ack great plenty of
matter in small room of words, yea and those so circumspectly and
precisely ordered, to avoid the cavillations of such, as for enmity to
the truth therein contained, would gladly seek and abuse all advantages
which might be found by any oversight in penning of it, that the
sentences were thereby become so full as nothing might well be added
without idle superfluity, and again so nighly pared that nothing might
be minished without taking away some necessary substance of matter
therein expressed. This manner of writing, beside the peculiar terms of
arts and figures, and the difficulty of the matters themselves, being
throughout interlaced with the schoolmen's controversies, made a great
hardness in the author's own book, in that tongue wherein otherwise he
is both plentiful and easy, insomuch that it sufficeth not to read him
once, unless you can be content to read in vain." Then follows Norton's
estimate of the translator's duty in such a case: "I durst not presume
to warrant myself to have his meaning without his words. And they that
wot well what it is to translate well and faithfully, specially in
matters of religion, do know that not only the grammatical construction
of words sufficeth, but the very building and order to observe all
advantages of vehemence or grace, by placing or accent of words, maketh
much to the true setting forth of a writer's mind." Norton, however, did
not entirely forget his readers. He approached his task with "great
doubtfulness," fully conscious of the dilemma involved. "If I should
follow the words, I saw that of necessity the hardness of the
translation must needs be greater than was in the tongue wherein it was
originally written. If I should leave the course of words, and grant
myself liberty after the natural manner of my own tongue, to say that in
English which I conceived to be his meaning in Latin, I plainly
perceived how hardly I might escape error." In the end he determined "to
follow the words so near as the phrase of the English tongue would
suffer me." Unhappily Norton, like Grimald and like some of the
translators of the Bible, has an exaggerated regard for brevity. He
claims that "if the English book were printed in such paper and letter
as the Latin is, it should not exceed the Latin in quantity," and that
students "shall not find any more English than shall suffice to construe
the Latin withal, except in such few places where the great difference
of the p