That Ovid and his heroes were paynims
he confesses with regret, and takes heart in the reflection that they
may all be reduced too ryght of Christian law.
he confesses with regret, and takes heart in the reflection that they
may all be reduced too ryght of Christian law.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v04
His was the romance not of feeling,
but of decoration. He loved ornament with the ardour of an
ornamental age, and he tricked out his authors with all the re-
sources of Elizabethan English. The concision and reticence of
the classics were as nothing to him. He was ambitious always to
clothe them in the garb which they might have worn had they
been not mere Englishmen, but fantastics of his own age. Like all
his contemporaries, he was eager to excuse his own shortcomings.
'According to this purpose and intent of mine,' he wrote, “I frame
my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a meane and popular stile.
a
## p. 13 (#35) ##############################################
Philemon Holland
13
Wherein, if I have called againe into use some old words, let it be
attributed to the love of my countrey language: if the sentence be not so
concise, couched and knit togither as the originall, loth I was to be obscure
and darke: have I not Englished every word aptly? ech nation hath
several maners, yea, and tearmes appropriate by themselves. '
His phrase is never affected; his style is neither mean
nor popular; and thus far he speaks the language of conven-
tion. The rest of the passage is the soundest criticism.
Holland had a natural love of the old words and proverbs which
distinguished his country language. His sentences are seldom
concise or knit together, and his translations, though not apt to
their originals, are apt enough to the language of their adoption.
If he seldom echoed the sound of Greek and Latin, he never missed
the sense, nor did he fear a comparison of his own work with the
classical texts. When it was said that his versions were not in
accord with the French or Italian, he knew that he was in the
right of it. 'Like as Alcibiades said to one'-thus he wrote-
'Tráračov oův kaì ăkovoov, i. e. strike hardly (Euribiades) 80 you
heare me speake: even so I say; Find fault and spare not; but
withal, read the original better before you give sentence. ' Let his
own test be applied to him, and he will not fail. Take, for instance,
a famous passage in the fifth book of Livy, which describes the
salvation of the Capitol from the Gauls. Here is the Latin, simple
and straightforward:
Anseres non fefellere, quibus sacris Junonis in summa inopia cibi tamen
abstinebatur. Quae res saluti fuit; namque clangore eorum alarumque
crepitu excitus M. Manlius, qui triennio ante consul fuerat, vir bello egregius,
armis arreptis simul ad arma ceteros ciens vadit.
Holland's English, close as it keeps to the text of Livy, has its own
colour and quality :
*But they could not so escape the geese'-thus it runs—'which were
consecrated unto Juno, and for all the scarcitie of victuals were spared and not
killed up. And this it was that saved them all. For with their gagling and
fluttering of their wings, M. Manlius,who three yeares before had been Consul,
a right hardie and noble warrionr, was awaked. Who taking weapon in hand,
speedily went forth and raised the rest withall to take armes. '
The English has a plainness to which Holland very rarely attains ;
but it is not its plainness nor its perfect harmony that gives it
a character of its own. In the first place,'gagling'arrests the ear so
sharply, that the reader is as wide awake as M. Manlius himself.
And then how admirable in sound and sense is the equivalent of
vir bello egregius'a right hardie and noble warriour! ' It is by
such touches as this and by a feeling of what is musical in prose,
which never deserted him, that Holland produced his effects. His
## p. 14 (#36) ##############################################
14
Translators
3
failing from a pedantic point of view is an excess of ornament.
He was not always content to say what he had to say once. He
delighted to turn a statement about—to put it now in this light,
now in that. 'Jacta est alea,' writes Suetonius. "The dice be thrown,'
says Holland; 'I have set up my rest; come what will of it' His
'
variety and resource are endless. In a single passage he makes
a
Vitellius his own contemporary.
‘Being given most of all to excessive bellie cheere and crueltie,' he writes,
'he devided his repast into three meales every day at least, and sometime into
foure, to wit, Breakefast, Dinner, Supper, and rere-bankets. '
From this, the last drop of Latin austerity is squeezed. And you
can hear Vespasian rioting with his friends when Holland writes :
given exceedingly hee was to skoffs, and those so skurrile and filthy, that he
could not so much as forbeare words of ribaudrie. And yet there be many
right pleasant conceited jests of his extant.
In such terms as these might Rabelais have composed the
lives of the Roman Emperors. Excellent in tone and movement
as is the Suetonius, in some respects his Pliny is Holland's
masterpiece. The difficulty of this enterprise was far greater. If
the obstacle in the way of a familiar rendering might have seemed
insuperable, Holland has easily surmounted it. He has thawed the
frigid original at the fire of his romantic temper. 'Sirrah (quoth
he) remember you are but a shoemaker, and therefore meddle no
higher I advise you than with shoes. ' The mere Sirrah carries
you leagues away from Apelles and the shoemaker whom he bade
look to bis last, and reminds you of the truth that Holland, like
the old painters, put the noblest of his Greeks and Romans into
doublet and hose.
His industry was universally applauded. He composed folios
with as little toil as other men give to the writing of pamphlets.
The two largest of his works are separated by a bare year It was
said that he wrote the whole of Plutarch's Morals with one pen-
a pen which became mythical. 'It seemed that he leaned very
lightly on the Neb thereof,' says Fuller, 'though weightily enough
in another sense, performing not slightly but solidly what he
undertook. ' Fuller, with his usual good sense, puts his finger upon
the truth. It was the solidity of Holland's achievement, not its
extent, which was remarkable. His industry was always well
directed. Few writers have ever kept so consistently at a high
level of excellence. He was no master in the art of sinking. His
narrative never flags; his argument knows no failure. His style
was apt alike for history or reflection. And if he did not accurately
3
## p. 15 (#37) ##############################################
15
Florio's Montaigne
represent in English the prose of Livy and Plutarch, of Suetonius
and Pliny, he left us a set of variations upon ancient motives,
to which we may listen with an independent and unalloyed
pleasure.
John Florio's Montaigne holds a place apart. This translator
had neither the sentiment of North nor the scholarship of
Holland. He brought to his task that which neither the one
nor the other of these masters possessed-a curious fantasy, which
was all his own. He was of the stuff whereof pedants are made.
He delighted in eccentricity and extravagance. His prefaces are
masterpieces of pomp and decoration. Asking, in a breathless
refrain, ‘Madame, now do I flatter you? ' he exhausts the language
of adulation, until at last he falls back upon ecstatic repetitions.
He dedicates the first book of his Montaigne 'to the Right
Honourable my best-best Benefactors, and most-most honored
Ladies, Lucie Countesse of Bedford ; and hir best-most loved-
loving mother Lady Anne Harrington' He plays upon words; he
.
lets sound take the place of sense; he cultivates alliteration, and
pleads guilty to‘a jirke of the French jargon. ' A plain simplicity
is beyond his reach; he fetches his frequent images from afar. He
declares that in his translation he serves but as Vulcan, to hatchet
this Minerva from that Jupiter's bigge braine. ' When he con-
templates his finished work, he strikes an attitude of valiance.
'I sweat, I wept, and I went-on, til now I stand at bay. ' He is
modest only when he thinks of his original. “Him have I set
before you,' says he, 'perhaps without his trappings, and his
'meate without sauce. ' But he keeps a stern face even in the
presence of his 'peerlesse, and in all good gifts unparagonised
Ladies'; he tells his reader that he is still resolute John Florio';
and there is always more of Bobadil in his bearing than of Holo-
fernes.
Upon his version of Montaigne's Essays he exhausted his gifts
and lavished his temperament. He loved words for their own
sakes with a love which Montaigne would not have appreciated, and
which will be easily intelligible to all who know Florio's famous
Worlde of Wordes. Turn where you will in his translation, and you
will find flowers of speech, which grow not in the garden of the
original. 'Je n'y vauls rien,' says Montaigne, and Florio interprets:
'I am nothing worth, and I can never fadge well. ' For souflet Florio
can find nothing simpler than 'a whirret in the car'; for finesses
verbales he gives us 'verbal wily-beguilies,' surely a coinage of his
own. Fade becomes 'wallowish,' and crestez is admirably rendered
6
## p. 16 (#38) ##############################################
16
Translators
6
>
by 'pert and cocket. ' The ‘jirke of the French jargon,' already
mentioned, is evident in such borrowed words as 'tintamare,'
'entrecuidance,' 'friandize' and 'mignardize. ' He is as fond as
Montaigne himself of proverbial phrases. 'I will have them to
give Plutarch a bob upon mine own lips' has precisely the same
sense and sound as the French 'Je veux qu'ils donnent une nazarde
à Plutarque sur mon nez. And, though the metaphor is changed,
‘he hath had the canvas' (as who should say ‘he hath had the
sack') is an excellent match for 'cettuy-cy aura donné du nez à
terre. It will be seen that Florio's method was neither just nor
accurate. He made no attempt to suppress himself as we are told
a good translator should. The reader never forgets that resolute
John Florio' is looking out from the page as well as Montaigne.
He is often inaccurate, and not seldom he misses the point. But
compare his version with Cotton's, and you will not hesitate to
give the palm to Florio. Cotton's translation is a sound and
scholarly piece of work; Florio's is a living book.
The translations in verse made in the age of Elizabeth may not
be compared with the translations in prose. For their inferiority
there are many plain reasons. Only a poet can render in another
tongue the works of a poet, and even a poet cannot ensure a just
interpretation. Between one language and another there are
obstacles of metre and style, of temper and music, which are most
often insuperable. Moreover, in the sixteenth century, the trans-
lating of prose was governed by so wise a convention, that mere
journeymen could attempt a delicate task without risking con-
spicuous failure.
The secret of verse could not be thus easily
imparted, and much that won the approval of its own time appears
to us the saddest of doggerel. The enterprise was yet further
hampered by a vain love of experiment. An age which desired to
leave nothing untried did its best to introduce the hexameter into
English verse, and, as Vergil and Ovid composed their poems in
hexameters, it seemed proper to some translators to follow an
alien example. Ascham began the controversy both by practice
and precept. In his Toxophilus, he gave the world some poor
specimens of the kind. The exercise of some ingenuity may scan
the lines which follow:
>
:
What thing wants quiet and meri rest endures but a smal while.
Both merie songs and good shoting deliteth Apollo.
