For indeed he that shall translate a shepherd's tale and use the talk
and style of an heroical personage, expressing the silly man's meaning
with lofty thundering words, in my simple judgment joins (as Horace
saith) a horse's neck and a man's head together. For as the one were
monstrous to see, so were the other too fond and foolish to read.
Wherefore I have (I say) used the common country phrase according to the
person of the speakers in every Eclogue, as though indeed the man
himself should tell his tale. If there be anything herein that thou
shalt happen to mistake, neither blame the learned poet, nor control the
clownish shepherd (good reader) but me that presumed rashly to offer so
unworthy matter to thy survey."[336] Another phase of "decorum," the
necessity for employing a lofty style in dealing with the affairs of
great persons, comes in for discussion in connection with translations
of Seneca and Virgil. Jasper Heywood makes his excuses in case his
translation of the _Troas_ has "not kept the royalty of speech meet for
a tragedy";[337] Stanyhurst praises Phaer for his "picked and lofty
words";[338] but he himself is blamed by Puttenham because his own words
lack dignity. "In speaking or writing of a prince's affairs and
fortunes," writes Puttenham, "there is a certain decorum, that we may
not use the same terms in their business as we might very well do in a
meaner person's, the case being all one, such reverence is due to their
estates."[339] He instances Stanyhurst's renderings, "Aeneas was fain to
_trudge_ out of Troy" and "what moved Juno to _tug_ so great a captain
as Aeneas," and declares that the term _trudge_ is "better to be spoken
of a beggar, or of a rogue, or of a lackey," and that the word _tug_
"spoken in this case is so undecent as none other could have been
devised, and took his first original from the cart." A similar objection
to the employment of a "plain" style in telling the Troy story was made,
it will be remembered, in the early fifteenth century by Wyntoun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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