Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

a small sample of his picturesque description, take the first appear ance of Hythloday. On leaving church at Antwerp one day, sauntering out

"I chanced to espy this foresaid Peter (Giles) talking with a certain stranger, a man well stricken in age, with a black sunburnt face, a long beard, and a cloak cast homely about his shoulders, whom by his favour and apparel forthwith I judged to be a mariner."

A fair specimen of his humour is his pretended difficulties in finding out exactly where Utopia lay. He let off Raphael without minute questioning, so occupied was he with the peculiarities of the place; then he wrote to his friend Giles, who found the traveller, and asked the particulars of latitude and longitude; but unfortunately at the critical moment a servant came and whispered Raphael, and when the story was taken up again after this interruption, some person in the room had a fit of coughing, so that Giles lost "certain of the words." Throughout Robinson's translation of the 'Utopia,' the translator is so full of admiration that he cannot refrain from marginal remarks, such as, "O wittie head," a prettie fiction and a wittie," "mark this well."

66

Of late years the 'Utopia' has been sometimes quoted as containing lessons for the present day. As a matter of fact, More gives us no lesson that we do not get from living preachers in forms more directly adapted to our time-the main pleasure in reading him apart from his humour and picturesqueness is the surprise of finding in the 'Utopia' doctrines that have been preached in these latter days and considered novel. Curiously enough, the chief author of our time anticipated by the "merry, jocund, and pleasant" More, is the grimly humorous, vehement, and defiant "Seer of Chelsea," Mr Carlyle. The difference of manner makes the coincidence of matter all the more striking. We find realised in the 'Utopia' Mr Carlyle's main political doctrines his hatred of idleness and love of steady industry, his model aristocracy, his "Captains of Industry," his treatment of malefactors, and his grand specific for an overcrowded country-emigration. The Utopians are a sober, industrious, thrifty people; jewellery and fine clothes they put away with childhood; they have no idle rich, they leave hunting to the butchers; the chief duty of their magistrates the Syphogrants is, "to see and take heed that no man sit idle;" they enslave their malefactors, give them a peculiar dress, cut off the tips of their ears, hire them out to work, and punish desertion with death: when their children become too numerous, they found a colony.

All this is a curious anticipation of the Latter-Day Pamphlets'; and in More we meet with many other things that we are accustomed to think peculiarly modern. He makes some pleasant play

on the pedantic worship of antiquity, and the over-honoured "wisdom of our ancestors." He brings against the capital punishment of theft the same argument that Macaulay, in the Indian Penal Code, urged against the capital punishment of rape. Some years ago we heard much about the depopulation of the Highlands of Scotland to make deer-parks: More has a similar complaint to make; in his day the high price of English wool tempted landlords to eject husbandmen, and turn arable land into sheep-pastures.

The Utopia' was first translated by Ralph Robinson in 1551. It was again translated by Bishop Burnet in 1684. Both translations have often been reprinted, and others have been made. Robinson's translation is included in Arber's series of 'English Reprints,' 1869.

If we compare Robinson's translation with the original or with Burnet's translation, we are struck with a peculiarity characteristic of our literature up to and including the age of Elizabeth. Robinson seldom translates an epithet with a single word; he repeats two or even three words that are nearly synonymous. It would seem as if he distrusted the expressiveness of the new language, and sought to convey the Latin meaning by showing it in as many aspects as our language permitted. "Plain, simple, and homely," "merry, jocund, and pleasant," "disposition or conveyance" of the matter, might be explained in this way. But the greater number of the tautologies are the incontinence arising from want of art; couples are often used where the meaning of one would be amply apparent: thus-"I grant and confess," "I reckon and account," "tell and declare,' ," "win and get," and so forth.