His precept was better than his practice. He condemned the
English hexameter far more effectively than he wrote it. Carmen
## p. 17 (#39) ##############################################
6
Stanyhurst's Vergil
17
erametrum, said he, doth rather holte and hoble than run
smothly in an English tong. The question, once posed, was hotly
debated. Gabriel Harvey wished no other epitaph than this : 'the
inventor of the English hexameter. Spenser gave Harvey a ready
approval, and Nashe, of course, took the other side. "The Hexa-
meter verse,' says he, with excellent sense, 'I grant to be a gentle-
man of an auncient house (so is many an English begger); yet this
clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in. Time has proved the justice
of Nashe's opinion. The experiments of Spenser and Harvey were
long since forgotten, and those who turned Vergil and Ovid into
their own measures are remembered only as curiosities.
By far the bravest of them was Richard Stanyhurst, who, in
1582, published the First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis
translated intoo English heroical verse. ' Whether he wrote in
prose or verse, he surpassed in a fantastic eccentricity the vainest
of his contemporaries. Never was there a stranger mixture of
pedantry and slang than is to be found in his work. His criticism
is his own and expressed in his own terms. The verses of Ennius,
he says, 'savoure soomwhat nappy of thee spigget,' and he classes
him with Horace, Juvenal and Persius among a 'rablement of
cheate Poëtes. ' Vergil, on the other hand, for his peerelesse style,
and matchlesse stuffe doth beare thee prick and price among al
thee Roman Poëts. ' He declares that, if any hold that Phaer's
version lightened his enterprise, they are altogeather in a wrong
box. ' He offers to go over these books again and give them a new
livery, which shall neither ‘jet with Mr Phaer his badges, ne yeet
bee clad with this apparaile wherewith at this present they coom
furth atyred. ' Indeed, he makes light of his labour. Phaer took
fifteen days to translate the fourth book. He ‘huddled up' his in
ten. And for this he asks no praise but pardon, adding, character-
istically, that 'forelittring bitches whelp blynd puppies. ' But,
though he wasted not his time, he did nothing at haphazard. He
expounds his theory of the hexameter with great care, and gives
every syllable its proper quantity, varying its length according to
its terinination and to the consonant or vowel which follows it.
His labour is lost. Even if his theory were admissible, it would
not save his version from ridicule.
Yet, absurd as it is, Stanyhurst's Vergil is worth examination.
It is a work which owes no debt to anything save to its author's
perverted ingenuity. Orthography, metre, vocabulary are each
unique. Stanyhurst aimed, not merely at a new prosody, but at
a new language. He invented a set of onomatopoeic symbols,
2
E. L. IV.
CH. 1.
## p. 18 (#40) ##############################################
18
Translators
which you cannot match elsewhere in literature. What can we
make of such lines as these :
Theese flaws theyre cabbans wyth stur snar jarrye doe ransack.
Now doe they rayse gastly lyghtnings, now grislye reboundings
Of ruffe raffe roaring, mens harts with terror agrysing,
With peale meale ramping, with thwick thwack sturdelye thundring?
Not content with these mimicries of sound, he invented what-
ever new words seemed useful for his purpose. 'Mutterus humming,'
'gredelye bibled,''smacklye bebasse thee,' 'boucherous hatchet-
these are a few of his false coins. And he used the slang which
was modern in his day for the interpretation of Vergil without
scruple or shame. Imagine Dido, queen of Carthage, asking in
,
fury: shall a stranger give me the slampam'! With an equal
contempt of fitness he renders pollutum hospitium by 'Paltock's
Inn,' and so pleased is he with 'Scarboro warning,' for the blow
before the word, that he uses it with no better excuse than
incautam, and, in another place, he is guilty of Scarboro scrabbling'
without any excuse at all. As little did he hesitate to mar the
epic dignity of Vergil with the popular proverbs of every day,
such as 'in straw there lurketh some pad,' or 'as wild as a March
hare. ' And, being bound in the chains of the hexameter, he
distorts the order of the words out of all semblance to English,
until his version is wholly unintelligible without the friendly
aid of the Latin. Yet his monstrous incongruities pleased the
taste of his time. Harvey is proud to have been imitated by
' learned Mr Stanyhurst'; and Phaer fell, that this thrasonicall
huffe snuffe' might rise. Richard Carew mentions him in the
same breath with Sir Philip Sidney, and Francis Meres cites him
without disapproval. But critics there were who saw through his
pretence. Nashe, above all, rated him at a proper value; and
Barnabe Rich did him ample justice in few words : 'Among other
Fictions,' says Rich, ‘be tooke upon him to translate Virgill, aud
stript him out of a Velvet gowne into a Fooles coate, out of a Latin
Heroicall verse into an English riffe raffe. ' The question of the
English hexameter has received a final answer, and, for us, Stany-
hurst is but an episode in the history of literature. And what an
episode! His very gravity makes him the more ludicrous, and his
only pupils are Charles Cotton, Thomas Bridges, captain Alexander
Radcliffe and the other writers of burlesque.
To Stanyhurst, Thomas Phaer was an insignificant competitor.
But he had enjoyed twenty years of fame before Stanyhurst's
44
a
a
a
## p. 19 (#41) ##############################################
>
Phaer's Vergil
19
version was printed, and, though momentarily depressed, he
survived the absurd fashion of the hexameter in the esteem of his
contemporaries. Webbe praises his 'most gallant verse,' and
chooses him as an example to prove the meetnesse of our speeche
to receive the best forme of poetry. ' The proof is deficient.
Phaer was no poet, and very ill-skilled to present the beauty of
Vergil in English verse. As Anthony à Wood says, he was 'a
person of a mutable mind,' who addicted his muse to many studies.
Educated at Oxford, he studied law, wrote a work Of the Nature
of Writts and presently adopted medicine as his profession. In
brief, translation was his pastime, and, doubtless, his knowledge
of the healing art was profounder than his knowledge of English
or Latin. His Vergil, composed in lines of fourteen syllables, like
Golding's Ovid and Chapman's Homer, never rises above a facile
mediocrity. The translator constantly sacrifices taste and sense to
the demands of rime, and mixes in a kind of familiar jingle the
easy stateliness of the original. Even in the rare passages which
display some movement and energy, he descends suddenly upon
the wrong word, and sets the reader on his guard. Here, for
instance, is his rendering of the celebrated lines, Monstrum
horrendum ingens, etc. , in the fourth book:
A monster gastly great, for every plume her carkas beares
Lyke number leering eies she hath, like number harckning eares,
Lyke number tounges and mouthes she waggs, a wondrous thing to speake;
At midnight fourth she flies, and under shade her sounde doth squeake.
If the first two lines might pass muster, no word can be said in
defence of the others. With the word 'squeake,' Phaer descends
into bathos, and the best that can be said for him is that, while
Stanyhurst always lets his reason go, Phaer is sometimes sane.
The best loved of all the ancient poets was Ovid, whose popu-
larity is attested by many translations of varying worth. The first
version in point of date is The Fable of Ovid treting of Narcissus,
translated oute of Latin into Englysh Mytre, with a moral therein
to, very pleasante to rede. This was followed, five years later, by
the first edition of Arthur Golding's work (1565), of which more
will be said presently. In 1567, George Turbervile printed The
Heroycall Epistles of the learned Poet Publius Ovidius Naso,
and, in 1577, there came from the press two versions of Ovid his
Invective against Ibis, one of which is the work of Thomas Under-
downe, to whom, also, we owe the Aethiopian Historie of Heliodorus.
Marlowe turned the Elegies into rimed couplets, and George
Chapman, in 1595, published Ovids Banquet of Sauce, a coronet
a
2-2
## p. 20 (#42) ##############################################
20
Translators
4
for his Mistress Philosophy, and his amorous Zodiac. De
Tristibus was Englished by Churchyard, and Francis Beaumont
gave proof of his skill in a lively version of Salmacis and Herma-
phroditus. The cause of Ovid's popularity is not far to seek.
He was an efficient guide to the Greek and Roman mythologies,
and he furnished the poets with theme, sentiment and allusion. Of
all the translations, by far the most famous was Arthur Golding's
rendering of the Metamorphoses. The first edition (1565) contained
but four books. In 1567, the work was complete. It is described
on the title-page as 'a worke very pleasaunt and delectable,' and
a stern couplet warns the reader against frivolity:
With skill, heede, and judgement, thys work must be red,
For els to the reader it stands in small stead.
Golding's motive, in truth, was above suspicion. His work was
'pleasaunt and delectable' by accident. He wished to improve the
occasion before all things. In a long epistle, addressed to Robert
earl of Leicester, he clearly sets forth his purpose. There is no
fable of Ovid which does not make for edification. For instance :
In Phaeton's fable untoo syght the Poet dooth expresse
The natures of ambition blynd, and youthful wilfulnesse.
And a little ingenuity will interpret every book in a sense most
profitable to the reader.
That Ovid and his heroes were paynims
he confesses with regret, and takes heart in the reflection that they
may all be reduced too ryght of Christian law. ' In the same spirit,
he hopes that the simple sort of reader will not be offended when
he sees the heathen names of feigned gods in the book, and assures
him that every living wight, high and low, rich and poor, master and
slave, maid and wife, simple and brave, young and old, good and bad,
wise and foolish, lout and learned man, shall see his whole estate,
words, thoughts and deeds in this mirror. It is a bold claim of
universality, which Ovid himself would not have made. But it
was in tune with the temper of the age, and, doubtless, added to
the popularity of the work.
The chief characteristic of the translation is its evenness. It
never falls below or rises above a certain level. The craftsman-
ship is neither slovenly nor distinguished. The narrative flows
through its easy channel without the smallest shock of interruption.
In other words, the style is rapid, fluent and monotonous. The
author is never a poet and never a shirk. You may read his
mellifluous lines with something of the same simple pleasure which
the original gives you. Strength and energy are beyond Golding's
## p. 21 (#43) ##############################################
Golding and Chapman
21
compass, and he wisely chose a poet to translate who made no
demand upon the qualities he did not possess. He chose a metre,
too, very apt for continuous narrative—the long line of fourteen
syllables, and it is not strange that his contemporaries bestowed
upon him their high approval. Puttenham paid him no more than
his due when he described him as 'in translation very cleare and
very faithfully answering his author's intent. He won the rare
and difficult praise of Thomas Nashe, and he was honoured by
Shakespeare, who did not disdain to borrow of his verses. The
lines which follow will recall to everyone a celebrated passage in
The Tempest:
Ye Ayres and windes: ye Elves of Hills, of Brookes, of Woods alone,
Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye everychone.
