emselves and
(as it were) after much pains in breaking up a gap bestow no less to
close it up again." To the end of the century translation is encouraged
or defended on the ground that it is a public duty. Thomas Danett is
urged to translate the _History_ of Philip de Comines by certain
gentlemen who think it "a great dishonor to our native land that so
worthy a history being extant in all languages almost in Christendom
should be suppressed in ours";[274] Chapman writes indignantly of Homer,
"And if Italian, French, and Spanish have not made it dainty, nor
thought it any presumption to turn him into their languages, but a fit
and honorable labor and (in respect of their country's profit and their
prince's credit) almost necessary, what curious, proud, and poor
shamefastness should let an English muse to traduce him?"[275]

Besides all this, the translator's conception of his audience encouraged
and guided his pen. While translations in general could not pretend to
the strength and universality of appeal which belonged to the Bible,
nevertheless taken in the mass and judged only by the comment associated
with them, they suggest a varied public and a surprising contact with
the essential interests of mankind. The appeals on title pages and in
prefaces to all kinds of people, from ladies and gentlemen of rank to
the common and simple sort, not infrequently resemble the calculated
praises of the advertiser, but admitting this, there still remains much
that implies a simple confidence in the response of friendly readers.
Rightly or wrongly, the translator presupposes for himself in many cases
an audience far removed from academic preoccupations. Richard Eden,
translating from the Spanish Martin Cortes' _Arte de Navigar_, says,
"Now therefore this work of the Art of Navigation being published in our
vulgar tongue, you may be assured to have more store of skilful
pilots."[276] Golding's translations of Pomponius Mela and Julius
Solinus Polyhistor are described as, "Right pleasant and profitable for
Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers."[277] Hellowes, with an
excess of rhetoric which takes from his convincingness, presents
Guevara's _Familiar Epistles_ as teaching "rules for kings to rule,
counselors to counsel, prelates to practise, captains to execute,
soldiers to perform, the married to follow, the prosperous to prosecute,
and the poor in adversity to be comforted, how to write and talk with
all men in all matter