Sir Thomas Elyot, 1487-1546, a man of admired integrity and of a genial didactic turn, who was employed by Henry VIII. on two of his most important embassies, was a miscellaneous writer of considerable range. His most famous work is 'The Governor,' which deals chiefly with the subject of education. Besides this he wrote a medical and dietetic work, The Castle of Health,' composed 'Bibliotheca Eliota' (probably a work on the choice of books), and pretended to translate from the Greek a work called "The Image of Governance.'

With More and Elyot may be mentioned their friend, though considerably their junior, John Leland (1506-1552), scholar and antiquary, author of The Itinerary.'

Edward Hall, 1500-1547, is often coupled with Fabyan as one of the two beginners of English prose history. The title of his work is The Union of the two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and Yorke.' There is no particular reason for coup'ing him with Fabyan. More comes between them as a historian with his Edward V. Hall was a man of better education than Fabyan; studied at Cambridge, went to the bar, and rose to be one of the

GEORGE CAVENDISH.-WILLIAM TYNDALE.

193

judges of the sheriff's court. His style is not equal to More's, and better than Fabyan's.

Sir Roger Ascham says that in "Hall's Chronicle much good matter is quite marred with indenture English and . . . strange and inkhorn terms.'

The work was reprinted among the English Chronicles in 1809. George Cavendish, 1495 (?)-1562 (1), gentleman-usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and after Wolsey's death to Henry VIII., wrote a biography of the Cardinal, which is reprinted in Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography' as a standard authority. Apart from its own worth, it is interesting as having furnished Shakspeare with particulars for his 'Henry VIII.'

An edition, published by Mr Singer in 1825, was accompanied with a proof that the author was George Cavendish, and not William, as commonly reported.

John Bellenden, Ballenden, or Ballentyne, Arch lean of Moray, is the first Scotch writer of prose. He translated Boece's 'History of Scotland' (1536) and the first five books of Livy. His diction is very little different from the ordinary English diction of that time.

Translators of the Bible.-Between 1537 and 1539 appeared in rapid succession four translations of the Bible-Tyndale's, Coverdale's, Matthew's, and Cranmer's.

William Tyndale, 1434-1536.-Translation of New Testament, published at Antwerp, 1526.-Little is known of Tyndale's family. He was a native of Gloucestershire, his birthplace probably North Nibley. He was educated at Oxford, and continued there probably as a tutor till 1519. Thereafter, being tutor in the family of Sir John Walsh, of Little Sodbury, in his native county, his antiPopish views became known, exposed him to threats of censure, and finally made England too hot for him, and drove him to Hamburg, 1523-24. Here he laboured at his translation of the Scriptures, holding, with the reformers of Germany and Switzerland, that the Bible should be in every hand, not in the exclusive keeping of the Church. In 1524-25 he printed two editions of the New Testament by snatches at different places, subject to vexatious interruptions. In 1526 an edition was deliberately printed at Antwerp, and every endeavour used to smuggle it into England. Turning next to the Old Testament, he translated the five books of Moses, which he published in 1530. He revised his New Testament in 1534. Hitherto he had escaped the agents sent to hunt him out and apprehend him. At last, in 1535, an emissary of the English Popish faction tracked him to Antwerp, obtained a warrant from the Emperor, and lodged him in prison. In 1536 he was led to the stake at Antwerp, strangled, and burnt. At that very time, the change having come in Henry's relations with the

N

Pope, the King's printer in London was printing the first English edition of his New Testament.

66

[ocr errors]

"Tyndale's translation of the New Testament is the most im"portant philological monument of the first half of the sixteenth century, perhaps, I should say, of the whole period between "Chaucer and Shakspeare, both as a historical relic and as having more than anything else contributed to shape and fix the sacred "dialect, and establish the form which the Bible must permanently "assume in an English dress. The best features of the translation "of 1611 are derived from the version of Tyndale, and thus that "remarkable work has exerted, directly and indirectly, a more powerful influence on the English language than any other single production between the ages of Richard II. and Queen Elizabeth." (Marsh's 'Lectures on the English Language.')

