The Frankfort Book-
Fair, the Francofordiense Emporium of Henri Estienne.
Fair, the Francofordiense Emporium of Henri Estienne.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v04
218, 1.
34 for 1652 read 1633
1, 41 for English. . . Latin read Latin. . . English
>
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
2
p. 219 1. 32 for 1669 read 1660/1
p. 304, 11. 16–24 for Buchanan's. . . earls; read An attempt to counteract Buchanan's
influence was made in The True Lawe of Free Monarchies, which was attributed to
king James. The defenders of Scottish monarchy were forced to take very high ground
in order to meet their assailants, and it was under these circumstances that the Stewart
doctrine of the divine right of kings was formulated. Similar principles had, indeed,
been widely disseminated in England by the Homily published in 1547, as well as by
that in 1570;
p. 379, 11. 38-39 for Proclamations. . . Edward VI, read Quite naturally, popish books
were banned under Edward VI,
p. 381, 1. 41 for printed read added
p. 394, 1. 13 for the two read and one
add to footnote , and A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 1909.
p. 398, 1, 1 for 1604 read 1603.
p. 407, 11. 34–38 for , but the actual. . . Venus and Adonis. read ; an oft quoted state-
ment that the actual selling price was one pound appears to be based on the insufficient
evidence of a manuscript note in a copy not now traceable. For a copy of Shakespeare's
Sonnets, Alleyn the actor paid fivepence in June 1609.
p. 412, last line dele 2 See bibl. and the corresponding reference in text.
p. 435, in respect of the Bibliographies generally, consult The Modern Language
Review, General Index to volumes 1-x, Cambridge, 1915.
p. 444, 1. 11 under Estienne add [But as to the authorship, see Mark Pattison's essay
The Stephenses. ]
p. 449, add to the bibliography of chapter 1:
Satire Ménippée. A pleasant Satyre or Poesie, wherein is discovered the Catholicon of
Spain, etc. 1595.
p. 450, add to the bibliography of chapter II:
Prothero, R. E. The Psalms in Human Life. 1903.
Wordsworth, C. Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible. 1864, etc.
p. 452, add to the bibliography of chapter III :
Buchan, John. Sir Walter Raleigh. Oxford, 1897.
Hume, Martin A. S. Sir Walter Raleigh. 1897.
Rodd, Sir Rennell, Sir Walter Raleigh. 1904.
p. 467, 1. 35 to the bibliography of chapter VI add and edited by him, Oxford, 1913.
p. 473, add to the bibliography of chapter VI:
Stopes, C. C. William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal. Bang's Materialien,
1910.
p. 474, add to the bibliography of chapter VII :
[See, also, Mod. Lang. Rev. vols. vn and xi, 1912 and 1916. )
p. 481, add to the bibliography of chapter IX under William Drummond of Haw-
thornden :
Ed. Kastner, L. E. Manchester, 1913.
pp. 488-90, add to the bibliography of chapter XI:
[See Bibliography by Keynes, G. , Cambridge and London, 1914. ]
Poems. Ed. Grierson, H. J. C. 2 vols. Oxford, 1912.
Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Shakspr. Soc.
1842.
Smith, G. C. M. Donniana. Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. viii, 1913.
p. 492, add to the bibliography of chapter XII:
Spearing, E. M. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vols. vii and vini, 1912, 1913.
p. 507, add to the bibliography of chapter XIV under Bacon:
Steeves, G. W. Francis Bacon. A Sketch of his Life, Works and Literary Friends.
[Bibliographical. ] 1910.
pp. 514-36, add to the bibliography of chapter XVI:
Smith, G. C. Moore. Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia. Stratford-upon-Avon, 1913.
The Bride, by S. R[owlands]. 1617. Ed. Porter, A. C. Boston, 1905,
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
XV
Smith, C. F. John Dee (1527-1608). 1909.
Dixon, J. H. Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England. 1846.
Ingledew, C. J. D. The Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire. 1860.
p. 537, add to the bibliography of chapter XVII :
Einstein, L. The Italian Renaissance in England. 1902.
Addenda to the present (2nd) impression.
pp. 453-62, add to the bibliography of chapters IV and V:
Arber, E. The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers. 1897.
Beazley, C. R. The Dawn of Modern Geography. 3 vols. Oxford, 1904, 1906.
Douady, d. La mer et les poètes anglais. Paris, 1912.
Jusserand, J. J. Histoire Littéraire du Peuple anglais. Vol. 11, Bk. v, chapters i
and ix. Paris, 1904.
Payne, E. J. (ed. ). Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen to America. Select Narratives
from. . . Hakluyt. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Oxford, 1893, 1900.
Raleigh, W. English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. First printed as an intro-
duction to Messrs MacLehose's edition of Hakluyt, 1905. Revised and reissued
separately. Glasgow, 1906.
Wright, T. Early Travels in Palestine. 1848.
pp. 544–9, add to the bibliography of chapter XVIII :
Estienne, H. Francofordiense Emporium. Geneva, 1574.
The Frankfort Book-
Fair, the Francofordiense Emporium of Henri Estienne. Edited, with historical
introduction, translation, and notes, by Thompson, J. W. The Caxton Club,
Chicago, 1911.
McKerrow, R. B. A dictionary of printers and booksellers in England, Scotland and
Ireland, and of foreign printers of English books. 1557–1640. Ed. by McKerrow,
R. B. Bibliographical Society. 1910.
Notes on bibliographical evidence for literary students and editors of English works
of the 16th and 17th centuries. 1914. (Trans. of the Bibliographical Society,
vol. xn. )
Printers' and publishers' devices in England and Scotland 1485–1640. Biblio.
graphical Society. 1913.
