be sure, he was unable to purge his diction of colour and variety, and his manner was far better suited to the rendering of Apuleius than the prose of today, which has passed through the sieve of the eighteenth century. But with an excellent modesty he pleads acceptance for his “simple translation.” Though he applauds the “frank and flourishing style” of his author, “as he seems to have the Muses at his will to feed and maintains his pen,” he uses of deliberation “more common and familiar words”—the phrase proves the essential recognition of his own style—“fearing lest the book should appear very obscure and dark, and thereby consequently loathsome to the reader.” Indeed, he elected to translate the one book of the world which demanded the free employment of strange terms, and set himself incontinent to avoid slang and to simplify redundancies. And his restraint is the more unexpected when you recall the habit of contemporary translators. Barnaby Rich studded Herodotus thick with colloquialisms and fresh-minted words. Philemon Holland made no attempt to chasten his vocabulary. But Adlington, his opportunity being the higher, fell the more marvelously below it. For the most part, then, you will ransack his version in vain for obsolete words or exotic flowers of speech. And yet not even his love of simplicity has kept his vocabulary entirely pure. Again and again a coined phrase, a strange form shows, like a dash of colour, upon his page. “The roperipe boy”—thus he renders
puer ille peremptor meus by a happy inspiration, which Apuleius himself might envy. Fresh and unhackneyed is “the gleed of the sun” for
jubaris orb. How exquisitely does “a swathell of red silk” represent
russea fasceola! “Traffe or baggage” is more pleasantly picturesque than
sarcinam vel laciniam, and one’s heart rejoices to hear a churl styled “a rich chuff.” Again, “
ungles” is far more expressive, if less common, than “claws;” and who would write “niggardly” when “niggish” is ready to his hand? And is not “a carrion stink” a high-sounding version of
fetore nimio? To encounter so sturdy and wholesome a phrase as “I smelling his crafty and subtle fetch” though it be a poor echo of
ego perspiciens malum istum verberonem blaterantem et inconcinne causificantem—is to regret the impoverishment of our English tongue. But not often are we rejoiced by the unexpected, and for the most part Adlington is a scrupulous critic of his diction. As he makes no attempt to represent in English his author’s vocabulary, so is he wont to shirk the imagery, and curtail the redundancy affected by Apuleius, repressing the hyperbolical ostentations of his original, save only when he indulges in exaggerations of his own. When the miserable Thelyphron is protecting a dead man from the witch women, thus does Apuleius, with his admirable sense of words, enhance the horror of crawling minutes:
cum ecce crepusculum et nox provecta et nox altior et dein concubia altiora; et jam nox intempesta for which Adlington writes in all brevity “midnight.” Apuleius again has a dozen fantastical notions of the dawn, and Adlington cuts them all down to the colourless level of “when morning was come.” Thus even does he reduce so garishly purple a piece of imagery as:
Commodum punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum caelum inequitabat. When the thieves return to their den after the sack of Milo’s house, and sit them down to revelry, Apuleius surpasses even his own habit of opulent description.
Estur ac potatur—thus he writes
incondite pulmentis acervatim, panibus aggeratim, poculis agminatim ingestis. “Cups in battalions!” ’Tis a pretty conceit, and for Adlington it means no more than “they drank and eat exceedingly.” But having accustomed you to a chaste severity of language, he will break out suddenly into a decorative passage, for which the Latin gives no warrant. “Moreover there beg diverse that will cast off their partlets, collars, habiliments, fronts, cornets, and krippins”: thus he turns a perfectly simple sentence—
lacinias omnes exuunt, amicula dimovent—proving his quietude of phrase the effect of design rather than of necessity. So also he is wont to clip and crop his author’s metaphors. “While I considered these things” is a withered, nerveless rendering of
cum isto cogitationis solo luctuarem; yet is it entirely characteristic of his method. Indeed, from beginning to end he treats his author with the freest hand, and never permits the form and colour of the Latin to interrupt his conception of English prose.
But if he sacrificed something by too scrupulous a restraint, he sacrificed still more by his scanty knowledge of Latin. Scholarship was as little fashionable in Tudor England as pedantry, the defect corresponding to its quality; and Adlington laid no claim to profound erudition. He did but purpose “according to his slender knowledge (though it were rudely, and far disagreeing from the fine and excellent doings nowadays),” to translate “the delectable jests of Lucius Apuleius into our vulgar tongue.” Nor is the confession of “slender knowledge” a mere parade of modesty: it is wholly justified by the event. To compile a list of errors were superfluous. In truth there is no page without its blunder, though, as we shall presently see, the translator commonly manages to tumble not only into sense but into distinction. Now and again the mistakes are so serious as to pervert the meaning, and then one regrets that Adlington was not more wisely guided. For instance, the servants of Philebus, the priest of the Syrian goddess, are called puella by Apuleius in contempt of their miserable profession, and the translator impenetrably obscures the episode by rendering the word “daughters” without a hint of explanation. Still, all are not so grave, though you are constantly driven to wonder at the ingenuity of error. When Byrrhena, in her panegyric of Hypata, tells Lucius that there the merchant may encounter the bustle of
