No More Learning

' 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


## p. 266 (#290) ############################################

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


## p. 270 (#294) ############################################

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


## p. 272 (#296) ############################################

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.


## p. 274 (#298) ############################################

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


## p. 275 (#299) ############################################

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


## p. 276 (#300) ############################################

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.
Florio had all the virtues, save accuracy. If his book fails to
represent the style of Montaigne, and not infrequently distorts his
meaning, it is none the less a piece of living prose. Perhaps, it
tells you more of Florio than of Montaigne ; but it has that enduring
quality, character, and it is unlikely that fashion will ever drive it
from the minds of admiring scholars. Cotton's version is of other
stuff. Though not always correct, though never close-knit as is
the original, it is more easily intelligible than Florio's, and gives,
may be, a clearer vision of the French. That, indeed, was Cotton's
purpose. “My design,' says he, ‘in attempting this translation was
to present my country with a true copy of a very brave original. '
Both translators use too many words for their purpose, Florio
because he delights in the mere sound of them, Cotton, because
he had not acquired the gift of concise expression, because he
did not always know how to discard the tiresome symbols which


## p. 277 (#301) ############################################

Charles Cotton and his Montaigne 277
6
encumber bis sentences as with pack-thread. Florio, on the one
hand, wrote like a fantastic, to whom embroideries were essential,
Cotton, on the other, wrote like a country gentleman, who, after
a day's fishing, turned an honest penny by the pursuits of scholar-
ship. The one lacks precision, the other distinction, and each man
will decide for himself which he prefers.
Charles Cotton, in truth, holds a place apart in the literary
history of his time. Though L'Estrange was born to an ancient
house in Norfolk, the strife of art and politics, the necessities of
his journals had driven him to London and the taverns. Cotton,
well as he knew London, remained still faithful to his dale in
Derbyshire. In Lamb's phrase, he 'smacked of the rough mag-
nanimity of the old English vein. ' It was in all sincerity that he
praised his beloved caves,
from Dog-star heats,
And hotter persecution safe retreats.
When poverty drove him to do the work of a hack, he did it
with what skill and spirit he might. If The Compleat Gamester
was unworthy his pen, his Planter's Manual is a pleasant and
practical little treatise. His verses have won the approval of
Coleridge and Lamb and Wordsworth, and his lines to his 'dear
and most worthy Friend, Mr Isaac Walton' remind us of Horace
and his Sabine farm:
A day without too bright a Beam,
A warm, but not a scorching Sun,
A Southern gale to curl the Stream,
And (master) half our work is done.
These four lines are worth the whole of Scarronides, and, doubtless,
they will be remembered when the translation of Montaigne has
faded utterly from the minds of men.
The most industrious and by no means the least distinguished
of the translators of his time was captain John Stevens. Who and
what he was we know not. There is no record of him or his
achievements, save on the title-pages of his many books. There is
no doubt that he did a signal service to English letters. It was
through his skill and learning that the history of Spain and
Spanish literature was made known to his countrymen. His
mere industry appals us. He translated nothing save the works
of Spaniards, and he accommodated his style to the style of his
originals with a variety which no other of his contemporaries
could match. Where a light and easy manner was required,
as by Quevedo, he knew how to give it, and, when he brought


