No More Learning

259 (#283) ############################################

Hudibras and Hudibrastic Verse
259
'Naso Scarronomimus,' the writer of Ovidius Exulans, can scarcely
persuade the sorry tit of his humour to move for all his thwackings,
and even Alexander Radcliffe, a captain, an inns-of-court-man and
a poet, who, in The Ramble, An Anti-Heroic Poem, gave proof of
a rough vigour and freshness, fails to arouse a laugh by his Ovid
Travestie. To send Ulysses to Scotland as a volunteer, for the
suppression of rebellion, and to leave him loitering at an inn on the
homeward road, is an artifice which no literary fashion can justify.
In truth, the taste of the dying seventeenth century was not our
taste, and we can only wonder at the indiscretion of our ancestors.
Meanwhile, Samuel Butler had discovered in Hudibras the real
purpose of burlesque? If Scarron had done nothing else than to
inspire, at a distance, this work of genius, we should still owe him
a debt of gratitude. It was not for Butler to ridicule the ancient
mythologies; he saw before his eyes the follies and pretensions
of his own time and country awaiting castigation. And so, he
turned the travesty magnificently to the uses of satire. He
employed the artifices of contrast and anachronism beloved by
the imitators of Scarron to exhibit in the clear light of absurdity
the hypocrisy and meanness of presbyterians. He, too, expressed
the high in terms of the low.
he low. His work is the masterpiece
of its kind, unique and incomparable. It is idle to praise its
technical perfection. The resource and ingenuity of the author's
rimes, the tireless exuberance of his wit, his easy movement, his
bold extravagance are qualities unmatched elsewhere in literature.
Nor does his wisdom lag behind his wit. He concentrates into
aphorisms the fruit of his keen observation with so happy a skill
that a great part of his work has passed into the possession of all
Englishmen. Thousands quote him with assurance who have
never turned the pages of Hudibras, who would care not a fig
for his fable or his satire, even if they understood them. And,
though he won instant acceptance, he defied imitation. When he
had fashioned his masterpiece, he broke the mould; and, for that
very reason, perhaps, he became the prey of the parodists.
There is nothing that looks so easy as perfection, and the
coffeehouse poets, easily beguiled, thought it no shame to express
themselves and their politics in Hudibrastic verse. If they could
not rival the master, they could at least pretend to mimicry in
halting octosyllables. The boldest of them all was Ned Ward, who
combined the crafts of publican and poet. Born in Oxfordshire in
1667, he was, says his biographer, ‘of low extraction and little
1 Cf. ante, vol. VIII, chap. Ir.
17--2


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260 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
education. Whatever his extraction may have been, he cleverly
picked up his knowledge of letters as he went along. He did not
scruple to call one of his books Vulgus Britannicus, and he be-
lieved in the singularity of 'an Egyptian Magi. ' In his youth, he
had travelled in the West Indies, a fact commemorated by Pope,
'or shipp'd with Ward to Ape and Monkey Lands. ' But he early
settled to the professions which suited him best. His first experi-
ment in inn-keeping was made in Moorfields. He presently moved
to Fulwood rents, where he opened a punch-shop and tavern, “but in
a genteel way,' says Giles Jacob, “and with his wit, humour, and good
liquor, has afforded his guests pleasurable entertainment. ' Whatever
he did was, doubtless, done in a 'genteel way,' and the guests who
found pleasure in his entertainment were, one and all, sound tories
and high churchmen. A big, burly man, he showed a practical faith
in his own ale and his own punch, and, while he gossiped at the
fireside with his clients, never let a day pass without a verse :
So Ned, divided, writes and brews,
To try if darling gain accrues
More from his Mash-Tub than his Muse.
His mash-tub had the better of it. Not only did it fill his pocket;
it did not put him into the pillory. Twice, for his muse's sake, he
faced the angry mob at the Royal Exchange and at Charing Cross.
‘As thick as eggs at Ward in pillory,' says Pope; but his humour
carried him safely through the vicissitudes of politics, and he died
at his tavern, a prosperous potman and scurrile poet, in 1731.
He was a journalist in verse. His Hudibras Redivivus is a
gazette in rime, which was inspired by the moment, and was
published in parts. The ingenious Ward begins his preface with
an apology. "Tho' I have made bold,' he says, 'to borrow a Title
from one of the best poems that ever was published in the English
Tongue-yet I would not have the world expect me such a wizard
as to conjure up the spirit of the inimitable Butler. He need not
have been in doubt. He was no wizard, but a pedestrian jogtrot
writer of doggerel, whom criticism could not affright nor opposition
baulk. Yet his Hudibras is a wonderful achievement. Its facile
fluent ease marks the versifier who could write two hundred lines
standing on one foot. His language is common enough. Neither
Brown nor Motteux surpasses him in knowledge of the slang which
was heard in the tavern or at the street corner. Had he lived to-
day, he might have been an ornament of the sporting press. Living
when he did, he supported the cause of church and state in such
couplets as jingled in the brain, and tripped readily to the tongue.