Pollard, A. W. Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: a study in the bibliography of
Shakespeare's plays 1594–1685. 1909.
Shakespeare's fight with the pirates and the problems of the transmission of the
text. (Sandars Lectures, 1915. ) 1917.
Spirgatis, M. Englische Litteratur auf der Frankfurter Messe von 1561-1620. (Dziatzko,
K. Sammlung Bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten. Heft 15. Leipzig, 1902. )
.
Supplementary Addenda to the present (2nd) impression.
P. 249, 11. 8–10 for Castalio. . . second hand read The protest, in the preface to Love-
Melancholy, against forbidding the reading of the Canticles, the Ballade of Ballades,
as 'too light and amorous a tract,' has been borrowed
pp. 449 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter II:
Bowen, F. A Layman's Study of the English Bible. New York, 1894.
Cook, A. S. Words in the Bible. The Nation. New York, 1912.
pp. 490 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter XII:
Gray, G. J. Fisher's sermon against Luther. London, 1912.
pp. 496 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter XIII :
An edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy with a full commentary by W. Aldis
Wright and E. Bensly is in preparation and will be published by the Clarendon Press.
Osler, Sir W. The Library of Robert Burton, See the news sheet of the Bibliographical
Society, December 1909.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
TRANSLATORS
The translators of Elizabeth's age pursued their craft in the
spirit of bold adventure which animated Drake and Hawkins. It
was their ambition to discover new worlds of thought and beauty.
They sailed the wide ocean of knowledge to plant their colonies of
the intellect where they might, or to bring back to our English
shores some eloquent stranger, whom their industry had taught to
speak with our English tongue. Holland justly describes his
enterprise as a conquest. He'would wish rather and endeavour,'
says he in the preface to his translation of Pliny, 'by all means to
triumph now over the Romans in subduing their literature under the
dent of the English pen, in requitall of the conquest some time over
this Island, atchieved by the edge of their sword. ' And, harbouring
this sentiment of conquest, the translators were strongly impelled
also by the desire to benefit their native land and its rulers.
They had learned from the classics deep lessons of policy and
statecraft, which they would impart to their queen and her magis-
trates. Their achievement was, indeed, the real renascence of
England, the authentic recovery of the ancient spirit. That they
were keenly conscious of what they were doing is clear from their
dedications and their prefaces. The choice of the great personages
to whom they presented their works was made with a deliberate
purpose. When North and Holland asked the queen’s protection
for their masterpieces, it was in the full hope and knowledge that
Plutarch and Livy would prove wise guides unto her footsteps.
Nor was it with the mere intent of flattery or applause that
other translators offered the fruits of their toil to Cecil,
Leicester and Christopher Hatton. They wished to give counsel
where they deemed it useful. Thomas Wilson, for instance,
the translator of Demosthenes, thought that every good subject
should compare the present and the past; that, when he heard
of Athens and the Athenians, he should remember England and
Englishmen; that, in brief, he should learn from the doings of his
E. L. IV.
1
CH, I.
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
Translators
3
elders how to deal with his own affairs. John Brende, who
Englished Quintus Curtius, in presenting his book to the duke
of Northumberland, thus explained his purpose:
* There is required in all Magistrates,' says he, 'both a faith and feare in
God, and also an outward pollicie in worldly thinges 1: whereof, as the one is
to be learned by the Scriptures, so the other must chiefly be gathered by
reading of histories. '
Wherever you turn, you find the same admirable excuse; and, as
the translators gave to England well nigh the whole wisdom of the
ancients, they provided not merely grave instruction for kings
and statesmen, but plots for the dramatists, and entertainment for
lettered ease.
As their interest lay chiefly in the matter of their originals,
they professed little desire to illustrate a theory of translation.
They had neither the knowledge nor the sense of criticism, which
should measure accurately the niceties of their craft. They set
about their work in a spirit of sublime unconsciousness. In their
many prefaces, and they delighted in prefaces, there is scarce a
hint that they are pursuing a delicate art. The most of them
were indifferent to, or ignorant of, Horace's maxim :
Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres,
though, for the best of reasons, they followed the poet's liberal
counsel. They would not have understood the scientific care with
which Dryden presently distinguished metaphrase and paraphrase.
Chapman, it is true, knew the end at which he aimed, and, in the
preface to his Homer, lucidly describes what should be the ambition
of the translator:
“The work of a skilfull and worthy translator,' says he, “is to observe the
sentences, figures and formes of speech proposed in his author, his true sence
and height, and to adorn them with figures and formes of oration fitted to the
originall in the same tongue to which they are translated. '
And one W. R. , in an eloquent epistle, addressed to the translator,
wittily defends Lodge against the charge that he had not parrot-like
spoken Seneca's own words and lost himself in a Latin echo. But
both Chapman and Lodge's defender wrote when the art of trans-
lation had been pursued for two generations and was falling, not
unnaturally, into a habit of self-criticism. In general, the trans-
lators of the heyday were accurate neither in word nor in shape.
1
i Geffraie Fenton showed his approval of this sentiment by borrowing it word for
word in his preface to the Tragicall Discourses.
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
The Craft of Translation
3
They followed the text as remotely as they imitated the style of
their originals.
