ble regard for the original.
"Neither of these," he writes of the two books which he has completed,
"are braved out in their colors as the use is nowadays, and yet so
seemly as either you will love them because they are modest, or not
mislike them because they are not impudent, since in refusing idle
pearls to make them seem gaudy, they reject not modest apparel to cause
them to go comely. The truth is (Gentlemen) in making the new attire, I
was fain to go by their old array, cutting out my cloth by another
man's measure, being great difference whether we invent a fashion of
our own, or imitate a pattern set down by another. Which I speak not to
this end, for that myself could have done more eloquently than our
author hath in Greek, but that the course of his writing being most
sweet in Greek, converted into English loseth a great part of his
grace."[353] Outside of the field of theology or of classical prose
there were translators who strove for accuracy. Hoby, profiting
doubtless by his association with Cheke, endeavored in translating _The
Courtier_ "to follow the very meaning and words of the author, without
being misled by fantasy, or leaving out any parcel one or other."[354]
Robert Peterson claims that his version of Della Casa's _Galateo_ is
"not cunningly but faithfully translated."[355] The printer of Carew's
translation of Tasso explains: "In that which is done, I have caused
the Italian to be printed together with the English, for the delight
and benefit of those gentlemen that love that most lively language. And
thereby the learned reader shall see how strict a course the translator
hath tied himself in the whole work, usurping as little liberty as any
whatsoever as ever wrote with any commendations."[356] Even translators
who do not profess to be overfaithful display a consciousness of the
existence of definite standards of accuracy. Thomas Chaloner, another
of the friends of Cheke, translating Erasmus's _Praise of Folly_ for
"mean men of baser wits and condition," chooses "to be counted a scant
true interpreter." "I have not pained myself," he says, "to render word
for word, nor proverb for proverb ... which may be thought by some
cunning translators a deadly sin."[357] To the author of the _Menechmi_
the word "translation" has a distinct connotation. The printer of the
work has found him "very loath and unwilling to hazard this to the
curious view of envious detraction, being (as he tells me) neither so
e