And Golding was by no means a man of one book. He turned
Latin and French into English with equal facility. Had it not been
for Holland, he might justly have been called the ‘Translator
Generall in his age. ' A friend of Sir Philip Sidney, he completed
that poet's translation of De Mornay's Woorke concerning the
trewnesse of the Christian Religion. To him we owe our earliest
and best version of Caesar's Gallic War (1565), besides The
abridgemente of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, gathered
and written in the Latin tung by the famous Historiographer
Justin (1570), several works translated from Calvin and the
Politicke, Moral and Martial Discourses written in French by
M. Jacques Hurault (1595). In brief, he tried his hand at many
enterprises and failed in none, and Webbe's panegyric might still
stand for his epitaph :
For which Gentleman surely our Country hath greatly to gyve God
thankes: as for him which hath taken infinite paynes without ceasing, travelling
as yet indefatigably, and is addicted without society by his continuall laboure
to profit this nation and speeche in all kind of good learning.
Though Ovid and Vergil were the favourites, the other poets
were by no means neglected. Another reign saw the completion
of Chapman's vigorous and faithful Homer, which Pope should
never have displaced, but he published a translation of seven
books of the Iliad in 1598, and a word must be said here of his
splendid achievement. To do full justice to Chapman's work a
continuous reading is necessary. It shines less brightly in isolated
passages than in its whole surface, various and burnished, like the
shield of Achilles. It is a poet's echo of a poet-loud and bold.
Justly may the same indulgence be granted Chapman which he
would claim for Homer : he 'must not bee read for a few lynes
## p. 22 (#44) ##############################################
22
Translators
2
with leaves turned over caprichiously in dismembred fractions, but
throughout, the whole drift, weight, and height of his workes set
before the apprensive eyes of his judge. ' Then shall we perceive
the true merit of Chapman's masterpiece. From end to end it
gives proof of an abounding life, a quenchless energy. There is a
grandeur and spirit in Chapman’s rendering, not unworthy the
original, ‘of all bookes extant in all kinds the first and best. ' The
long, swinging line of fourteen syllables, chosen for the Niad, is
the fairest representative of Homer's majestic hexameters, and it
is matter for regret that Chapman preferred the heroical distich
in his rendering of the Odyssey. Moreover, Chapman claimed an
advantage over his fellows in that he translated his author without
a French or Latin intermediary. His knowledge of Greek was not
impeccable. Errors due to ignorance or haste are not infrequent,
nor need they cause us surprise, if it be true, as he asserts, that he
translated the last twelve books in fifteen weeks. As little need
they incur our censure. If Chapman, the scholar, sometimes
nodded, Chapman, the poet, was ever awake, and his version of
Homer will ever remain one among the masterpieces of his age
and country.
In his prefaces, he vindicates both Homer and himself from the
detraction of enemies. Admitting proudly that his manner of
writing is ‘farre fecht, and, as it were, beyond sea,' he defends, as
well he may, his varietie of new wordes. ' Ifómy countrey language
were an usurer,' says he, ‘hee would thanke me for enriching him. '
Chaucer had more new words than any man since him need devise,
and therefore for currant wits to crie from standing braines, like a broode of
Frogs from a ditch, to have the ceaseless flowing river of our tongue turnde
into their Frogpoole, is a song farre from their arrogation of sweetnes.
And, ready as he was, in his ‘harmlesse and pious studie,'
to esteem the policies and wisdoms of his enemies at no more
value than a musty nut, he was readier still to champion the fame
of Homer, especially against the ‘soule-blind Scaliger' and his
'palsied diminuation. ' He did not belittle the beauty of the
Aeneid, but, with perfect truth, declared that Homer's poems
were 'writ from a free furie,' Vergil's out of a 'courtly, laborious,
and altogether imitatorie spirit. ' In brief, he was loyal alike in
commentary and interpretation, and, as he hailed Homer "the
Prince of Poets,' so he himself may justly be styled the prince
of poetical translators. But even he had his forerunners. In
1579 Thomas Purfoote gave to English what he calls The Crounc of
Homer's Works, or The Battel of the Frogges and Myce, and, in
8
## p. 23 (#45) ##############################################
23
a
Sylvester and Harington
1581, Arthur Hall, M. P. for Grantham, translated ten books of the
Iliad from the French. Of Horace, Thomas Drant Englished both
Satires and Epistles; Marlowe turned a book of Lucan into blank
verse; and Timothy Kendall's Flowres of Epigrammes (1575 and
1577) were gathered out of sundry authors and particularly from
Martial. The deficiency in Greek drama, as has been said, was made
up for by many versions of Seneca, and there was no reason why
an Englishman of the sixteenth century, who had not the ancient
tongues, should have been deprived of a fair knowledge of the
Greek and Latin poets.
Of modern poets there is not so long a tale to tell. Dante was
unknown, and Petrarch was revealed for the most part surrep-
titiously under the names of his translators. The most widely read
of them all was Du Bartas, styled by Gabriel Harvey 'the Treasury
of Humanity and the Jewell of Divinity,' whose Divine Weekes and
Workes were translated into rimed decasyllabic verse by Joshua
Sylvester (1590—2). The popularity which this version enjoyed
is not easily intelligible, and the fact that Milton sought therein
some sort of inspiration is not enough to tempt a modern
curiosity. Tasso's masterpiece found two translators in Edward
Fairfax and Richard Carew, and Sir John Harington, at the behest
of queen Elizabeth, made a version of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
(1591) in eight-lined stanzas. His translation, like the other verse
translations of the time, displays care and fluidity without dis-
tinction. Its rapid course knows neither check nor variety. Its
style is rather familiar than dignified, and Harington errs like
Stanyhurst in the use of modern slang. Such lines as
>
They tooke them to a fort, with such small treasure,
And in so Scarborow warning they had leasure,
suggest the barbarism of the barbarous Aeneid. Harington,
moreover, embellished his text with a set of notes, in which he
extols his family and his friends. In brief, he was a pedant and a
courtier, who took to letters as a pastime, and practised them after
the fashion of his kind. In a characteristic preface, he defended
the craft of the poet, his chosen author, and his own enterprise.
Though the craft, as he knew well enough, needed no apology, he
could not refrain from breaking a lance with Puttenham, whose
treatise had recently been published, and who had withheld the
“high and supernatural title of maker from mere translators. In
his defence of Ariosto, Harington appeals to authority and to
sound morals. The Italian poet, says his translator, follows the
## p. 24 (#46) ##############################################
24
Translators
rules of Aristotle. More than this, he follows Vergil with a patient
fidelity. “Virgill extolled Aeneas to please Augustus; Ariosto
prayseth Rogero to the honour of the house of Este. ' And does
not Alcina beguile Rogero, as Dido beguiled Aeneas? It is clear,
therefore, that Ariosto should share the common eulogy of Vergil,
Indeed, he may claim a higher praise, because there may be found
in his many writings passages of which Vergil was incapable—such
as the Christian demeanour of Charlemagne in the 14th book, and
the conversion of Rogero to the Christian faith in the 41st. Briefly,
Harington treats Vergil as Golding treated Ovid, and reproves
him, in sorrow rather than in anger, for his inevitable paganism.
As for the mention of himself and his kinsmen in his notes, to
which Harington pleads guilty, he made them because Plutarch
blamed Homer for nowhere explaining of what stock he was, of
what town, or of what country. 'Excuse me, then,' says he, 'if I in
a work that may perhaps last longer than a better thing, and being
not ashamed of my kindred, name them here and there to no
man's offence. No excuse is necessary. Who would blame a
whimsical scholar for chattering of himself and for interrupting
a serious work with amiable anecdotage?
Besides the translations openly made and avowed, there are
others which masquerade as fresh, unborrowed works. In his
Elizabethan Sonnets, Sidney Lee has traced to their origin in
France or Italy a vast number of English sonnets. He has proved
the debt which the poets of the sixteenth century owed to their
predecessors. He has set side by side in a close parallel the
sonnets of Lodge and Ronsard, of Daniel and Desportes. He
has shown most clearly what Wyatt and many others took from
Petrarch. He has illustrated the 'influence' of Marot, du Bellay,
de Pontoux, Jacques de Billy and Durant upon our bards, great
and small. As an episode in the history of translation this
'influence' is of the greatest interest. We should not consider
its moral aspect too censoriously. In Puttenham's despite, the
Elizabethans do not seem to have regarded plagiarism as a heinous
sin. If they had, who would have escaped condemnation ? No
doubt Southern, who pilfered from Ronsard, and spoiled what he
pilfered, deserved all the censure which the critic heaped upon
him. But there are indications not merely that plagiarism was
thought respectable, but that a translator might claim as his own
that which he had put into English. 'I call it mine,' says Nicholas
Grimald of his translation of Cicero's De Officiis, 'as Plautus
and Terence called the comedies theirs which they made out of
>
## p. 25 (#47) ##############################################
The Charge of Plagiarism
25
Greek’; and, doubtless, Wyatt, Daniel, Lodge, Spenser and the rest
called the sonnets theirs which they had made out of French and
Italian, because they had made them. Ben Jonson did not think it
worth while to give Philostratus credit for his ‘Drink to me only
with thine eyes,' and he left it for the critics of a later age to track
every chapter of his Discoveries to its lair. In neither case need
.
the morality of his method be discussed, and Dryden's defence of him
may stand as a defence for all save for such burglars as Southern:
He has done his robberies so openly, that we may see that he
fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a
monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory
in him. '
## p. 26 (#48) ##############################################
CHAPTER II
THE AUTHORISED VERSION AND ITS INFLUENCE
1
IF the Authorised Version of the Bible be the first English
classic, as seems by all competent authorities to be allowed, two
enquiries suggest themselves: first, what is meant when it is
called a classic, and, secondly, what are the qualities that entitle
it to be ranked as the first classic in English? In other words,
it will be necessary first to examine the Bible as literature, irre-
spective of any translation whatever; and, secondly, to examine
its diction in the standard English translation, in order to see
whether the choice of words, the mould of sentences and the
harmonious disposition of sounds are such as deserve the highest
praise, in comparison with the choicest productions of native
English genius.
These two enquiries, however—the one into the nature of the
Bible considered as literature, and the other into the nature of
the English in which our standard version is written—will, of ne-
cessity, imply some consideration of the successive stages by which
what we call the Bible grew into being, and of the successive stages
by which the English of our Bible was gradually selected, imbued
with the proper meanings and associations, and ordered into a fit
medium for the conveyance of the high thoughts and noble
emotions in which the original abounds. Especially is it true of
our second enquiry that no adequate conception of the language
employed in the Jacobean version can be formed, save through
at least a brief survey of the series of English translations which
led
up to it. Their indebtedness to their predecessors is recognised
most clearly by the translators of the Authorised Version, who
say in their preface:
Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought, from the beginning, that
we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one
a good one; . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one
principal good one, not justly to be excepted against—that hath been our
endeavour, that our mark.