## p. 261 (#285) ############################################

Ned Ward
261
For popular government he had a hearty contempt :
a
For he that will oblige the throng,
Must ne'er hold one opinion long,
But turn his doctrine and his creed,
As often as the Cause has need.
Among those upon whom he poured out his contempt are 'prophet
Dan' with 'the scoundrel Freedom of his Pen,' all whigs and all
dissenters. He believed, like an eminent statesman, that the
one object of the whigs was to make themselves ‘masters for life'
of England and all that it contained :
A man of sense, with half an Eye,
(Says he) may easily descry,
Thro' all their conscientious Cant,
What in reality they want;
Which is, believe me, in a word,
All that the Kingdom can afford.
Compromise he hated, and impartiality. He professed a deep
distrust of moderation, which was no better in his eye than a
‘modish cant;' with which fools disguise 'their spite, their venom,
and their lies. ' The book is tedious in its facility. It weighs upon
the reader's spirit with the heaviness of all dead controversies.
Even where he protests against the debtors' prison, where
men for poverty alone
Must wear these doublets made of stone,
he wins your reluctant approval. He is at his best when he describes
the taverns and shops of the town, their picturesque signs, and
the strange characters who throng the streets, the campaign
wenches and the ale-wives, the lame mumpers and the disabled
seamen. Here, he spoke with an authority which none of his
colleagues in Grub street could rival. If he had but a casual
acquaintance with the English tongue, he knew London and its
slang like the tavern keeper that he was. Whatever were his
shortcomings, his industry was prodigious. Vulgus Britannicus
rivalled his Hudibras in dulness and prolixity. The Republican
Procession, in which, among others, he ridicules Marlborough,
'a great Pretender to the trick of State,' is merry only on the
title-page. He poured forth broadsides, satires, prose and verse
with an equal hand. Impartially, he sang the praises of a Derby-
Ale-House and the New Tunbridge Wells at Islington. The love
of good living and high principles breathes in all that he wrote.
The pity is that a sound inspiration found so poor and graceless
an expression. Now and then, he could sing a song in the true


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262 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
Rabelaisian strain, as in his Wine and Wisdom: or the Tipling
Philosophers:
Wise Thales the Father of all
The Greek Philosophicall Crew,
Ere he gaz'd at the Heavens, would call
For a chirruping Bottle or two.
In fifty stanzas, he thus extolled what was, assuredly, the more
profitable of his two trades, and, for the moment, endowed his
doggerel with a rollicking sincerity.
It is, as has been said, by his sketches of London and its streets
that Ned Ward saves his Hudibrastic experiments from dulness,
and there, in the sights and sounds about him, he found the
material best suited to his talent. Whatever disloyalty the hacks
of Grub street may have shown to the English language, they were
constant in their devotion to the London, which was their world.
Ned Ward, in his London Spy, and Tom Brown, in his Amusements
Serious and Comical, have bequeathed to us a picture of the
town whose merit is wholly independent of literature. They are
the true descendants of Dekker and Nashe, from whom they are
separated by less than a century of time. Between them are many
centuries of style and thought. The London which Dekker and
Nashe describe is enwrapped in an atmosphere of dark mystery and
impenetrable gloom. They see the seven deadly sins ever before
them, and deplore the iniquity of their city with the solemn
eloquence of prophets. Satire is their lightest weapon. They
condemn even where they admire. It is in no spirit of flippancy
that Dekker denounces the cruelty of this ‘now once-againe New-
reared-Troy. ' Nashe's voice is the voice of a sincerely repentant
sinner. 'London,' he cries, 'lay off thy gorgeous attire and cast
downe thy selfe before God in contrition and prayer, least hee cast
thee downe in his indignation into hell-fire. '
Ned Ward and Tom Brown could not look upon the life about
them with the grave eyes of their predecessors. It was not for
them to be censorious or to hope for better things. If only the
city of their habitation were a place of pleasant resort, they cared
not for its morals. And they wrote of it in the easy style of
the trained reporter. Their temperament in no sense diminishes
the value of their sketch. They have shown us a London infinitely
more supple, infinitely commoner and, at the same time, far closer
to our own than the London of Dekker and Nashe. The cockney
with his nimbler wit and paltrier ideals had intervened, and fixed for
all time certain lineaments of the city. No longer is it dominated


