The correct explanation is, of course, that in T. we have an expansion, the object of which is to represent more fully the force of the Latin non illum...talem balanced by sed fore qui with the generic subjunctive. T.'s reading is also a stylistic improvement upon the strained ellipsis in D. H. Metrically, the slight change in its last line, by which the initial trochee is balanced by a second after the caesura, is an improvement upon the smoother reading of H. Everything here points to the assumed ' reviser.' (e) Of very similar significance is T.'s translation of Virg. 261 seq.the passage describing Æneas' appearance when greeted by Mercury. D. H. Gyrt with a sworde of iasper, starrie T. 336. (1) bright; Of Tyrian purple hynge his showl- His shininge pawle of mightie Striped throwgh out with a thinn like D. H. These three points emerge from a comparison: (i) T.'s expansion and re-arrangement in 1. (2) remove the strained inversion in D. H. 1. (2). (ii) T.'s gift and work brings in both munera and fecerat in the Latin, and marks a typical departure from Gavin Douglas who supplied the earlier reading (Of mychty Didois gift wrocht al his wedis). (iii) T.'s wealthy is obviously a more suitable adjective than mightie to translate dives. All this is consistent with the methods of the 'reviser.' There remain two cases of real or apparent omission which differ from each other and from those already given. In all the cases quoted so far D. and H. clearly stand together as against T. On one occasion (ƒ) however, D. quotes the Latin, as if there was a gap, where both T. and H. are complete. This is a passage very unsatisfactory in style and metre translating Virg. 300-303. In the first place Surrey has allowed Douglas to lead him into an 'indecorum,' an unfortunate expression of a type rare with him but destined to become common later on. Dido whisketh through the towne like Bachus nunne T. 389. That Surrey wrote this there can be no doubt. All three texts agree and the expression is merely Douglas' verbiage condensed. After this D. prints three lines of Virgil (301–303) for which the following translation, identical except for minor variations, is supplied in T. and H. T. 390. As Thias stirres the sacred rites begon, And when the wonted third yeres sacrifice Doth prick her fourth, hering Bachus name hallowed, Doth call her fourth with noyes of dauncing. The sense of this is near enough to the Latin, but both wording and metre are ugly. The names and allusions would supply an easy explanation of why the passage should have been omitted in the first place. Surrey consistently omits or simplifies such as were not readily understandable by the ordinary educated reader of his day. What is difficult of explanation is how this translation should occur in both T. and H. when it was clearly not present in any of the MSS. which Owen had before him. If, in the previous part of this section, as example was added to example, any tendency seemed to be shaping itself, any theory forming as to the relation of T. to D. H. and to Surrey himself, this passage must take the theorizer back to his initial uncertainty. It is not, of course, the only instance in which H. resembles T. more closely than it does D. There are a few others which may well be worked into the argument here, although they are not concerned with omissions: (i) H. and T. regularly use Cinders (= cineres) for the remains of the dead. D. uses Dust. (ii) T. and H. agree in their translation of Virg. 21 sparsos fraterna caede as with brothers slaughter staind. D. renders with brothers fewde defiled. (iii) H. is closer to T.'s reading in l. 174. T. Awayted with great train. H. awayted with a train. D. backed with a grete rout. (iv) T. H. 177. Knotted in golde. 1(v) T.H. 548. The streming sailes abid- D. Wounde up in golde (Douglas, envolupit...and wound). D. The strayned sayle abideth but for winde. It is clear that these are due to more than one cause. Some have the appearance of being corrections common to T. and H. and would therefore be parallel to the Bachus nunne passage. The last has at first sight the appearance of a correction (it is not the strayned, but the streming, or flapping, sail which waits for the wind) but strayned has probably arisen by a copyist's differentiation from streming followed by an editorial guess. Dust for the un-English cinders was perhaps a substitution of Owen's. Even those which appear to be corrections are more easily susceptible of other explanations than the disputed passage. For one thing they are all slight points, involving at most no more than three words at a time. It must be remembered that D. was printed from three MSS. When the reading of the copy of Surrey's autograph was illegible by reason of its 'spedy writing,' Owen had recourse to the other two, which he considered inferior as having passed through more hands with the usual consequences. They would contain many minor deviations, some of which, through the illegibility of the main 1 To these may be added some of the examples quoted (ante) under Vocabulary. MS. (which may be styled D.') passed into D.'s text. We may take (ii) as an example. Surrey may never have written anything but slaughter staind. These words, however, being unreadable or corrupted in D.' Owen took an inferior reading from another MS.-inferior, because fewde has a special limited sense in English which Virgil's caede does not connote. These examples of common readings in T. and H. do not, therefore, shed much light upon the more important passage in question. The further discussion of this will be reserved until the summing up of all the evidence provided by this section. The final example (g) to be quoted here is, unlike the preceding, clear and conclusive. (g) Virg. 484. [sacerdos...] Hesperidum templi custos, epulasque draconi quae dabat. D.'H. [A nunne] Of thesperian sisters T. 641. [A nunne] That of thesperian temple (old) The garden that gives the dragon sisters temple old And of their goodly garden keper was That gives unto the dragon eke his foode. At first glance, so natural seems the allusion to the garden of the Hesperides, it might appear as if D. and H. concurred in a clumsy abridgment of T., but the Latin contains no reference to garden, and Surrey (if we may trust the Certain Bokes) set his face rigidly against unwarrantable expansion. That Douglas should mention here the gardingis hecht Hesperida makes no difference. Surrey rejects all his amplifications. The word (wardane) used by Douglas to translate custos, however, gives us the clue. There can be no doubt that Surrey wrote its doublet gard(i)en2 in apposition with nunne, exactly as custos is in apposition with sacerdos. Except for the metrical expletive old (present only in H.) the Latin is thus closely translated. The ambiguous spelling garden