1 Notwithstanding the current use of this term, the Jacobean revision was never
publicly authorised by parliament or convocation, privy council or king. The accept-
ance which it has enjoyed has been won chiefly on its merits.
а
## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################
Character of the
of the Bible
27
The Bible either proceeds from divine inspiration, as some will
have it, or, according to others, is the fruit of the religious genius of
the Hebrew race. From either point of view, the authors are highly
gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their diversities, and the
progressiveness observable in their representations of the nature of
God, are wonderfully consistent in the main tenor of their writings,
and serve, in general, for mutual confirmation and illustration.
In some cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier pro-
ductions by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive
conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and pro-
founder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier conception
often lends itself, without wrenching, to the deeper interpretation
and the completer exposition.
The Bible is not distinctively an intellectual achievement. Like
all other great works of literature, it springs from, and addresses,
human nature as a whole. It has no more to do with intellect
than with sensibility, imagination, or will. In fact, if it be more
concerned with one of these faculties than another, sensibility,
the sphere of the emotions, is the one that has pre-eminence
over the rest.
The character of the Bible as a whole is best understood by
regarding the Old Testament as its representative, and devoting
attention primarily to that. It is the Hebraic temper, and
the achievements of the Hebrew genius, that give the Bible a
unique place among books; and these racial traits were much
less subject to modification by alien influences—such as that of
Greek culture-in the period covered by the Old Testament, than
during the epoch in which the composition of the New Testament
was effected.
Much of the difficulty, for example, encountered
in the adequate rendering of St Paul's epistles into another tongue
is due to elements in his writing which are not common to him
and the writers of the Old Testament, but belong specifically to
him as one who had received a tincture of Greek learning, which,
in modifying his thought, had also modified his speech. The tone
of the Bible, then, is given to it by the Old Testament, which,
therefore, may be considered as the type of the whole.
Its themes are the greatest that literature can treat. They
may be reduced to three-God, man and the physical universe.
The physical universe is regarded as subordinate, and even sub-
ject, to man, within the measure of his capacity and needs, while
man, in his turn, is subject to God. The visible creation reveals
the wisdom, power and skill of its Maker. Man's constitution
## p. 28 (#50) ##############################################
28 The Authorised Version and its Influence
being related to that of the world about him, he finds in the
latter provision for his physical wants, and a certain satisfaction,
falling, however, short of the highest, for his spiritual cravings.
The relations of one human being to another, and of all spiritual
existences among themselves, are partly matters of positive or-
dinance, and partly to be inferred from their relations to God.
Thus, if God is the Father of all, all men are brethren. God is
represented as desiring to draw man into closer and closer union
with Himself, or as restoring man to his original condition of
friend and trustful child. Such eventual and complete restoration
is to be effected through the agency of the Hebrew people, but
particularly of certain leaders—patriarchs, prophets and others-
who, accordingly, are made the subjects of more or less extended
biographies.
Speaking generally, the three species of literature in the Old
Testament, succeeding one another in the order of time, are:
narrative, poetry-chiefly lyrical—and prophecy. In the New
Testament, the epistles may be said to represent prophecy, and
the Revelation to be partly of a prophetic, and partly of a poetical,
character, so far as these two can be distinguished.
Narrative, then, comes first in order of time, as in order of
books. It deals with the early history of mankind, and the great
epochs, especially the earlier, in the history of the Hebrew race.
As suggested above, it delineates history largely under the form
of biography, its most universally interesting form, and these
biographies are full of ups and downs, of lights and shadows,
both in characters and events. Conceived as affecting the ulti-
mate destinies of all mankind, and, indeed, of every individual
soul, these lives, presented in bold and picturesque outlines, are
among the most enthralling of stories.
Next in order to the narrative books, thus filled with matter of
deepest import and overwhelming interest to the race, come the
poetic books, of which the Psalter is the chief. Some of the
psalms are founded upon chapters of the national history, and all
presuppose an acquaintance with the national religion. In turn,
the psalms of an earlier period are subject to reworking at a later
epoch, to express more perfectly the sentiments of the individual
or the religious community. The same staple of matter thus re-
appears in a variety of forms, all of them charged with sincerity,
fervour, or even passion.
The prophetic books form the third main division. After story
and song come monition and reproof, mingled with predictions of
a
## p. 29 (#51) ##############################################
Character of the Bible
29
a better time. The prophet has much in common with the poet,
but is more didactic, and is concerned with the national life rather
than with the individual. Like the poet, the prophet rehearses
or alludes to God's dealings with His people, so that continuity
of motive is maintained throughout. A projection into the future
opens up occasional vistas of limitless range and surpassing beauty,
which give scope and direction to such hopes as men are prone to
conceive for themselves or their descendants.
The first condition of great literature is a unity of theme and
concept that shall give coherence and organisation to all detail,
however varied. By this test the Bible is great literature.
One increasing purpose runs through the whole, and is reflected
in the widening and deepening thought of the writers; yet it is a
purpose which exists germinally at the beginning, and unfolds
like a bud. Thus, all the principal books are linked and even
welded together, and to the common consciousness form, as it
were, but a single book, rather tò ßißríov than tà Bibría.
By far the greater part of the books which the world has
agreed to call classic—that is, permanently enjoyable and per-
manently helpful—are marked by dignity of theme and earnestness
of treatment. The theme or themes of the Bible are of the utmost
comprehensiveness, depth and poignancy of appeal. In the treat-
ment there is nowhere a trace of levity or insincerity to be
detected. The heart of a man is felt to be pulsating behind every
line. There is no straining for effect, no obtrusive ornament, no
complacent parading of the devices of art. Great matters are
presented with warmth of sentiment, in a simple style; and nothing
is more likely to render literature enduring.
Another trait of good literature exemplified by the Bible is
breadth. Take, for example, the story of Jacob, the parable of
the Prodigal Son, or St Paul's speech on Mars' hill. Only the
essentials are given. There is no petty and befogging detail.
The characters, the events, or the arguments stand out with clear-
ness, even with boldness, An inclusive and central effect is
produced with a few masterly strokes, so that the resulting im-
pression is one of conciseness and economy.
Closely associated with this quality of breadth is that of vigour.
The authors of the Bible have no time nor mind to spend upon
the elaboration of curiosities, or upon minute and trifling points.
Every sentence, nay, every word, must count. The spirit which
animates the whole must inform every particle. There is no room
for delicate shadings; the issues are too momentous, the concerns
## p. 30 (#52) ##############################################
30 The Authorised Version and its Influence
too pressing, to admit of introducing anything that can be spared.
A volume is compressed into a page, a page into a line.
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
Jesus wept.
It would not be difficult to show how all these qualities flow
necessarily from the intense preoccupation of the Biblical authors
with matters affecting all they held dear, all their hopes and fears
with respect to their country, their family and themselves, at the
present and in a boundless future. Even when the phrases em-
ployed seem cool and measured, they represent a compressed
energy like that of a tightly coiled spring, tending to actuate
effort and struggle of many kinds, and to open out into arts and
civilisations of which the Hebrew never dreamed.
In a sense, then, it is the lyrical faculty that distinguishes the
Hebrew author. Yet he is not an Aeolian harp, delicately re-
sponsive to every zephyr of sentiment. His passions are few and
elemental, and, as we have seen, are prone to utter themselves
energetically. One is tempted to compare the great lyric, as it
has been called, of the Hebrew, with the effusions, or rather the
creations, of Sappho and Pindar. Yet Sappho and Pindar must
suffer in the comparison. Addison speaks of Horace and Pindar
as showing, when confronted with the Psalms, 'an absurdity and
confusion of style,' and 'a comparative poverty of imagination. '
As for Sappho, her longest extant production, while intense,
shows, in conjunction with the shorter fragments, that her deeper
emotion is limited in range, and, because of this limitation, and
the tropical fervour displayed, is less universal in its appeal than
the best lyrical outpourings of the Hebrew genius. These include,
not only the Psalms, but much of Job, the best of the prophets,
a good deal of the Apocalypse, occasional passages of St Paul,
and even parts of the narrative books, especially those which
report the utterances of notable persons.
It has been asserted that the Hebrews of the Old Testament
were incapable of producing either drama or fiction, and, one
might add, the leisurely developments of the epic. This is only
another way of affirming their lyrical intensity and preoccupation.
The destruction of Sennacherib's host is related with exultation,
and the historian of Exodus rejoices over the destruction of the
Egyptians in the Red sea. He is no more dispassionate than Tacitus
in excoriating Nero, or Joinville in his devotion to St Louis. Events
are never displayed in that 'dry light' so dear, as they supposed,
6
## p. 31 (#53) ##############################################
Character of the Bible
31
to Heraclitus and Francis Bacon. There are always postulates
which nothing could induce the writer to discard. There is always
a presumption in favour of monotheism, of God's protecting
or punitive care for the people of Israel, of their eventual de-
liverance and full entrance upon their divinely ordained mission.
The poet or prophet could never be brought to admit that there
might be gods many, nor that the Hebrew people were not fore-
ordained to pre-eminence over Philistines and Assyrians.
But this egoism, this racial pride, which manifest themselves
by a strong colouring and a decided tone, and which are at the
furthest possible remove from scientific indifferentism, do not
prevent the Bible from possessing a universality which has placed
it at the foundation, or the head, or both, of all modern literatures.
There are several reasons for this. Every one is interested in the
origin of the world and of man. It may be urged that no other
literature gives so plain and coherent an account of these origins,
and of the early history of mankind, as the book of Genesis. Next,
the Bible emphasises the conception that all nations are of one
blood, and that all men are brethren, since their Father is one.
This, in satisfying the social instinct, has tended more and more
to draw tribe to tribe, and kingdom to kingdom, as well as
individual to individual, and, indirectly, has appealed to national
and personal ambition. Thirdly, the morality of the Bible, even
where it takes the form of statutory enactments, keeps in view the
interests of individual happiness and social well-being. Fourthly,
the Hebrew race is presented as, in some sort, the prototype, or
the beneficent elder brother, of all other races and nationalities,
so that any of its experiences are likely to find a parallel in
subsequent history, or even to help in making subsequent history.
Fifthly, the future of mankind is regarded in the Bible as bound
up with the general acceptance of Hebrew principles and ideals.
