Part 14 (1/2)

[363] P. xxv.

[364] P. xv.

IV. FROM COWLEY TO POPE

IV

FROM COWLEY TO POPE

Although the ardor of the Elizabethan translator as he approached the vast, almost unbroken field of foreign literature may well awaken the envy of his modern successor, in many respects the period of Dryden and Pope has more claim to be regarded as the Golden Age of the English translator. Patriotic enthusiasm had, it is true, lost something of its earlier fire, but national conditions were in general not unfavorable to translation. Though the seventeenth century, torn by civil discords, was very unlike the period which Holland had lovingly described as ”this long time of peace and tranquillity, wherein ... all good literature hath had free course and flourished,”[365] yet, despite the rise and fall of governments, the stream of translation flowed on almost uninterruptedly. Sandys' _Ovid_ is presented by its author, after his visit to America, as ”bred in the New World, of the rudeness whereof it cannot but partic.i.p.ate; especially having wars and tumults to bring it to light instead of the Muses,”[366] but the more ordinary translation, bred at home in England during the seventeenth century, apparently suffered little from the political strife which surrounded it, while the eighteenth century afforded a ”peace and tranquillity” even greater than that which had prevailed under Elizabeth.

Throughout the period translation was regarded as an important labor, deserving of every encouragement. As in the sixteenth century, friends and patrons united to offer advice and aid to the author who engaged in this work. Henry Brome, dedicating a translation of Horace to Sir William Backhouse, writes of his own share of the volume, ”to the translation whereof my pleasant retirement and conveniencies at your delightsome habitation have liberally contributed.”[367] Doctor Barten Holiday includes in his preface to a version of Juvenal and Persius an interesting list of ”worthy friends” who have a.s.sisted him. ”My honored friend, Mr. John Selden (of such eminency in the studies of antiquities and languages) and Mr. Farnaby ... procured me a fair copy from the famous library of St. James's, and a ma.n.u.script copy from our herald of learning, Mr. Camden. My dear friend, the patriarch of our poets, Ben Jonson, sent in an ancient ma.n.u.script partly written in the Saxon character.” Then follow names of less note, Casaubon, Anyan, Price.[368]

Dryden tells the same story. He has been permitted to consult the Earl of Lauderdale's ma.n.u.script translation of Virgil. ”Besides this help, which was not inconsiderable,” he writes, ”Mr. Congreve has done me the favor to review the _Aeneis_, and compare my version with the original.”[369] Later comes his recognition of indebtedness of a more material character. ”Being invited by that worthy gentleman, Sir William Bowyer, to Denham Court, I translated the First Georgic at his house, and the greatest part of the last Aeneid. A more friendly entertainment no man ever found.... The Seventh Aeneid was made English at Burleigh, the magnificent abode of the Earl of Exeter.”[370]

While private individuals thus rallied to the help of the translator, the world in general regarded his work with increasing respect. The great Dryden thought it not unworthy of his powers to engage in putting cla.s.sical verse into English garb. His successor Pope early turned to the same pleasant and profitable task. Johnson, the literary dictator of the next age, described Rowe's version of Lucan as ”one of the greatest productions of English poetry.”[371] The comprehensive editions of the works of British poets which began to appear towards the end of the eighteenth century regularly included English renderings, generally contemporaneous, of the great poetry of other countries.

The growing dignity of this department of literature and the Augustan fondness for literary criticism combined to produce a large body of comment on methods of translation. The more ambitious translations of the eighteenth century, for example, were accompanied by long prefaces, containing, in addition to the elaborate paraphernalia of contemporary scholars.h.i.+p, detailed discussion of the best rules for putting a foreign cla.s.sic into English. Almost every possible phase of the art had been broached in one place and another before the century ended. In its last decade there appeared the first attempt in English at a complete and detailed treatment of the theory of translation as such, Tytler's _Essay on the Principles of Translation_.

From the sixteenth-century theory of translation, so much of which is incidental and uncertain in expression, it is a pleasure to come to the deliberate, reasoned statements, unmistakable in their purpose and meaning, of the earlier critics of our period, men like Denham, Cowley, and Dryden. In contrast to the ma.s.s of unrelated individual opinions attached to the translations of Elizabeth's time, the criticism of the seventeenth century emanates, for the most part, from a small group of men, who supply standards for lesser commentators and who, if they do not invariably agree with one another, are yet thoroughly familiar with one another's views. The field of discussion also has narrowed considerably, and theory has gained by becoming less scattering.