## p. 263 (#287) ############################################

The London Spy.
Tom Brown 263
2
a
>
by gallant or beau or gull. Those who throng the taverns of the
time are either impostors, such as Radcliffe paints in The Ramble,
or mere citizens meanly ambitious of cutting a dash. In brief, it
seems perfectly consonant with the prevailing manners that Ned
Ward should keep an ale-house, or that Motteux, the translator of
Rabelais, should desert literature for the selling of China goods.
The London Spy is, undoubtedly, Ward's masterpiece. After
two centuries, it still keeps the fresh stamp of truth. Its design,
if design it may be called, is of the simplest. A citizen, who,
'after a tedious confinement in a country Hutt,' breaking loose from
'the scholar's gaol, his study,' revisits London. There he meets an old
schoolfellow, who shows him the sights, and especially the taverns,
of the town. It is a Gulls Horn-book of another age, written with
a plain simplicity, and with scarce a touch of satire. The two friends
range from Billingsgate, where they observe the 'oars' and ‘scullers,'
who tout by the waterside, and note 'the stink of sprats and the
unteneable clamours of the wrangling society,' to Hummun’sTurkish
bath. They wander from the Quaker's tavern in Fish lane to
that hideous inferno the Poultry compter, from the Wits' coffee-
house, where the cockney sketches for his friend a character of the
modern poets, to Bartholomew Fair, now stripped of its glory. By
the way, they encounter many strange personages, such as the
highwayman, who has good friends in Newgate,' and is 'well
acquainted with the ostlers about Bishopsgate and Smithfield, and
gains from them intelligence of what booties go out that are
worth attempting. The book is written with a directness and
simplicity which command belief, and ends, as in duty bound,
with a description of the death and funeral of Dryden, who was
the master of them all, and who impressed his laws upon his liege
subjects, like the dictator that he was.
Tom Brown followed hard upon the heels of Ned Ward, and,
in his Amusements Serious and Comical Calculated for the
Meridian of London, pictured the London that he saw, with less
truth than Ward, and greater wit. London he recognises to be
.
a world by itself, and he imagines 'what an Indian would think
of such a motley herd of people, thus anticipating Macaulay’s
imagined New Zealander. He sketches the city, and those whom
he and his Indian encounter-the alderman, the usurer, the broker
and the rest—with a good-humoured enthusiasm. For him, the
playhouse is ‘an enchanted island. When they walk in the Mall,
'
he persuades his Indian to exclaim 'I never beheld in my life so
great a flight of birds. ' Much of the book is the comedy of the


## p. 264 (#288) ############################################

264 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
age translated into a light-fingered prose. Tom Brown finds it as
bard as Ned Ward finds it to keep away from the taverns and
gaming-houses, and, in his exposure of the many rascals who lay in
waiting for the unwary traveller, he sets a fashion speedily followed
in The Cheats of London and a vast library of similar chapbooks.
He was, in truth, well fitted by character and training to do the
work of Grub street. Educated at Christ Church, he won an
instant fame by a pleasant trick of writing Latin verse, and it is
said that many pieces were extant of his composition, bearing
other names. Even in his youth, his cynic temper preferred money to
fame, and no sooner had he left the university for London than he
was ready to hire himself out to the highest bidder. Nothing came
amiss to his facile brain. To show his touch with the classics, he
translated Persius and mimicked Horace. The example of Rabelais
was ever before him, and he followed John Phillips in imitating the
prognostications of Pantagruel. His epigrams, in Latin or English,
are rather coarse than witty. The best of his work is journalism,
illuminated always by the light of scholarship. There is no topic
so bare that he will not embroider it with tags from the classics.
His favourite artifice was to indite letters from the dead to the
living, an artifice which gave him the chance to ridicule ‘Tom'
D'Urfey, ‘Joe' Harris the player, and even the great Dryden himself.
The death of ‘tbe gallant Dundee' inspired him to imitate Cowley's
pindarics, though, as he said himself, he was ill acquainted with
that kind of writing. He suffered at once from excessive praise
and ill-deserved blame. “Without partiality, we may say,' wrote
Sam Briscoe, his bookseller, ‘for satyrical Prose or Verse, Mr Brown
was not inferior to Petronius, Martial, or any other of the witty
ancients. ' These were his models, truly; but his works testify how
far he fell short of their performance. On the other hand, a grave
injustice was done to him, as it has been to many another, by the
thoughtless, who fathered upon him ‘all the pamphlets good and bad,
Lampoons, Trips, London Spies, and the like insignificant Trifles. '
His lively humour won him the name of 'Tom Brown the facetious'
and the epithet, not wholly complimentary, still clings to him.
The enemy, who said of him that he had less the Spirit of a Gentle-
man than the rest, and more of a Scholar,' spiced his malice with
the truth. What, indeed, had a gentleman to make in Grub
street? However, with all his faults, Tom Brown was a real man of
letters, who, had he not been 'too lazy in his temper to write much
would have builded himself a better monument. ' In character, he
was careless and independent. He did his best to live by his pen,


## p. 265 (#289) ############################################

The New Art of Translation 265
and, when his pen failed him, he turned pedagogue. At no time
would he rely upon the caprices of a patron. 'I am one of the first
of the Suburban class,' he boasted, 'that has ventur'd out without
making an application to a nobleman's porter, and tiring him out
with showing him his master's name. ' For the rest, he wrote the
famous epigram upon Dr Fell, and died, at last, repentant and
absolved. He confessed on his death-bed that he had 'complied
too much with the Libertinism of the time,' and extorted a promise
from his bookseller, who speedily went back upon his word, to
expunge 'all prophane, undecent passages' from his works, when
he came to reprint them.
The career of Tom Brown is characteristic of Grub street and
of his age. From one-incomparably the best-you may learn all.
But, by a curious irony, neither poverty nor the bottle impaired
the tireless industry of the hacks. Though the standard of style
which they set up for themselves was not a high one, they never
feared to put their talent to the test. They fought for causes
good or evil with a kind of ferocity. None of them disdained the
weapons of the wits. We have seen how Ned Ward expressed his
opinions and his prejudices in Hudibrastic verse. The gathered
pamphlets of Roger L'Estrange, written, for the most part, in
defence of himself and the high church party, would fill a shelf.
John Phillips, whom Milton trained for wiser purposes, disgraced
himself for ever by selling a hireling pen to Titus Oates. If there
is nothing so transient as dead controversy, it must yet be admitted
that these writers were artists in their own style. Their skill in
invective, their assumption of passionate conviction, their out-
spoken contempt for the enemy of the moment, cannot but claim
our admiration. But in nothing did they display their marvellous
energy so clearly as in the task of translation. Here, again, they
recall the enterprise of the Elizabethans. They do not challenge
comparison with their predecessors. They recognised that each
age must look at the classics through its own eyes. They knew,
also, that the France and Spain of their time had provided a
treasure-house of masterpieces, which their skill and knowledge
could unlock. And, when they had taken these masterpieces from
their treasure-house, they did not scruple to trick them out in
the familiar, parti-coloured style of their own Grub street. It
seems, indeed, as though the fashion of translation changed as
rapidly as the fashion of hats and coats. Though the Plutarch
of North and Holland, the Montaigne of Florio, the Seneca of
Lodge were less than a century old, they appeared fantastic, if not


