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]