## p. 278 (#302) ############################################

278 Writers of Burlesque and Translators
Mariana's History of Spain 'to speak English,' as he said, under
the auspices of the earl of Dorset, to whom it is dedicated, he did
it with a dignity and eloquence which befit the Muse of history.
The one cause of complaint which we have against him is that
he could not keep away from Shelton's Don Quixote, which
he 'revised and corrected' with a lavish hand. Nor does his
excuse better his ill-doing. He declares in a dedication that
Cervantes’s ‘successful masterpiece has not prov'd happy in its
translators, for though it has been made English twice the versions
have neither time been proportionable to the Beauty of the
Original. ' As to Shelton's work, he pronounces it ‘almost a literal
version,' and then complains that it is ‘in such unpolish'd language,
and with so many Mistakes, that there seem'd to be nothing left
but the outlines and rough Draught of this curious piece. So
Stevens took Shelton's masterpiece and amended it, bringing it,
it is true, far nearer to the original, and robbing it of what is of far
higher worth than accuracy, its style and character.
For the rest, Stevens touched nothing that he did not embellish.
Though he did not disdain romance, though we owe to his pen
Pablo de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper, and a collection of novels,
with the title The Spanish Libertines, his preference, or the
preference of his readers, was for history and travel. Sandoval's
History of Charles V followed The Spanish Rule of Trade to the
West Indies, written by Don Joseph de Veitia Linage. He took his
share in the English of a series of voyages, published in monthly
parts, thus making a link between the old method of publishing
and the practice of today. So far as we know, he was a translator
and a translator only. He seems to have played no part in the
life of his time. His dedications, couched in the terms of the
loftiest flattery, afford us little clue to his career. Perhaps, as
he inscribes his translation of The Portuguese Asia, with humble
adulation, to Catherine, queen dowager of England, he may have
professed the Catholic faith. But, by his works we know him, and
by his works alone, and they tell us that he did the journey-work
of translation with a sounder scholarship and with a more
various style than any of the men of letters, his contemporaries,
could boast.


## p. 279 (#303) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
BERKELEY AND CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY
THE period of English thought which followed Locke's death
was fruitful both in great writers and in important movements.
Locke's own influence was felt everywhere. His new way of ap-
proaching the subject, his freedom from the traditional technicalities
of the schools, and his application of his method to a wide range
of human interests, made philosophy count for more with reflective
writers generally, and determined the line of thought taken by
greater minds. Speculation turned mainly upon three problems
-the problem of knowledge, the problem of religion and the
problem of morality. The treatment of each problem led to
striking developments; and Locke's influence affected them all,
though in unequal degrees. The idealism of Berkeley followed
directly from his fundamental positions ; the leaders of the deists
professed themselves his disciples, though they arrived at con-
clusions different from his ; the work of the moralists was less
fully determined by his speculations, though his ethical views were,
perhaps, seldom far from their minds. In the present chapter,
this division of problems will be followed ; it will treat, in
suecession, of the metaphysicians, the deists and the moralists.
Most writers, indeed, did not limit their interests to a single
problem; and their place here will have to be determined by
a view of the permanent importance of their work in different
departments. Strict chronological order, also, to some extent,
will be sacrificed. In this way, consideration of the writings of
Samuel Clarke, for instance--although he was a prominent
figure in the whole philosophical movement, and one of the
earliest to attain éminence will be postponed till the last section
of the chapter.


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280 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
I. METAPHYSICIANS.
George Berkeley was born at Dysert castle, county Kilkenny,
Ireland, on 12 March 1685, and educated at Kilkenny school and
Trinity college, Dublin, which he entered in 1700 and where he re-
mained, first as a scholar, afterwards as fellow and tutor, till January
1713. These early years are the most remarkable in Berkeley's
literary career. He published, anonymously, two mathematical
tracts in 1707; his Essay towards a new theory of vision appeared
in 1709, his Principles of Human Knowledge, part I, in 1710; and
when, in 1713, he got leave of absence from his college and set out
for London, it was 'to print his new book '-Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous—as well as 'to make acquaintance
with men of merit. ' These three books reveal the new thought
which inspired his life ; and the evidence of his Common place
Book (discovered and published by Campbell Fraser in 1871)
shows that he was barely twenty years of age when this new
thought took hold of him. Berkeley was absent from Ireland for
eight years, spending his time in London, France and Italy
(where, on a second visit, he resided four years). During this
period, he did little literary work; he made some progress, indeed,
with the second part of his Principles, but the MS was lost in his
travels, and the work was never resumed; his Latin treatise De
motu was written as he was on his way home in 1720, and published
in 1721; he collected materials for a natural history of Sicily, but
this MS also was lost; a journal written in Italy, however, and
many letters remain to show his appreciation of the beauties of
nature and art. His return to England gave a new direction to
his energy
The country was in the period of collapse which
follows a speculative mania ; and Berkeley saw the true cause
of the national disaster in the decline of religion, the decay of
public spirit and the prevalent corruption of manners. One
hundred and forty years later, Mark Pattison described the
period as an age whose poetry was without romance, whose
philosophy was without insight, and whose public men
without character? ' A similar judgment forms the burden of
Berkeley's Essay towards preventing the ruin of Great Britain,
published anonymously in 1721. He returned to Ireland and to
Trinity college later in the same year, and was presented to the
deanery of Dromore. The office attracted him because it would
give him leisure for reflection and for philanthropic work; but
1 Essays and Reviews, 1860, p. 254.
were


