions as we +have of our own."[374] Seemingly there was an attempt to naturalize "all +Greece and Rome." Anacreon, Pindar, Apollonius Rhodius, Lucretius, +Tibullus, Statius, Juvenal, Persius, Ovid, Lucan, are names taken almost +at random from the list of seventeenth and eighteenth-century +translations. Criticism, however, was ready to concern itself with the +translation of any classic, ancient or modern. Denham's two famous +pronouncements are connected, the one with his own translation of the +Second Book of the _Aeneid_, the other with Sir Richard Fanshaw's +rendering of _Il Pastor Fido_. In the later eighteenth century +voluminous comment accompanied Hoole's _Ariosto_ and Mickle's _Camoens_. + +At present, however, we are concerned not with the number and variety of +these translations, but with their homogeneity. As translators showed +themselves less inclined to wander over the whole field of literature, +the theory of translation assumed much more manageable proportions. A +further limitation of the area of discussion was made by Denham, who +expressly excluded from his consideration "them who deal in matters of +fact or matters of faith,"[375] thus disposing of the theological +treatises which had formerly divided attention with the classics. + +The aims of the translator were also clarified by definition of his +audience. John Vicars, publishing in 1632 _The XII. Aeneids of Virgil +translated into English decasyllables_, adduces as one of his motives +"the common good and public utility which I hoped might accrue to young +students and grammatical tyros,"[376] but later writers seldom repeat +this appeal to the learner. The next year John Brinsley issued _Virgil's +Eclogues, with his book De Apibus, translated grammatically, and also +according to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar and +the verse will permit_. A significant comment in the "Directions" runs: +"As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceit +which arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intended +for this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in time +drive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the minds +of all." Apparently the schoolmaster's ban upon the unauthorized use of +translations was establishing the distinction between the English +version which might claim to be ranked as literature and that which +Johnson later designated as "the clandestine refuge of schoolboys."[377] + +Another limitation of the audience was, however, less admirable. For the +widely democratic appeal of the Elizabethan translator was substituted +an appeal to a class, distinguished, if one may believe the philosopher +Hobbes, as much by social position as by intellect. In discussing the +vocabulary to be employed by the translator, Hobbes professes opinions +not unlike those of the sixteenth-century critics. Like Puttenham, he +makes a distinction between words as suited or unsuited for the epic +style. "The names of instruments and tools of artificers, and words of +art," he says in the preface to his _Homer_, "though of use in the +schools, are far from being fit to be spoken by a hero. He may delight +in the arts themselves, and have skill in some of them, but his glory +lies 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 the +use of unfamiliar words, also, there is nothing new; but in the +standards by which he tries such terms there is something amusingly +characteristic of his time. In the choice of words, "the first +indiscretion 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 to +reproduce Hobbes' capitalization--"are not sufficiently known. For the +work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for three +virtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the reading whereof women no less +than men have a just pretence though their skill in language be not so +universal. And therefore foreign words, till by long use they become +vulgar, are unintelligible to them." Dryden is similarly restrained by +the thought of his readers. He does not try to reproduce the "Doric +dialect" of Theocritus, "for Theocritus writ to Sicilians, who spoke +that dialect; and I direct this part of my translations to our ladies, +who neither understand, nor will take pleasure in such homely +expressions."[378] In translating the _Aeneid_ he follows what he +conceives 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 that +Virgil 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 been +better bred than to be too nicely knowing in such things."[379] + +Another element in theory which displays the strength and weakness of +the time is the treatment of the work of other countries and other +periods. A changed attitude towards the achievements of foreign +translators becomes evident early in the seventeenth century. In the +prefaces to an edition of the works of Du Bartas in English there are +signs of a growing satisfaction with the English language as a medium +and an increasing conviction that England can surpass the rest of Europe +in the work of translation. Thomas Hudson, in an address to James VI of +Scotland, attached to his translation of _The History of Judith_, quotes +an interesting conversation which he held on one occasion with that +pedantic monarch. "It pleased your Highness," he recalls, "not only to +esteem the peerless style of the Greek Homer and the Latin Virgil to be +inimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted), but also to +allege (partly through delight your majesty took in the haughty style of +those most famous writers, and partly to sound the opinion of others) +that also the lofty phrases, the grave inditement, the facund terms of +the French Salust (for the like resemblance) could not be followed nor +sufficiently expressed in our rough and unpolished English +language."[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 famous +Sylvester on his translations from the same author, the English tongue +has 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 with +French, 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 of +the Earl of Roscommon, who, after praising the work of the earlier +French 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 of +Virgil. "Segrais ... is wholly destitute of elevation, though his +version is much better than that of the two brothers, or any of the rest +who have attempted Virgil. Hannibal Caro is a great name among the +Italians; yet his translation is most scandalously mean."[384] "What I +have said," he declares somewhat farther on, "though it has the face of +arrogance, yet is intended for the honor of my country; and therefore I +will boldly own that this English translation has more of Virgil's +spirit in it than either the French or Italian."[385] + +On translators outside their own period seventeenth-century critics +bestowed even less consideration than on their French or Italian +contemporaries. Earlier writers were forgotten, or remembered only to be +condemned. W. L., Gent., who in 1628 published a translation of Virgil's +_Eclogues_, expresses his surprise that a poet like Virgil "should yet +stand still as a _noli me tangere_, whom no man either durst or would +undertake; only Master Spenser long since translated the _Gnat_ (a +little fragment of Virgil's excellence), giving the world peradventure +to conceive that he would at one time or other have gone through with +the 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 of +Latin poets into a mellow and neat English soil (a thing not done +before)."