262
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. x. OCT. 3, im
'ENGLANDS PARNASSUS,' 1600.
(See 10 S. ix. 341, 401 ; x. 4, 84, 182.)
THE esteem in which the works of the great French poet Du Bartas were held by the reading public of the age of Elizabeth and James I. is sufficiently attested by the number of different translations of his writ- ings that issued from the press at that time, and by the considerable influence that they exercised over writers on all sorts of subjects. This popularity was due in no small measure to James himself, who, before he became King of England, translated and published as his own portions of Du Bartas' s poems. He also encouraged Thomas Hudson to translate Du Bartas's ' History of Judith,' and was very gracious to the poet when he visited his Court as ambassador from France, giving him a right royal welcome. But James does not seem to have been over-kind or gracious to Joshua Sylvester, who per- formed for Du Bartas what George Chapman did for Homer, and whose complete transla- tion of Du Bartas is not only a work of great labour, but a really honourable and note- worthy addition to the literature of an age that produced marvels.
' Englands Parnassus ' reflects in a very fair manner the importance that was at- tached to the compositions of Du Bartas, for it gives place to quotations from the transla- tions of King James, Hudson, Thomas Lodge, and Sylvester. There are ten extracts from James's poems, nine of these being from Du Bartas's ' Urania,' and one from a poem entitled ' The Phoenix.' Thomas Hudson is credited with fifty-two passages, forty-nine of which Collier has referred to ' Judith.' Thomas Lodge makes a fifth-rate attempt to translate a piece of ' The Furies,' two lines of which Allot assigns to Gervase Markham, but which I have found in ' Wits Miserie ' :
' Warre,' p. 354.
Under Warres brazen feete stoopes all the earth,
His mouth a flaming brand, his voyce a thunder.
(signed) "Idem," viz. I. Markham.
The same lines are translated under Sylvester's name, in the same section, with a ludicrous mistake by. Allot :
' Warre,' p. 352.
Her brasen teeth shake al the earth asunder ; Her mouth a fire-brand, and her voyce a thunder, &c
But it is Sylvester's work that supplies the great bulk of the Du Bartas quotations, there being no fewer than 123 of his, a great number of which run into many lines, and being equalled in totality only by the extracts which Allot took from the various poems
of Edmund Spenser, and the * Orlando*
Furioso ' of Sir John Harington.
Collier had a very poor opinion of Sylvester,, but he had a still poorer knowledge of Sylvester's work. He gained his knowledge- of Sylvester in a dream ; and it was by intuition that he was able to supply the few references that he appends to the Sylvester- quotations, most of which are miserably out of place.
Of the entries now traced to Sylvester the three following are unsigned in Allot' s- book. Collier credits the first one to Warner's ' Albions England,' and the second to ' The Shipwreck of Jonas ' ; the other he leaves without a reference, which I now supply,, my authorities for Sylvester, as stated before, being the 1641 edition of his works, editecL by the late Rev. A. B. Grosart :
- Love,' p. 226.
The Dutch in love is proude, Italians envious, The French man full of mirth, the Spanyard furious- ' The Colonies' of Du Bartas, 11. 650-51.
' Of Tempests,' p. 424. Now Nereus foames, and now the wrackfull wave,,
Tis naught but lightnings flashes, full of fright.
' The Schisme,' 11. 918-25.. ' Of the Hebrew Tongue,' p. 567. All haile, thou sempiternal! spring
Are open brookes, where every man might read. 4 Babylon,' 11. 420-30.
Now we turn to Allot' s errors of assign- ment. He gives one Sylvester passage to. Thomas Kyd, and signs Sir Philip Sidney's- name to three lines, as one quotation, two of the lines belonging to Sylvester. On. the other hand, in two cases he mingles with. Sylvester-signed quotations passages that are not Sylvester's at all. These mixed entries have already been dealt with.
The passage signed with Thomas Kyd's. name is the following, which I am glad to have found, as it was thought to be rightly credited to Kyd, and might turn up some- day in a work that could consequently be claimed to be his, just as it was thought by Grosart that ' The Tragedy of Selimus ' must surely be by Robert Greene, because Allot gave him certain passages from it. Allot, however, is a rotten reed to lean upon.
- Tyrannic,' p. 342.
It is an hell in hatefull vassalage, Under a Tyrant to consume ones age ; A selfe-shaven Dennis, or a Nero fell, Whose cursed courts with bloud and incest swell An owle that flyes the light of parliaments And state assemblies, jealous of th' intents Of private tongues, who for a pastime sets His peeres at oddes, and on their furie whets, Who neither fayth, honour, nor right respects.
Du Bartas's 'Babylon,' 11. 24-32.
