The flattering arts of the dedicator were also practised by Jasper Heywood, who, in 1559, began to translate Seneca, and inscribed his first attempt to the Earl of Pembroke. He was a man of considerable ability, a younger son of John Heywood-Pope's "eldest Heywood -famous for his Interludes. Jasper was born in 1535, and entered as a student at Oxford in 1547. In 1554 he became a Fellow of Merton, but resigned that position -in order to avoid expulsion-in consequence of some irregularity. Cardinal Pole recommended him in 1558 for a Fellowship in the newly founded Trinity College; but without success. He was elected to a Fellowship of All Souls in this year; from which, however, he was expelled after the accession of Elizabeth for non-compliance with the new religious requirements of the College. Being ordained priest, he became a Jesuit in 1562, and was for seventeen years Professor of Moral Theology in the college of that order at Dillingen in Bavaria. In 1581 he returned to England, where, in 1583, he was arrested on suspicion of being a priest, and was arraigned in 1585 in Westminster Hall, together with five other priests, all of whom were condemned and executed. Though he himself escaped this extreme fate, he was sent to the Tower and kept in captivity for seventeen months, at the end of which time he was banished, and died at Naples in 1598. These biographical details have some significance when we remember that the man, who endured suffering with steadfast courage in behalf of his religious convictions, was in his youth the translator of some of the works of the great Roman professor of Stoicism. Seneca is an author now little read, but in the Middle Ages his supposed leanings towards Christianity, and the tradition of his correspondence with St. Paul, gave him a distinguished place among the few ancient writers still studied in the schools. His plays, consisting as they did almost exclusively of representations of the revolutions of fortune, largely contributed to sanction the meaning attached to the word "tragedy" in the Canterbury Tales, the De Heywood translatos of Senica his travlation Casibus Illustrium Virorum, and The Mirror for Magistrates; and as we shall see hereafter, exercised a weighty influence on the development of the drama under Elizabeth. There was even something in his style attractive to an age which had lost the true tradition of classical form. Seneca exaggerated all the features of the sophistical manner which Euripides had introduced into the Greek drama. Instead of leaving the moral to be deduced from the action, he concentrated his powers upon the dialogue; and his tragedies are, therefore, no more than brilliant exercises in rhetoric; but inexperienced tastes are apt to admire the pompous declamation of his actors, and the sparkle of epigrams, antitheses, and paradoxes, profusely scattered through his plays. Jasper Heywood translated three of Seneca's tragedies—the Troas in 1559, the Thyestes in 1560, and the Hercules Furens in 1561. For the rendering of dialogue he employed the ballad metre, apparently not perceiving how little suited this measure was either for the general purposes of the drama, or for the reflection of the peculiarities of Seneca's style; the lyrical parts he translated into stanzas of decasyllabic verse variously combined. As Seneca's text is almost unknown to the modern reader, it will be needless to give specimens of Heywood's translation, but the following passages, showing the different spirit in which he set about his task on different occasions, are of interest, because they illustrate the growth of the critical faculty in the atmosphere of the Renaissance. In his first translation-the TroasHeywood allowed himself much latitude. After speaking of the difficulty of translating Seneca, he says: Now as concernyng sundry places augmented and since altered in thys translation. Fyrst, forasmuch as thys worke seemed unto me in some places unperfytte (whether left so of the authour or part of it lost, as tyme devoureth all thynges, I wotte not), I have (where I thought good) with addicyon of mine owne pen supplied the want of some thynges, as the fyrst chorus, after the fyrst act, beginning thus: "O ye to whom, etc." the second acte I have added the spectre of Achilles spright rising from hell to require the sacrifice of Polyxena, beginning in this wise, "Forsaking now, etc." Againe the three last staves of the chorus after the same acte, and as for the third chorus, which in Seneca beginneth thus, Quæ vocat sedes, forasmuch as nothing is therein but a heaped nombre of farre and strange contreyes, considering with myself the names of so many unknown countreyes, mountains, desertes, and woodes, should have no grace in the English tonge, this being a strange and unpleasant thing to the reader (except I should expounde the history of eche, which would be far too tedious) I have in the place thereof made another beginning in thys manner; "O Jove that leadst, etc." which alteracyon may be borne with seeing that the chorus is no part of the substance of the matter.1 But in the translation of the Hercules Furens he followed a very different way. Neither could I