Sixthly, the utmost fulness of individual life is represented as
conditional upon the acceptance of that God who first distinctly
revealed Himself to the Hebrews, upon obedience to Him and
upon spiritual union with Him. With this is associated the
Messianic hope of a Deliverer, who, greater than His brethren,
yet even as they, should serve to bring God down to man, and
lift man up to God. These, perhaps, are reasons enough why,
notwithstanding the lyric note which is everywhere heard through-
out the Bible, it possesses also a character of universality, and,
one might also say, of impersonality.
but of decoration. He loved ornament with the ardour of an
ornamental age, and he tricked out his authors with all the re-
sources of Elizabethan English. The concision and reticence of
the classics were as nothing to him. He was ambitious always to
clothe them in the garb which they might have worn had they
been not mere Englishmen, but fantastics of his own age. Like all
his contemporaries, he was eager to excuse his own shortcomings.
'According to this purpose and intent of mine,' he wrote, “I frame
my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a meane and popular stile.
a
## p. 13 (#35) ##############################################
Philemon Holland
13
Wherein, if I have called againe into use some old words, let it be
attributed to the love of my countrey language: if the sentence be not so
concise, couched and knit togither as the originall, loth I was to be obscure
and darke: have I not Englished every word aptly? ech nation hath
several maners, yea, and tearmes appropriate by themselves. '
His phrase is never affected; his style is neither mean
nor popular; and thus far he speaks the language of conven-
tion. The rest of the passage is the soundest criticism.
Holland had a natural love of the old words and proverbs which
distinguished his country language. His sentences are seldom
concise or knit together, and his translations, though not apt to
their originals, are apt enough to the language of their adoption.
If he seldom echoed the sound of Greek and Latin, he never missed
the sense, nor did he fear a comparison of his own work with the
classical texts. When it was said that his versions were not in
accord with the French or Italian, he knew that he was in the
right of it. 'Like as Alcibiades said to one'-thus he wrote-
'Tráračov oův kaì ăkovoov, i. e. strike hardly (Euribiades) 80 you
heare me speake: even so I say; Find fault and spare not; but
withal, read the original better before you give sentence. ' Let his
own test be applied to him, and he will not fail. Take, for instance,
a famous passage in the fifth book of Livy, which describes the
salvation of the Capitol from the Gauls. Here is the Latin, simple
and straightforward:
Anseres non fefellere, quibus sacris Junonis in summa inopia cibi tamen
abstinebatur. Quae res saluti fuit; namque clangore eorum alarumque
crepitu excitus M. Manlius, qui triennio ante consul fuerat, vir bello egregius,
armis arreptis simul ad arma ceteros ciens vadit.
Holland's English, close as it keeps to the text of Livy, has its own
colour and quality :
*But they could not so escape the geese'-thus it runs—'which were
consecrated unto Juno, and for all the scarcitie of victuals were spared and not
killed up. And this it was that saved them all. For with their gagling and
fluttering of their wings, M. Manlius,who three yeares before had been Consul,
a right hardie and noble warrionr, was awaked. Who taking weapon in hand,
speedily went forth and raised the rest withall to take armes. '
The English has a plainness to which Holland very rarely attains ;
but it is not its plainness nor its perfect harmony that gives it
a character of its own. In the first place,'gagling'arrests the ear so
sharply, that the reader is as wide awake as M. Manlius himself.
And then how admirable in sound and sense is the equivalent of
vir bello egregius'a right hardie and noble warriour! ' It is by
such touches as this and by a feeling of what is musical in prose,
which never deserted him, that Holland produced his effects. His
## p. 14 (#36) ##############################################
14
Translators
3
failing from a pedantic point of view is an excess of ornament.
He was not always content to say what he had to say once. He
delighted to turn a statement about—to put it now in this light,
now in that. 'Jacta est alea,' writes Suetonius. "The dice be thrown,'
says Holland; 'I have set up my rest; come what will of it' His
'
variety and resource are endless. In a single passage he makes
a
Vitellius his own contemporary.
‘Being given most of all to excessive bellie cheere and crueltie,' he writes,
'he devided his repast into three meales every day at least, and sometime into
foure, to wit, Breakefast, Dinner, Supper, and rere-bankets. '
From this, the last drop of Latin austerity is squeezed. And you
can hear Vespasian rioting with his friends when Holland writes :
given exceedingly hee was to skoffs, and those so skurrile and filthy, that he
could not so much as forbeare words of ribaudrie. And yet there be many
right pleasant conceited jests of his extant.
In such terms as these might Rabelais have composed the
lives of the Roman Emperors. Excellent in tone and movement
as is the Suetonius, in some respects his Pliny is Holland's
masterpiece. The difficulty of this enterprise was far greater. If
the obstacle in the way of a familiar rendering might have seemed
insuperable, Holland has easily surmounted it. He has thawed the
frigid original at the fire of his romantic temper. 'Sirrah (quoth
he) remember you are but a shoemaker, and therefore meddle no
higher I advise you than with shoes. ' The mere Sirrah carries
you leagues away from Apelles and the shoemaker whom he bade
look to bis last, and reminds you of the truth that Holland, like
the old painters, put the noblest of his Greeks and Romans into
doublet and hose.
His industry was universally applauded. He composed folios
with as little toil as other men give to the writing of pamphlets.
The two largest of his works are separated by a bare year It was
said that he wrote the whole of Plutarch's Morals with one pen-
a pen which became mythical. 'It seemed that he leaned very
lightly on the Neb thereof,' says Fuller, 'though weightily enough
in another sense, performing not slightly but solidly what he
undertook. ' Fuller, with his usual good sense, puts his finger upon
the truth. It was the solidity of Holland's achievement, not its
extent, which was remarkable. His industry was always well
directed. Few writers have ever kept so consistently at a high
level of excellence. He was no master in the art of sinking. His
narrative never flags; his argument knows no failure. His style
was apt alike for history or reflection. And if he did not accurately
3
## p. 15 (#37) ##############################################
15
Florio's Montaigne
represent in English the prose of Livy and Plutarch, of Suetonius
and Pliny, he left us a set of variations upon ancient motives,
to which we may listen with an independent and unalloyed
pleasure.
John Florio's Montaigne holds a place apart. This translator
had neither the sentiment of North nor the scholarship of
Holland. He brought to his task that which neither the one
nor the other of these masters possessed-a curious fantasy, which
was all his own. He was of the stuff whereof pedants are made.
He delighted in eccentricity and extravagance. His prefaces are
masterpieces of pomp and decoration. Asking, in a breathless
refrain, ‘Madame, now do I flatter you? ' he exhausts the language
of adulation, until at last he falls back upon ecstatic repetitions.
He dedicates the first book of his Montaigne 'to the Right
Honourable my best-best Benefactors, and most-most honored
Ladies, Lucie Countesse of Bedford ; and hir best-most loved-
loving mother Lady Anne Harrington' He plays upon words; he
.
lets sound take the place of sense; he cultivates alliteration, and
pleads guilty to‘a jirke of the French jargon. ' A plain simplicity
is beyond his reach; he fetches his frequent images from afar. He
declares that in his translation he serves but as Vulcan, to hatchet
this Minerva from that Jupiter's bigge braine. ' When he con-
templates his finished work, he strikes an attitude of valiance.
'I sweat, I wept, and I went-on, til now I stand at bay. ' He is
modest only when he thinks of his original. “Him have I set
before you,' says he, 'perhaps without his trappings, and his
'meate without sauce. ' But he keeps a stern face even in the
presence of his 'peerlesse, and in all good gifts unparagonised
Ladies'; he tells his reader that he is still resolute John Florio';
and there is always more of Bobadil in his bearing than of Holo-
fernes.
Upon his version of Montaigne's Essays he exhausted his gifts
and lavished his temperament. He loved words for their own
sakes with a love which Montaigne would not have appreciated, and
which will be easily intelligible to all who know Florio's famous
Worlde of Wordes. Turn where you will in his translation, and you
will find flowers of speech, which grow not in the garden of the
original. 'Je n'y vauls rien,' says Montaigne, and Florio interprets:
'I am nothing worth, and I can never fadge well. ' For souflet Florio
can find nothing simpler than 'a whirret in the car'; for finesses
verbales he gives us 'verbal wily-beguilies,' surely a coinage of his
own. Fade becomes 'wallowish,' and crestez is admirably rendered
6
## p. 16 (#38) ##############################################
16
Translators
6
>
by 'pert and cocket. ' The ‘jirke of the French jargon,' already
mentioned, is evident in such borrowed words as 'tintamare,'
'entrecuidance,' 'friandize' and 'mignardize. ' He is as fond as
Montaigne himself of proverbial phrases. 'I will have them to
give Plutarch a bob upon mine own lips' has precisely the same
sense and sound as the French 'Je veux qu'ils donnent une nazarde
à Plutarque sur mon nez. And, though the metaphor is changed,
‘he hath had the canvas' (as who should say ‘he hath had the
sack') is an excellent match for 'cettuy-cy aura donné du nez à
terre. It will be seen that Florio's method was neither just nor
accurate. He made no attempt to suppress himself as we are told
a good translator should. The reader never forgets that resolute
John Florio' is looking out from the page as well as Montaigne.
He is often inaccurate, and not seldom he misses the point. But
compare his version with Cotton's, and you will not hesitate to
give the palm to Florio. Cotton's translation is a sound and
scholarly piece of work; Florio's is a living book.
The translations in verse made in the age of Elizabeth may not
be compared with the translations in prose. For their inferiority
there are many plain reasons. Only a poet can render in another
tongue the works of a poet, and even a poet cannot ensure a just
interpretation. Between one language and another there are
obstacles of metre and style, of temper and music, which are most
often insuperable. Moreover, in the sixteenth century, the trans-
lating of prose was governed by so wise a convention, that mere
journeymen could attempt a delicate task without risking con-
spicuous failure.
The secret of verse could not be thus easily
imparted, and much that won the approval of its own time appears
to us the saddest of doggerel. The enterprise was yet further
hampered by a vain love of experiment. An age which desired to
leave nothing untried did its best to introduce the hexameter into
English verse, and, as Vergil and Ovid composed their poems in
hexameters, it seemed proper to some translators to follow an
alien example. Ascham began the controversy both by practice
and precept. In his Toxophilus, he gave the world some poor
specimens of the kind. The exercise of some ingenuity may scan
the lines which follow:
>
:
What thing wants quiet and meri rest endures but a smal while.
Both merie songs and good shoting deliteth Apollo.
His precept was better than his practice. He condemned the
English hexameter far more effectively than he wrote it. Carmen
## p. 17 (#39) ##############################################
6
Stanyhurst's Vergil
17
erametrum, said he, doth rather holte and hoble than run
smothly in an English tong. The question, once posed, was hotly
debated. Gabriel Harvey wished no other epitaph than this : 'the
inventor of the English hexameter. Spenser gave Harvey a ready
approval, and Nashe, of course, took the other side. "The Hexa-
meter verse,' says he, with excellent sense, 'I grant to be a gentle-
man of an auncient house (so is many an English begger); yet this
clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in. Time has proved the justice
of Nashe's opinion. The experiments of Spenser and Harvey were
long since forgotten, and those who turned Vergil and Ovid into
their own measures are remembered only as curiosities.
