The weakling he sits buzzing at his book, IX. THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1604). Much tamer in every way than Gascoigne was this other soldier and poet, yet he is an interesting man, if for no other reason than that he saw the wonderful growth of the Elizabethan literature from its beginnings to its maturity. He lived for some two years in the service of the Earl of Surrey, contributed to Tottel's Miscellany and to the 'Mirror for Magistrates,' and survived to issue several books contemporaneously with the plays of Shakespeare. He began life as a gay gallant or "royster" at the Court of Henry VIII., and he saw the accession of James I. Though his poetry is of small account, his life was eventful and interesting. In the war with Scotland under Edward VI. he was taken prisoner; being ransomed, he returned to Court, found himself forgotten and neglected, and turned his face, swearing, "as long as he his five wits had, to come in Court no more." He courted a widow, who shamelessly told him he had too little money for her: whereupon, in the rage of his disappointment, he broke his lute, burnt his books and MSS., and went abroad to the Emperor as a soldier of fortune. He served in Mary's wars with France in the last year of her reign; was taken prisoner; became very popular among the cultivated French, and rewarded their courtesy by cleverly escaping to England. He lived through the whole of the reign of Elizabeth, engaging in various warlike adventures, for which he seems to have received very poor recompense, and making some effort to live by his pen. His chief writings, besides the stories of Lord Mowbray and Shore's Wife in the Mirror for Magistrates,' were extracts from his own experience;-Churchyard's Chips, 1565; Churchyard's Choice, 1579; Churchyard's Charge, “a light bundle of lively discourses," 1580; Churchyard's Challenge, 1593; and Churchyard's Charity, "a musical consort of heavenly harmony," 1595. In these works he appears as a garrulous, gossiping old fellow, fond of reciting his own exploits, and overflowing with good advice and general goodwill-on easy confidential terms with the public. So far as his works afford indications, he was tolerably happy in his old age. There would seem to have been a change in his circumstances between 1565 and 1580. In 1565 he narrated his own life in most lugubrious Mirror for Magistrates strain, under the title of "A tragical discourse of the unhappy man's life." In 1578 he translated Ovid De Tristibus. But in 1580 he gave another version of his life in dancing ballad couplets as "a story translated out of French," dwelling with particular gusto on his powers of amusing and gaining the friendship of his enemies during his periods of captivity in Scotland and France. He kept on writing with great activity till the very last, publishing no less than thirty-five works during the last twenty-five years of his long life. Such was the Nestor of the Eliza bethan heroes. X.-TRANSLATORS OF SENECA AND OVID. Our translators were drawn to Seneca by the same feelings that led to the production of the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' They found in him a similar vein of declamation on the downfall of greatness, the evanescent character of prosperity, the slipperiness of the heights of pride. Thomas Newton, who collected the translations of the several trage 1 For reprints see 'Bibliographical Miscellanies,' Oxford, 1813; Frondes Caduca, Auchinleck Press, 1816–17; and (specially) 'Chips concerning Scotland,' edited, with Life, by George Chalmers, 1817. dies in 1581, enlarged expressly on their moral tone. He affected to believe that Seneca might be charged with encouraging ambition, cruelty, incontinence, &c.; and affirmed in denial of any such charge that "in the whole catalogue of heathen writers there is none that does so much with gravity of philosophical sentences, weightiness of sappy words, and authority of sound matter, to beat down sin, loose life, dissolute dealing, and unbridled sensuality." It is not worth while, if it were possible, to recall the personalities of the several translators. The first of them was Jasper Heywood, then an Oxford undergraduate, who set to work to translate the 'Troas,' immediately after the publication of the 'Mirror for Magistrates' in 1559. He was followed by Alexander Nevile, John Studley, and Thomas Nuce: and the separate translations were collected into one volume by Thomas Newton in 1581. The translations are avowedly free. In his preface to the 'Troas,' Heywood says that he has endeavoured to keep touch with the Latin, not word for word or verse for verse, but in such a way as to expound the sense; and Nevile, who was but sixteen when he wrote, and whose preface is an amusing study of inflated precocity and stilted moralising, boldly affirmed his intention of wandering from his author, roving where he listed, adding and subtracting at pleasure. Of course none of the translators make the remotest approach to the style of Seneca: they simply transmute him into the poetical commonplaces of Lydgate and the Mirror.' Look, for instance, at Studley's rendering of the invocation of Medea in the Fourth Act : "O flittering flocks of grisly ghosts O ugsome Bugs, O Goblins grim O lowering Chaos, dungeon blind Where Ditis muffled up in clouds O wretched woful wawling souls That linked lie with jingling chains O mossy den where death doth couch Release your pangs, O sprites, and to Cause ye the snaggy wheel to pause, to rest upon the ground; his swelling thirst to staunch." A collector of "sound and fury" would find many amusing passages in these translations. At the same time, the raw material, very raw though it was, may have been useful to Shakespeare or any dramatist that knew how to refine it. It is not impossible that Shakespeare derived from these rude translations some hints for his incomparable studies of oppressed and desperate women. What drew Arthur Golding to translate Ovid's Metamorphoses, is hard to conjecture. If it had been Ovid's 'Art of Love,' one might have pointed to the translation as part of the amatory movement in literature, standing to the translation of Seneca as Tottel's Miscellany to the 'Mirror for Magistrates.' But Golding was not the sort of man from whom one would expect a translation of an amatory work. He was an indefatigable translator from Latin, but his subjects generally were of a different cast. He began in 1562 by translating with fervent Protestant zeal a brief treatise on the burning of Bucer and Phagius in the time of Queen Mary, setting forth "the fantastical and tyrannous dealings of the Romish Church, together with the godly and modest regiment of the true Christian Church." The tract is picturesque and forcible. His next performance was a translation of Aretine's history of the wars between "the Imperials and the Goths for the possession of Italy," published in 1563. He translated from Justin in 1564; Cæsar's Commentaries in 1565; and numerous ecclesiastical and other works. His translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was completed in 1567. It is not very exact, nor calculated to convey an idea of the poet's exquisite delicacy of expression; but it was quite good enough to reveal to non-classical readers a new world of graceful fancies. Shakespeare must have revelled in it, denuding the exquisite fancies of what was rough in the manner of their presentation, and letting them lie in his mind, and stimulate his imagination to beget many others of the same kind. The following is a specimen which may have been in Shakespeare's mind when he imagined the station of Mercury new lighted on a heavenkissing hill: "And thereupon he call'd his son that Maia had him born, Commanding Argus should be killed. He made no long abode, But tied his feathers to his feet, and took his charmed rod (With which he bringeth things asleep, and fetcheth souls from hell,) And put his hat upon his head; and when that all was well, He leaped from his father's towers and down to earth he flew, And there both hat and wings also he lightly from him threw, Retaining nothing but his staff, the which he closely held Between his elbow and his side, and through the common field Went plodding like some good plain soul that had some flock to feed." Prefixed to the work is an epistle also in Alexandrines, moralising the various fables, asking the pious reader to understand good men by "gods," and to see in Fate and For |