I have said that North and his colleagues were inspired by a
love of adventure. They resembled the pioneers of our empire also
in a splendid lack of scruple. As the early travellers cheerfully
seized
upon the treasure of others, painfully acquired, and turned
to their own profit the discoveries of Spaniard and Portuguese, so
the translators cared not by what intermediary they approached
the Greek and Latin texts. Very few were scholars in the sense
that Philemon Holland was a scholar. Like Shakespeare, the
most had little Latin and less Greek. When Thomas Nicolls,
citizen and goldsmith of London, set out to translate Thucydides,
he went no further than the French of Claude de Seyssel, and
Claude de Seyssel made his version not from the Greek but from
the Latin of Laurentius Valla. Between Thomas North and Plutarch
stands the gracious figure of Jacques Amyot. Thomas Underdowne
derived his Aethiopian Historie from the Latin of Stanislaus
Warschewiczki, a Polish country gentleman, who translated the
Greek of Heliodorus, rure paterno, in 1551. Thus Adlington, in
interpreting The Golden Ass, was misled by Lasne Dore of
Guillaume Michel. Thus Aristotle came into our speech through the
French of Leroy, and even Bandello crossed from Italy to England
by the courtly bridge of Belleforest.
The result of this careless method is that the translations of
Elizabeth's age (in prose, at any rate) are unsoiled by pedantry.
They do not smell of the lamp; they suggest nowhere the laborious
use of the pedestrian dictionary. They call up a vision of
space and courage and the open air. That they are inappropriate
seems no fault in them. If they replace the restraint of the classics
with the colour and sentiment of romance, it is because the trans-
lators have done their work thoroughly. They have turned the
authors of Greece and Rome not merely into a new language but
into the feeling of another age and clime. In other words, their
books carry with them the lively air of brave originals. And this
natural impress is the deeper, because translation was not an
exclusive craft, pursued in the narrow spirit of mere scholarship.
Many of the most ingenious craftsmen were men of the world,
who made their versions to beguile a leisure snatched from the
conduct of affairs. Sir Thomas Hoby, who gave us The Courtier,
was an ambassador; Danett, who put Commines in an English
dress, practised the art of diplomacy loftily exemplified in
his original; with a fine sense of propriety, Peter Whitehorne
1-2
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4
Translators
>
>
translated Machiavelli's Arte of Warre when he was in Barbary
with the emperor, 'at the siege and winning of Calibbia’; Thomas
North himself played his part as a magistrate in the policies of the
larger world. Even those who, like Holland and Golding, adopted
translating as a profession practised a style all untrammelled by
the schools. The reproach of Dryden, that “there are many who
understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother-
tongue,' might not be brought with justice against them. Few
men of the century knew Greek and Latin. Many were masters
of English, which they wrote with an eloquence and elaboration
rarely surpassed.
The translators’ range of discovery was wide. They brought
into the ken of Englishmen the vast continent of classical literature.
Only a few provinces escaped their search, and, of the few, one was
the province which should have had the quickest attraction for them.
It is not a little strange that the golden age of our drama should
have seen the translation of but one Greek play. Of Aeschylus and
Sophocles there is nothing. A free paraphrase of the Phoenissae,
presented at Gray's Inn under the name of Jocasta in 1566 by
George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh, and made not from
the Greek but from the Italian of Ludovico Dolce, is the Eliza-
bethans' only and fragile link with Euripides. Plautus fared not
much better: we have no more than the Menaechmi of William
Warner (1595), which may have given Shakespeare a hint for The
Comedy of Errors. More popular were Seneca and Terence-
Seneca, no doubt, for his ingenious maxims, and Terence because he
was appointed to be read in schools. Of the historians, both Greek
and Latin, there is a long list. An unknown translator, who
hides his name under the initials B. R. , and who may be Barnabe
Rich, published two books of Herodotus in 1584, and Thomas
Nicolls, already mentioned, gave to England a complete Thucydides
in 1550. Of Livy, we have a fragment by Antony Cope (1544),
and a version of all that remains by the incomparable Philemon
Holland (1600), to whose industry also are due Suetonius
(1606), Ammianus Marcellinus (1609) and Xenophon's Cyro-
paedia (1632). Sallust, as might be expected, was a favourite of
Tudor England. His Catiline was translated by Thomas Paynell
(1541), his Jugurtha by Alexander Barclay (1557), and both
histories by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist (1608). Golding's
Caesar (1565), Brende's Quintus Curtius (1553), and Stocker's
Diodorus Siculus (1569), by no means complete the tale. What
Sir Henry Savile did for the Histories and the Agricola of Tacitus
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
of Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca
5
(1591), Richard Greenwey did for the Annals and the Description
of Germany (1598), and there is no author Englished for us in
fuller and worthier shape than the wisest of Roman historians.
Xenophon found other translators besides Holland, and Plutarch's
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans fell happily into the
hands of Sir Thomas North, whose skill gave them a second and a
larger immortality.