By far the bravest of them was Richard Stanyhurst, who, in
1582, published the First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis
translated intoo English heroical verse. ' Whether he wrote in
prose or verse, he surpassed in a fantastic eccentricity the vainest
of his contemporaries. Never was there a stranger mixture of
pedantry and slang than is to be found in his work. His criticism
is his own and expressed in his own terms. The verses of Ennius,
he says, 'savoure soomwhat nappy of thee spigget,' and he classes
him with Horace, Juvenal and Persius among a 'rablement of
cheate Poëtes. ' Vergil, on the other hand, for his peerelesse style,
and matchlesse stuffe doth beare thee prick and price among al
thee Roman Poëts. ' He declares that, if any hold that Phaer's
version lightened his enterprise, they are altogeather in a wrong
box. ' He offers to go over these books again and give them a new
livery, which shall neither ‘jet with Mr Phaer his badges, ne yeet
bee clad with this apparaile wherewith at this present they coom
furth atyred. ' Indeed, he makes light of his labour. Phaer took
fifteen days to translate the fourth book. He ‘huddled up' his in
ten. And for this he asks no praise but pardon, adding, character-
istically, that 'forelittring bitches whelp blynd puppies. ' But,
though he wasted not his time, he did nothing at haphazard. He
expounds his theory of the hexameter with great care, and gives
every syllable its proper quantity, varying its length according to
its terinination and to the consonant or vowel which follows it.
His labour is lost. Even if his theory were admissible, it would
not save his version from ridicule.
Yet, absurd as it is, Stanyhurst's Vergil is worth examination.
It is a work which owes no debt to anything save to its author's
perverted ingenuity. Orthography, metre, vocabulary are each
unique. Stanyhurst aimed, not merely at a new prosody, but at
a new language. He invented a set of onomatopoeic symbols,
2
E. L. IV.
CH. 1.
## p. 18 (#40) ##############################################
18
Translators
which you cannot match elsewhere in literature. What can we
make of such lines as these :
Theese flaws theyre cabbans wyth stur snar jarrye doe ransack.
Now doe they rayse gastly lyghtnings, now grislye reboundings
Of ruffe raffe roaring, mens harts with terror agrysing,
With peale meale ramping, with thwick thwack sturdelye thundring?
Not content with these mimicries of sound, he invented what-
ever new words seemed useful for his purpose. 'Mutterus humming,'
'gredelye bibled,''smacklye bebasse thee,' 'boucherous hatchet-
these are a few of his false coins. And he used the slang which
was modern in his day for the interpretation of Vergil without
scruple or shame. Imagine Dido, queen of Carthage, asking in
,
fury: shall a stranger give me the slampam'! With an equal
contempt of fitness he renders pollutum hospitium by 'Paltock's
Inn,' and so pleased is he with 'Scarboro warning,' for the blow
before the word, that he uses it with no better excuse than
incautam, and, in another place, he is guilty of Scarboro scrabbling'
without any excuse at all. As little did he hesitate to mar the
epic dignity of Vergil with the popular proverbs of every day,
such as 'in straw there lurketh some pad,' or 'as wild as a March
hare. ' And, being bound in the chains of the hexameter, he
distorts the order of the words out of all semblance to English,
until his version is wholly unintelligible without the friendly
aid of the Latin. Yet his monstrous incongruities pleased the
taste of his time. Harvey is proud to have been imitated by
' learned Mr Stanyhurst'; and Phaer fell, that this thrasonicall
huffe snuffe' might rise. Richard Carew mentions him in the
same breath with Sir Philip Sidney, and Francis Meres cites him
without disapproval. But critics there were who saw through his
pretence. Nashe, above all, rated him at a proper value; and
Barnabe Rich did him ample justice in few words : 'Among other
Fictions,' says Rich, ‘be tooke upon him to translate Virgill, aud
stript him out of a Velvet gowne into a Fooles coate, out of a Latin
Heroicall verse into an English riffe raffe. ' The question of the
English hexameter has received a final answer, and, for us, Stany-
hurst is but an episode in the history of literature. And what an
episode! His very gravity makes him the more ludicrous, and his
only pupils are Charles Cotton, Thomas Bridges, captain Alexander
Radcliffe and the other writers of burlesque.
To Stanyhurst, Thomas Phaer was an insignificant competitor.
But he had enjoyed twenty years of fame before Stanyhurst's
44
a
a
a
## p. 19 (#41) ##############################################
>
Phaer's Vergil
19
version was printed, and, though momentarily depressed, he
survived the absurd fashion of the hexameter in the esteem of his
contemporaries. Webbe praises his 'most gallant verse,' and
chooses him as an example to prove the meetnesse of our speeche
to receive the best forme of poetry. ' The proof is deficient.
Phaer was no poet, and very ill-skilled to present the beauty of
Vergil in English verse. As Anthony à Wood says, he was 'a
person of a mutable mind,' who addicted his muse to many studies.
Educated at Oxford, he studied law, wrote a work Of the Nature
of Writts and presently adopted medicine as his profession. In
brief, translation was his pastime, and, doubtless, his knowledge
of the healing art was profounder than his knowledge of English
or Latin. His Vergil, composed in lines of fourteen syllables, like
Golding's Ovid and Chapman's Homer, never rises above a facile
mediocrity. The translator constantly sacrifices taste and sense to
the demands of rime, and mixes in a kind of familiar jingle the
easy stateliness of the original. Even in the rare passages which
display some movement and energy, he descends suddenly upon
the wrong word, and sets the reader on his guard. Here, for
instance, is his rendering of the celebrated lines, Monstrum
horrendum ingens, etc. , in the fourth book:
A monster gastly great, for every plume her carkas beares
Lyke number leering eies she hath, like number harckning eares,
Lyke number tounges and mouthes she waggs, a wondrous thing to speake;
At midnight fourth she flies, and under shade her sounde doth squeake.
If the first two lines might pass muster, no word can be said in
defence of the others. With the word 'squeake,' Phaer descends
into bathos, and the best that can be said for him is that, while
Stanyhurst always lets his reason go, Phaer is sometimes sane.
The best loved of all the ancient poets was Ovid, whose popu-
larity is attested by many translations of varying worth. The first
version in point of date is The Fable of Ovid treting of Narcissus,
translated oute of Latin into Englysh Mytre, with a moral therein
to, very pleasante to rede. This was followed, five years later, by
the first edition of Arthur Golding's work (1565), of which more
will be said presently. In 1567, George Turbervile printed The
Heroycall Epistles of the learned Poet Publius Ovidius Naso,
and, in 1577, there came from the press two versions of Ovid his
Invective against Ibis, one of which is the work of Thomas Under-
downe, to whom, also, we owe the Aethiopian Historie of Heliodorus.
Marlowe turned the Elegies into rimed couplets, and George
Chapman, in 1595, published Ovids Banquet of Sauce, a coronet
a
2-2
## p. 20 (#42) ##############################################
20
Translators
4
for his Mistress Philosophy, and his amorous Zodiac. De
Tristibus was Englished by Churchyard, and Francis Beaumont
gave proof of his skill in a lively version of Salmacis and Herma-
phroditus. The cause of Ovid's popularity is not far to seek.
He was an efficient guide to the Greek and Roman mythologies,
and he furnished the poets with theme, sentiment and allusion. Of
all the translations, by far the most famous was Arthur Golding's
rendering of the Metamorphoses. The first edition (1565) contained
but four books. In 1567, the work was complete. It is described
on the title-page as 'a worke very pleasaunt and delectable,' and
a stern couplet warns the reader against frivolity:
With skill, heede, and judgement, thys work must be red,
For els to the reader it stands in small stead.
Golding's motive, in truth, was above suspicion. His work was
'pleasaunt and delectable' by accident. He wished to improve the
occasion before all things. In a long epistle, addressed to Robert
earl of Leicester, he clearly sets forth his purpose. There is no
fable of Ovid which does not make for edification. For instance :
In Phaeton's fable untoo syght the Poet dooth expresse
The natures of ambition blynd, and youthful wilfulnesse.
And a little ingenuity will interpret every book in a sense most
profitable to the reader.
That Ovid and his heroes were paynims
he confesses with regret, and takes heart in the reflection that they
may all be reduced too ryght of Christian law. ' In the same spirit,
he hopes that the simple sort of reader will not be offended when
he sees the heathen names of feigned gods in the book, and assures
him that every living wight, high and low, rich and poor, master and
slave, maid and wife, simple and brave, young and old, good and bad,
wise and foolish, lout and learned man, shall see his whole estate,
words, thoughts and deeds in this mirror. It is a bold claim of
universality, which Ovid himself would not have made. But it
was in tune with the temper of the age, and, doubtless, added to
the popularity of the work.
The chief characteristic of the translation is its evenness. It
never falls below or rises above a certain level. The craftsman-
ship is neither slovenly nor distinguished. The narrative flows
through its easy channel without the smallest shock of interruption.
In other words, the style is rapid, fluent and monotonous. The
author is never a poet and never a shirk. You may read his
mellifluous lines with something of the same simple pleasure which
the original gives you. Strength and energy are beyond Golding's
## p. 21 (#43) ##############################################
Golding and Chapman
21
compass, and he wisely chose a poet to translate who made no
demand upon the qualities he did not possess. He chose a metre,
too, very apt for continuous narrative—the long line of fourteen
syllables, and it is not strange that his contemporaries bestowed
upon him their high approval. Puttenham paid him no more than
his due when he described him as 'in translation very cleare and
very faithfully answering his author's intent. He won the rare
and difficult praise of Thomas Nashe, and he was honoured by
Shakespeare, who did not disdain to borrow of his verses. The
lines which follow will recall to everyone a celebrated passage in
The Tempest:
Ye Ayres and windes: ye Elves of Hills, of Brookes, of Woods alone,
Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye everychone.
And Golding was by no means a man of one book. He turned
Latin and French into English with equal facility. Had it not been
for Holland, he might justly have been called the ‘Translator
Generall in his age. ' A friend of Sir Philip Sidney, he completed
that poet's translation of De Mornay's Woorke concerning the
trewnesse of the Christian Religion. To him we owe our earliest
and best version of Caesar's Gallic War (1565), besides The
abridgemente of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, gathered
and written in the Latin tung by the famous Historiographer
Justin (1570), several works translated from Calvin and the
Politicke, Moral and Martial Discourses written in French by
M. Jacques Hurault (1595). In brief, he tried his hand at many
enterprises and failed in none, and Webbe's panegyric might still
stand for his epitaph :
For which Gentleman surely our Country hath greatly to gyve God
thankes: as for him which hath taken infinite paynes without ceasing, travelling
as yet indefatigably, and is addicted without society by his continuall laboure
to profit this nation and speeche in all kind of good learning.