[387] Denham announces, "There are so few translations which +deserve praise, that I scarce ever saw any which deserved pardon; those +who travail in that kind being for the most part so unhappy as to rob +others without enriching themselves, pulling down the fame of good +authors without raising their own." Brome,[388] writing in 1666, +rejoices in the good fortune of Horace's "good friend Virgil ... who +being plundered of all his ornaments by the old translators, was +restored to others with double lustre by those standard-bearers of wit +and judgment, Denham and Waller,"[389] and in proof of his statements +puts side by side translations of the same passage by Phaer and Denham. +Later, in 1688, an anonymous writer recalls the work of Phaer and +Stanyhurst 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 is +found 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. He +includes him with Spenser among the "great masters of our language," and +adds, "many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he +derived the harmony of his numbers from _Godfrey of Bulloign_, which was +turned into English by Mr. Fairfax."[392] But even Dryden, who sometimes +saw beyond his own period, does not share the admiration which some of +his friends entertain for Chapman. "The Earl of Mulgrave and Mr. +Waller," he writes in the _Examen Poeticum_, "two of the best judges of +our age, have assured me that they could never read over the translation +of Chapman without incredible pleasure and extreme transport. This +admiration of theirs must needs proceed from the author himself, for the +translator has thrown him down as far as harsh numbers, improper +English, and a monstrous length of verse could carry him."[393] + +In this satisfaction with their own country and their own era there +lurked certain dangers for seventeenth-century writers. The quality +becomes, as we shall see, more noticeable in the eighteenth century, +when the shackles which English taste laid upon original poetry were +imposed also upon translated verse. The theory of translation was +hampered in its development by the narrow complacency of its exponents, +and the record of this time is by no means one of uniform progress. The +seventeenth century shows clearly marked alternations of opinion; now it +sanctions extreme methods; now, by reaction, it inclines towards more +moderate views. The eighteenth century, during the greater part of its +course, produces little that is new in the way of theory, and adopts, +without much attempt to analyze them, the formulas left by the preceding +period. We may now resume the history of these developments at the point +where 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 who +described their methods held theories much like those of Chapman. W. L., +Gent., in the extremely flowery and discursive preface to his version of +Virgil's _Eclogues_, says, "Some readers I make no doubt they (the +translations) will meet with in these dainty mouthed times, that will +tax me with not coming resolved word for word and line for line with the +author.... I used the freedom of a translator, not tying myself to the +tyranny of a grammatical construction but breaking the shell into many +pieces, was only careful to preserve the kernel safe and whole from the +violence of a wrong or wrested interpretation." After a long simile +drawn from the hunting field he concludes, "No more do I conceive my +course herein to be faulty though I do not affect to follow my author so +close as to tread upon his heels." John Vicars, who professes to have +robed Virgil in "a homespun English gray-coat plain," says of his +manner, "I have aimed at these three things, perspicuity of the matter, +fidelity to the author, and facility or smoothness to recreate thee my +reader. Now if any critical or curious wit tax me with a _Frustra fit +per plura &c._ and blame my not curious confinement to my author line +for line, I answer (and I hope this answer will satisfy the moderate and +ingenuous) that though peradventure I could (as in my Babel's Balm I +have done throughout the whole translation) yet in regard of the lofty +majesty of this my author's style, I would not adventure so to pinch his +spirits, as to make him seem to walk like a lifeless ghost. But on +thinking on that of Horace, _Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio_, I +presumed (yet still having an eye to the genuine sense as I was able) +to expatiate with poetical liberty, where necessity of matter and phrase +enforced." Vicars' warrant for his practice is the oftquoted caution of +Horace, _Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere_. + +But the seventeenth century was not disposed to continue uninterruptedly +the tradition of previous translators. In translated, as in original +verse a new era was to begin, acclaimed as such in its own day, and +associated like the new poetry, with the names of Denham and Cowley as +both poets and critics and with that of Waller as poet. Peculiarly +characteristic of the movement was its hostility towards literal +translation, a hostility apparent also, as we have seen, in Chapman. "I +consider it a vulgar error in translating poets," writes Denham in the +preface 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 sense +and genius of the author," which "was scarce heard of in England before +this present age."[394] + +Why Chapman and later translators should have fixed upon extreme +literalness as the besetting fault of their predecessors and +contemporaries, it is hard to see. It is true that the recognition of +the desirability of faithfulness to the original was the most +distinctive contribution that sixteenth-century critics made to the +theory of translation, but this principle was largely associated with +prose 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 by +slavish adherence to the letter. As a matter of fact, however, +sixteenth-century translation was obviously an unfamiliar field to most +seventeenth-century commentators, and although their generalizations +include all who have gone before them, their illustrations are usually +drawn from the early part of their own century. Ben Jonson, whose +translation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_ is cited by Dryden as an +example of "metaphrase, or turning an author word by word and line by +line from one language to another,"[395] is perhaps largely responsible +for the mistaken impression regarding the earlier translators. Thomas +May and George Sandys are often included in the same category. Sandys' +translation of Ovid is regarded by Dryden as typical of its time. Its +literalism, its resulting lack of poetry, "proceeded from the wrong +judgment of the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse nor +loved it; they were scholars, 'tis true, but they were pedants; and for +all their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translated +into English."