## p. 281 (#305) ############################################

Berkeley in America 281
a legal question arose as to the right of presentation, and his
hopes received a check. Berkeley is one of the most perfect
a
characters among men of letters; but his perfection was not
colourless. He threw himself with energy into the defence of
his rights, and at least had the satisfaction of a protracted
lawsuit. While the case was still pending, in 1724, he was
appointed to a much more valuable preferment~the deanery of
Derry. “It is said to be worth £1500 a year,' he wrote, 'but I
do not consider it with a view to enriching myself. I shall be
perfectly contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme
of Bermuda' This scheme seems to have taken hold of Berkeley's
mind about two years previously; to it he devoted his fortune
and ten years of his life. His plan was to found a college in the
Bermudas, with the twofold object of the reformation of manners
among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation
of the gospel among the American savages. ' Berkeley spent four
years in London in endeavouring to extract a charter and grant
of money from a reluctant government and subscriptions from
an unbelieving generation; he had to frequent the court and
dispute twice a week with Samuel Clarke before queen Caroline,
then princess of Wales ; he listened to the banter of the wits
of the Scriblerus club, and then replied with such eloquence
and enthusiasm that they'rose all up together, with earnestness
exclaiming, “Let us set out with him immediately”'; he canvassed
every member of parliament with such effect that, in the Commons,
there were only two opponents of the vote; even Walpole sub-
scribed to the scheme, though he secretly determined that the
government grant of money should never be paid. Bermuda
became the fashion, and Berkeley was idolised. But he grudged
the waste of time, and, at last with only a promise from Walpole
that the grant would be paid-he set sail from Greenwich in
September 1728, with his newly-married wife. In January 1729,
he landed at Newport, Rhode island. There he remained for
nearly three years, waiting vainly for the government to fulfil
its promises. This it never did ; he never reached Bermuda, and
his college was never founded; but he left his impress upon the
early efforts of American philosophy ; his interpretation of the
material world modified the thinking of Jonathan Edwards, the
metaphysician and theologian of New England ; and the memory
of his visit has been treasured by the American mind. The new
world also affected Berkeley's imagination and led to a set of
Verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America.


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282 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
6
One of his lines—Westward the course of empire takes its way
-has come to be looked upon as prophetic; but his idea was
not geographical ; it was that better times would follow better
morals, where nature guides and virtue rules. '
Berkeley remained in London for more than two years after his
return to England; and a new period of authorship began, during
which he joined in the controversies of the age. In Alciphron, or
the Minute Philosopher (1732), written in the seclusion of his home
in Rhode island, he applied his general principles in defence of
religion against the free-thinkers. In 1733 appeared his Theory of
Vision, or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained ; and, in
the following year, he published The Analyst, in which he criticised
the positions of the new mathematics which, in his view, were
connected with a materialistic conception of the world. This bold
attempt to carry the war into the enemy's country called forth
many pamphlets on the other side. In the same year, Berkeley
returned to Ireland as bishop of Cloyne ; and, henceforth, his
literary work was divided between questions of social reform
and religious reflection. The reform is represented by The
Querist (1735), a work full of penetrating remarks ; both subjects
are combined in Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions
(1744), which begins by expounding the medicinal virtues of
tar-water, and ends in an exposition of idealism in which the
Lockean strain has given place to the Platonic. A Miscellany
containing several tracts was published in October 1752. Two
months earlier he had left Cloyne, that he might spend the
remainder of his days at Oxford ; and there he died on 14
January 1753.
When Berkeley launched his idealism upon an unsympathetic
world, he had read Descartes and Malebranche and been attracted
by the philosophy of Plato; he was also acquainted with the
works of the mathematicians and natural philosophers, and sus-
pected a trend to materialism in their theories ; but his thought
had been formed under the influence of Locke, whose Essay
found earlier recognition from the academic authorities at
Dublin than from those of English universities. At the time
when Berkeley entered Trinity college and for ten years after-
wards, the provost was Peter Browne, afterwards bishop of Cork,
a student and critic of the Essay. He had already attracted
attention by an Answer to Toland (1697). His more original
works followed after a long interval—The Procedure, extent and
limits of human understanding, in 1728, and the work called, for