Though Ovid and Vergil were the favourites, the other poets
were by no means neglected. Another reign saw the completion
of Chapman's vigorous and faithful Homer, which Pope should
never have displaced, but he published a translation of seven
books of the Iliad in 1598, and a word must be said here of his
splendid achievement. To do full justice to Chapman's work a
continuous reading is necessary. It shines less brightly in isolated
passages than in its whole surface, various and burnished, like the
shield of Achilles. It is a poet's echo of a poet-loud and bold.
Justly may the same indulgence be granted Chapman which he
would claim for Homer : he 'must not bee read for a few lynes
## p. 22 (#44) ##############################################
22
Translators
2
with leaves turned over caprichiously in dismembred fractions, but
throughout, the whole drift, weight, and height of his workes set
before the apprensive eyes of his judge. ' Then shall we perceive
the true merit of Chapman's masterpiece. From end to end it
gives proof of an abounding life, a quenchless energy. There is a
grandeur and spirit in Chapman’s rendering, not unworthy the
original, ‘of all bookes extant in all kinds the first and best. ' The
long, swinging line of fourteen syllables, chosen for the Niad, is
the fairest representative of Homer's majestic hexameters, and it
is matter for regret that Chapman preferred the heroical distich
in his rendering of the Odyssey. Moreover, Chapman claimed an
advantage over his fellows in that he translated his author without
a French or Latin intermediary. His knowledge of Greek was not
impeccable. Errors due to ignorance or haste are not infrequent,
nor need they cause us surprise, if it be true, as he asserts, that he
translated the last twelve books in fifteen weeks. As little need
they incur our censure. If Chapman, the scholar, sometimes
nodded, Chapman, the poet, was ever awake, and his version of
Homer will ever remain one among the masterpieces of his age
and country.
In his prefaces, he vindicates both Homer and himself from the
detraction of enemies. Admitting proudly that his manner of
writing is ‘farre fecht, and, as it were, beyond sea,' he defends, as
well he may, his varietie of new wordes. ' Ifómy countrey language
were an usurer,' says he, ‘hee would thanke me for enriching him. '
Chaucer had more new words than any man since him need devise,
and therefore for currant wits to crie from standing braines, like a broode of
Frogs from a ditch, to have the ceaseless flowing river of our tongue turnde
into their Frogpoole, is a song farre from their arrogation of sweetnes.
And, ready as he was, in his ‘harmlesse and pious studie,'
to esteem the policies and wisdoms of his enemies at no more
value than a musty nut, he was readier still to champion the fame
of Homer, especially against the ‘soule-blind Scaliger' and his
'palsied diminuation. ' He did not belittle the beauty of the
Aeneid, but, with perfect truth, declared that Homer's poems
were 'writ from a free furie,' Vergil's out of a 'courtly, laborious,
and altogether imitatorie spirit. ' In brief, he was loyal alike in
commentary and interpretation, and, as he hailed Homer "the
Prince of Poets,' so he himself may justly be styled the prince
of poetical translators. But even he had his forerunners. In
1579 Thomas Purfoote gave to English what he calls The Crounc of
Homer's Works, or The Battel of the Frogges and Myce, and, in
8
## p. 23 (#45) ##############################################
23
a
Sylvester and Harington
1581, Arthur Hall, M. P. for Grantham, translated ten books of the
Iliad from the French. Of Horace, Thomas Drant Englished both
Satires and Epistles; Marlowe turned a book of Lucan into blank
verse; and Timothy Kendall's Flowres of Epigrammes (1575 and
1577) were gathered out of sundry authors and particularly from
Martial. The deficiency in Greek drama, as has been said, was made
up for by many versions of Seneca, and there was no reason why
an Englishman of the sixteenth century, who had not the ancient
tongues, should have been deprived of a fair knowledge of the
Greek and Latin poets.
Of modern poets there is not so long a tale to tell. Dante was
unknown, and Petrarch was revealed for the most part surrep-
titiously under the names of his translators. The most widely read
of them all was Du Bartas, styled by Gabriel Harvey 'the Treasury
of Humanity and the Jewell of Divinity,' whose Divine Weekes and
Workes were translated into rimed decasyllabic verse by Joshua
Sylvester (1590—2). The popularity which this version enjoyed
is not easily intelligible, and the fact that Milton sought therein
some sort of inspiration is not enough to tempt a modern
curiosity. Tasso's masterpiece found two translators in Edward
Fairfax and Richard Carew, and Sir John Harington, at the behest
of queen Elizabeth, made a version of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
(1591) in eight-lined stanzas. His translation, like the other verse
translations of the time, displays care and fluidity without dis-
tinction. Its rapid course knows neither check nor variety. Its
style is rather familiar than dignified, and Harington errs like
Stanyhurst in the use of modern slang. Such lines as
>
They tooke them to a fort, with such small treasure,
And in so Scarborow warning they had leasure,
suggest the barbarism of the barbarous Aeneid. Harington,
moreover, embellished his text with a set of notes, in which he
extols his family and his friends. In brief, he was a pedant and a
courtier, who took to letters as a pastime, and practised them after
the fashion of his kind. In a characteristic preface, he defended
the craft of the poet, his chosen author, and his own enterprise.
Though the craft, as he knew well enough, needed no apology, he
could not refrain from breaking a lance with Puttenham, whose
treatise had recently been published, and who had withheld the
“high and supernatural title of maker from mere translators. In
his defence of Ariosto, Harington appeals to authority and to
sound morals. The Italian poet, says his translator, follows the
## p. 24 (#46) ##############################################
24
Translators
rules of Aristotle. More than this, he follows Vergil with a patient
fidelity. “Virgill extolled Aeneas to please Augustus; Ariosto
prayseth Rogero to the honour of the house of Este. ' And does
not Alcina beguile Rogero, as Dido beguiled Aeneas? It is clear,
therefore, that Ariosto should share the common eulogy of Vergil,
Indeed, he may claim a higher praise, because there may be found
in his many writings passages of which Vergil was incapable—such
as the Christian demeanour of Charlemagne in the 14th book, and
the conversion of Rogero to the Christian faith in the 41st. Briefly,
Harington treats Vergil as Golding treated Ovid, and reproves
him, in sorrow rather than in anger, for his inevitable paganism.
As for the mention of himself and his kinsmen in his notes, to
which Harington pleads guilty, he made them because Plutarch
blamed Homer for nowhere explaining of what stock he was, of
what town, or of what country. 'Excuse me, then,' says he, 'if I in
a work that may perhaps last longer than a better thing, and being
not ashamed of my kindred, name them here and there to no
man's offence. No excuse is necessary. Who would blame a
whimsical scholar for chattering of himself and for interrupting
a serious work with amiable anecdotage?
Besides the translations openly made and avowed, there are
others which masquerade as fresh, unborrowed works. In his
Elizabethan Sonnets, Sidney Lee has traced to their origin in
France or Italy a vast number of English sonnets. He has proved
the debt which the poets of the sixteenth century owed to their
predecessors. He has set side by side in a close parallel the
sonnets of Lodge and Ronsard, of Daniel and Desportes. He
has shown most clearly what Wyatt and many others took from
Petrarch. He has illustrated the 'influence' of Marot, du Bellay,
de Pontoux, Jacques de Billy and Durant upon our bards, great
and small. As an episode in the history of translation this
'influence' is of the greatest interest. We should not consider
its moral aspect too censoriously. In Puttenham's despite, the
Elizabethans do not seem to have regarded plagiarism as a heinous
sin. If they had, who would have escaped condemnation ? No
doubt Southern, who pilfered from Ronsard, and spoiled what he
pilfered, deserved all the censure which the critic heaped upon
him. But there are indications not merely that plagiarism was
thought respectable, but that a translator might claim as his own
that which he had put into English. 'I call it mine,' says Nicholas
Grimald of his translation of Cicero's De Officiis, 'as Plautus
and Terence called the comedies theirs which they made out of
>
## p. 25 (#47) ##############################################
The Charge of Plagiarism
25
Greek’; and, doubtless, Wyatt, Daniel, Lodge, Spenser and the rest
called the sonnets theirs which they had made out of French and
Italian, because they had made them. Ben Jonson did not think it
worth while to give Philostratus credit for his ‘Drink to me only
with thine eyes,' and he left it for the critics of a later age to track
every chapter of his Discoveries to its lair. In neither case need
.
the morality of his method be discussed, and Dryden's defence of him
may stand as a defence for all save for such burglars as Southern:
He has done his robberies so openly, that we may see that he
fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a
monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory
in him. '
## p. 26 (#48) ##############################################
CHAPTER II
THE AUTHORISED VERSION AND ITS INFLUENCE
1
IF the Authorised Version of the Bible be the first English
classic, as seems by all competent authorities to be allowed, two
enquiries suggest themselves: first, what is meant when it is
called a classic, and, secondly, what are the qualities that entitle
it to be ranked as the first classic in English? In other words,
it will be necessary first to examine the Bible as literature, irre-
spective of any translation whatever; and, secondly, to examine
its diction in the standard English translation, in order to see
whether the choice of words, the mould of sentences and the
harmonious disposition of sounds are such as deserve the highest
praise, in comparison with the choicest productions of native
English genius.
These two enquiries, however—the one into the nature of the
Bible considered as literature, and the other into the nature of
the English in which our standard version is written—will, of ne-
cessity, imply some consideration of the successive stages by which
what we call the Bible grew into being, and of the successive stages
by which the English of our Bible was gradually selected, imbued
with the proper meanings and associations, and ordered into a fit
medium for the conveyance of the high thoughts and noble
emotions in which the original abounds. Especially is it true of
our second enquiry that no adequate conception of the language
employed in the Jacobean version can be formed, save through
at least a brief survey of the series of English translations which
led
up to it. Their indebtedness to their predecessors is recognised
most clearly by the translators of the Authorised Version, who
say in their preface:
Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought, from the beginning, that
we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one
a good one; . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one
principal good one, not justly to be excepted against—that hath been our
endeavour, that our mark.
1 Notwithstanding the current use of this term, the Jacobean revision was never
publicly authorised by parliament or convocation, privy council or king. The accept-
ance which it has enjoyed has been won chiefly on its merits.
