H

ADVERTISEMENT.

AVING been informed by my respected publisher that the former impression of these volumes has been entirely exhausted and long out of print, I have had much pleasure in acceding to his request to superintend a new edition. The text has been thoroughly revised by a collation with a fine copy of the first folio, and great care has been bestowed upon the punctuation. The Life of Chapman has, to a great extent, been rewritten, though it is to be regretted that little additional information could be procured. Since the former publication much attention has been turned to the study of Homer, probably through the influence of the writings of Mr. Gladstone; and some good versions of the Homeric Poems have been added to our literature. Among these the translations of the Iliad by Lord Derby and Mr. I. C. Wright, and one of the Odyssey, in the Spenserian stanza, by Mr. Philip Stanhope Worsley, have been deservedly commended. The noble version of George Chapman, however, has an independent value and interest. It is to be prized for its fine old language and the sweetness of its epithets, as much as its representation (however imperfect all such representations may be) of the original. The contemporary and friend of Shakespeare has left us a work worthy of the great age in which he lived; and I hope I may not be accused of the undue partiality of an advocate, if I express my conviction that Chapman's Homer is (to use Mr. Godwin's words) 66 one of the greatest treasures the English language has to boast."

Aston Upthorpe,

R. H.

March, 1865.

HE increasing interest in the sterling literature of the Elizabethan age is too obvious to need remark. The new era of criticism in the writings of Shakespeare has

caused the dust which had accumulated upon the works of many of his less-known contemporaries to be shaken off, and the result has proved by no means disadvantageous to their reputation. "He, indeed, overlooks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it from the table-land of the age in which he lived. He towered above his fellows in shape and gesture proudly eminent,' but he was one of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, the most graceful and beautiful of them; but it was a common and a noble brood."* One branch, however, of this "giant family" has not hitherto met with that attention to which it is justly entitled; a branch which contributed in no slight degree to enrich the language, and enlighten and enlarge the national mind-I mean the sturdy race of our old Translators. While Shakespeare and Spenser, Bacon, Sydney, Hooker, Ben Jonson, and a host of others, poets, philosophers, divines, and statesmen, "men whom Fame has eternized in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country and ornaments of human nature," were giving to the world the imperishable monuments

* Hazlitt's "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,"

P. 12.

of their genius, there was a hardly-to-be-less honoured race employed in culling from the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek and Latin Classics, in exploring the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, and throwing open their treasures in noble and stately Translations. When James ascended the throne, himself no mean scholar, he found his people in possession of versions in their own language of most of the great writers of Classical Antiquity. And though it is true the rage for Translation had been so great that many of these were of mushroom growth, and have meritedly sunk into oblivion, yet there were others which were of too genuine worth to be merely ephemeral, which have stood the test of ages, and which, having done good service in their day, are now undeservedly laid aside, and sought after only by the scholar and the philologer, or, may be, the curious, yet to every true lover of his native language are they precious heir-looms of the genius and learning of a past and a glorious age.

It is not to be supposed that in the following remarks on some of these old Translations I specify all that could be enumerated, but I would wish to mention a few, which obtained no slight popularity in their time, and which seem to me still worth the attention of the lover of old literature. Virgil, as might be imagined, was an early favourite. The version by Thomas Phaier, first published in Queen Mary's reign, is no mean specimen of the art of Translation, and, though now supplanted by the great work of the "glorious John," contains much to admire. A late critic indeed has passed a very high eulogium upon it which may seem a little too laudatory, though I can add my sincere testimony to the worth of "Thomas Phaier, Doctour of Phisicke." Mr. Godwin describes it "as the most wonderful depository of living description and fervent feeling, that is to be found perhaps in all the circle of literature."*

Ovid, besides numerous translations of his other poems by various authors, was nobly "converted" in his Metamorphoses by Arthur Golding, a name of no faint lustre amongst our old Translators. In "Lives of Edward and John Philips," p. 247. (London, 4to. 1815.)

1567 Golding produced his charming work complete. Warton confesses that "his style is poetical, and spirited, and his versification clear, his manner ornamental and diffuse, yet with a sufficient observance of the original."* After such testimony it would seem hardly necessary to add an observation; but I can assure the reader he would be much pleased by the smoothness and sweetness of diction in this fine version. Golding gave us several other translations; and one in particular may be mentioned, namely Philip Mornay's Treatise "On the Truth of the Christian Religion," executed in conjunction with Sir Philip Sydney.

Sir Thomas North's Translation of Plutarch's Lives, 1579, though avowedly taken from the French of Amyot, has a claim to our veneration from the use that Shakespeare made of it. The popularity of this work may be estimated from the fact that it was a household book during the whole of the seventeenth century, and we have no less than six folio editions of it, viz., 1579, 1595, 1602, 1631, 1657, 1676. The edition of 1657 was published under the superintendence of the illustrious Selden. I may be pardoned for giving Mr. Godwin's opinion of it. "I must confess that till this book fell into my hands, I had no genuine feeling of Plutarch's merits, or knowledge of what sort of writer he was. The philosopher of Cheronæa subjects himself in his biographical sketches to none of the rules of fine writing; he has not digested the laws and ordonnance of composition, and the dignified and measured step of an historian; but rambles just as his fancy suggests, and always tells you without scruple or remorse what comes next in his mind. How beautiful does all this show in the simplicity of the old English! How aptly does this dress correspond to the tone and manner of thinking in the author! While I read Plutarch in Sir Thomas North, methinks I see the grey-headed philosopher, full of information and anecdote, a veteran in reflection and experience, and smitten with the love of all that is most exalted in our nature, pouring out without restraint the collections of his wisdom, as he reclines in his

• Warton's Hist. Engl. Poetry, vol. 111. p. 332, ed. 1840.