umed rashly to offer so
unworthy matter to thy survey."[336] Another phase of "decorum," the
necessity for employing a lofty style in dealing with the affairs of
great persons, comes in for discussion in connection with translations
of Seneca and Virgil. Jasper Heywood makes his excuses in case his
translation of the _Troas_ has "not kept the royalty of speech meet for
a tragedy";[337] Stanyhurst praises Phaer for his "picked and lofty
words";[338] but he himself is blamed by Puttenham because his own words
lack dignity. "In speaking or writing of a prince's affairs and
fortunes," writes Puttenham, "there is a certain decorum, that we may
not use the same terms in their business as we might very well do in a
meaner person's, the case being all one, such reverence is due to their
estates."[339] He instances Stanyhurst's renderings, "Aeneas was fain to
_trudge_ out of Troy" and "what moved Juno to _tug_ so great a captain
as Aeneas," and declares that the term _trudge_ is "better to be spoken
of a beggar, or of a rogue, or of a lackey," and that the word _tug_
"spoken in this case is so undecent as none other could have been
devised, and took his first original from the cart." A similar objection
to the employment of a "plain" style in telling the Troy story was made,
it will be remembered, in the early fifteenth century by Wyntoun.

The matter of decorum was to receive further attention in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In general, however, the comment
associated with verse translations does not anticipate that of later
times and is scarcely more significant than that which accompanies the
novella. So long, indeed, as the theory of translation was so largely
concerned with the claims of the reader, there was little room for
initiative. It was no mark of originality to say that the translation
must be profitable or entertaining, clear and easily understood; these
rules had already been laid down by generations of translators. The real
opportunity for a fresh, individual approach to the problems of
translation lay in consideration of the claims of the original author.
Renaissance scholarship was bringing a new knowledge of texts and
authors and encouraging a new alertness of mind in approaching texts
written in foreign languages. It was now possible, while making
faithfulness to source obligatory instead of optional, to put the matter
on a reasonable basis. The most vigorous and suggestive comment came
from a sm