Echoes of Old LancashireAxon, William E. A. (William Edward Armytage)
History
Echoes of Old Lancashire
Axon, William E. A. (William Edward Armytage)
Lancashire (England) -- History
This passage has not escaped the notice either of Mr. T. H. Jamieson,
who has edited Barclay’s translation of the “Stultifera Navis,” or of
Dr. A. W. Ward, who has written his life in the “Dictionary of National
Biography,” and puts the query that Godmanchester may be meant. The
eclogue from which the quotation is taken, together with two others,
are said to be “gathered out of a booke named in Latin, ‘Miseriæ
Curialium,’ compiled by Æneas Silvius, Poet and Oratour.” This, of
course, means that member of the Piccolomini family, who, after an
earlier life not free from reproach, made a decorous pontiff, as Pope
Pius II., and died in 1464. This book, drawn from his own experience of
the unhappy life of courtiers, was the most popular of all his
writings. It was often reprinted, but whether Barclay worked from a
printed or a MS. copy is not known. Now, what his principles of
translation were we know, both from his declaration and practice. In
his version of Brandt’s “Ship of Fools,” he tells how he added and
omitted as seemed best for his purpose of producing a book that should
aid in strengthening the morality of the time. And in dealing with
Æneas Sylvius, he has been even freer than in dealing with Brandt. Of
the “Miseriæ Curialium,” there are several editions in the British
Museum, and those of Paris (1475?), Cologne (1468?), Rome (1485? and
1578), have been examined for me by Dr. W. A. Shaw, to whom my best
thanks are due for his kindness. “The book,” he says, “of Æneas Sylvius
is in prose, and, in epistolary form addressed to ‘dñō Johī de Arch
Pspicaci et claro Jurū cōsulto.’ There is none of the eclogue and
dialogue form of Barclay’s work; there are no interlocutors, and there
are no references, save to such names of classical antiquity as serve
for satirical notice, in, say, Juvenal, with the exception that, in the
section treating of the table and pleasures of eating, he refers
briefly to the place of origin of the better known delicacies. There is
no mention of Manchester, nor of England, from first to last, nor any
possibility of it from the style of the letter, and taking it casually,
side by side with Barclay, I cannot find a parallel point which would
suggest a translation.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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