misled T.'s 'editor,' to whom as to everyone else the 'garden of the Hesperides' was a more familiar idea than that in the text; the passage appeared to him corrupt and he accordingly emended' it. The line in T. And...keper was is certainly, as the earlier And whiles...swarm about (a) is probably, spurious. A brief summary may now be given of the evidence so far collected. There are four points the certainty of which appears to be established. (1) T.'s text like D.' and H. has been subjected to a certain amount of editing,' i.e. as the term is used here, to an occasional rather uninspired 'cooking,' the result of which is sometimes a misrepresentation of the 1 This passage is quoted from D. as illustrating more clearly the explanation to be given. This explanation was partly anticipated by Imelmann, op. cit. original Latin and the original English version. Examples (a) and (g) show this'. (2) T.'s text has also been subjected to a closer and more careful overhauling to which the name of 'revision' has been given. This was carried out by one who was a good Latin scholar, sensitive to the fine shades of Virgil's construction and style, and himself a poet, thoroughly in tune with Surrey's manner and sympathetic towards his masculine and mature conception of blank verse rhythm. Several examples, varying from correction of obvious errors to minute moves in the direction of greater accuracy, have been quoted to illustrate the ' reviser's' work. (3) From all the examples it is clear that T. represents a later version than D. H., though the actually latest text (H.) will naturally contain some innovations that are later even than T. (4) Further proof of the authenticity of D. H. can in many cases be supplied by a comparison with Gavin Douglas. It has been assumed that H. represents a version which had developed independently of the printed editions which came into circulation some years before it was written down. This view is in accordance with the ascertainable relationship between MS. and printed book in the sixteenth century (see Part I). But the fact remains that the owner of H., or a predecessor, could, if he wished, refer to both D. and T. If it could be shown that he had done so to any considerable extent, then H. would be a text of far less independent authority than has been assumed for it in this study. The only passage, however, which points disturbingly in this direction is (ƒ) As Thias stirres, etc. The fact that these lines correspond to Latin lines in D. (testifying to a gap in all Owen's MSS.) reinforced by the poorness of their style and metre, would seem to point to T.'s editor,' who was, as has been seen, a blundering person. If T.'s 'editor' is responsible for them then they passed from T. to H.2, 1 The hand of this same editor' is probably to be traced in at least one other passage: Virg. 177. [Fama]......ingrediturque solo. Per(e)cing the erthe. T. Stayeth on earth. D. H. D. H. makes no sense at all. T. makes fair sense, but not Virgil's sense. Yet ingreditur is a common, obvious verb. The writer suggests tentatively that Surrey wrote 'Pacing the erthe.' The verb 'pace' is first recorded from Douglas's Eneid (N.E.D.). It does not occur in this context, but Surrey's familiarity with Douglas's vocabulary may have prompted him to have used the verb here as an exact translation of ingreditur.' As a neologism it may have easily been corrupted into 'perce,' a common verb in Surrey. Even if correctly, though possibly not clearly, written in T.', T.'s 'editor' may have been puzzled by it and have emended' as in the text. 2 Space and the demands of clarity alike render it impossible to include in the text all the stages and complexities of textual change, for which, however, allowance should continually be made. Thus it is not to be understood that this passage necessarily went direct from the printed T. to H. as we have it. There may have been intermediate мs. stages. Indeed, this is rendered highly probable by the slight variations in H., which would seem to show that the scribe was not copying T. together with, it may be, one or two other T. H. readings. But the debt of H. to T., even if this view be accepted, amounts to very little. Its independence as an authority can scarcely be considered infringed. The question, however, may fairly be asked: Why, if the person responsible for H. had this gap filled in from T., did he not also fill in the previous gaps? The most obvious explanation is that in this case the greater length of the omission led, in the first place, to its being noticed, and, in the second, to the feeling that it ought to be filled in. The others were passed over. Though, on the whole, probability points to T.'s 'editor' as responsible for these lines, this should not be too hastily assumed. There is no reason why all the editing should belong to one stage. The greater prominence of this omission may have prompted some earlier owner of a Surrey MS. to fill it in, and his attempt may have passed into several MSS. Nor can the ugliness of the style and harshness of the metre be held conclusive proof of another hand than Surrey's. These three lines follow immediately upon that in which Dido whisketh through the towne like Bachus nunne, the authenticity of which is proved up to the hilt. If Surrey, himself, carried the poem through more than one stage, he may have felt that the length and obviousness of this gap were unsatisfactory and have filled it in more hastily than successfully, leaving the lines to be polished at some future time. It is the longest omission, and was therefore filled in before the other minor gaps. If there was more than one authentic version of the poem, then H. in possessing this and a few other readings, shows a stage intermediate between D.' and T.' This brings the argument to the point where it is necessary to consider the possibility of author's revision, particularly with reference to T. The nature of the 'revision' which the poem has undergone as a translation has already been illustrated. This revision stands in such marked antithesis to the editing' of which indubitable examples have also been cited, that it must appear more than doubtful if we can ascribe both to the same hand. The editing is easily accounted for. Some omission, ambiguity or difficulty lies at the back of each example. Surrey's text was 'emended' as Shakespeare's has been in later days. The 'revision' is a different matter-how different can only be appreciated when the general level of poetry, scholarship and culture in the period 1540-1557 is kept in mind. For the numerical majority of the alterations are made in lines and passages which, to the average editor, or even poet, of the mid-sixteenth century, would appear adequate in sense and style. Nor do the alterations betray only a scholarly working over |