Translation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries showed certain new developments, the most marked of which was the tendency among translators who aspired to the highest rank to confine their efforts to verse renderings of the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics. A favorite remark was that it is the greatest poet who suffers most in being turned from one language into another. In spite of this, or perhaps for this reason, the common ambition was to undertake Virgil, who was generally regarded as the greatest of epic poets, and attempts to translate at least a part of the _Aeneid_ were astonis.h.i.+ngly frequent. As early as 1658 the Fourth Book is described as ”translated ... in our day at least ten times into English.”[372] Horace came next in popularity; by the beginning of the eighteenth century, according to one translator, he had been ”translated, paraphrased, or criticized on by persons of all conditions and both s.e.xes.”[373] As the century progressed, Homer usurped the place formerly occupied by Virgil as the object of the most ambitious effort and the center of discussion. But there were other translations of the cla.s.sics. Cooke, dedicating his translation of Hesiod to the Duke of Argyll, says to his patron: ”You, my lord, know how the works of genius lift up the head of a nation above her neighbors, and give as much honor as success in arms; among these we must reckon our translations of the cla.s.sics; by which when we have naturalized all Greece and Rome, we shall be so much richer than they by so many original productions as we have of our own.”[374] Seemingly there was an attempt to naturalize ”all Greece and Rome.” Anacreon, Pindar, Apollonius Rhodius, Lucretius, Tibullus, Statius, Juvenal, Persius, Ovid, Lucan, are names taken almost at random from the list of seventeenth and eighteenth-century translations. Criticism, however, was ready to concern itself with the translation of any cla.s.sic, ancient or modern. Denham's two famous p.r.o.nouncements are connected, the one with his own translation of the Second Book of the _Aeneid_, the other with Sir Richard Fanshaw's rendering of _Il Pastor Fido_. In the later eighteenth century voluminous comment accompanied Hoole's _Ariosto_ and Mickle's _Camoens_.

At present, however, we are concerned not with the number and variety of these translations, but with their h.o.m.ogeneity. As translators showed themselves less inclined to wander over the whole field of literature, the theory of translation a.s.sumed much more manageable proportions. A further limitation of the area of discussion was made by Denham, who expressly excluded from his consideration ”them who deal in matters of fact or matters of faith,”[375] thus disposing of the theological treatises which had formerly divided attention with the cla.s.sics.

The aims of the translator were also clarified by definition of his audience. John Vicars, publis.h.i.+ng in 1632 _The XII. Aeneids of Virgil translated into English decasyllables_, adduces as one of his motives ”the common good and public utility which I hoped might accrue to young students and grammatical tyros,”[376] but later writers seldom repeat this appeal to the learner. The next year John Brinsley issued _Virgil's Eclogues, with his book De Apibus, translated grammatically, and also according to the propriety of our English tongue so far as Grammar and the verse will permit_. A significant comment in the ”Directions” runs: ”As for the fear of making truants by these translations, a conceit which arose merely upon the abuse of other translations, never intended for this end, I hope that happy experience of this kind will in time drive it and all like to it utterly out of schools and out of the minds of all.” Apparently the schoolmaster's ban upon the unauthorized use of translations was establis.h.i.+ng the distinction between the English version which might claim to be ranked as literature and that which Johnson later designated as ”the clandestine refuge of schoolboys.”[377]

Another limitation of the audience was, however, less admirable. For the widely democratic appeal of the Elizabethan translator was subst.i.tuted an appeal to a cla.s.s, distinguished, if one may believe the philosopher Hobbes, as much by social position as by intellect. In discussing the vocabulary to be employed by the translator, Hobbes professes opinions not unlike those of the sixteenth-century critics. Like Puttenham, he makes a distinction between words as suited or unsuited for the epic style. ”The names of instruments and tools of artificers, and words of art,” he says in the preface to his _Homer_, ”though of use in the schools, are far from being fit to be spoken by a hero. He may delight in the arts themselves, and have skill in some of them, but his glory lies not in that, but in courage, n.o.bility, and other virtues of nature, or in the command he has over other men.” In Hobbes' objection to the use of unfamiliar words, also, there is nothing new; but in the standards by which he tries such terms there is something amusingly characteristic of his time. In the choice of words, ”the first indiscretion is in the use of such words as to the readers of poesy (which are commonly Persons of the best Quality)”--it is only fair to reproduce Hobbes' capitalization--”are not sufficiently known. For the work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (princ.i.p.ally) for three virtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the reading whereof women no less than men have a just pretence though their skill in language be not so universal. And therefore foreign words, till by long use they become vulgar, are unintelligible to them.” Dryden is similarly restrained by the thought of his readers. He does not try to reproduce the ”Doric dialect” of Theocritus, ”for Theocritus writ to Sicilians, who spoke that dialect; and I direct this part of my translations to our ladies, who neither understand, nor will take pleasure in such homely expressions.”[378] In translating the _Aeneid_ he follows what he conceives to have been Virgil's practice. ”I will not give the reasons,”

he declares, ”why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation, land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say that Virgil has avoided those properties, because he writ not to mariners, soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, etc., but to all in general, and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been better bred than to be too nicely knowing in such things.”[379]