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266 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
unintelligible, to the contemporaries of Dryden. The 'several
hands,' the 'persons of quality,' who presumed to do again the tasks
valiantly performed by their grandsires, aimed less at a splendour
of effect than at a uniform neatness. The one licence they permitted
themselves, as we shall see, was an incorrigible licence of slang.
They thought that their habit of speech was perfectly suited to the
heroes and gods of antiquity. They clipped their words in trans-
lating the classics, as they clipped them in an insolent pamphlet.
They possessed not the smallest sense of propriety, and believed
that there was no writer, ancient or modern, whose meaning could
not be adequately expressed in their vernacular. Thus, it mattered
not who gazed in their mirror; it gave back always the same
reflection. Their theory of translation was, of course, the theory
of Dryden, who marshalled them for the fray. "The Qualification
of a Translator worth reading,' said he, ‘must be a Mastery of the
Language he translates out of, and that he translates into; but if a
deficiencie be allowed in either, it is in the Original. ' And it was
in the original, were it Latin or Greek, that many of them were
deficient. Like the Elizabethans, they, too, sought what help they
could find in French versions of their author. Nor was it for them
to disobey Dryden's second injunction. ‘A Translator,' wrote the
master, 'that would write with any force or spirit of an Original,
must never dwell on the words of an author. ' So lightly did they
dwell upon their authors' words, that, in many specimens, it is not
easy to distinguish between translation and burlesque.
By the preferences of these writers we come to know the taste of
the booksellers and of the town. They were not animated by the spirit
of adventure or by the ambition of instructing kings and nobles in
high policy, which moved the Elizabethans. Their sole object was to
profit themselves by pleasing the public. Petronius, to whom they
owed a special allegiance, was easily taught to speak their dialect.
The first version we owe to William Burnaby and another hand. In
the second, Tom Brown, captain Ayloffe and others are said to have
given their aid, though it is not clear what they contributed, and
a comparison of the two by no means justifies the bookseller's claim
that the second is ‘wholly new. ' Though much of Petronius is lost
in the process of translation, the work is done with a sympathy and
an energy which we expect from the authentic descendants of
Ascyltus and Eumolpus. Here is no dwelling on the words of the
author. The book may be read from beginning to end, as though it
were an independent and original romance. The version of Lucian
by several eminent bands displays precisely the same qualities.


## p. 267 (#291) ############################################

John Phillips
267
Deprived of its atmosphere, it wears the aspect of an English
work. The ‘eminent hands’—
Tom Brown, John Phillips, Walter
Moyle and the rest—handled the English tongue with ease and
familiarity, and, if they owed more to the French of d’Ablancourt
than to the Greek of Lucian, they have had no difficulty in trans-
posing their author into the guise of their own place and time. The
work, done under Dryden's eye, was journey-work, if you will, and
defaced by a tone of commonness. But it has a character which
removes it by many leagues from the crib, and Dryden, no doubt,
speaks truth when he places the translators among the finer spirits
of the age. ” Walter Moyle and Sir Henry Sheeres deserve whatever
praise he could give them, but let it not be forgotten that it is
the facetious Tom Brown, whom Dryden could not mention with
honour, that bore the brunt of the work.
John Phillips, whose travesties have already been mentioned,
was eminent among the translators of the time. He took his share
in Englishing Lucian and Plutarch, and the folios to which he put
his name were neither few nor slight. He was bred in classical
learning by his uncle John Milton, whose influence he early
shook off. For many years, he seems to have gained his liveli-
hood by his pen, and was as versatile as he was industrious.
What Aubrey calls his ‘jiggish phancy' inspired him to the
making of almanacks, the inditing of satires and to the conduct
of political controversy. A loyal disciple of Rabelais, he composed
a sermon with a passage from Gargantua for his text, and embraced
the doctrine of Pantagruel with a constant heart. His policy shifted
with the convenience of the hour. He approached Cromwell cap
in hand when it suited him, and afterwards, in a travesty, set the
Protector in hell. He shouted for the king at the restoration, and
hailed the infamous Oates as the saviour of his country.
He
naturally incurred the hatred of Anthony à Wood, both for his
own sake and on account of Milton, that villainous leading
incendiary. But, whatever blots there may have been upon his
honour, he was tireless in industry. He died, so to say, with
a pen in his hand. At seventy years of age, he is described by
Dunton as a gentleman of good learning, and well born; and will
write you a design off in a very little time, if the gout or claret
does not stop him. ' For many years, he edited a grave periodical,
The Present State of Europe, and, in the compass and extent of
bis translations, he was a near rival to Philemon Holland. To
provide two vast folios in a year is a triumph of persistence, if
no other merit be claimed for it.


