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.