mind
to his interest in Ascham's theories. Possibly he shared his master's
belief that "even the best translation is for mere necessity but an evil
imped wing to fly withal, or a heavy stump leg of wood to go
withal."[335] In discussion of the style to be employed in the metrical
rendering there was the same failure to make explicit the connection
between the original and the translation. Many critics accepted the
principle that "decorum" of style was essential in the translation of
certain kinds of poetry, but they based their demand for this quality on
its extrinsic suitability much more than on its presence in the work to
be translated. In Turbervile's elaborate comment on the style which he
has used in his translation of the _Eclogues_ of Mantuan, there is the
same baffling vagueness in his references to the quality of the original
that is felt in the prefaces of Lydgate and Caxton. "Though I have
altered the tongue," he says, "I trust I have not changed the author's
meaning or sense in anything, but played the part of a true interpreter,
observing that we call Decorum in each respect, as far as the poet's and
our mother tongue will give me leave. For as the conference between
shepherds is familiar stuff and homely, so have I shaped my style and
tempered it with such common and ordinary phrase of speech as countrymen
do use in their affairs; alway minding the saying of Horace, whose
sentence I have thus Englished:

To set a manly head upon a horse's neck
And all the limbs with divers plumes of divers hue to deck,
Or paint a woman's face aloft to open show,
And make the picture end in fish with scaly skin below,
I think (my friends) would cause you laugh and smile to see
How ill these ill-compacted things and numbers would agree.

For indeed he that shall translate a shepherd's tale and use the talk
and style of an heroical personage, expressing the silly man's meaning
with lofty thundering words, in my simple judgment joins (as Horace
saith) a horse's neck and a man's head together. For as the one were
monstrous to see, so were the other too fond and foolish to read.
Wherefore I have (I say) used the common country phrase according to the
person of the speakers in every Eclogue, as though indeed the man
himself should tell his tale. If there be anything herein that thou
shalt happen to mistake, neither blame the learned poet, nor control the
clownish shepherd (good reader) but me that pres