s at large."[278] Holland's honest simplicity gives
greater weight to a similarly sweeping characterization of Pliny's
_Natural History_ as "not appropriate to the learned only, but
accommodate to the rude peasant of the country; fitted for the painful
artisan in town or city; pertinent to the bodily health of man, woman,
or child; and in one word suiting with all sorts of people living in a
society and commonweal."[279] In the same preface the need for replying
to those who oppose translation leads Holland to insist further on the
practical applicability of his matter. Alternating his own with his
critics' position, he writes: "It is a shame (quoth one) that _Livy_
speaketh English as he doth; Latinists only owe to be acquainted with
him: as who should say the soldier were to have recourse to the
university for military skill and knowledge, or the scholar to put on
arms and pitch a camp. What should _Pliny_ (saith another) be read in
English and the mysteries couched in his books divulged; as if the
husbandman, the mason, carpenter, goldsmith, lapidary, and engraver,
with other artificers, were bound to seek unto great clerks or linguists
for instructions in their several arts." Wilson's translation of
Demosthenes, again, undertaken, it has been said, with a view to rousing
a national resistance against Spain, is described on the title page as
"most needful to be read in these dangerous days of all them that love
their country's liberty."[280]

Naturally enough, however, especially in the case of translations from
the Latin and Greek, the academic interest bulks largely in the
audience, and sometimes makes an unexpected demand for recognition in
the midst of the more practical appeal. Holland's _Pliny_, for example,
addresses itself not only to peasants and artisans but to young
students, who "by the light of the English ... shall be able more
readily to go away with the dark phrase and obscure constructions of the
Latin." Chapman, refusing to be burdened with a popular audience, begins
a preface with the insidious compliment, "I suppose you to be no mere
reader, since you intend to read Homer."[281] On the other hand, the
academic reader, whether student or critic, is, if one accepts the
translator's view, very much on the alert, anxious to confer the English
version with the original, either that he may improve his own knowledge
of the foreign language or that he may pick faults in the new rendering.
Wilson attacks t