## p. 268 (#292) ############################################

268 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
-
And John Phillips's versions are always workmanlike. La Cal-
prenède's Pharamond was once, no doubt, 'a fam'd romance,'
though it is no more likely to find readers today than Madeleine de
Scudery's Almahide, or The Captive Queen; and Phillips's task, in
Englishing both, was faithfully performed. His chief lack is a lack of
distinction. There is not a page that most of the other hacks might
not have written with equal ease. For ease is its chief characteristic
- ease of phrase, ease of movement. With the same nonchalance,
he Englished Tavernier's Voyages in the East, Ludolphus’s History
of Aethiopia, Grelot’s Voyage to Constantinople and many
another forgotten work of travel or fiction. Besides these monu-
ments of energy, a version of Scarron's Typhon seems but
the solace of a summer's afternoon. None of these, as we have
said, bears the sole and individual mark of Phillips's talent.
There is one book-his translation of Don Quixote—which, for
good or evil, is all his own. Not even Ned Ward, whose inappro-
priate courage persuaded him to turn the masterpiece of Cervantes
into Hudibrastic verse, committed so great an outrage on a noble
original as did John Phillips when he made The History of the most
Renowned Don Quixote English 'according to the humour of our
Modern Language. It is difficult to describe this rash experiment.
'
Imagine Hamlet turned into the lingo of the music hall, and fitted
with occasional songs and dances, and you will have a faint
impression of Phillips's impropriety. Little as he respected his
author, he respected still less the time and place of his incom-
parable romance. He has reduced to the level of his own Grub
street the style and manner of Cervantes. His work is less a
translation than a travesty. He has treated Don Quixote as
Scarron treated the Aeneid. He has composed a debased fantasia
of his own upon a wellknown and beautiful theme. In other
words, he has employed an imagery as vulgar as the slang of the
tavern can make it. Rosinante, in his eyes, is a 'Dover post-horse,'
the inn keeper is 'as true a thief as ever sung psalm at Tyburn. '
The fish which Don Quixote has for his supper is ‘so ill-dress’d
as if it had been cook'd in Ram Alley or White-Fryers. ' Such
humour as anachronism will afford may be found on every page,
and, as though it were not enough to create a confusion of time,
Phillips never ceases to confound the Spain of the age of Cervantes
with the England of his own. The sail of the windmill throws the
knight sprawling, says he, 'at the distance of more yards than
would have measured Long Megg of Lincoln a gown and petticoat. '
He likens the lovers to 'young citizens and their wives in an Epsom


## p. 269 (#293) ############################################

John Phillips's Don Quixote
269
coach'; in his version, Tolosa masquerades as Betty, “the daughter
of a Cobbler in Southwark, that kept a stall under a Chandler's
shop in Kent street'; and, by way of a crowning absurdity, the lady
tells Don Ferdinand 'to read Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest. '
ow, he merely hints at a false comparison, as when he says that
Cardenio held his Lucinda 'as the Lobster held the Hair upon
Salisbury Plain. ' Now, he seems to exhaust his ingenuity in a
single passage. When the inn keeper tells Don Quixote that he,
too, had been a knight errant, he boasts, in Phillips's travesty, how
he himself had pursu'd the same Chace of Honour in his youth, travelling
through all parts of the World in search of bold Adventures; to which
purpose he had left no corner unvisited of the King's Bench Rules, the
Skulking Holes of Alsatia, the Academy of the Fleet, the Colledge of New-
gate, the Parliews of Turnbull, and Pickt Hatch, the Bordellos of St Giles's,
Banstead-Downs, Newmarket-Heath: . . . not a Publick Bowling Green
where he had not exercis'd his heels; nor an Execution-crowd, nor a Hedge-
Tavern, where he had not employ'd his pauming, topping, cogging fingers.
:
This is monumental, but it is not Cervantes. And by how many
leagues is it removed from the splendid simplicity of Shelton!
Worse still, the ingenious Phillips makes Don Quixote an
occasion for setting forth his preferences and his animosities. He
packs his pages with modern instances. He drags in Hobbes and
the Protector by the heels; nor does he lose a chance of insulting
Milton, to whom he owed such scholarship as he possessed. Thus
it is that Don Diego di Miranda describes his son's attainments:
he is a great admirer of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius—but as for the modern
poets he allows very few to be worth a straw; among the rest he has a
particular Peek against Du Bartas, and Paradise Lost, which he says has
neither Rhime nor Reason.
To defend such a work as Phillips's Don Quixote is not easy.
There is a flippant irreverence in its jests and gibes which criticism
is forced to condemn. No man has a right thus licentiously to
transform a masterpiece of literature. The very readiness with
which a writer of burlesque can achieve a laugh should warn him
that the laugh is not worth achievement. Yet, when all is said that
can be said in dispraise, we cannot but acknowledge the supreme
skill with which Phillips has performed his task. His zest never
flags, his imagery never grows tired. On every page he has a
fresh, if perverse, simile. With untiring energy, he illustrates
Cervantes from the life of the taverns which he frequented. The
vigour and levity of his style are amazing; his understanding of
the original is seldom at fault, and, though it may be said that the


