Part 17 (1/2)

There can be no desire to be hypercritical in judging such a production, or to lay stress on occasional slips of spelling and prosody; but the English of Pleunus very often strikes one--nor is it surprising that it should be so--as Italian literally rendered He probably never attained an idioy; and one would have said less about it, had it not been for that sort of professorial assu back in order of tilot _History of Aurelio and of Isabel Daughter to the King of Scotland_, translated from the Spanish, and printed in 1556 at Antwerp I propose to quote a passage where two knights in love with Isabel propose to cast lots for her:--”I fynde none occasion that is so iuste, that by the same lof you, or you of me maye complayne vs: inashe more bounde vnto the loue, that he beareth to Isabell, then vnto any other bounde of frendshi+ppe And therfore I see not, that I for respecte of you, nor you also for h enterprise alreadie by vs begonne Nor in likewise ether in one place sould displane the louingly sailes [_voilles amoureuses_ in the French colureat betwene vs and more, then of brother conioyned frendshi+p”

Here it is not so conspicuously the orthography that is at fault, as the composition and syntax But up and down this little book, too, there are so The translator from the Spanish of Juan de Flores, whoever he was (a Frenchman probably), understood French and Italian; but surely his conversance with the reue was on a par with that of the majority of his Continental felloellers then, before, and since; and doubtless his printer has not failed to contribute to the barbarous unintelligibility of the English text This is the book to which Collins the poet mistakenly informed Warton that Shakespear had resorted for the story of the _Teraphical and grammatical heresies exists in _The historijke Pvrtreatvres of the woll[4] Bible_, printed at Lyons in 1553 It is a series of woodcuts, with a quatrain in English beneath each picture descriptive of its , and is introduced by an elaborate epistle by Peter Derendel and an Address from the printer to the reader Both, however, probably proceeded from the pen of Derendel, as doubtless connected with Pierre Erondelle, a well-known preceptor in London at a sohout the volume are literal translations, presuh, and ht have tempted quotation; but, eccentric as they are, they are coo to come from the printer of the work, which is the co to Biblical subjects, lish letterpress

I will transcribe only the commencement of the preface, whoseever it may be:--”The affectionreader, being cotinuallie coo about to satisfie the in this, withe thow desirest and lookest for in mi vacation, the withe, to mai please the, I wolde it were to e, as it is be the mishappe of the tihter is thus poetically set forth:--

”The kinges daughter fonde hie, withe to hiht worthie, His ownehim for noorce able”

Once es_ ix is portrayed after the ensuing fashi+on:--

”Hauing killed his bretherne on a stone, Abi with for warre Thebes, anon A strocke he had, of a wo and the syntax in these exaeous; yet they are possibly not ht be expected from persons unversed in the intricacies and ano was executed for the special behoof, not alone of English residents abroad, but also of English students of sacred history at ho of the class at that time in our literature or our art It is allish was selected, as French would have been as serviceable to the educated reader here, while the Anglo-Gallic _patois_ lish educational books produced by foreign printers were not quite invariably so wide of the mark in an idiomatic respect Solish author or editor; and such may have been the case with a version of the _Short Catechish, where the slips do not exceed an ordinary Table of Errata

Now and then, too, the writer himself was alone responsible for the eccentricities which presented themselves in his book, as where Stanyhurst, in his version of the _aeneid_, published at Leyden in 1582, renders the opening lines of Book the Second thus:--

”With tentive list'ning each wight was setled in harckning; Then father aeneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie

You me bid, O Princesse, too scarrifie a festered old soare, How that the Troians wear prest by Grecian armie”

Here it was the idiosyncrasy of the Briton which reduced a translation to a burlesque, and disregarded the canons of his own language, as well as taste and propriety in diction For the entire work is cast in a similar mould, and is heterodox in alrossly absurd even for an Irishiuraphy--Williaular advocate of it--Charles Butler--Dr Jones and his theory exaraphy, which arded as empirical and fallacious, only forms part of such an inquiry as the present by reason of the presence in our earlier literature of a few books which were apparently designed, more or less, for educational purposes

The fundamental theory of the promoters of this principle, both in former tiovern the written character, and that all laws of philology and grammar should defer to popular pronunciation It is, of course, begging the question, in the first place; and one of the warmest enthusiasts on the subject admits that the very pronunciation, which is the product of sound, and on which he relies, differs in different localities