[396] + +But neither Jonson, Sandys, nor May has much to say with regard to the +proper methods of translation. The most definite utterance of the group +is found in the lines which Jonson addressed to May on his translation +of 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, by +polishing, altering, or restoring the harsh, improper, or mistaken with +a nicer exactness than perhaps is required in so long a labor,"[398] a +comment open to various interpretations. His metrical version of the +Psalms is described as "paraphrastically translated," and it is worthy +of note that Cowley, in his attack on the practice of too literal +translation, should have chosen this part of Sandys' work as +illustrative of the methods which he condemns. For the translators of +the new school, though professedly the foes of the word for word method, +carried their hostility to existing theories of translation much +farther. Cowley begins, reasonably enough, by pointing out the absurdity +of translating a poet literally. "If a man should undertake to translate +Pindar word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated +another; as may appear when a person who understands not the original +reads the verbal traduction of him into Latin prose, than which nothing +seems more raving.... And I would gladly know what applause our best +pieces of English poesy could expect from a Frenchman or Italian, if +converted faithfully and word for word into French or Italian +prose."[399] But, ignoring the possibility of a reasonable regard for +both the original and the English, such as had been advocated by Chapman +or by minor translators like W. L. and Vicars, Cowley suggests a more +radical method. Since of necessity much of the beauty of a poem is lost +in translation, the translator must supply new beauties. "For men +resolving in no case to shoot beyond the mark," he says, "it is a +thousand to one if they shoot not short of it." "We must needs confess +that after all these losses sustained by Pindar, all we can add to him +by our wit or invention (not deserting still his subject) is not likely +to make him a richer man than he was in his own country." Finally comes +a definite statement of Cowley's method: "Upon this ground I have in +these two Odes of Pindar taken, left out and added what I please; nor +make it so much my aim to let the reader know precisely what he spoke as +what was his way and manner of speaking, which has not been yet (that I +know of) introduced into English, though it be the noblest and highest +kind of writing in verse." Denham, in his lines on Fanshaw's translation +of 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 had +their appeal for the translator who was conscious of real creative +power. "Poesy," he says in the preface to his translation from the +_Aeneid_, "is of so subtle a spirit that in the pouring out of one +language into another it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not +added in transfusion, there will remain nothing but a _caput mortuum_." +The new method, which Cowley is willing to designate as _imitation_ if +the critics refuse to it the name of translation, is described by Dryden +with his usual clearness. "I take imitation of an author in their +sense," he says, "to be an endeavor of a later poet to write like one +who has written before him, on the same subject; that is, not to +translate his words, or be confined to his sense, but only to set him as +a pattern, and to write as he supposes that author would have done, had +he lived in our age, and in our country."[400] + +Yet, after all, the new fashion was far from revolutionizing either the +theory or the practice of translation. Dryden says of Denham that "he +advised more liberty than he took himself," and of both Denham and +Cowley, "I dare not say that either of them have carried this libertine +way of rendering authors (as Mr Cowley calls it) so far as my definition +reaches; for in the _Pindaric Odes_ the customs and ceremonies of +ancient Greece are still observed."[401] In the theory of the less +distinguished translators of the second and third quarters of the +century, the influence of Denham and Cowley shows itself, if at all, in +the claim to have translated paraphrastically and the complacency with +which translators describe their practice as "new," a condition of +things which might have prevailed without the intervention of the method +of imitation. About the year 1680 there comes a definite reaction +against too great liberty in the treatment of foreign authors. Thomas +Creech, defining what may justly be expected of the translator of +Horace, says, "If the sense of the author is delivered, the variety of +expression kept (which I must despair of after Quintillian hath assured +us that he is most happily bold in his words) and his fancy not +debauched (for I cannot think myself able to improve Horace) 'tis all +that can be expected from a version."[402] After quoting with approval +what Cowley has said of the inadequacy of any translation, he continues: +"'Tis true he (Cowley) improves this consideration, and urges it as +concluding against all strict and faithful versions, in which I must beg +leave to dissent, thinking it better to convey down the learning of the +ancients than their empty sound suited to the present times, and show +the age their whole substance, rather than their ghost embodied in some +light air of my own." An anonymous writer presents a group of critics +who are disgusted with contemporary fashions in translation and wish to +go 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 their +number, to translate the Fourth Book of the _Aeneid_, keeping himself in +due 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 not +advocate 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 not +come under ordinary rules, but he fears the effect of Cowley's example +"when writers of unequal parts to him shall imitate so bold an +undertaking," and believes that only a poet so "wild and ungovernable" +as Pindar justifies the method of Cowley. "If Virgil, or Ovid, or any +regular intelligible authors be thus used, 'tis no longer to be called +their work, when neither the thoughts nor words are drawn from the +original; but instead of them there is something new produced, which is +almost the creation of another hand.... He who is inquisitive to know an +author's thoughts will be disappointed in his expectation; and 'tis not +always that a man will be contented to have a present made him, when he +expects the payment of a debt. To state it fairly; imitation is the most +advantageous way for a translator to show himself, but the greatest +wrong which can be done to the memory and reputation of the dead." + +Though imitation was not generally accepted as a standard method of +translation, certain elements in the theory of Denham and Cowley +remained popular throughout the seventeenth and even the eighteenth +century. A favorite comment in the complimentary verses attached to +translations is the assertion that the translator has not only equaled +but surpassed his original. An extreme example of this is Dryden's +fatuous 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 of +the _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 and +perspicuity, the qualities which appealed most strongly to the century, +that the claim to improvement was made. Often, however, it was +associated with notably accurate versions. Cartwright calls upon the +readers 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 oppose +attempts 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_. "Far +from adopting the former part of this maxim," he declares, "I consider +it to be the duty of a poetical translator, never to suffer his original +to fall. He must maintain with him a perpetual contest of genius; he +must 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 he +sees 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 the +most significant element in the seventeenth-century theory of +translation. These men advocated freedom in translation, not because +such freedom would give the translator a greater opportunity to display +his own powers, but because it would enable him to reproduce more truly +the spirit of the original. A good translator must, first of all, know +his author intimately. Where Denham's expressions are fuller than +Virgil's, they are, he says, "but the impressions which the often +reading of him hath left upon my thoughts." Possessing this intimate +acquaintance, the English writer must try to think and write as if he +were identified with his author. Dryden, who, in spite of his general +principles, sometimes practised something uncommonly like imitation, +says in the preface to _Sylvae_: "I must acknowledge that I have many +times exceeded my commission; for I have both added and omitted, and +even sometimes very boldly made such expositions of my authors as no +Dutch commentator will forgive me.... Where I have enlarged them, I +desire the false critics would not always think that those thoughts are +wholly mine, but either that they are secretly in the poet, or may be +fairly deduced from him; or at least, if both these considerations +should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were +living, and an Englishman, they are such as he would probably have +written."