stinctions between different kinds of literature. Both the novella and
the epic might be classed as "histories," and "histories" were valuable
because they aided the reader in the actual conduct of life. Arthur
Golding tells in the preface to his translation of Justin the story of
how Alexander the Great "coming into a school and finding not Homer's
works there ... gave the master a buffet with his fist: meaning that the
knowledge of _Histories_ was a thing necessary to all estates and
degrees."[330] It was the content of a work that was most important, and
comment like that of Drant makes us realize how persistent was the
conception that such content was common property which might be adjusted
to the needs of different readers. The lesser freedoms of the translator
were probably largely due to the difficulties inherent in a metrical
rendering. It is "ryme" that partially accounts for some of Douglas's
"digressions." Seneca's _Hercules Furens_, literal as the translation
purports to be, is reproduced "verse for verse, as far as the English
tongue permits." Thomas Twyne, who completed the work which Phaer began,
calls attention to the difficulty "in this kind of translation to
enforce their rime to another man's meaning."[331] Edward Hake, it is
not unlikely, expresses a common idea when he gives as one of his
reasons for employing verse rather than prose "that prose requireth a
more exact labor than metre doth."[332] If one is to believe Abraham
Fleming, one of the adherents of Gabriel Harvey, matters may be improved
by the adoption of classical metres. Fleming has translated Virgil's
_Bucolics_ and _Georgics_ "not in foolish rhyme, the nice observance
whereof many times darkeneth, corrupteth, perverteth, and falsifieth
both the sense and the signification, but with due proportion and
measure."[333]

Seemingly, however, the translators who advocated the employment of the
hexameter made little use of the argument that to do so made it possible
to reproduce the original more faithfully. Stanyhurst, who says that in
his translation of the first four books of the _Aeneid_ he is carrying
out Ascham's wish that the university students should "apply their wits
in beautifying our English language with heroical verses," chooses
Virgil as the subject of his experiment for "his peerless style and
matchless stuff,"[334] leaving his reader with the impression that the
claims of his author were probably subordinate in the translator's