The philosophers and moralists of the ancient world chimed
with the humour of Tudor England. Their simple disputations
possess the charm of freshness and curiosity. The problems of
conduct posed by Cicero and Plutarch are of a kind that found
an eager solution in the minds of men, still simple enough to love
casuistry for its own sake. Such questions as how a man may
praise himself without incurring envy or blame, or whether
philosophers ought to converse with princes and rulers, were met,
it is certain, with many arguments and various answers. And the
translators supplied those ignorant of the dead languages with a
mighty armoury of intellectual weapons. Of Plato, to be sure,
there is little enough. Besides Sir Thomas Elyot's Of the Know-
ledge which maketh a wise man (1533), distantly inspired by the
philosopher, immediately suggested by Diogenes Laertius, there is
but a version of the Axiochus, a doubtful dialogue. Aristotle
received more generous treatment. His Ethics were translated
from the Italian by John Wylkinson (1547), and, as has been said,
one J. D. made a version of the Politics from the French of Loys
Leroy, dit Regius (1598) Far more popular were Cicero and
Seneca, the chief instructors of the age. Tully's Offices, translated
by Robert Whittington, laureate in grammar (1533), and by Nicholas
Grimald (1555), were confidently commended to rulers, schoolmen,
orators and rhetoricians:
'At few words," says the ingenious Grimalde, 'al men, that of wisdome be
studious, may gette sommewhat herein to sharpe the wyt, to store the intelli-
gence, to fede the minde, to quicke the sprite, to augment the reason, to direct
the appetite, to frame the tounge, to fashion the maners. '
Nor were the two treatises on Friendship and Old Age overlooked.
The one was translated by John Harington (1550), the other by
Thomas Newton (1569), and both have as handsome an appearance
in their English dress as any books of the time; and, in 1561, John
Dolman 'englysshed these fyve Questions, which Marke Tullye
Cicero disputed in his Manor of Tusculanum. Upon Seneca, also,
Whittington tried his hand, to whom we owe The Fame and
Rule of Honest lyvynge (1546) and The Remedyes against all
casual Chances. For the rest, Arthur Golding translated The
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
6
Translators
1
1
Woorke concerning Benefyting (1558), and, in 1614, Thomas Lodge
published his monumental version of Seneca's prose, a work un-
dimmed by comparison even with Holland's translation of Plutarch's
Morals (1603).
The modern world yielded as rich a spoil as the ancient. The
Italianate Englishman, bitterly reproached by his contemporaries,
brought back from Italy, with his fantastic costume and new-
fangled manners, a love of Italian literature and of Italian romance.
From across the Alps came our knowledge of the court, of arms
and of the arts. In a famous passage, Ascham deplored the
encroaching influence. Evil as he thought the Morte Arthure,
'the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall
poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye,' he declared
that 'ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme as
one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England. '
Yet their growing popularity could not be gainsaid:
“That which is most to be lamented'-again Ascham speaks-'and therefore
more nedefull to be looked to, there be mo of these ungratious bookes set out
in Printe within these fewe monethes, than have been sene in England many
score yeare before. '
Ascham wrote in 1567, and there is no doubt that he had in his
mind William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, of which the first
volume was published in 1566, the second in 1567, and Geffraie
Fenton's Certaine Tragicall Discourses (1567). Few books of the
time had a more immediate and profound influence than these.
They entertained the court and were an inspiration to the poets.
Had it not been for Painter, the English drama would have taken
another path. The stories of blood and desire, appropriate to
the ferocity of the Italian republics, were eagerly retold by our
dramatists, avid of the fierce emotions which Elizabeth's peaceful
England did not encourage in act. The tale of borrowings from
Painter's Palace is a long one. Shakespeare and Webster, Marston
and Massinger, all owe a debt to the ingenious writer whom Ascham
savagely condemned. And they could not have gone for their plots
to a better source. For Painter was a true child of his age. His
ambition, like the ambition of the chroniclers, was encyclopaedic.
He aimed, not at telling one story, but at telling all stories. He
began at the beginning and carried his work to the very end. It
would be difficult to find a plot that has not its origin, or its
counterpart, in Painter's treasure-house. His earliest stories are
taken from Livy, Herodotus and Aulus Gellius; and, presently, he
seeks his originals in the works of queen Margaret and Boccaccio,
of Bandello and Straparola. Whatever were the origin and substance
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
Painter and Fenton
7.
of his tales, be reduced them all to a certain plainness. He had a
ready talent for story-telling; he cultivated a straightforward style;
and, unlike the most of his fellows, he avoided embroidery. His
popularity, therefore, is easily explained: his work was quickly
intelligible to simple folk, and the dramatists had no difficulty in
clothing his dry bones with their romantic imagery. But they
acknowledged their debt with a difference. Shakespeare did not
scruple to borrow the very words of North and Holinshed. He
took no more than the plot from Painter's version of Rhomeo and
Julietta.
Ascham's judgment of Painter and Fenton, foolish and unjust
as it is, seems to have been anticipated by the translator of the
Tragicall Discourses of Bandello. Fenton, indeed, securely defends
himself against the detraction of the puritan. In an epistle
dedicatory, addressed to the lady Mary Sidney, he professes that
his choice of stories was made with the best motive. He had no
other desire than to improve the occasion.
'Albeit, at the firste sighte,' says he, theis discourses maye importe certeine
vanytyes or fonde practises in love, yet I doubte not to bee absolved . . . , seinge
I have rather noted diversitie of examples in sondrye younge men and women,
approvynge sufficientlye the inconvenience happenynge by the pursute of
lycenceous desyer, then affected in anye sorte suche uncerteyne follyes. '
If Bandello incurred censure, what sentence would have been
passed upon Boccaccio?
