XVIII. had neither seen the translation, nor knew CHAP. any one who had; at the same time that we know that Chaucer does not, in any of his works which have come down to us, 66 expresse" any such thing. of Boc It was probably about this period of Chau- Translation cer's life, that he wrote the translation con- thius. tained in his works, of the treatise of Boethius entitled Consolatio Philosophia. This book was eminently popular in the middle ages, as exhibiting in some degree the union of Christian faith with classical refinement, and of Grecian philosophy with that spirit of allegory so congenial to the preferences of a rude and semi-barbarous people. It would be a long and laborious task to enumerate the various translations which were early made of this work of the Roman senator into almost every European language. Among the examples which might be given, it deserves to be remembered that this fask fixed the choice and employed the vigils of our illustrious Alfred. The translation of Chaucer is not entitled Its defects. to any very emphatical panegyric. The work XVIII. CHAP of Boethius is composed of alternate effusions in prose and verse; and his poetry, in point of ease, elegance and energy, often has a claim upon us for great commendation. But Chaucer, whose vocation to the art of verse was so early and decisive, has, for a reason which it would be difficult to discover, attired all the lofty and impressive sallies of his original in the plain and ordinary garb of prose. Nor has he been eminently successful in preserving the sense of the Roman. Thus in the commencement of the work Boethius says, Ecce mihi laceræ dictant scribenda Camenæ! in the word lacera plainly referring to the practice of the ancients, of expressing grief by tearing their garments; and representing his celestial visitants as thus participating in his calamity. This Chaucer translates, "For lo! rending Muses of Poetes enditen to me thinges to be writen." Further in the same introduction, Protrahit ingratas impia vita meras 3 XVIII. is rendered, " myne unpitous life draweth CHAP. along ungreable dwellynges." Here, if we should affirm that Chaucer himself unquestionably understood the last word of the line, we must at least admit that his version would never convey the true sense to a mere English reader, and that the word "dwellynges" must be interpreted by such a person, not as a denomination of time, which is its meaning in Boethius, but as a denomination of place, and referring to the prison in which the illustrious senator was newly immured. It would be idle further to multiply instances. Through the whole performance Chaucer seems to have aimed too much at a literal rendering of his author, and not suf ficiently to have enquired what ideas the English phrases he used would convey to an ordinary reader. Judging from internal evidence, we should It beauties. undoubtedly be inclined to consider this production simply as the exercise of a young man for his improvement in the art of composition. In this point of view Chaucer was well employed upon it. An author who had CHAP. Conceived the sublime and audacious purpose XVIII. of creating a language, or (to state his enterprise in the lowest terms) of bringing a language from the hovels of the brutish and the enslaved, to which it had been banished, and of teaching it to erect its lofty front in the dwellings of princes and the halls of the learned, did wisely when he set himself diligently to consider how a Roman senator, the ornament of a mighty empire, would have expressed his thoughts in the words and phrases of this dishonoured tongue. Accordingly many passages of Chaucer's translation are beautifully idiomatic and harmonious in their construction. Take for example the commencement of his version of that celebrated metre, O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas, &c. "O thou father, soveraine and creatour of heven and of erthes, that governest this world by perdurable reson, that commandest * Lib. III, Metrum ix. XVIII. the tymes to gone sythe that age had begin- CHAP. ning thou that dwellest thy selfe aye sted-= faste and stable, and yevest all other thinges to be meved: ne foraine causes ne causeden b the never to compoune werk of flitering matere, but onely the forme of soverain gode yset within the without envy, that meved the frely; thou that artalderfairest, beringe the fayre world in thy thought formedest this worlde to thy [the] likenesse semblable of that fayre world in thy thought." Chaucer may values upon it. There are reasons however which induce us to believe that Chaucer regarded himself his translation of Boethius in a different light than as an exercise to be performed for his private improvement. He, as well as Lydgate, mentions it with apparent complacence' in the general enumeration of his works". Beside which, we are to consider that, in the first attempts to form and refine a language, translation was not, as now, regarded 1 b moving, agitated, unquiet. Legend of Good Women, ver. 425. |