[411] + +By a sort of irony the more faithful translator came in time to +recognize this as one of the precepts of his art, and sometimes to use +it as an argument against too much liberty. The Earl of Roscommon says +in the preface to his translation of Horace's _Art of Poetry_, "I have +kept as close as I could both to the meaning and the words of the +author, and done nothing but what I believe he would forgive if he were +alive; and I have often asked myself this question." Dryden follows his +protest against imitation by saying: "Nor must we understand the +language only of the poet, but his particular turn of thoughts and +expression, which are the characters that distinguish, and, as it were, +individuate him from all other writers. When we come thus far, 'tis +time to look into ourselves, to conform our genius to his, to give his +thought either the same turn, if our tongue will bear it, or if not, to +vary but the dress, not to alter or destroy the substance."[412] Such +faithfulness, according to Dryden, involves the appreciation and the +reproduction of the qualities in an author which distinguish him from +others, or, to use his own words, "the maintaining the character of an +author which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear +that individual poet whom you would interpret."[413] Dryden thinks that +English translators have not sufficiently recognized the necessity for +this. "For example, not only the thoughts, but the style and +versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different: yet I see, even in +our best poets who have translated some parts of them, that they have +confounded their several talents, and, by endeavoring only at the +sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them so much alike that, if +I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the +copies which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was objected against a +late noble painter that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them +were like. And this happened because he always studied himself more than +those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the +hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from +another." + +But critics recognized that study and pains alone could not furnish the +translator for his work. "To be a thorough translator," says Dryden, "he +must be a thorough poet,"[414] or to put it, as does Roscommon, somewhat +more mildly, he must by nature possess the more essential +characteristics of his author. Admitting this, Creech writes with a +slight air of apology, "I cannot choose but smile to think that I, who +have ... too little ill nature (for that is commonly thought a +necessary ingredient) to be a satirist, should venture upon +Horace."[415] Dryden finds by experience that he can more easily +translate 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 know +not; 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 I +have lately attempted; perhaps, too, he was more according to my +genius."[416] He looks forward with pleasure to putting the whole of the +_Iliad_ into English. "And this I dare assure the world beforehand, that +I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil, though I +say not the translation will be less laborious; for the Grecian is more +according to my genius than the Latin poet."[417] The insistence on the +necessity for kinship between the author and the translator is the +principal idea in Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_. According to +Roscommon, + + 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 sometimes +made a pretext for undue latitude, it is evident that there was here an +important contribution to the theory of translation. In another respect, +also, the consideration of metrical effects, the seventeenth century +shows some advance,--an advance, however, which must be laid chiefly to +the credit of Dryden. Apparently there was no tendency towards +innovation and experiment in the matter of verse forms. +Seventeenth-century translators, satisfied with the couplet and kindred +measures, did not consider, as the Elizabethans had done, the +possibility of introducing classical metres. Creech says of Horace, +"'Tis certain our language is not capable of the numbers of the +poet,"[418] and leaves the matter there. Holiday says of his translation +of the same poet: "But many, no doubt, will say Horace is by me +forsaken, his lyric softness and emphatical Muse maimed; that there is a +general defection from his genuine harmony. Those I must tell, I have in +this translation rather sought his spirit than numbers; yet the music of +verse not neglected neither, since the English ear better heareth the +distich, and findeth that sweetness and air which the Latin affecteth +and (questionless) attaineth in sapphics or iambic measures."[419] +Dryden frequently complains of the difficulty of translation into +English metre, especially when the poet to be translated is Virgil. The +use of rhyme causes trouble. It "is certainly a constraint even to the +best poets, and those who make it with most ease.... What it adds to +sweetness, it takes away from sense; and he who loses the least by it +may be called a gainer. It often makes us swerve from an author's +meaning; as, if a mark be set up for an archer at a great distance, let +him aim as exactly as he can, the least wind will take his arrow, and +divert it from the white."[420] The line of the heroic couplet is not +long enough to reproduce the hexameter, and Virgil is especially +succinct. "To make him copious is to alter his character; and to +translate him line for line is impossible, because the Latin is +naturally 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 any +Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter has more feet than the English +heroic."[421] Yet though Dryden admits that Caro, the Italian +translator, who used blank verse, made his task easier thereby, he does +not think of abandoning the couplet for any of the verse forms which +earlier translators had tried. He finds Chapman's _Homer_ characterized +by "harsh numbers ... and a monstrous length of verse," and thinks his +own period "a much better age than was the last ... for versification +and the art of numbers."