1, 41 for English. . . Latin read Latin. . . English
>
## p. xiv (#20) #############################################
xiv
2
p. 219 1. 32 for 1669 read 1660/1
p. 304, 11. 16–24 for Buchanan's. . . earls; read An attempt to counteract Buchanan's
influence was made in The True Lawe of Free Monarchies, which was attributed to
king James. The defenders of Scottish monarchy were forced to take very high ground
in order to meet their assailants, and it was under these circumstances that the Stewart
doctrine of the divine right of kings was formulated. Similar principles had, indeed,
been widely disseminated in England by the Homily published in 1547, as well as by
that in 1570;
p. 379, 11. 38-39 for Proclamations. . . Edward VI, read Quite naturally, popish books
were banned under Edward VI,
p. 381, 1. 41 for printed read added
p. 394, 1. 13 for the two read and one
add to footnote , and A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 1909.
p. 398, 1, 1 for 1604 read 1603.
p. 407, 11. 34–38 for , but the actual. . . Venus and Adonis. read ; an oft quoted state-
ment that the actual selling price was one pound appears to be based on the insufficient
evidence of a manuscript note in a copy not now traceable. For a copy of Shakespeare's
Sonnets, Alleyn the actor paid fivepence in June 1609.
p. 412, last line dele 2 See bibl. and the corresponding reference in text.
p. 435, in respect of the Bibliographies generally, consult The Modern Language
Review, General Index to volumes 1-x, Cambridge, 1915.
p. 444, 1. 11 under Estienne add [But as to the authorship, see Mark Pattison's essay
The Stephenses. ]
p. 449, add to the bibliography of chapter 1:
Satire Ménippée. A pleasant Satyre or Poesie, wherein is discovered the Catholicon of
Spain, etc. 1595.
p. 450, add to the bibliography of chapter II:
Prothero, R. E. The Psalms in Human Life. 1903.
Wordsworth, C. Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible. 1864, etc.
p. 452, add to the bibliography of chapter III :
Buchan, John. Sir Walter Raleigh. Oxford, 1897.
Hume, Martin A. S. Sir Walter Raleigh. 1897.
Rodd, Sir Rennell, Sir Walter Raleigh. 1904.
p. 467, 1. 35 to the bibliography of chapter VI add and edited by him, Oxford, 1913.
p. 473, add to the bibliography of chapter VI:
Stopes, C. C. William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal. Bang's Materialien,
1910.
p. 474, add to the bibliography of chapter VII :
[See, also, Mod. Lang. Rev. vols. vn and xi, 1912 and 1916. )
p. 481, add to the bibliography of chapter IX under William Drummond of Haw-
thornden :
Ed. Kastner, L. E. Manchester, 1913.
pp. 488-90, add to the bibliography of chapter XI:
[See Bibliography by Keynes, G. , Cambridge and London, 1914. ]
Poems. Ed. Grierson, H. J. C. 2 vols. Oxford, 1912.
Conversations of Ben Jonson with William Drummond of Hawthornden. Shakspr. Soc.
1842.
Smith, G. C. M. Donniana. Mod. Lang. Rev. vol. viii, 1913.
p. 492, add to the bibliography of chapter XII:
Spearing, E. M. , Mod. Lang. Rev. vols. vii and vini, 1912, 1913.
p. 507, add to the bibliography of chapter XIV under Bacon:
Steeves, G. W. Francis Bacon. A Sketch of his Life, Works and Literary Friends.
[Bibliographical. ] 1910.
pp. 514-36, add to the bibliography of chapter XVI:
Smith, G. C. Moore. Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia. Stratford-upon-Avon, 1913.
The Bride, by S. R[owlands]. 1617. Ed. Porter, A. C. Boston, 1905,
## p. xv (#21) ##############################################
XV
Smith, C. F. John Dee (1527-1608). 1909.
Dixon, J. H. Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England. 1846.
Ingledew, C. J. D. The Ballads and Songs of Yorkshire. 1860.
p. 537, add to the bibliography of chapter XVII :
Einstein, L. The Italian Renaissance in England. 1902.
Addenda to the present (2nd) impression.
pp. 453-62, add to the bibliography of chapters IV and V:
Arber, E. The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers. 1897.
Beazley, C. R. The Dawn of Modern Geography. 3 vols. Oxford, 1904, 1906.
Douady, d. La mer et les poètes anglais. Paris, 1912.
Jusserand, J. J. Histoire Littéraire du Peuple anglais. Vol. 11, Bk. v, chapters i
and ix. Paris, 1904.
Payne, E. J. (ed. ). Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen to America. Select Narratives
from. . . Hakluyt. 2 vols. 2nd edn. Oxford, 1893, 1900.
Raleigh, W. English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. First printed as an intro-
duction to Messrs MacLehose's edition of Hakluyt, 1905. Revised and reissued
separately. Glasgow, 1906.
Wright, T. Early Travels in Palestine. 1848.
pp. 544–9, add to the bibliography of chapter XVIII :
Estienne, H. Francofordiense Emporium. Geneva, 1574.
The Frankfort Book-
Fair, the Francofordiense Emporium of Henri Estienne. Edited, with historical
introduction, translation, and notes, by Thompson, J. W. The Caxton Club,
Chicago, 1911.
McKerrow, R. B. A dictionary of printers and booksellers in England, Scotland and
Ireland, and of foreign printers of English books. 1557–1640. Ed. by McKerrow,
R. B. Bibliographical Society. 1910.
Notes on bibliographical evidence for literary students and editors of English works
of the 16th and 17th centuries. 1914. (Trans. of the Bibliographical Society,
vol. xn. )
Printers' and publishers' devices in England and Scotland 1485–1640. Biblio.
graphical Society. 1913.