а
## p. 27 (#49) ##############################################
Character of the
of the Bible
27
The Bible either proceeds from divine inspiration, as some will
have it, or, according to others, is the fruit of the religious genius of
the Hebrew race. From either point of view, the authors are highly
gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their diversities, and the
progressiveness observable in their representations of the nature of
God, are wonderfully consistent in the main tenor of their writings,
and serve, in general, for mutual confirmation and illustration.
In some cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier pro-
ductions by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive
conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and pro-
founder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier conception
often lends itself, without wrenching, to the deeper interpretation
and the completer exposition.
The Bible is not distinctively an intellectual achievement. Like
all other great works of literature, it springs from, and addresses,
human nature as a whole. It has no more to do with intellect
than with sensibility, imagination, or will. In fact, if it be more
concerned with one of these faculties than another, sensibility,
the sphere of the emotions, is the one that has pre-eminence
over the rest.
The character of the Bible as a whole is best understood by
regarding the Old Testament as its representative, and devoting
attention primarily to that. It is the Hebraic temper, and
the achievements of the Hebrew genius, that give the Bible a
unique place among books; and these racial traits were much
less subject to modification by alien influences—such as that of
Greek culture-in the period covered by the Old Testament, than
during the epoch in which the composition of the New Testament
was effected.
Much of the difficulty, for example, encountered
in the adequate rendering of St Paul's epistles into another tongue
is due to elements in his writing which are not common to him
and the writers of the Old Testament, but belong specifically to
him as one who had received a tincture of Greek learning, which,
in modifying his thought, had also modified his speech. The tone
of the Bible, then, is given to it by the Old Testament, which,
therefore, may be considered as the type of the whole.
Its themes are the greatest that literature can treat. They
may be reduced to three-God, man and the physical universe.
The physical universe is regarded as subordinate, and even sub-
ject, to man, within the measure of his capacity and needs, while
man, in his turn, is subject to God. The visible creation reveals
the wisdom, power and skill of its Maker. Man's constitution
## p. 28 (#50) ##############################################
28 The Authorised Version and its Influence
being related to that of the world about him, he finds in the
latter provision for his physical wants, and a certain satisfaction,
falling, however, short of the highest, for his spiritual cravings.
The relations of one human being to another, and of all spiritual
existences among themselves, are partly matters of positive or-
dinance, and partly to be inferred from their relations to God.
Thus, if God is the Father of all, all men are brethren. God is
represented as desiring to draw man into closer and closer union
with Himself, or as restoring man to his original condition of
friend and trustful child. Such eventual and complete restoration
is to be effected through the agency of the Hebrew people, but
particularly of certain leaders—patriarchs, prophets and others-
who, accordingly, are made the subjects of more or less extended
biographies.
Speaking generally, the three species of literature in the Old
Testament, succeeding one another in the order of time, are:
narrative, poetry-chiefly lyrical—and prophecy. In the New
Testament, the epistles may be said to represent prophecy, and
the Revelation to be partly of a prophetic, and partly of a poetical,
character, so far as these two can be distinguished.
Narrative, then, comes first in order of time, as in order of
books. It deals with the early history of mankind, and the great
epochs, especially the earlier, in the history of the Hebrew race.
As suggested above, it delineates history largely under the form
of biography, its most universally interesting form, and these
biographies are full of ups and downs, of lights and shadows,
both in characters and events. Conceived as affecting the ulti-
mate destinies of all mankind, and, indeed, of every individual
soul, these lives, presented in bold and picturesque outlines, are
among the most enthralling of stories.
Next in order to the narrative books, thus filled with matter of
deepest import and overwhelming interest to the race, come the
poetic books, of which the Psalter is the chief. Some of the
psalms are founded upon chapters of the national history, and all
presuppose an acquaintance with the national religion. In turn,
the psalms of an earlier period are subject to reworking at a later
epoch, to express more perfectly the sentiments of the individual
or the religious community. The same staple of matter thus re-
appears in a variety of forms, all of them charged with sincerity,
fervour, or even passion.
The prophetic books form the third main division. After story
and song come monition and reproof, mingled with predictions of
a
## p. 29 (#51) ##############################################
Character of the Bible
29
a better time. The prophet has much in common with the poet,
but is more didactic, and is concerned with the national life rather
than with the individual. Like the poet, the prophet rehearses
or alludes to God's dealings with His people, so that continuity
of motive is maintained throughout. A projection into the future
opens up occasional vistas of limitless range and surpassing beauty,
which give scope and direction to such hopes as men are prone to
conceive for themselves or their descendants.
The first condition of great literature is a unity of theme and
concept that shall give coherence and organisation to all detail,
however varied. By this test the Bible is great literature.
One increasing purpose runs through the whole, and is reflected
in the widening and deepening thought of the writers; yet it is a
purpose which exists germinally at the beginning, and unfolds
like a bud. Thus, all the principal books are linked and even
welded together, and to the common consciousness form, as it
were, but a single book, rather tò ßißríov than tà Bibría.
By far the greater part of the books which the world has
agreed to call classic—that is, permanently enjoyable and per-
manently helpful—are marked by dignity of theme and earnestness
of treatment. The theme or themes of the Bible are of the utmost
comprehensiveness, depth and poignancy of appeal. In the treat-
ment there is nowhere a trace of levity or insincerity to be
detected. The heart of a man is felt to be pulsating behind every
line. There is no straining for effect, no obtrusive ornament, no
complacent parading of the devices of art. Great matters are
presented with warmth of sentiment, in a simple style; and nothing
is more likely to render literature enduring.
Another trait of good literature exemplified by the Bible is
breadth. Take, for example, the story of Jacob, the parable of
the Prodigal Son, or St Paul's speech on Mars' hill. Only the
essentials are given. There is no petty and befogging detail.
The characters, the events, or the arguments stand out with clear-
ness, even with boldness, An inclusive and central effect is
produced with a few masterly strokes, so that the resulting im-
pression is one of conciseness and economy.
Closely associated with this quality of breadth is that of vigour.
The authors of the Bible have no time nor mind to spend upon
the elaboration of curiosities, or upon minute and trifling points.
Every sentence, nay, every word, must count. The spirit which
animates the whole must inform every particle. There is no room
for delicate shadings; the issues are too momentous, the concerns
## p. 30 (#52) ##############################################
30 The Authorised Version and its Influence
too pressing, to admit of introducing anything that can be spared.
A volume is compressed into a page, a page into a line.
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
Jesus wept.
It would not be difficult to show how all these qualities flow
necessarily from the intense preoccupation of the Biblical authors
with matters affecting all they held dear, all their hopes and fears
with respect to their country, their family and themselves, at the
present and in a boundless future. Even when the phrases em-
ployed seem cool and measured, they represent a compressed
energy like that of a tightly coiled spring, tending to actuate
effort and struggle of many kinds, and to open out into arts and
civilisations of which the Hebrew never dreamed.
In a sense, then, it is the lyrical faculty that distinguishes the
Hebrew author. Yet he is not an Aeolian harp, delicately re-
sponsive to every zephyr of sentiment. His passions are few and
elemental, and, as we have seen, are prone to utter themselves
energetically. One is tempted to compare the great lyric, as it
has been called, of the Hebrew, with the effusions, or rather the
creations, of Sappho and Pindar. Yet Sappho and Pindar must
suffer in the comparison. Addison speaks of Horace and Pindar
as showing, when confronted with the Psalms, 'an absurdity and
confusion of style,' and 'a comparative poverty of imagination. '
As for Sappho, her longest extant production, while intense,
shows, in conjunction with the shorter fragments, that her deeper
emotion is limited in range, and, because of this limitation, and
the tropical fervour displayed, is less universal in its appeal than
the best lyrical outpourings of the Hebrew genius. These include,
not only the Psalms, but much of Job, the best of the prophets,
a good deal of the Apocalypse, occasional passages of St Paul,
and even parts of the narrative books, especially those which
report the utterances of notable persons.
It has been asserted that the Hebrews of the Old Testament
were incapable of producing either drama or fiction, and, one
might add, the leisurely developments of the epic. This is only
another way of affirming their lyrical intensity and preoccupation.
The destruction of Sennacherib's host is related with exultation,
and the historian of Exodus rejoices over the destruction of the
Egyptians in the Red sea. He is no more dispassionate than Tacitus
in excoriating Nero, or Joinville in his devotion to St Louis. Events
are never displayed in that 'dry light' so dear, as they supposed,
6
## p. 31 (#53) ##############################################
Character of the Bible
31
to Heraclitus and Francis Bacon. There are always postulates
which nothing could induce the writer to discard. There is always
a presumption in favour of monotheism, of God's protecting
or punitive care for the people of Israel, of their eventual de-
liverance and full entrance upon their divinely ordained mission.
The poet or prophet could never be brought to admit that there
might be gods many, nor that the Hebrew people were not fore-
ordained to pre-eminence over Philistines and Assyrians.
But this egoism, this racial pride, which manifest themselves
by a strong colouring and a decided tone, and which are at the
furthest possible remove from scientific indifferentism, do not
prevent the Bible from possessing a universality which has placed
it at the foundation, or the head, or both, of all modern literatures.
There are several reasons for this. Every one is interested in the
origin of the world and of man. It may be urged that no other
literature gives so plain and coherent an account of these origins,
and of the early history of mankind, as the book of Genesis. Next,
the Bible emphasises the conception that all nations are of one
blood, and that all men are brethren, since their Father is one.
This, in satisfying the social instinct, has tended more and more
to draw tribe to tribe, and kingdom to kingdom, as well as
individual to individual, and, indirectly, has appealed to national
and personal ambition. Thirdly, the morality of the Bible, even
where it takes the form of statutory enactments, keeps in view the
interests of individual happiness and social well-being. Fourthly,
the Hebrew race is presented as, in some sort, the prototype, or
the beneficent elder brother, of all other races and nationalities,
so that any of its experiences are likely to find a parallel in
subsequent history, or even to help in making subsequent history.
Fifthly, the future of mankind is regarded in the Bible as bound
up with the general acceptance of Hebrew principles and ideals.
Sixthly, the utmost fulness of individual life is represented as
conditional upon the acceptance of that God who first distinctly
revealed Himself to the Hebrews, upon obedience to Him and
upon spiritual union with Him. With this is associated the
Messianic hope of a Deliverer, who, greater than His brethren,
yet even as they, should serve to bring God down to man, and
lift man up to God. These, perhaps, are reasons enough why,
notwithstanding the lyric note which is everywhere heard through-
out the Bible, it possesses also a character of universality, and,
one might also say, of impersonality.