[422] Roscommon, whose version of Horace's _Art +of Poetry_ is in blank verse, says that Jonson's translation lacks +clearness as a result not only of his literalness but of "the constraint +of rhyme,"[423] but makes no further attack on the couplet as the +regular vehicle for translation. + +Dryden, however, is peculiarly interested in the general effect of his +verse as compared with that of his originals. "I have attempted," he +says 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 can +come to the Latin."[424] In his study of Virgil previous to translating +the _Aeneid_ he observed "above all, the elegance of his expressions +and the harmony of his numbers."[425] Elsewhere he says of his author, +"His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears whose +sense it bears, yet the numbers are perpetually varied to increase the +delight of the reader; so that the same sounds are never repeated twice +together."[426] These metrical effects he has tried to reproduce in +English. "The turns of his verse, his breakings, his numbers, and his +gravity, I have as far imitated as the poverty of our language and the +hastiness of my performance would allow," he says in the preface to +_Sylvae_.[427] In his translation of the whole _Aeneid_ he was guided by +the same considerations. "Virgil ... is everywhere elegant, sweet, and +flowing in his hexameters. His words are not only chosen, but the places +in which he ranks them for the sound. He who removes them from the +station wherein their master set them spoils the harmony. What he says +of the Sibyl's prophecies may be as properly applied to every word of +his: they must be read in order as they lie; the least breath +discomposes them and somewhat of their divinity is lost. I cannot boast +that I have been thus exact in my verses; but I have endeavored to +follow 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 last +consideration I have shunned the _caesura_ as much as possibly I could: +for, wherever that is used, it gives a roughness to the verse; of which +we have little need in a language which is overstocked with +consonants."[428] Views like these contribute much to an adequate +conception of what faithfulness in translation demands. + +From the lucid, intelligent comment of Dryden it is disappointing to +turn to the body of doctrine produced by his successors. In spite of the +widespread interest in translation during the eighteenth century, little +progress was made in formulating the theory of the art, and many of the +voluminous prefaces of translators deserve the criticism which Johnson +applied to Garth, "his notions are half-formed." So far as concerns the +general method of translation, the principles laid down by critics are +often mere repetitions of the conclusions already reached in the +preceding century. Most theorists were ready to adopt Dryden's view that +the translator should strike a middle course between the very free and +the very close method. Put into words by a recognized authority, so +reasonable an opinion could hardly fail of acceptance. It appealed to +the eighteenth-century mind as adequate, and more than one translator, +professing to give rules for translation, merely repeated in his own +words what Dryden had already said. Garth declares in the preface +condemned by Johnson: "Translation is commonly either verbal, a +paraphrase, or an imitation.... The manner that seems most suitable for +this present undertaking is neither to follow the author too close out +of a critical timorousness, nor abandon him too wantonly through a +poetic boldness. The original should always be kept in mind, without too +apparent a deviation from the sense. Where it is otherwise, it is not a +version but an imitation."[429] Grainger says in the introduction to his +_Tibullus_: "Verbal translations are always inelegant, because always +destitute of beauty of idiom and language; for by their fidelity to an +author's words, they become treacherous to his reputation; on the other +hand, a too wanton departure from the letter often varies the sense and +alters the manner. The translator chose the middle way, and meant +neither to tread on the heels of Tibullus nor yet to lose sight of +him."[430] The preface to Fawkes' _Theocritus_ harks back to Dryden: "A +too faithful translation, Mr. Dryden says, must be a pedantic one.... +And as I have not endeavored to give a verbal translation, so neither +have I indulged myself in a rash paraphrase, which always loses the +spirit of an ancient by degenerating into the modern manners of +expression."[431] + +Yet behind these well-sounding phrases there lay, one suspects, little +vigorous thought. Both the clarity and the honesty which belong to +Dryden's utterances are absent from much of the comment of the +eighteenth century. The apparent judicial impartiality of Garth, Fawkes, +Grainger, and their contemporaries disappears on closer examination. In +reality the balance of opinion in the time of Pope and Johnson inclines +very perceptibly in favor of freedom. Imitation, it is true, soon ceases +to enter into the discussion of translation proper, but literalism is +attacked again and again, till one is ready to ask, with Dryden, "Who +defends it?" Mickle's preface to _The Lusiad_ states with unusual +frankness what was probably the underlying idea in most of the theory of +the time. Writing "not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure +is to see what the author exactly says," but "to give a poem that might +live in the English language," Mickle puts up a vigorous defense of his +methods. "Literal translation of poetry," he insists, "is a solecism. +You may construe your author, indeed, but if with some translators you +boast that you have left your author to speak for himself, that you have +neither added nor diminished, you have in reality grossly abused him, +and deceived yourself. Your literal translations can have no claim to +the original felicities of expression, the energy, elegance, and fire of +the original poetry. It may bear, indeed, a resemblance, but such an +one as a corpse in the sepulchre bears to the former man, when he moved +in 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 poetry +into his own version, but will give it also the spirit of an +original."[432] A similarly clear statement of the real facts of the +situation appears in Johnson's remarks on translators. His test for a +translation is its readability, and to attain this quality he thinks it +permissible for the translator to improve on his author. "To a thousand +cavils," he writes in the course of his comments on Pope's _Homer_, "one +answer is necessary; the purpose of a writer is to be read, and the +criticism which would destroy the power of pleasing must be blown +aside."[433] The same view comes forward in his estimate of Cowley's +work. "The Anacreon of Cowley, like the Homer of Pope, has admitted the +decoration of some modern graces, by which he is undoubtedly more +amiable to common readers, and perhaps, if they would honestly declare +their own perceptions, to far the greater part of those whom courtesy +and ignorance are content to style the learned."[434] + +In certain matters, however, the translator claimed especial freedom. "A +work of this nature," says Trapp of his translation of the _Aeneid_, "is +to be regarded in two different views, both as a poem and as a +translated poem." This gives the translator some latitude. "The thought +and contrivance are his author's, but his language and the turn of his +versification are his own."[435] Pope holds the same opinion. A +translator must "give his author entire and unmaimed" but for the rest +the diction and versification are his own province.