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270 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
book should never have been done, it must be added that it is done
exceedingly well. For, if it gives us a very blurred picture of
Don Quixote, it presents the clear image of the most flippant,
restless and debauched mind of an age which ill understood the
punctilio of life or letters.
Peter Motteux, a fitting companion in literature for John
Phillips, differed widely from him in blood and breeding. His
youthful steps were not encouraged by a great poet. Thrown
early upon a country whose language he did not understand, he
was compelled to make a double conquest, first of a speech
which was not his own, and then of the town in which he was an
enforced exile. Born in 1663 at Rouen, he came to England when
the edict of Nantes was revoked, and speedily found a place among
English men of letters. So swift a change of nationality is almost
without parallel in the history of literature. The author of
Gramont is no near rival, since he was but four when he was
carried to France, and a Frenchman he remained, in all save blood,
till the end. Motteux's achievement was far more wonderful.
He left France at the age of twenty-two, probably with no training
either in English or in literature, and, within a few years, he was
writing with precisely the same accent as any other haunter of the
coffeehouses. In the preface to his Rabelais, he fears that he has
'not given his Author the graces of the English language in every
place,' and protests that he has not followed the example of
Lucullus, who wrote a book in Greek and scattered some false
Greek in it, to let the world know it was not written by a Greek.
Motteux was not guilty of a similar indiscretion. What errors may
be found in his diction, he assures us, have crept in without his
intent. He need have had no fear, nor have offered his reader any
apology. Motteux had many faults. Gallicism was not among
thein. He compared himself, proudly enough, with Livius Andro-
nicus, a Greek, and Terence, a Carthaginian, who chose Latin
for their tongue, and if he could not vie with them in purity
of style, he surpassed them, doubtless, in fluency. There was
no task to which he did not turn a ready hand. He wrote
plays, after the prescribed model, and without the smallest
distinction. He furnished the plays of others with doggerel
prologues. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, for which Le
Mercure Galant of his own land served as a model, and
was not refused the assistance of the great. Congreve and Prior
both condescend to his pages, and, as it was Dryden under whose
banner he fought, so it is the influence of Dryden which governs


## p. 271 (#295) ############################################

6
Motteux and his Translation of Rabelais 271
his journal. Frenchman though he was, he differs little enough from
his neighbours in Grub street. He might sign their works or they
his without much detriment to either side. Nevertheless, he played
a part in the literary history of his time. If he won the approval
of Dryden and Steele, he was deemed worthy the rancour of Pope,
who celebrates him as a bore,
Talkers I've learned to bear, Motteux I knew,
and, in The Art of Sinking, puts him among the eels, 'obscene
authors that wrap themselves up in their own mud, but are
mighty nimble and pert.
' And then, to prove an astonishing
adaptability, Motteux turned an honest tradesman, and sold
China and Japan wares 'cheap for a quick return. ' He did not
return to the craft of letters, and, after six years of honourable
dealing, died a mysterious and shameful death.
Had it not been for his translation of Rabelais, Motteux’s
name would not have outlived this crowning scandal. His trans-
lation gives him a place in history. The work has many faults.
It is 'nimble and pert,' like its author, and Rabelais himself
was never for a moment either pert or nimble. A still worse
fault is its diffuseness, a fault of which Motteux appears to have
been wholly unconscious. His style is as far from the Latin gravity
of the original as from the humourous eloquence of Sir Thomas
Urquhart. He is able neither to represent the one nor to carry on
the tradition of the other. Between him and the knight of Cromarty
there is not merely the difference which separates the English of
Elizabeth (for Urquhart was a belated Tudor) from the English
of Dutch William, but the difference which parts an erudite and
curious Scots pedant from the trivial, boisterous frequenter of
Will's. Motteux's phrase is simple to tawdriness. He drags
Rabelais down to his own level, and in nothing does he prove
his lack of taste so clearly as in his use of slang. Now, slang, to
the translator of Rabelais, is indispensable. The romance of
Pantagruel and Panurge cannot be turned out of its own into
any other tongue save by an artist in strange words. Urquhart
was perfectly equipped for the task, because his interest in oddly
coloured speech never tired, and because, when he was himself
at a loss, he made a liberal use of Cotgrave's Dictionary. Thus
it was that his slang had ever a literary flavour; it had already
won the freedom of humane letters; the dust of the street corner
was not thick upon it. Motteux’s slang was of another kind. It
lacked literary association. The quickwitted Frenchman had
.
picked it up in the gutter or the tavern; he had caught it fresh