Pollard, A. W. Shakespeare Folios and Quartos: a study in the bibliography of
Shakespeare's plays 1594–1685. 1909.
Shakespeare's fight with the pirates and the problems of the transmission of the
text. (Sandars Lectures, 1915. ) 1917.
Spirgatis, M. Englische Litteratur auf der Frankfurter Messe von 1561-1620. (Dziatzko,
K. Sammlung Bibliothekswissenschaftlicher Arbeiten. Heft 15. Leipzig, 1902. )
.
Supplementary Addenda to the present (2nd) impression.
P. 249, 11. 8–10 for Castalio. . . second hand read The protest, in the preface to Love-
Melancholy, against forbidding the reading of the Canticles, the Ballade of Ballades,
as 'too light and amorous a tract,' has been borrowed
pp. 449 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter II:
Bowen, F. A Layman's Study of the English Bible. New York, 1894.
Cook, A. S. Words in the Bible. The Nation. New York, 1912.
pp. 490 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter XII:
Gray, G. J. Fisher's sermon against Luther. London, 1912.
pp. 496 ff. , add to the bibliography of chapter XIII :
An edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy with a full commentary by W. Aldis
Wright and E. Bensly is in preparation and will be published by the Clarendon Press.
Osler, Sir W. The Library of Robert Burton, See the news sheet of the Bibliographical
Society, December 1909.
## p. xvi (#22) #############################################
## p. 1 (#23) ###############################################
CHAPTER I
TRANSLATORS
The translators of Elizabeth's age pursued their craft in the
spirit of bold adventure which animated Drake and Hawkins. It
was their ambition to discover new worlds of thought and beauty.
They sailed the wide ocean of knowledge to plant their colonies of
the intellect where they might, or to bring back to our English
shores some eloquent stranger, whom their industry had taught to
speak with our English tongue. Holland justly describes his
enterprise as a conquest. He'would wish rather and endeavour,'
says he in the preface to his translation of Pliny, 'by all means to
triumph now over the Romans in subduing their literature under the
dent of the English pen, in requitall of the conquest some time over
this Island, atchieved by the edge of their sword. ' And, harbouring
this sentiment of conquest, the translators were strongly impelled
also by the desire to benefit their native land and its rulers.
They had learned from the classics deep lessons of policy and
statecraft, which they would impart to their queen and her magis-
trates. Their achievement was, indeed, the real renascence of
England, the authentic recovery of the ancient spirit. That they
were keenly conscious of what they were doing is clear from their
dedications and their prefaces. The choice of the great personages
to whom they presented their works was made with a deliberate
purpose. When North and Holland asked the queen’s protection
for their masterpieces, it was in the full hope and knowledge that
Plutarch and Livy would prove wise guides unto her footsteps.
Nor was it with the mere intent of flattery or applause that
other translators offered the fruits of their toil to Cecil,
Leicester and Christopher Hatton. They wished to give counsel
where they deemed it useful. Thomas Wilson, for instance,
the translator of Demosthenes, thought that every good subject
should compare the present and the past; that, when he heard
of Athens and the Athenians, he should remember England and
Englishmen; that, in brief, he should learn from the doings of his
E. L. IV.
1
CH, I.
## p. 2 (#24) ###############################################
2
Translators
3
elders how to deal with his own affairs. John Brende, who
Englished Quintus Curtius, in presenting his book to the duke
of Northumberland, thus explained his purpose:
* There is required in all Magistrates,' says he, 'both a faith and feare in
God, and also an outward pollicie in worldly thinges 1: whereof, as the one is
to be learned by the Scriptures, so the other must chiefly be gathered by
reading of histories. '
Wherever you turn, you find the same admirable excuse; and, as
the translators gave to England well nigh the whole wisdom of the
ancients, they provided not merely grave instruction for kings
and statesmen, but plots for the dramatists, and entertainment for
lettered ease.
As their interest lay chiefly in the matter of their originals,
they professed little desire to illustrate a theory of translation.
They had neither the knowledge nor the sense of criticism, which
should measure accurately the niceties of their craft. They set
about their work in a spirit of sublime unconsciousness. In their
many prefaces, and they delighted in prefaces, there is scarce a
hint that they are pursuing a delicate art. The most of them
were indifferent to, or ignorant of, Horace's maxim :
Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus
Interpres,
though, for the best of reasons, they followed the poet's liberal
counsel. They would not have understood the scientific care with
which Dryden presently distinguished metaphrase and paraphrase.
Chapman, it is true, knew the end at which he aimed, and, in the
preface to his Homer, lucidly describes what should be the ambition
of the translator:
“The work of a skilfull and worthy translator,' says he, “is to observe the
sentences, figures and formes of speech proposed in his author, his true sence
and height, and to adorn them with figures and formes of oration fitted to the
originall in the same tongue to which they are translated. '
And one W. R. , in an eloquent epistle, addressed to the translator,
wittily defends Lodge against the charge that he had not parrot-like
spoken Seneca's own words and lost himself in a Latin echo. But
both Chapman and Lodge's defender wrote when the art of trans-
lation had been pursued for two generations and was falling, not
unnaturally, into a habit of self-criticism. In general, the trans-
lators of the heyday were accurate neither in word nor in shape.
1
i Geffraie Fenton showed his approval of this sentiment by borrowing it word for
word in his preface to the Tragicall Discourses.
## p. 3 (#25) ###############################################
The Craft of Translation
3
They followed the text as remotely as they imitated the style of
their originals.