[436] Such a dictum +was sure to meet with approval, for dignity of language and smoothness +of verse were the very qualities on which the period prided itself. It +was in these respects that translators hoped to improve on the work of +the preceding age. Fawkes, the translator of Theocritus, believes that +many lines in Dryden's _Miscellany_ "will sound very harshly in the +polished ears of the present age," and that Creech's translation of his +author can be popular only with those who "having no ear for poetical +numbers, are better pleased with the rough music of the last age than +the refined harmony of this." Johnson, who strongly approved of Dryden's +performance, accepts it as natural that there should be other attempts +at the translation of Virgil, "since the English ear has been accustomed +to the mellifluence of Pope's numbers, and the diction of poetry has +become more splendid."[437] There was something of poetic justice in +this attitude towards the seventeenth century, itself so unappreciative +of 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 predominant +form in translations. Blank verse, when employed, was generally +associated with a protest against the prevailing methods of translators. +Trapp and Brady, both of whom early in the century attempted blank verse +renderings of the _Aeneid_, justify their use of this form on the ground +that it permits greater faithfulness to the original. Brady intends to +avoid the rock upon which other translators have split, "and that seems +to me to be their translating this noble and elegant poet into rhyme; by +which they were sometimes forced to abandon the sense, and at other +times to cramp it very much, which inconveniences may probably be +avoided in blank verse."[438] Trapp makes a more violent onslaught upon +earlier translations, which he finds "commonly so very licentious that +they can scarce be called so much as paraphrases," and presents the +employment of blank verse as in some degree a remedy for this. "The +fetters of rhyme often cramp the expression and spoil the verse, and so +you can both translate more closely and also more fully express the +spirit of your author without it than with it."[439] Neither version +however was kindly received, and though there continued to be occasional +efforts to break away from what Warton calls "the Gothic shackles of +rhyme"[440] or from the oversmoothness of Augustan verse, the more +popular translators set the stamp of their approval on the couplet in +its classical perfection. Grainger, who translated Tibullus, discusses +the possibility of using the "alternate" stanza, but ends by saying that +he has generally "preferred the heroic measure, which is not better +suited to the lofty sound of the epic muse than to the complaining tone +of the elegy."[441] Hoole chooses the couplet for his version of +Ariosto, because it occupies the same place in English that the octave +stanza occupies in Italian, and because it is capable of great variety. +"Of all the various styles used by the best poets," he says, "none seems +so well adapted to the mixed and familiar narrative as that of Dryden in +his last production, known by the name of his _Fables_, which by their +harmony, spirit, ease, and variety of versification, exhibit an +admirable model for a translation of Ariosto."[442] It was, however, to +the regularity of Pope's couplet that most translators aspired. Francis, +the translator of Horace, who succeeded in pleasing his readers in spite +of his failure to conform with popular standards, puts the situation +well in a comment which recalls a similar utterance of Dryden. "The +misfortune of our translators," he says, "is that they have only one +style; and consequently all their authors, Homer, Virgil, Horace, and +Ovid, are compelled to speak in the same numbers, and the same unvaried +expression. The free-born spirit of poetry is confined in twenty +constant syllables, and the sense regularly ends with every second line, +as if the writer had not strength enough to support himself or courage +enough 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 attained +some popularity, were in the eighteenth century regarded with especial +disfavor. It was known that they had some vogue in France, but that was +not considered a recommendation. The English translation of Madame +Dacier's prose Homer, issued by Ozell, Oldisworth, and Broome, was +greeted with scorn. Trapp, in the preface to his Virgil, refers to the +new French fashion with true insular contempt. Segrais' translation is +"almost as good as the French language will allow, which is just as fit +for an epic poem as an ambling nag is for a war horse.... Their language +is excellent for prose, but quite otherwise for verse, especially +heroic. And therefore tho' the translating of poems into prose is a +strange modern invention, yet the French transprosers are so far in the +right because their language will not bear verse." Mickle, mentioning in +his _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 prose +translation of poetry is an attempt as absurd as to translate fire into +water." + +If there was little encouragement for the translator to experiment with +new solutions of the problems of versification, there was equally little +latitude allowed him in the other division of his peculiar province, +diction. In accordance with existing standards, critics doubled their +insistence on Decorum, a quality in which they found the productions of +former times lacking. Johnson criticizes Dryden's _Juvenal_ on the +ground that it wants the dignity of its original.[444] Fawkes finds +Creech "more rustic than any of the rustics in the Sicilian bard," and +adduces in proof many illustrations, from his calling a "noble pastoral +cup a fine two-handled pot" to his dubbing his characters "Tawney Bess, +Tom, Will, Dick" in vulgar English style.[445] Fanshaw, says Mickle in +the preface to his translation of Camoens, had not "the least idea of +the dignity of the epic style." The originals themselves, however, +presented obstacles to suitable rendering. Preston finds this so in the +case of Apollonius Rhodius, and offers this explanation of the matter: +"Ancient terms of art, even if they can be made intelligible, cannot be +rendered, with any degree of grace, into a modern language, where the +corresponding terms are debased into vulgarity by low and familiar use. +Many passages of this kind are to be found in Homer. They are frequent +also in Apollonius Rhodius; particularly so, from the exactness which he +affects in describing everything."[446] Warton, unusually tolerant of +Augustan taste in this respect, finds the same difficulty in the +_Eclogues_ and _Georgics_ of Virgil. "A poem whose excellence peculiarly +consists in the graces of diction," his preface runs, "is far more +difficult to be translated, than a work where sentiment, or passion, or +imagination is chiefly displayed.... Besides, the meanness of the terms +of husbandry is concealed and lost in a dead language, and they convey +no low and despicable image to the mind; but the coarse and common words +I was necessitated to use in the following translation, viz. _plough and +sow_, _wheat_, _dung_, _ashes_, _horse and cow_, etc., will, I fear, +unconquerably disgust many a delicate reader, if he doth not make proper +allowance for a modern compared with an ancient language."[447] +According to Hoole, the English language confines the translator within +narrow limits. A translation of Berni's _Orlando Innamorato_ into +English verse would be almost impossible, "the narrative descending to +such familiar images and expressions as would by no means suit the +genius of our language and poetry."