66

66

Miles Coverdale, 1488-1569, published a translation of the whole Bible in 1537. His life was more prosperous than Tyndale's. Hardly any mention is made of him before the date of his translation he would seem to have worked in silence, until the times became favourable to open activity in the cause of the Reformed faith. He was made Bishop of Exeter in 1551. During the reign

of Mary he prudently retired to the Continent, returning on the accession of Elizabeth to his former dignity. He is said to have been a native of Yorkshire. His version of the New Testament differs but slightly from Tyndale's. He also wrote several tracts, now much in request among book-hunters.

Matthew's Bible, so called from the name on the title-page, was issued under the superintendence of John Rogers, the proto-martyr of the reign of Mary. It is not a new translation, but a revised edition of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament, with an amended version of Coverdale's translation for the rest of the Bible. Rogers was a native of Warwickshire, was educated at Cambridge, and became the disciple and friend of Tyndale at Antwerp, where he was chaplain to the English merchants. He married a German wife, and left ten children.

Cranmer's Bible (1540) took its name from the celebratel Archbishop Cranmer, 1489-1556. It is substantially a new edition of Matthew's, revised by collation with the original Hebrew and Greek.

Hugh Latimer, 1491-1555, one of the foremost champions of the Reformation, burnt by Queen Mary at Oxford, along with Cranmer and Ridley. He was born at Thurcaston in Leicestershire, the son of a well-to-do yeoman. In 1505 he was sent to Cambridge, where in due course he became a resident Fellow. Always vehement and enthusiastic, he distinguished himself, like another Paul, by his strong attachment to the prevailing faith and his denunciations of the new light. About 1521 he was converted

by a priest whom he calls "Little Bilney," and immediately made himself obnoxious to "divers Papists in the University" by the new direction of his zealous and powerful eloquence. He was brought before Wolsey, but the Cardinal found nothing amiss in his preaching, and sent him away in triumph. When Henry wished to invalidate his marriage with Catherine, Latimer sat upon the question as one of a University Commission, and decided in the King's favour. Soon thereafter, in 1530, he was invited to Court, made a royal chaplain, and in 1535, on the elevation of Cranmer to the see of Canterbury, Bishop of Worcester. Never inclined to look at the world on its favourable side, he signalised his preferment by denouncing, with characteristic vehemence, the abuses of the time, declaring that "bishops, abbots, priors, parsons, canons resident, priests and all, were strong thieves-yea, dukes, lords, and all;" and that "bishops, abbots, with such other," should "keep hospitality to feed the needy people, not jolly fellows with golden chains and velvet gowns." In 1539 he got into trouble for refusing to sign the six Romanistic articles, resigned his bishopric, sought to retire into private life, but was seized, put in the Tower, and "commanded to silence." His voice is not heard again till the reign of Edward VI., when he blazes out as the most stirring of the Reforming preachers, and a man of importance at Court. When Edward died, everything was changed, and Latimer, with cther conspicuous Protestants, suffered the last extreme of persecution.

Latimer's sermons are still read with interest. They present an extraordinary contrast to modern sermons. In those days the ministers of the Word did not confine themselves to exegesis and morality in the abstract; they addressed hearers by name, and singling out particular classes, told them with some minuteness how to regulate their lives. Latimer took the utmost advantage of this licence of the pulpit,-told my Lord Chancellor of certain cases that he should attend to personally; warned the King against having too many horses, too many wives, or too much silver and gold; and admonished bishops and judges of their duty in the plainest terms. This was not all: in the matter he prob ably did not go beyond the time; in the manner, he was led by his excess of energy into eccentricities of diction and illustration rendered tolerable only by the power and freshness of his genius. His contemporaries looked upon him much as the present generation looks on Thomas Carlyle. Many could not endure his open defiance of conventionality, and could not speak of him with patience. These he outraged still more by replying to them from the pulpit. He says—

"When I was in trouble, it was objected and said unto me that I was singular, that no man thought as I thought, that I loved a singularity in

« ForrigeFortsæt »