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272 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
minted from the vulgar brains of his friends; and, though it was
lively enough to gain an instant laugh, it long since lost its humour.
Motteux makes free and frank acknowledgment of the source of
his common talk, as he calls it.
'Far be it from me,' he writes, ‘for all this to value myself upon hitting
the Words of Cant, in which my drolling Author is so luxuriant, for though
such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself
unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much Gibberish and Billingsgate
trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking myself as an Italian
Cardinal said on another account. . . Where the devil didst thon make up all
these fripperies ? '
He made them up in Grub street; and, when he had contrived
them, they were ill suited to his purpose.
The only literary sources from which he gathered his 'words
of Cant' were the travesties. He was no better able than John
Phillips to escape the anachronisms of Cotton and Radcliffe.
Though he had a finer restraint than the rascal who burlesqued
Don Quixote, he could not forbear to treat the text of Rabelais
with the same kind of wantonness. His version is full of allusions
to his own time, which are wholly out of place in the Englishing
of a masterpiece of the sixteenth century, and which today no man
may understand. Nothing can be more impertinent than to inter-
rupt the narrative of Rabelais with so foolish a catchword as 'his
name's Twyford. ' To translate maitre d'eschole by 'the Busby of
the place’ is wofully to misunderstand the business of a translator.
Still less excuse has Motteux, when, instead of the simple words
'at dawn,' he indulges his fancy thus extravagantly: 'when day,
peeping in the East, made the Sky turn from Black to Red, like
a boiling Lobster. The fact that he conveyed the image from
Hudibras, where it was appropriate, to Rabelais, where it is a
tiresome excrescence, does but heighten his sin. On every page,
he affronts the reader. He calls Panurge a 'sweet babe'; like the
journalist that he was, he clips 'doctor' into 'doc. ' Worse still,
he can find no better equivalent for c'est tout ung than 'it's
all one to Frank. ' Thus, he destroys the illusion of Rabelais,
and, as though that were not enough, he drags in by the heels
all the thievish gibberish that he could pick up in the purlieus of
Newgate in Newgate's heyday.
For Roger L'Estrange, the work of translation was but a
profitable interlude in a busy, active life? He was by tempera-
ment a fighter ; by habit, a man of affairs. No man loved the
1 Cf. as to Roger L'Estrange's work as a pamphleteer and journalist, ante, pp. 2–4.


## p. 273 (#297) ############################################

Roger L'Estrange as a Translator 273
fray better than he; none defended his opinions more bravely.
For the principles of an aristocratic toryism, which he advocated
fiercely and consistently, he suffered exile and imprisonment.
The highest reward, which he obtained for his loyalty to the king,
was to be appointed some years after the restoration surveyor of
the imprimery' and one of the licensers of the press. ' To the
end of his long life, therefore, it was to his pen alone that he could
trust, and, though controversy was most to his taste, he fell to
translating with the same brisk energy which made him formidable
as a pamphleteer. It was for money, of course, that he wrote his
many lively versions ; he was paid for his Josephus at so much
a sheet, as he might be paid today; but he could prove his
preferences by his selection of authors, and a preface always gave
him an opportunity of publishing his views. Thus, the face of
the controversialist is always seen through the mask of the
translator. In his Colloquies of Erasmus, for instance, he roundly
states that he made choice of this piece and subject for his own
sake and not for the readers'. Writing at the time of the popish
plot, and with a full consciousness of the suspicion that fell upon
him, he makes clear his own position. 'Some will have the
Translator to be a Papist in Masquerade,' says he, 'for going so
far. Others again will have him to be too much of a Protestant,
because he will go no farther : so that he is crushed betwixt the
two Extremes, as they hang up Erasmus himself, betwixt Heaven
and Hell. ' In his preface to Seneca's Morals, he descends from
truth itself to his own experience with yet greater clarity. For
L'Estrange, though he spoke with another's voice, could still
advocate the causes which for him were never lost.
He did his work of translation with the utmost thoroughness.
He was the master of many tongues, and when, in Englishing
Greek, he used the French version, which lay at his hand, he was
very careful to compare the result with the original. But his chiefest
qualification for the task was his mastery of his own language.
Having spent fifty years in the service of letters, he had turned
our English speech into the ready instrument of his thought.
Whatever author he translated, he took him not only out of his
own tongue, but out of his own land. He made him, for the moment,
a true-born Englishman, speaking the slang of the moment with
the proper accent of the cockney. As we have said, there are
objections to this method. It is inevitable that all works, of what-
ever time or place, should wear the same aspect, when they have
undergone this equalising process. They cannot but lose much of
18
E. L. IX.
CH. X.


