with leaves turned over caprichiously in dismembred fractions, but throughout, the whole drift, weight, and height of his workes set before the apprensive eyes of his judge.' Then shall we perceive the true merit of Chapman's masterpiece. From end to end it gives proof of an abounding life, a quenchless energy. There is a grandeur and spirit in Chapman's rendering, not unworthy the original, 'of all bookes extant in all kinds the first and best.' The long, swinging line of fourteen syllables, chosen for the Iliad, is the fairest representative of Homer's majestic hexameters, and it is matter for regret that Chapman preferred the heroical distich in his rendering of the Odyssey. Moreover, Chapman claimed an advantage over his fellows in that he translated his author without a French or Latin intermediary. His knowledge of Greek was not impeccable. Errors due to ignorance or haste are not infrequent, nor need they cause us surprise, if it be true, as he asserts, that he translated the last twelve books in fifteen weeks. As little need they incur our censure. If Chapman, the scholar, sometimes nodded, Chapman, the poet, was ever awake, and his version of Homer will ever remain one among the masterpieces of his age and country.

In his prefaces, he vindicates both Homer and himself from the detraction of enemies. Admitting proudly that his manner of writing is 'farre fecht, and, as it were, beyond sea,' he defends, as well he may, his 'varietie of new wordes.' If'my countrey language were an usurer,' says he, 'hee would thanke me for enriching him.' Chaucer had more new words than any man since him need devise, and therefore for currant wits to crie from standing braines, like a broode of Frogs from a ditch, to have the ceaseless flowing river of our tongue turnde into their Frogpoole, is a song farre from their arrogation of sweetnes. And, ready as he was, in his 'harmlesse and pious studie,' to esteem the policies and wisdoms of his enemies at no more value than a musty nut, he was readier still to champion the fame of Homer, especially against the 'soule-blind Scaliger' and his 'palsied diminuation.' He did not belittle the beauty of the Aeneid, but, with perfect truth, declared that Homer's poems were 'writ from a free furie,' Vergil's out of a 'courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatorie spirit.' In brief, he was loyal alike in commentary and interpretation, and, as he hailed Homer 'the Prince of Poets,' so he himself may justly be styled the prince of poetical translators. But even he had his forerunners. In 1579 Thomas Purfoote gave to English what he calls The Croune of Homer's Works, or The Battel of the Frogges and Myce, and, in

Sylvester and Harington

23

1581, Arthur Hall, M.P. for Grantham, translated ten books of the Iliad from the French. Of Horace, Thomas Drant Englished both Satires and Epistles; Marlowe turned a book of Lucan into blank verse; and Timothy Kendall's Flowres of Epigrammes (1575 and 1577) were gathered out of sundry authors and particularly from Martial. The deficiency in Greek drama, as has been said, was made up for by many versions of Seneca, and there was no reason why an Englishman of the sixteenth century, who had not the ancient tongues, should have been deprived of a fair knowledge of the Greek and Latin poets.

Of modern poets there is not so long a tale to tell. Dante was unknown, and Petrarch was revealed for the most part surreptitiously under the names of his translators. The most widely read of them all was Du Bartas, styled by Gabriel Harvey 'the Treasury of Humanity and the Jewell of Divinity,' whose Divine Weekes and Workes were translated into rimed decasyllabic verse by Joshua Sylvester (1590-2). The popularity which this version enjoyed is not easily intelligible, and the fact that Milton sought therein some sort of inspiration is not enough to tempt a modern curiosity. Tasso's masterpiece found two translators in Edward Fairfax and Richard Carew, and Sir John Harington, at the behest of queen Elizabeth, made a version of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1591) in eight-lined stanzas. His translation, like the other verse translations of the time, displays care and fluidity without distinction. Its rapid course knows neither check nor variety. Its style is rather familiar than dignified, and Harington errs like Stanyhurst in the use of modern slang. Such lines as

They tooke them to a fort, with such small treasure,
And in so Scarborow warning they had leasure,