I have said that North and his colleagues were inspired by a
love of adventure. They resembled the pioneers of our empire also
in a splendid lack of scruple. As the early travellers cheerfully
seized
upon the treasure of others, painfully acquired, and turned
to their own profit the discoveries of Spaniard and Portuguese, so
the translators cared not by what intermediary they approached
the Greek and Latin texts. Very few were scholars in the sense
that Philemon Holland was a scholar. Like Shakespeare, the
most had little Latin and less Greek. When Thomas Nicolls,
citizen and goldsmith of London, set out to translate Thucydides,
he went no further than the French of Claude de Seyssel, and
Claude de Seyssel made his version not from the Greek but from
the Latin of Laurentius Valla. Between Thomas North and Plutarch
stands the gracious figure of Jacques Amyot. Thomas Underdowne
derived his Aethiopian Historie from the Latin of Stanislaus
Warschewiczki, a Polish country gentleman, who translated the
Greek of Heliodorus, rure paterno, in 1551. Thus Adlington, in
interpreting The Golden Ass, was misled by Lasne Dore of
Guillaume Michel. Thus Aristotle came into our speech through the
French of Leroy, and even Bandello crossed from Italy to England
by the courtly bridge of Belleforest.
The result of this careless method is that the translations of
Elizabeth's age (in prose, at any rate) are unsoiled by pedantry.
They do not smell of the lamp; they suggest nowhere the laborious
use of the pedestrian dictionary. They call up a vision of
space and courage and the open air. That they are inappropriate
seems no fault in them. If they replace the restraint of the classics
with the colour and sentiment of romance, it is because the trans-
lators have done their work thoroughly. They have turned the
authors of Greece and Rome not merely into a new language but
into the feeling of another age and clime. In other words, their
books carry with them the lively air of brave originals. And this
natural impress is the deeper, because translation was not an
exclusive craft, pursued in the narrow spirit of mere scholarship.
Many of the most ingenious craftsmen were men of the world,
who made their versions to beguile a leisure snatched from the
conduct of affairs. Sir Thomas Hoby, who gave us The Courtier,
was an ambassador; Danett, who put Commines in an English
dress, practised the art of diplomacy loftily exemplified in
his original; with a fine sense of propriety, Peter Whitehorne
1-2
## p. 4 (#26) ###############################################
4
Translators
>
>
translated Machiavelli's Arte of Warre when he was in Barbary
with the emperor, 'at the siege and winning of Calibbia’; Thomas
North himself played his part as a magistrate in the policies of the
larger world. Even those who, like Holland and Golding, adopted
translating as a profession practised a style all untrammelled by
the schools. The reproach of Dryden, that “there are many who
understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother-
tongue,' might not be brought with justice against them. Few
men of the century knew Greek and Latin. Many were masters
of English, which they wrote with an eloquence and elaboration
rarely surpassed.
The translators’ range of discovery was wide. They brought
into the ken of Englishmen the vast continent of classical literature.
Only a few provinces escaped their search, and, of the few, one was
the province which should have had the quickest attraction for them.
It is not a little strange that the golden age of our drama should
have seen the translation of but one Greek play. Of Aeschylus and
Sophocles there is nothing. A free paraphrase of the Phoenissae,
presented at Gray's Inn under the name of Jocasta in 1566 by
George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh, and made not from
the Greek but from the Italian of Ludovico Dolce, is the Eliza-
bethans' only and fragile link with Euripides. Plautus fared not
much better: we have no more than the Menaechmi of William
Warner (1595), which may have given Shakespeare a hint for The
Comedy of Errors. More popular were Seneca and Terence-
Seneca, no doubt, for his ingenious maxims, and Terence because he
was appointed to be read in schools. Of the historians, both Greek
and Latin, there is a long list. An unknown translator, who
hides his name under the initials B. R. , and who may be Barnabe
Rich, published two books of Herodotus in 1584, and Thomas
Nicolls, already mentioned, gave to England a complete Thucydides
in 1550. Of Livy, we have a fragment by Antony Cope (1544),
and a version of all that remains by the incomparable Philemon
Holland (1600), to whose industry also are due Suetonius
(1606), Ammianus Marcellinus (1609) and Xenophon's Cyro-
paedia (1632). Sallust, as might be expected, was a favourite of
Tudor England. His Catiline was translated by Thomas Paynell
(1541), his Jugurtha by Alexander Barclay (1557), and both
histories by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist (1608). Golding's
Caesar (1565), Brende's Quintus Curtius (1553), and Stocker's
Diodorus Siculus (1569), by no means complete the tale. What
Sir Henry Savile did for the Histories and the Agricola of Tacitus
## p. 5 (#27) ###############################################
of Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca
5
(1591), Richard Greenwey did for the Annals and the Description
of Germany (1598), and there is no author Englished for us in
fuller and worthier shape than the wisest of Roman historians.
Xenophon found other translators besides Holland, and Plutarch's
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans fell happily into the
hands of Sir Thomas North, whose skill gave them a second and a
larger immortality.