[448] The task of translating +Ariosto, though not so hopeless, is still arduous on this account. +"There is a certain easy negligence in his muse that often assumes a +playful mode of expression incompatible with the nature of our present +poetry.... An English translator will have frequent reason to regret the +more rigid genius of the language, that rarely permits him in this +respect, to attempt even an imitation of his author." + +The comments quoted in the preceding pages make one realize that, while +the translator was left astonishingly free as regarded his treatment of +the original, it was at his peril that he ran counter to contemporary +literary standards. The discussion centering around Pope's _Homer_, at +once the most popular and the most typical translation of the period, +may be taken as presenting the situation in epitome. Like other prefaces +of the time, Pope's introductory remarks are, whether intentionally or +unintentionally, misleading. He begins, in orthodox fashion, by +advocating the middle course approved by Dryden. "It is certain," he +writes, "no literal translation can be just to an excellent original in +a superior language: but it is a great mistake to imagine (as many have +done) that a rash paraphrase can make amends for this general defect; +which is no less in danger to lose the spirit of an ancient, by +deviating into the modern manners of expression." Continuing, however, +he urges an unusual degree of faithfulness. The translator must not +think of improving upon his author. "I will venture to say," he +declares, "there have not been more men misled in former times by a +servile, dull adherence to the letter, than have been deluded in ours by +a chimerical insolent hope of raising and improving their author.... +'Tis a great secret in writing to know when to be plain, and when +poetical and figurative; and it is what Homer will teach us, if we will +but follow modestly in his footsteps. Where his diction is bold and +lofty, let us raise ours as high as we can; but where his is plain and +humble, we ought not to be deterred from imitating him by the fear of +incurring the censure of a mere English critic." The translator ought to +endeavor to "copy him in all the variations of his style, and the +different modulations of his numbers; to preserve, in the more active or +descriptive parts, a warmth and elevation; in the more sedate or +narrative, a plainness and solemnity; in the speeches a fullness and +perspicuity; in the sentences a shortness and gravity: not to neglect +even the little figures and turns on the words, nor sometimes the very +cast of the periods; neither to omit nor confound any rites and customs +of antiquity." + +Declarations like this would, if taken alone, make one rate Pope as a +pioneer in the art of translation. Unfortunately the comment of his +critics, even of those who admired him, tells a different story. "To say +of this noble work that it is the best which ever appeared of the kind, +would be speaking in much lower terms than it deserves," writes +Melmoth, himself a successful translator, in _Fitzosborne's Letters_. +Melmoth's description of Pope's method is, however, very different from +that offered by Pope himself. "Mr. Pope," he says, "seems, in most +places, to have been inspired with the same sublime spirit that animates +his 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. Thus +the character of Thersites, as it stands in the English _Iliad_, is +heightened, I think, with more masterly strokes of satire than appear in +the Greek; as many of those similes in Homer, which would appear, +perhaps, to a modern eye too naked and unornamented, are painted by Pope +in all the beautiful drapery of the most graceful metaphor"--a statement +backed by citation of the famous moonlight passage, which Melmoth finds +finer than the corresponding passage in the original. There is no doubt +in the critic's mind as to the desirability of improving upon Homer. +"There is no ancient author," he declares, "more likely to betray an +injudicious interpreter into meannesses than Homer.... But a skilful +artist knows how to embellish the most ordinary subject; and what would +be low and spiritless from a less masterly pencil, becomes pleasing and +graceful when worked up by Mr. Pope."[449] + +Melmoth's last comment suggests Matthew Arnold's remark, "Pope composes +with his eye on his style, into which he translates his object, whatever +it 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 review +some characteristic phrases. "I know not which I should most admire," +says the reviewer, "the justness of the original, or the force and +beauty of the language, or the sounding variety of the numbers."[451] +Prior, with more honesty, refuses to bother his head over "the justness +of 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 of +eighteenth-century taste. Even Dennis's onslaught, which begins with a +violent contradiction of the hackneyed tribute quoted above, leaves the +impression that its vigor comes rather from personal animus than from +distrust of existing literary standards or from any new and individual +theory of translation. + +With the romantic movement, however, comes criticism which presents to +us Pope's _Iliad_ as seen in the light of common day instead of through +the flattering illusions which had previously veiled it. New translators +like Macpherson and Cowper, though too courteous to direct their attack +specifically against the great Augustan, make it evident that they have +adopted new standards of faithfulness and that they no longer admire +either the diction or the versification which made Pope supreme among +his contemporaries. Macpherson gives it as his opinion that, although +Homer has been repeatedly translated into most of the languages of +modern Europe, "these versions were rather paraphrases than faithful +translations, attempts to give the spirit of Homer, without the +character and peculiarities of his poetry and diction," and that +translators have failed especially in reproducing "the magnificent +simplicity, if the epithet may be used, of the original, which can never +be characteristically expressed in the antithetical quaintness of modern +fine writing."[453] Cowper's prefaces show that he has given serious +consideration to all the opinions of the theorists of his century, and +that his own views are fundamentally opposed to those generally +professed. His own basic principle is that of fidelity to his author, +and, like every sensible critic, he sees that the translator must +preserve a mean between the free and the close methods. This approval of +compromise is not, however, a mere formula; Cowper attempts to throw +light upon it from various angles. The couplet he immediately repudiates +as an enemy to fidelity. "I will venture to assert that a just +translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible," he declares. +"No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet +with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense of +his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes +itself a snare, and the readier he is at invention and expedient, the +more likely he is to be betrayed into the wildest departures from the +guide whom he professes to follow."