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274 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
their individual character if they are all brought to walk with
the same gait, to use the same gesture. When Nero 'looks big
upon disaster,' and 'carries it on at a huffing note,' the reader loses
sight of Rome and Judaea, and is instantly borne back to Gray's-
inn-gate or Little Britain. And the mere fact that L'Estrange
set upon all the works which he Englished this very stamp and
pattern of his own time, while it increased their momentary popu-
larity, prevents their general acceptance as classics. They are
translated not into English, but into the dialect of a particular
time and place, and thus, with happy exceptions, they leave
the work of interpretation to be done all over again. But
L'Estrange's method has one conspicuous merit. It removes all
signs of halting uncertainty. You read a version, composed in
accord with it, in the confidence that the idiom of the original will
never disturb you, that you may judge it not as the tortured
expression of a foreign tongue, but as a fresh and independent
experiment in style. Pepys, for instance, a critic of quick
intelligence, was not blind to the peculiar merit of L'Estrange,
thus fortunate in the appreciation of his contemporaries, who
saw and approved the end at which he aimed.
In the selection of his originals, L'Estrange displayed a true
catholicity. He turned easily from Bona's Guide to Eternity to
Tully's Offices. He took a hand in the translation of Terence and
Tacitus, and, by himself, was responsible for The Visions of Quevedo
and The Spanish Decameron. Far better than these are his
Select Colloquies out of Erasmus Roterodamus. The light touch
and merry conceit of the author are qualities after L'Estrange's
own heart. The original, moreover, being of a gay irony, was
perfectly suited to L'Estrange's licentious method. Here, he
could leave the word for the sense with a good heart; and, as
Erasmus wrote for all time, looking through the foibles of his
friends to the very nature of man, he wore, without difficulty,
the garb of an English man of the world. By a hundred happy
turns, such as 'spoken like a true tarpaulin' for orationem vere
nauticam, the translator produces the impression of a living book-
not the best of living books, truly, for there is sometimes a flippancy
of phrase in L'Estrange's version, which is not merely irksome in
itself, but wholly unwarranted by the text. However, L'Estrange
was no verbal copier' encumbered with so many difficulties at once,
that he could never disentangle himself from all. ' He kept his
freedom at the expense of propriety. Even so, he preserved a
mean which eluded most of his contemporaries. To compare his


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L'Estrange and his Originals 275
Colloquies with those done into English by Tom Brown is to
measure the distance between the scholar and the bookseller's
hack. When Brown put his hand to the Colloquies, he showed no
respect for Erasmus, little for himself. He declares that he
'keeps his Author still in sight'; but he has no scruple in making
his version ‘palatable to the English reader. ' So, he sprinkles the
text with the expletives of the hour, deems no absurdity too
bold, and hopes, for instance, to win readers by rendering nuptias
Mortis, opinor, cum Marte, by not that of death and the Cobbler,
I hope, nor of Bully-Bloody-Bones and Mother Damnable. ' Thus,
he too has produced, not a translation, but a travesty, and is
guilty of the same outrage which John Phillips committed upon
Don Quixote. L'Estrange had many faults ; he never sank to the
depth of Brown's ineptitude.
The work by which he is best known, and by which he best
deserves to be remembered, is his version of Aesop's Fables. His
language, here also, is the language of talk rather than of litera-
ture, yet, for the most part, he observes a strict economy of words,
and seldom commits the blunder of making his fables diffuse.
'A daw that had a mind to be sparkish,' says he; 'I had much rather
be knabbing of crusts,'his Country Mouse declares, 'without fear or
danger in my own little hole, than be mistress of the whole world
with perpetual cares and alarums. ' In a sensible essay upon fables
in general, he asserts that the foundations of knowledge and virtue
are laid in childhood, and, presently, with an inapposite humour,
makes his fables unfit for a child's comprehension. What child,
we wonder, would read further after being confronted by such
an opening as this: 'In days of old, when Horses spoke Greek
and Latin, and Asses made syllogisms'? The fault of taste is
doubled when it is committed in defiance of a necessary simplicity.
Yet, he sins not always, and his Aesop, stripped of its reflexions,'
still remains the best that we have. In Seneca's Morals and
The Works of Josephus, he was less happily inspired. In the
first place, he challenged comparison with the incomparably
better versions of Lodge; in the second, neither Seneca nor
Josephus gave the smallest scope for his peculiar humour : when
he was most himself, in their case he was furthest from excellence.
But, of his Josephus, it may, at least, be said that it was a marvellous
achievement for a man of eighty-six, beset, as he tells us, by
'frequent troubles, and by ill-health. Good or bad, it was a fitting
conclusion to a career of rare vigour and energy, the crowning
work of one whom Pepys found 'a man of fine conversation,' and
a
18-2


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276 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
whom even the grave Evelyn pronounced 'a person of excellent
parts. '
Charles Cotton, in his translations, set before himself the same
ideal as Roger L'Estrange. He hoped that his versions might have
the air of true originals. And certain it is that you may read them
without any thought of his texts. Though his style, too, errs,
now and again, on the side of the tavern, he sternly avoids the
excesses of slang, which soil the works of his contemporaries.
Moreover, he made a resolute attempt to keep close to the
sense of the authors whom he translated, and, here again, he
separated himself rigidly from the custom of his age. His versions
are made one and all from the French, and, within the limits of
this language, he permitted himself a great latitude of choice.
Corneille's Horace is among his works, and Du Vair's Moral
Philosophy of the Stoics. These he followed by Gerard's History
of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, and the admirable Commen-
taries of Blaise de Montluc. In this last, perhaps, his talent found
its worthiest expression. He bad a natural sympathy with the
original, and he translated it into an English that is both dignified
and appropriate. Narrative was in closer accord with his temper
than philosophical disquisition, and, though it is by his version of
Montaigne's Essays that he is principally remembered today, his
Commentaries of Montluc approach more nearly in style and
quality to what a translation should be.
In translating Montaigne, Cotton was at a disadvantage, of
which he himself was wholly unconscious. He followed in the
footsteps of a far greater adept in the difficult art, John Florio.