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Double Translation in English Humanistic Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

William E. Miller
William E. Miller*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania Library
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Extract

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the most important study in the English grammar schools was Latin. The fact is well known, and so are the reasons for it. The pedagogical methods are, however, generally not easy to learn in detail. The writings of some educational theorists and the statutes of certain schools present a fragmentary picture of these methods, but an adequate account has yet to be written. This paper deals with the method called ‘double translation', an educational tool which some of the best teachers in England employed with great effect, but one which was quickly blunted in the hands of less able instructors. Double translation has received some attention from students of English Renaissance education, notably Foster Watson and T. W. Baldwin. Some misunderstanding of the method has arisen because of a confusion between double translation and ‘imitation'.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 10 , 1963 , pp. 163 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1963

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References

1 There is a list of published statutes in M. L. Clarke, Classical Education in Britain, 1500-l900 (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 180-181.

2 Especially, Watson, Foster, The English Grammar Schools to 1660: their Curriculum and Practice (Cambridge, 1908)Google Scholar, and Baldwin, T. W., William Shakspere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke (Urbana, 111., 1944)Google Scholar. Little about double translation, but much about school practices of the period, may be learned from a remarkable doctoral dissertation by A. Monroe Stowe, English Grammar Schools in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Teachers College, Columbia University, 1908). The degree to which the purpose of the English grammar school was to instruct pupils in the use of the vernacular as well as Latin is the subject of a paper by William Nelson in Studies in Philology XLIX (1952), 119-143. I have used some of the same evidence as Professor Nelson, but for a different purpose.

3 Roger Ascham, English Works, ed. W. A. Wright (Cambridge, 1904), p. 264. Hereafter, references to this work in the text will be identified by page numbers only.

4 Baldwin, 1, 261-263.

5 The Boke Named the Gouernour (London, 1565), sigs. G2V-G3V. The first edition of the book appeared in 1531.

6 John Palsgrave, The Comedy of Acolastus Translatedfrom the Latin ojFullonius, ed. P. L. Carver (London, 1937, Early English Text Society, O. S. No. 202), facsimile of title page.

7 M. Tulli Ciceronis De oratore libri tres, ed. A. S. Wilkins (Oxford, 1892), 1, 155.1 cannot find any specific description of double translation in De oratore. Cicero's plan of translating what he read in Greek into Latin seems not to have contemplated retranslation of the Latin into Greek and a comparison of the original Greek with the student's version. See, however, Baldwin, 1, 263.

8 Pliny, Letters, VII, ix. The text I have used here is that of M. Schuster, C. Plini Caecili Secundi Epistularum libri novetn (Leipzig, 1952). Those editions of the Letters old enough for Ascham to have used which I have looked at have vel… vel, and in other respects conform more closely to the accepted text than to Ascham's version. It is possible that Ascham carelessly quoted from some intermediate source.

9 Mancyne, sigs. f3r-f4v. Foster Watson calls attention to Mancinus ﹛op. cit., p. 403). The doubtful passage reads: ‘And whe he hath turnyd his englisshe into laten: let hym ouerse his laten diligentlye: that euery worde be acordynge to his englysshe/ and neyther more/ nor lesse: and that his laten haue a parfet sentence: when hit is englisshid worde by worde’ (f3v).

10 Io. Lodovici Vivis Valentini Opera, in duos distincta tomos (Basle, 1555), sig. Qir.

11 Quoted by Foster Watson, op. dr., p. 473. Ascham's ‘metaphrasis’ seems to be implied here.

12 It would be interesting to know whether or not Sir John Cheke employed double translation in tutoring Prince Edward. It seems likely that it was so. Ascham specifically states that the Princess Elizabeth was taught by this system (Ascham, op. cit., pp. 245- 246). It may be that Ascham gave too much credit to himself and too little to William Grindal, the princess's former tutor. But Grindal himself was a student of Ascham's. Cf. Baldwin, I, 257-259.

13 This is the Harington who was Queen Elizabeth's godson, later the translator of Ariosto.

14 Sir John Harington, Nugae Antiquae, selected by Henry Harington, ed. Thomas Park (London, 1804), 1, 133-134. Ascham wrote of'that Ientleman of worthie memorie, my dearest frend, and teacher of all the litle poore learning I haue, Syr Iohn Clwkc’ (op. cit., p . 283). It is worthy of notice that Cecil evidently had in mind improvement of both Latin and English.

15 John Brinsley, A Consolation for Our Grammar Schooles (London, 1622), sigs. Bir and BIr. This work has been reproduced in facsimile with an introduction and bibliographical note by Thomas Clark Pollock (New York, 1943).

16 The distinction, of course, goes far beyond this basic example. The rhetorical order of the formal Latin of the orators allowed elaborate balance, antithesis, and other devices, which required the suspension of all elements in the sentence in the mind until it was completed (periodic style). Greek, colloquial Latin, and English have tended toward a looser style in which the thoughts within a sentence are delivered by units that can be separately understood and remembered as the sentence proceeds. Cf. Foster Watson, op. cit., pp. 353-355.

17 S.T.C. 5288 (ed. of 1616).

18 S.T.C. 18963.

19 Clark, Donald L., John Milton at St. Paul's School (New York, 1948), p. 172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Hoole, Charles, A New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching Schoole (London, 1660)Google Scholar, reprinted with introduction and notes by Thiselton Mark (Syracuse, N. Y., 1912), pp. 182-183 and 194.

21 Gibbon, Edward, The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, Printed Verbatim from Hitherto Unpublished MSS., ed.John Murray (New York, 1907), pp. 119, 198, 332.Google Scholar