Another element in theory which displays the strength and weakness of the time is the treatment of the work of other countries and other periods. A changed att.i.tude towards the achievements of foreign translators becomes evident early in the seventeenth century. In the prefaces to an edition of the works of Du Bartas in English there are signs of a growing satisfaction with the English language as a medium and an increasing conviction that England can surpa.s.s the rest of Europe in the work of translation. Thomas Hudson, in an address to James VI of Scotland, attached to his translation of _The History of Judith_, quotes an interesting conversation which he held on one occasion with that pedantic monarch. ”It pleased your Highness,” he recalls, ”not only to esteem the peerless style of the Greek Homer and the Latin Virgil to be inimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted), but also to allege (partly through delight your majesty took in the haughty style of those most famous writers, and partly to sound the opinion of others) that also the lofty phrases, the grave inditement, the facund terms of the French Sal.u.s.t (for the like resemblance) could not be followed nor sufficiently expressed in our rough and unpolished English language.”[380] It was to prove that he could reproduce the French poet ”succinctly and sensibly in our vulgar speech” that Hudson undertook the _Judith_. According to the complimentary verses addressed to the famous Sylvester on his translations from the same author, the English tongue has responded n.o.bly to the demands put upon it. Sylvester has shown

... that French tongue's plenty to be such.

And yet that ours can utter full as much.[381]

John Davies of Hereford, writing of another of Sylvester's translations, describes English as acquitting itself well when it competes with French, and continues

If French to English were so strictly bound It would but pa.s.sing lamely strive with it; And soon be forc'd to lose both grace and ground, Although they strove with equal skill and wit.[382]

An opinion characteristic of the latter part of the century is that of the Earl of Roscommon, who, after praising the work of the earlier French translators, says,

From hence our generous emulation came, We undertook, and we performed the same: But now we show the world another way, And in translated verse do more than they.[383]

Dryden finds little to praise in the French and Italian renderings of Virgil. ”Segrais ... is wholly dest.i.tute of elevation, though his version is much better than that of the two brothers, or any of the rest who have attempted Virgil. Hannibal Caro is a great name among the Italians; yet his translation is most scandalously mean.”[384] ”What I have said,” he declares somewhat farther on, ”though it has the face of arrogance, yet is intended for the honor of my country; and therefore I will boldly own that this English translation has more of Virgil's spirit in it than either the French or Italian.”[385]

On translators outside their own period seventeenth-century critics bestowed even less consideration than on their French or Italian contemporaries. Earlier writers were forgotten, or remembered only to be condemned. W. L., Gent., who in 1628 published a translation of Virgil's _Eclogues_, expresses his surprise that a poet like Virgil ”should yet stand still as a _noli me tangere_, whom no man either durst or would undertake; only Master Spenser long since translated the _Gnat_ (a little fragment of Virgil's excellence), giving the world peradventure to conceive that he would at one time or other have gone through with the rest of this poet's work.”[386] Vicars' translation of the _Aeneid_ is accompanied by a letter in which the author's cousin, Thomas Vicars, congratulates him on his ”great pains in transplanting this worthiest of Latin poets into a mellow and neat English soil (a thing not done before).”[387] Denham announces, ”There are so few translations which deserve praise, that I scarce ever saw any which deserved pardon; those who travail in that kind being for the most part so unhappy as to rob others without enriching themselves, pulling down the fame of good authors without raising their own.” Brome,[388] writing in 1666, rejoices in the good fortune of Horace's ”good friend Virgil ... who being plundered of all his ornaments by the old translators, was restored to others with double l.u.s.tre by those standard-bearers of wit and judgment, Denham and Waller,”[389] and in proof of his statements puts side by side translations of the same pa.s.sage by Phaer and Denham.

Later, in 1688, an anonymous writer recalls the work of Phaer and Stanyhurst only to disparage it. Introducing his translation of Virgil, ”who has so long unhappily continued a stranger to tolerable English,”

he says that he has ”observed how _Player_ and _Stainhurst_ of old ...

had murdered the most absolute of poets.”[390] One dissenting note is found in Robert Gould's lines prefixed to a 1687 edition of Fairfax's _G.o.dfrey of Bulloigne_.

See here, you dull translators, look with shame Upon this stately monument of fame, And to amaze you more, reflect how long It is, since first 'twas taught the English tongue: In what a dark age it was brought to light; Dark? No, our age is dark, and that was bright.