uke.

[349] _To the Reader_, in edition of 1564, literally reprinted Boston,
Lincolnshire, 1877.

[350] _To the Reader_, in _Marcus Tullius Cicero's Three Books of Duties_,
1558.

[351] Translated by Christopher Featherstone, reprinted, Edinburgh, 1844.

[352] London, 1577.

[353] _To the Gentlemen Readers_, in _Herodotus_, translated by B. R.,
London, 1584.

[354] _Op. cit._

[355] _Dedication_, in edition of 1576, reprinted, ed. Spingarn, Boston,
1914.

[356] _Preface_, in _Godfrey of Bulloigne_, London, 1594, reprinted in
Grosart, _Occasional Issues_, 1881.

[357] _To the Reader_, in edition of 1549.

[358] _The Printer to the Reader_, reprinted in _Shakespeare's Library_,
1875.

[359] _To the Reader._

[360] See _Works_, ed. Grosart, II, 50.

[361] _Dedication_, London, 1590.

[362] _To the Reader_, in _The Iliads of Homer_, Charles Scribner's Sons,
p. xvi.

[363] P. xxv.

[364] P. xv.

IV. FROM COWLEY TO POPE

IV

FROM COWLEY TO POPE

Although the ardor of the Elizabethan translator as he approached the
vast, almost unbroken field of foreign literature may well awaken the
envy of his modern successor, in many respects the period of Dryden and
Pope has more claim to be regarded as the Golden Age of the English
translator. Patriotic enthusiasm had, it is true, lost something of its
earlier fire, but national conditions were in general not unfavorable to
translation. Though the seventeenth century, torn by civil discords, was
very unlike the period which Holland had lovingly described as "this
long time of peace and tranquillity, wherein ... all good literature
hath had free course and flourished,"[365] yet, despite the rise and
fall of governments, the stream of translation flowed on almost
uninterruptedly. Sandys' _Ovid_ is presented by its author, after his
visit to America, as "bred in the New World, of the rudeness whereof it
cannot but participate; especially having wars and tumults to bring it
to light instead of the Muses,"[366] but the more ordinary translation,
bred at home in England during the seventeenth century, apparently
suffered little from the political strife which surrounded it, while the
eighteenth century afforded a "peace and tranquillity" even greater than
that which had prevailed under Elizabeth.

Throughout the period translation was regarded as an important labor,
deserving of every encouragement. As in the sixteenth century, friends
and patrons