"_D._ Peeter / is that your sone?
_P._ Yea it is my sonne.
_D._ it is a goodlie childe. God let hun al wayes prosper in virtue.
_P._ I thancke you coosen.
_D._ Doth he not go to the scole?
_P._ Yes / hee learneth to speake French.
_D._ Doth hee? it is very well done. John / can you well speake
French?
_J._ Not very well coosen, but I learne.
_D._ Wher go you too schoole?
_J._ In the Lumbeardes streat.
_D._ Have you gon long too schoole?
_J._ About half a yeare."
So the dialogue goes on, and there is a series of them.
III. A second exemplification of the superlative obstacles which persons
born out of England have at all periods encountered in the endeavour to
comprehend on their own part, and render intelligible to others, our
insular speech, is taken from the Italian Grammar of Henry Pleunus,
printed at Leghorn at the end of the seventeenth century.
Now, here, in lieu of the alleged width of acceptability, which meets the
eye in the traveller's pocket-dictionary just described, we get a positive
assurance that the author was a master of the English tongue; and it may
be predicated of him that, compared with the majority of foreigners, he
exhibits a proficiency very considerably above the average, though we
honestly believe it to be grossly improbable that "every one speaks
English at Legorne," as he says in one of the Anglo-Italian dialogues.
There can be no desire to be hypercritical in judging such a production,
or to lay stress on occasional slips of spelling and prosody; but the
English of Pleunus very often strikes one--nor is it surprising that it
should be so--as Italian literally rendered. He probably never attained an
idiomatic phraseology; and one would have said less about it, had it not
been for that sort of professorial assumption on the title-page.
Going back in order of time, I shall furnish some specimens of the
tetraglot _History of Aurelio and of Isabel Daughter to the King of
Scotland_, translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1556 at Antwerp. I
propose to quote a passage where two knights in love with Isabel propose
to cast lots for her:--"I fynde none occasion that is so iuste, that by
the same lof you, or you of me maye complayne vs: inasmuch that euery one
of vs by him selfe is ynoughe more bounde vnto the loue, that he beareth
to Isabell, then vnto any other bounde of frendshippe. And therfore I see
not, that I for respecte of you, nor you also for mine to be ought to
withdrawe from the high enterprise alreadie by vs begonne. Nor in likewise
might be called a vertuouse worke, that we both together in one place
sould displane the louingly sailes [_voilles amoureuses_ in the French
column], for that shoulde be to defile, that so great betwene vs and more,
then of brother conioyned frendship."
Here it is not so conspicuously the orthography that is at fault, as the
composition and syntax. But up and down this little book, too, there are
some drolleries of spelling. The translator from the Spanish of Juan de
Flores, whoever he was (a Frenchman probably), understood French and
Italian; but surely his conversance with the remaining tongue was on a par
with that of the majority of his Continental fellow-dwellers then,
before, and since; and doubtless his printer has not failed to contribute
to the barbarous unintelligibility of the English text. This is the book
to which Collins the poet mistakenly informed Warton that Shakespear had
resorted for the story of the _Tempest_.
But a far stranger monument of orthographical and grammatical heresies
exists in _The historijke Pvrtreatvres of the woll[4] Bible_, printed at
Lyons in 1553. It is a series of woodcuts, with a quatrain in English
beneath each picture descriptive of its meaning, and is introduced by an
elaborate epistle by Peter Derendel and an Address from the printer to the
reader. Both, however, probably proceeded from the pen of Derendel, who
was doubtless connected with Pierre Erondelle, a well-known preceptor in
London at a somewhat later date.
The verses which occur throughout the volume are literal translations,
presumably by Erondelle, from the French, and are singular enough, and
might have tempted quotation; but, eccentric as they are, they are
completely thrown into the background by the _prolegomena_, and more
especially by the preface purporting to come from the printer of the work,
which is the common set of blocks relating to Biblical subjects, made in
the present case to accompany an English letterpress.
I will transcribe only the commencement of the preface, whoseever it may
be:--"The affection mine all waies towarde the hartlie ernest, louing
reader, being cotinuallie commaunded of the dutie of mi profession, mai
not but dailie go about to satisfie the in this, withe thow desirest and
lookest for in mi vacation, the withe, to mai please the, I wolde it were
to mi minde so free and licentiouse streched at large, as it is be the
mishappe of the time restrained."
The discovery of Moses by Pharaoh's daughter is thus poetically set
forth:--
"The kinges daughter fonde him in great pitie
The russhes amonge, withe to him fauourable,
As god did please, him to saue thought worthie,
His owne mother giuing him for noorce able."
Once more, the fall of Abimelech in _Judges_ ix. is portrayed after the
ensuing fashion:--
"Hauing killed his bretherne on a stone,
Abimelech was forced ielde the ghoast:
For besieging with for warre Thebes, anon
A strocke he had, of a woman with lost."
The spelling and the syntax in these examples are equally outrageous; yet
they are possibly not more so than might be expected from persons unversed
in the intricacies and anomalies of our language. But the point is, that
the undertaking was executed for the special behoof, not alone of English
residents abroad, but also of English students of sacred history at home;
for there was nothing of the class at that time in our literature or our
art. It is almost incomprehensible on what ground English was selected, as
French would have been as serviceable to the educated reader here, while
the Anglo-Gallic _patois_ must have proved a puzzle to all alike.
The early English educational books produced by foreign printers were not
quite invariably so wide of the mark in an idiomatic respect. Some of them
were doubtless read in proof by the English author or editor; and such may
have been the case with a version of the _Short Catechisme_ of Cardinal
Bellarmine published in 1614 at Augsburgh, where the slips do not exceed
an ordinary Table of Errata.
Now and then, too, the writer himself was alone responsible for the
eccentricities which presented themselves in his book, as where
Stanyhurst, in his version of the _Æneid_, published at Leyden in 1582,
renders the opening lines of Book the Second thus:--
"With tentive list'ning each wight was setled in harckning;
Then father Æneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie.
You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare,
How that the Troians wear prest by Grecian armie."
Here it was the idiosyncrasy of the Briton which reduced a translation to
a burlesque, and disregarded the canons of his own language, as well as
taste and propriety in diction. For the entire work is cast in a similar
mould, and is heterodox in almost every particular; some passages are too
grossly absurd even for an Irishman who had spent most of his life in
Belgium or Holland.