## p. 283 (#307) ############################################

283
>
A New Theory of Vision
short, Divine Analogy, in 1733. These two books are connected
with Berkeley's later work, for the theory of our knowledge of God
propounded in the former is criticised in one of the dialogues of
Alciphron, and the criticisms are replied to in Browne’s Divine
Analogy. Browne could not accept Locke's account of knowledge
by means of ideas, when it came to be applied to mind. Mind and
body, he held, are not known in the same way. We have, indeed,
ideas of our mental operations as these are connected with the
body; but minds or spirits—whether divine or human-can be
known only by analogy. This view, Berkeley, in later life, attacked;
but it points to a difficulty in his own theory also—a difficulty
which he came to see, without fully resolving it. There is, how-
ever, no sufficient evidence for saying that Browne had any
direct influence upon Berkeley's early speculation.
Berkeley's theory emerges full-grown, if not fully armed. Even
in his Common-place Book, there is no hesitation in the references
to my doctrine,' 'the immaterial hypothesis. ' Only persons exist:
'all other things are not so much existences as manners of the
existence of persons. ' He knows that'a mighty sect of men will
oppose me,' that he will be called young, an upstart, a pretender,
vain; but his confidence is not shaken : 'Newton begs his prin-
ciples; I demonstrate mine. ' He did not, at first, reveal the whole
truth to the world. An Essay towards a new theory of vision
deals with one point only—the relation between the objects of
sight and those of touch. Molyneux had once set the problem
to Locke, whether a man born blind, if he recovered his sight,
would be able by sight alone to distinguish from one another a
cube and a sphere, with which he had been previously acquainted
by touch. Molyneux answered his own question in the negative,
and Locke expressed agreement with his solution and admiration
for the insight which it showed. Berkeley was of one mind with
them about the answer to the query, but for a more fundamental
If extension be an idea common to sight and touch (as
Locke held), then visible squareness must be the same as, or
have something in common with, tangible squareness. In virtue
of this, the man born blind, so soon as he is made to see,
should be able to distinguish between a visible square and a
visible circle and to identify this distinction with the distinction
between the square and the circle already known by touch.
If he is unable to do so, it is because there is nothing in
common between the visible object and the tangible. And this
is Berkeley's view.
reason,


## p. 284 (#308) ############################################

284 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
The objects of sight and touch make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas
which are widely different from each other. 'A man born blind,' he says,
'being made to see, would at first have no idea of distance by sight: the sun
and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer, would all seem to be in
his eye, or rather in his mind. '
A great part of the Essay is devoted to an explanation of the
apparent immediateness with which the distance of an object is
seen. But the essence of the whole consists in two propositions-
that the objects (or ideas) of sight have nothing in common with
the objects of touch, and that the connection of sight and touch
is 'arbitrary' and learned by experience only. The connection
is arbitrary; but it is regular and constant. What we see suggests
to us what we may expect to touch and handle. The whole
visible world—as was further enforced in his Theory of Vision
or Visual Language-consists of a set of signs which, like a
language, have for their purpose to convey a meaning ; though
they neither resemble nor cause that meaning, nor have any
necessary connection with it. In using sight to guide our move-
ments, we interpret the language of God.
Some of the details of Berkeley's Essay need revision in the
light of modern study of the senses. But this does not obscure its
merit as one of the most brilliant pieces of psychological analysis
in the English language. A more serious objection to it is that
the author pushes too far his war against abstractions.