all number of men of scholarly tastes and of active minds, who
brought to the subject both learning and enthusiasm, and who were not
content with vague, conventional forms of words.

It was prose rather than verse renderings that occupied the attention of
these theorists, and in the works which they chose for translation the
intellectual was generally stronger than the artistic appeal. Their
translations, however, showed a variety peculiarly characteristic of the
English Renaissance. Interest in classical scholarship was nearly always
associated with interest in the new religious doctrines, and hence the
new theories of translation were attached impartially either to
renderings of the classics or to versions of contemporary theological
works, valuable on account of the close, careful thinking which they
contained, as contrasted with the more superficial charm of writings
like those of Guevara. An Elizabethan scholar, indeed, might have
hesitated if asked which was the more important, the Greek or Latin
classic or the theological treatise. Nash praises Golding
indiscriminately "for his industrious toil in Englishing Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_, besides many other exquisite editions of divinity
turned by him out of the French tongue into our own."[340] Golding
himself, translating one of these "exquisite editions of divinity,"
Calvin's _Sermons on the Book of Job_, insists so strongly on the
"substance, importance, and travail"[341] which belong to the work that
one is ready to believe that he ranked it higher than any of his other
translations. Nor was the contribution from this field to be despised.
Though the translation of the Bible was an isolated task which had few
relations with other forms of translation, what few affiliations it
developed were almost entirely with theological works like those of
Erasmus, Melanchthon, Calvin, and to the translation of such writings
Biblical standards of accuracy were transferred. On the other hand the
translator of Erasmus or Calvin was likely to have other and very
different interests, which did much to save him from a narrow pedantry.
Nicholas Udall, for example, who had a large share in the translation of
Erasmus's _Paraphrase on the New Testament_, also translated parts of
Terence and is best known as the author of _Ralph Roister Doister_.
Thomas Norton, who translated Calvin's _Institution of the Christian
Religion_, has been credited with a share in _Gorboduc_.

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