Harington,

suggest the barbarism of the barbarous Aeneid. moreover, embellished his text with a set of notes, in which he extols his family and his friends. In brief, he was a pedant and a courtier, who took to letters as a pastime, and practised them after the fashion of his kind. In a characteristic preface, he defended the craft of the poet, his chosen author, and his own enterprise. Though the craft, as he knew well enough, needed no apology, he could not refrain from breaking a lance with Puttenham, whose treatise had recently been published, and who had withheld the 'high and supernatural' title of maker from mere translators. In his defence of Ariosto, Harington appeals to authority and to sound morals. The Italian poet, says his translator, follows the

rules of Aristotle. More than this, he follows Vergil with a patient fidelity. 'Virgill extolled Aeneas to please Augustus; Ariosto prayseth Rogero to the honour of the house of Este.' And does not Alcina beguile Rogero, as Dido beguiled Aeneas? It is clear, therefore, that Ariosto should share the common eulogy of Vergil. Indeed, he may claim a higher praise, because there may be found in his many writings passages of which Vergil was incapable-such as the Christian demeanour of Charlemagne in the 14th book, and the conversion of Rogero to the Christian faith in the 41st. Briefly, Harington treats Vergil as Golding treated Ovid, and reproves him, in sorrow rather than in anger, for his inevitable paganism. As for the mention of himself and his kinsmen in his notes, to which Harington pleads guilty, he made them because Plutarch blamed Homer for nowhere explaining of what stock he was, of what town, or of what country. 'Excuse me, then,' says he, 'if I in a work that may perhaps last longer than a better thing, and being not ashamed of my kindred, name them here and there to no man's offence.' No excuse is necessary. Who would blame a whimsical scholar for chattering of himself and for interrupting a serious work with amiable anecdotage?

Besides the translations openly made and avowed, there are others which masquerade as fresh, unborrowed works. In his Elizabethan Sonnets, Sidney Lee has traced to their origin in France or Italy a vast number of English sonnets. He has proved the debt which the poets of the sixteenth century owed to their predecessors. He has set side by side in a close parallel the sonnets of Lodge and Ronsard, of Daniel and Desportes. He has shown most clearly what Wyatt and many others took from Petrarch. He has illustrated the 'influence' of Marot, du Bellay, de Pontoux, Jacques de Billy and Durant upon our bards, great and small. As an episode in the history of translation this 'influence' is of the greatest interest. We should not consider its moral aspect too censoriously. In Puttenham's despite, the Elizabethans do not seem to have regarded plagiarism as a heinous sin. If they had, who would have escaped condemnation? No doubt Southern, who pilfered from Ronsard, and spoiled what he pilfered, deserved all the censure which the critic heaped upon him. But there are indications not merely that plagiarism was thought respectable, but that a translator might claim as his own that which he had put into English. I call it mine,' says Nicholas Grimald of his translation of Cicero's De Officiis, 'as Plautus and Terence called the comedies theirs which they made out of

The Charge of Plagiarism

25

Greek'; and, doubtless, Wyatt, Daniel, Lodge, Spenser and the rest called the sonnets theirs which they had made out of French and Italian, because they had made them. Ben Jonson did not think it worth while to give Philostratus credit for his 'Drink to me only with thine eyes,' and he left it for the critics of a later age to track every chapter of his Discoveries to its lair. In neither case need the morality of his method be discussed, and Dryden's defence of him may stand as a defence for all save for such burglars as Southern : 'He has done his robberies so openly, that we may see that he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him.'

CHAPTER II

THE AUTHORISED VERSION AND ITS INFLUENCE

Ir the Authorised Version' of the Bible be the first English classic, as seems by all competent authorities to be allowed, two enquiries suggest themselves: first, what is meant when it is called a classic, and, secondly, what are the qualities that entitle it to be ranked as the first classic in English? In other words, it will be necessary first to examine the Bible as literature, irrespective of any translation whatever; and, secondly, to examine its diction in the standard English translation, in order to see whether the choice of words, the mould of sentences and the harmonious disposition of sounds are such as deserve the highest praise, in comparison with the choicest productions of native English genius.

These two enquiries, however-the one into the nature of the Bible considered as literature, and the other into the nature of the English in which our standard version is written-will, of necessity, imply some consideration of the successive stages by which what we call the Bible grew into being, and of the successive stages by which the English of our Bible was gradually selected, imbued with the proper meanings and associations, and ordered into a fit medium for the conveyance of the high thoughts and noble emotions in which the original abounds. Especially is it true of our second enquiry that no adequate conception of the language employed in the Jacobean version can be formed, save through at least a brief survey of the series of English translations which led up to it. Their indebtedness to their predecessors is recognised most clearly by the translators of the Authorised Version, who say in their preface:

Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought, from the beginning, that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one; ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against-that hath been our endeavour, that our mark.

1 Notwithstanding the current use of this term, the Jacobean revision was never publicly authorised by parliament or convocation, privy council or king. The acceptance which it has enjoyed has been won chiefly on its merits.