The philosophers and moralists of the ancient world chimed
with the humour of Tudor England. Their simple disputations
possess the charm of freshness and curiosity. The problems of
conduct posed by Cicero and Plutarch are of a kind that found
an eager solution in the minds of men, still simple enough to love
casuistry for its own sake. Such questions as how a man may
praise himself without incurring envy or blame, or whether
philosophers ought to converse with princes and rulers, were met,
it is certain, with many arguments and various answers. And the
translators supplied those ignorant of the dead languages with a
mighty armoury of intellectual weapons. Of Plato, to be sure,
there is little enough. Besides Sir Thomas Elyot's Of the Know-
ledge which maketh a wise man (1533), distantly inspired by the
philosopher, immediately suggested by Diogenes Laertius, there is
but a version of the Axiochus, a doubtful dialogue. Aristotle
received more generous treatment. His Ethics were translated
from the Italian by John Wylkinson (1547), and, as has been said,
one J. D. made a version of the Politics from the French of Loys
Leroy, dit Regius (1598) Far more popular were Cicero and
Seneca, the chief instructors of the age. Tully's Offices, translated
by Robert Whittington, laureate in grammar (1533), and by Nicholas
Grimald (1555), were confidently commended to rulers, schoolmen,
orators and rhetoricians:
'At few words," says the ingenious Grimalde, 'al men, that of wisdome be
studious, may gette sommewhat herein to sharpe the wyt, to store the intelli-
gence, to fede the minde, to quicke the sprite, to augment the reason, to direct
the appetite, to frame the tounge, to fashion the maners. '
Nor were the two treatises on Friendship and Old Age overlooked.
The one was translated by John Harington (1550), the other by
Thomas Newton (1569), and both have as handsome an appearance
in their English dress as any books of the time; and, in 1561, John
Dolman 'englysshed these fyve Questions, which Marke Tullye
Cicero disputed in his Manor of Tusculanum. Upon Seneca, also,
Whittington tried his hand, to whom we owe The Fame and
Rule of Honest lyvynge (1546) and The Remedyes against all
casual Chances. For the rest, Arthur Golding translated The
## p. 6 (#28) ###############################################
6
Translators
1
1
Woorke concerning Benefyting (1558), and, in 1614, Thomas Lodge
published his monumental version of Seneca's prose, a work un-
dimmed by comparison even with Holland's translation of Plutarch's
Morals (1603).
The modern world yielded as rich a spoil as the ancient. The
Italianate Englishman, bitterly reproached by his contemporaries,
brought back from Italy, with his fantastic costume and new-
fangled manners, a love of Italian literature and of Italian romance.
From across the Alps came our knowledge of the court, of arms
and of the arts. In a famous passage, Ascham deplored the
encroaching influence. Evil as he thought the Morte Arthure,
'the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall
poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye,' he declared
that 'ten Morte Arthures do not the tenth part so much harme as
one of these bookes, made in Italie, and translated in England. '
Yet their growing popularity could not be gainsaid:
“That which is most to be lamented'-again Ascham speaks-'and therefore
more nedefull to be looked to, there be mo of these ungratious bookes set out
in Printe within these fewe monethes, than have been sene in England many
score yeare before. '
Ascham wrote in 1567, and there is no doubt that he had in his
mind William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, of which the first
volume was published in 1566, the second in 1567, and Geffraie
Fenton's Certaine Tragicall Discourses (1567). Few books of the
time had a more immediate and profound influence than these.
They entertained the court and were an inspiration to the poets.
Had it not been for Painter, the English drama would have taken
another path. The stories of blood and desire, appropriate to
the ferocity of the Italian republics, were eagerly retold by our
dramatists, avid of the fierce emotions which Elizabeth's peaceful
England did not encourage in act. The tale of borrowings from
Painter's Palace is a long one. Shakespeare and Webster, Marston
and Massinger, all owe a debt to the ingenious writer whom Ascham
savagely condemned. And they could not have gone for their plots
to a better source. For Painter was a true child of his age. His
ambition, like the ambition of the chroniclers, was encyclopaedic.
He aimed, not at telling one story, but at telling all stories. He
began at the beginning and carried his work to the very end. It
would be difficult to find a plot that has not its origin, or its
counterpart, in Painter's treasure-house. His earliest stories are
taken from Livy, Herodotus and Aulus Gellius; and, presently, he
seeks his originals in the works of queen Margaret and Boccaccio,
of Bandello and Straparola. Whatever were the origin and substance
## p. 7 (#29) ###############################################
Painter and Fenton
7.
of his tales, be reduced them all to a certain plainness. He had a
ready talent for story-telling; he cultivated a straightforward style;
and, unlike the most of his fellows, he avoided embroidery. His
popularity, therefore, is easily explained: his work was quickly
intelligible to simple folk, and the dramatists had no difficulty in
clothing his dry bones with their romantic imagery. But they
acknowledged their debt with a difference. Shakespeare did not
scruple to borrow the very words of North and Holinshed. He
took no more than the plot from Painter's version of Rhomeo and
Julietta.
Ascham's judgment of Painter and Fenton, foolish and unjust
as it is, seems to have been anticipated by the translator of the
Tragicall Discourses of Bandello. Fenton, indeed, securely defends
himself against the detraction of the puritan. In an epistle
dedicatory, addressed to the lady Mary Sidney, he professes that
his choice of stories was made with the best motive. He had no
other desire than to improve the occasion.
'Albeit, at the firste sighte,' says he, theis discourses maye importe certeine
vanytyes or fonde practises in love, yet I doubte not to bee absolved . . . , seinge
I have rather noted diversitie of examples in sondrye younge men and women,
approvynge sufficientlye the inconvenience happenynge by the pursute of
lycenceous desyer, then affected in anye sorte suche uncerteyne follyes. '
If Bandello incurred censure, what sentence would have been
passed upon Boccaccio?