satisfie myself till I had throughout thys whole tragedye of Seneca, a grave and wise writer, so travailed that I had in English given verse for verse (as far as the English tonge permits) and word for word with the Latyn: whereby I might both make some tryal of myself, and as it were teche the little children to goe that yet can but crepe.2 This close attention to nicety of phrase is indicative of a growing eagerness in English writers to refine their native language, which was presently to culminate in the Euphuistic movement. But on the whole it did not prevail to any great extent among the translators of the Classics, who were mainly desirous to introduce to their readers the substance of the works which they themselves admired. This, certainly, is the predominant motive in the next translation which calls for our notice, namely that of Ovid's Metamorphoses. In the Middle Ages Ovid was, I imagine, an even greater favourite than Virgil. His poems touched at numerous points the peculiar tastes and sympathies of those times. His Art of Love helped the Troubadours and their allegorical successors to construct the metaphysics of their poetical creed; his Heroides furnished the same school with most of the examples of 1 Sixt Tragedie of the most grave and prudent author, Lucius Annæus Seneca, set forth in English by Jasper Heywood, student in Oxenford, 1559. 2 Address to Lord Pembroke prefixed to the translation of Hercules Furens, 1561. amorous martyrology; and his Metamorphoses discovered a rich mine of fable to the exhausted invention of the Trouvère. Nevertheless his works presented certain difficulties to the Christian imagination, on account both of the Paganism of the subject matter, and the immorality of much of the sentiment. It is therefore remarkable that the first English translator of the Metamorphoses should have been a man strongly imbued with the rising spirit of Puritanism. Arthur Golding, son of John Golding, one of the auditors of the Exchequer, was born about 1536. He is said to have been educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, but there is no record of his having taken a degree at that University. Indeed, it seems improbable that he should have been at any University, for as early as 1549 he is found in the service of the Protector Somerset. He was well connected, being uncle through his sister of Edward, 17th Earl of Oxford, to whom in later years he acted as receiver. He printed the first four books of his translation of the Metamorphoses in 1565, and completed the work in 1567. He also translated in 1565, Cæsar's Commentaries; in 1575, Beza's Tragedy of Abraham's Sacrifice; in 1577, Seneca, De Beneficiis; while in 1587 he completed the translation of Du Mornay's Treatise on the Truth of Christianity which had been begun by Sir Philip Sidney. Sharing the views of the Calvinistic Reformers, he denounced the violation of the Sabbath by the performance of stage plays; and in 1580 he wrote on the subject of the earthquake which was at that time, as we see from the correspondence of Gabriel Harvey, exciting the imagination of the English people. Golding regards the earthquake as a punishment sent by God on the wickedness of the times. He died in 1606. Such a man must necessarily have found some difficulty in reconciling his admiration of Ovid's style with his disapprobation of Ovid's opinions. And indeed the part of his work most interesting to the modern reader is the metrical preface, in which he explains the motive and plan of his translation. This is contained in an epistle to the Earl of Leicester, to whom the book is dedicated, and an Address to the Reader. The simple sort, he says, in the latter, may be offended by seeing the names of heathen gods; but this is unreasonable in view of certain considerations on which he dwells with fulness in his epistle to the Earl. According to him, Ovid was a disciple of Pythagoras, and intended in the Metamorphoses to illustrate the constant process of human change. But here he was met by one of the many difficulties which led the early Church to prohibit the study of heathen authors. Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of souls, and Golding is therefore at pains to inform the reader that this doctrine is not to be understood of the individual soul of man, which is immortal, but merely of the triple soul, vegetable, animal, and rational, which is born of union with the body. He goes industriously through several books of the Metamorphoses, and explains the moral object of the particular tales; and then sets forth his own purpose in the translation : These fables out of every book I have interpreted, To show how they and all the rest may stand a man in stead : Not adding over curiously the meaning of them all, For that were labour infinite and tediousness not small, Both unto your good Lordship, and the rest that should them read, Who well might think I did the bounds of modesty exceed, If I this one Epistle should with matters overcharge Which scarce a book of many quires can well contain at large. The things to one which heathen men to many gods impute, For God and Fate and Fortune are the terms of heathenness, |