[252]

The greatness of the field was fitted to arouse and sustain the ardor of
English translators. In contrast with the number of manuscripts at
command in earlier days, the sixteenth century must have seemed
endlessly rich in books. Printing was making the Greek and Latin
classics newly accessible, and France and Italy, awake before England to
the new life, were storing the vernacular with translations and with new
creations. Translators might find their tasks difficult enough and they
might flag by the way, as Hoby confesses to have done at the end of the
third book of _The Courtier_, but plucking up courage, they went on to
the end. Hoby declares, with a vigor that suggests Bunyan's Pilgrim, "I
whetted my style and settled myself to take in hand the other three
books";[253] Edward Hellowes, after the hesitation which he describes in
the Dedication to the 1574 edition of Guevara's _Familiar Epistles_,
"began to call to mind my God, my Prince, my country, and also your
worship," and so adequately upheld, went on with his undertaking; Arthur
Golding, with a breath of relief, sees his rendering of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_ at last complete.

Through Ovid's work of turned shapes I have with painful pace
Passed on, until I had attained the end of all my race.
And now I have him made so well acquainted with our tongue,
As that he may in English verse as in his own be sung.[254]

Sometimes the toilsomeness of the journey was lightened by
companionship. Now and then, especially in the case of religious works,
there was collaboration. Luther's _Commentary on Galatians_ was
undertaken by "certain godly men," of whom "some began it according to
such skill as they had. Others godly affected, not suffering so good a
matter in handling to be marred, put to their helping hands for the
better framing and furthering of so worthy a work."[255] From Thomas
Norton's record of the conditions under which he translated Calvin's
_Institution of the Christian Religion_, it is not difficult to feel the
atmosphere of sympathy and encouragement in which he worked. "Therefore
in the very beginning of the Queen's Majesty's most blessed reign," he
writes, "I translated it out of Latin into English, for the commodity of
the Church of Christ, at the special request of my dear friends of
worthy memory, Reginald Wolfe and Edward Whitchurch, the one Her
Majesty's Printer for the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues, the other
her Highness'