[454] The popular idea that the +translator should try to imagine to himself the style which his author +would have used had he been writing in English is to Cowper "a direction +which wants nothing but practicability to recommend it. For suppose six +persons, equally qualified for the task, employed to translate the same +Ancient into their own language, with this rule to guide them. In the +event it would be found that each had fallen on a manner different from +that of all the rest, and by probable inference it would follow that +none had fallen on the right."[455] + +Cowper's advocacy of Miltonic blank verse as a suitable vehicle for a +translation of Homer need not concern us here, but another innovation on +which he lays considerable stress in his prefaces helps to throw light +on the practice and the standards of his immediate predecessors. With +more veracity than Pope, he represents himself as having followed his +author even in his "plainer" passages. "The passages which will be least +noticed, and possibly not at all, except by those who shall wish to find +me at a fault," he writes in the preface to the first edition, "are +those which have cost me abundantly the most labor. It is difficult to +kill a sheep with dignity in a modern language, to slay and prepare it +for the table, detailing every circumstance in the process. Difficult +also, without sinking below the level of poetry, to harness mules to a +wagon, 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, has +the minuteness of a Flemish painter." In the preface to his second +edition he recurs to this problem and makes a significant comment on +Pope's method of solving it. "There is no end of passages in Homer," he +repeats, "which must creep unless they be lifted; yet in all such, all +embellishment is out of the question. The hero puts on his clothes, or +refreshes himself with food and wine, or he yokes his steeds, takes a +journey, and in the evening preparation is made for his repose. To give +relief to subjects prosaic as these without seeming unseasonably tumid +is extremely difficult. Mr. Pope abridges some of them, and others he +omits; but neither of these liberties was compatible with the nature of +my undertaking."[456] + +That Cowper's reaction against Pope's ideals was not a thing of sudden +growth is evident from a letter more outspoken than the prefaces. "Not +much less than thirty years since," he writes in 1788, "Alston and I +read Homer through together. The result was a discovery that there is +hardly a thing in the world of which Pope is so entirely destitute as a +taste for Homer.... I remembered how we had been disgusted; how often we +had sought the simplicity and majesty of Homer in his English +representative, and had found instead of them puerile conceits, +extravagant metaphors, and the tinsel of modern embellishment in every +possible position."[457] + +Cowper's "discovery," startling, almost heretical at the time when it +was made, is now little more than a commonplace. We have long recognized +that Pope's Homer is not the real Homer; it is scarcely an exaggeration +to say, as does Mr. Andrew Lang, "It is almost as if he had taken +Homer's theme and written the poem himself."[458] Yet it is surprising +to see how nearly the eighteenth-century ambition, "to write a poem that +will live in the English language" has been answered in the case of +Pope. Though the "tinsel" of his embellishment is no longer even +"modern," his translation seems able to hold its own against later verse +renderings based on sounder theories. The Augustan translator strove to +give his work "elegance, energy, and fire," and despite the false +elegance, we can still feel something of true energy and fire as we read +the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. + +The truth is that, in translated as in original literature the +permanent and the transitory elements are often oddly mingled. The fate +of Pope's Homer helps us to reconcile two opposed views regarding the +future history of verse translations. Our whole study of the varying +standards set for translators makes us feel the truth of Mr. Lang's +conclusion: "There can be then, it appears, no final English translation +of Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is Greek and +eternal, the element of what is modern, personal, and fleeting."[459] +The translator, it is obvious, must speak in the dialect and move in the +measures of his own day, thereby very often failing to attract the +attention of a later day. Yet there must be some place in our scheme for +the faith expressed by Matthew Arnold in his essays on translating +Homer, that "the task of translating Homer into English verse both will +be re-attempted, and may be re-attempted successfully."[460] For in +translation there is involved enough of creation to supply the +incalculable element which cheats the theorist. Possibly some day the +miracle may be wrought, and, in spite of changing literary fashions, we +may have our English version of Homer in a form sufficient not only for +an age but for all time. + +It is this incalculable quality in creative work that has made +theorizing on the methods of translation more than a mere academic +exercise. 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 as +we leave the period of Pope, we can see the dull inadequacy of a +worn-out collection of rules giving way before the honest, individual +approach of Cowper. "Many a fair precept in poetry," says Dryden apropos +of Roscommon's rules for translation, "is like a seeming demonstration +in the mathematics, very specious in the diagram, but failing in the +mechanic operation."[461] Confronted by such discrepancies, the theorist +has again and again had to modify his "specious" rules, with the result +that the theory of translation, though a small, is yet a living and +growing element in human thought. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[365] _Preface to the Reader_, in _The Natural History of C. Plinius +Secundus_, 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 Several +Persons_, 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 by +Edmund 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 and +Translations_, 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 of +Virgil_, 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 authority +of Jonson, Sandys, and Holiday had fixed the judgment of the nation" (_The +Idler_, 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 other +care than (in Denham's phrase) to translate language into language, and to +have placed their whole merit in presenting a literal and servile +transcript 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 Prose +Writings_, 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 of +Horace 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 Translated +Verse._ + +[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 into +English 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, translated +by the late William Cowper_, London, 1802. + +[455] Preface to first edition, taken from _The Iliad of Homer, translated +by the late William Cowper_, London, 1802. + +[456] _Preface prepared by Mr. Cowper for a Second Edition_, in edition of +1802. + +[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. | + | | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Early Theories of Translation, by Flora Ross Amos + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION *** + +***** This file should be named 22353-8.txt or 22353-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/3/5/22353/ + +Produced by David Starner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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