English Translations from the Greek: A Bibliographical Survey

by Finley Melville Kendall Foster

I. The Growth of Translation

The Growth of Greek Translation. The solid line is original and reprinted translations; the dashed line is original translations only.

The history of English translation from the Greek is almost coincident with the history of English printing. In 1477 William Caxton set up his press in London and from that press in 1484 he issued his own translation of Aesop's Fables. The real beginning of serious translation, as is very evident from the chart accompanying this section, was made in the decade 1530-1540. From that time until the time of the Civil War and the Protectorate there was a steady output of translations, not many as compared with our day, but a proportion consistent with the size of the reading public of the time.

In the one hundred and thirty years between 1520 and 1650, one hundred and seventy-nine translations were published. Of these one hundred and fourteen were new translations and sixty-five were reprintings. That two-thirds of the total number are new translations is not surprising; for with the awakening of interest in Greek which took place during these years, men could not turn to translations made in former years. For this reason they had to satisfy the demand for knowledge of Greek literature in the English language by producing their own translations and reprinting these as the demand required. That the reprints amounted to one-half of the production of original translations is interesting as showing that the demand for translations was not equalled by a supply of new ones and that translations must have been popular. Printers have never [pg xiv] been inclined to be sentimental in regard to publishing books and any over-enthusiasm a translator may have in regard to his author is sure to be checked by the monetary standards of the publisher. For this reason I would suggest that the publishers during the latter part of the sixteenth and the first part of the seventeenth century evidently found Greek translations a paying proposition; if they had not, they would not have ventured to place so many translations before a very limited reading public. All this seems to add one more evidence to the already established dictum that the Renaissance readers in England were much interested in Greek literature.

During the one hundred and fifty years following the Civil War English literature was partly under the domain of those principles which are generally known as neo-classical. For this reason the facts of Greek translation are very interesting and to a certain degree provide an index of the importance of Greek literature during these years. At least five hundred and four translations of Greek authors were published, of which two hundred and thirty-nine were reprintings of those previously printed. The average number published per annum between 1530 and 1650 was 1.30 +; whereas for these one hundred and fifty years the annual average is 3.36 +. This increase may be due to the fact that the reading public of these later years was larger than that of the preceding age; but I doubt if it was almost three hundred per cent larger. I would much rather attribute the increase to an equal growth of interest in Greek literature encouraged by the principles of literary art which were flourishing at that time and fostered by the steady development of Greek scholarship through those years. Aristotle's Poetics was one of the sources of criticism during these years and, as I shall show in the next section, the interest in Greek philosophy was predominant throughout [pg xv] the period. The authority of the classics and the classics themselves were uppermost in the current of literary thought; hence it seems plausible that Greek translation should show a positive reaction at this time.

Before leaving this period I desire to point out one or two matters which have become evident upon a study of the chart at the beginning of this section. The curve as it passes through the decades after 1650 rises gradually to a peak in 1720. It is interesting to note that this was the hey-day of Pope: his Iliad was published volume by volume between 1715 and 1720. Through the latter years of Pope's life the curve declines, reaching its lowest point four years before his death. Shortly after his death Doctor Johnson began to exert his influence on English literature, an influence which was powerfully classical. This continuation of the neo-classical principles raised the curve again; and Doctor Johnson himself assisted in producing that result by reprinting a number of translations in his Works of the English Poets, 1779-81. The decline of the last twenty years of this period, 1780-1800, is synchronous with the fading of the supreme authority of neo-classical principles; for with the death of Johnson in 1784 the last star of the first magnitude in the neo-classical firmament had set. The curve would go much lower but for the reprinting of a number of translations in Anderson's Poets of Great Britain, 1792-94. As appears from the chart Greek translation was waiting for the tide to turn and come forth into the nineteenth century with renewed vigor.

The nineteenth century, quantitatively at least, is the most important period in the history of Greek translation, for more than half of the total number of translations printed between 1484 and 1916 were published during these years. As the chart indicates the great numerical advance came after 1860, although the preceding sixty years had been [pg xvi] far ahead of the previous centuries in the work produced. The reasons suggested for this great advance in the nineteenth century are: first, a new interest in Greece itself; secondly, the rise of classical libraries and the subsequent cheapness of translations; and thirdly a large output, mainly in the latter part of the nineteenth century, of schoolboy helps.

The early part of the nineteenth century was a time of much interest in Greece on the part of the English public. The travels of Edward Dodwell, H. W. Williams, and William Gell, to say nothing of Lord Byron, made the Greece of that day well known in England. Through all this time, from 1784 to 1818, William Mitford's History of Greece was proceeding in leisurely installments. The immediate popularity of the work is but another evidence of the widespread interest in Greece. I need hardly mention the stress which was laid upon the classics in the educational system of the time, for it is a well known fact. The emphasis which was placed upon Greek was at least equal to that upon Latin. The Classical scholars of the period such as C. J. Bloomfield, J. H. Monk, P. P. Dobree, and P. Elmsley spent the major portion of their lives in carrying on the work of Porson and editing Greek texts rather than Latin. The Reviews from time to time published articles on new classical books; and that the emphasis was on Greek rather than Latin is shown by a survey of the classical reviews in the Edinburgh Review between 1802 and 1836: of a total of thirty-nine articles, twenty-nine were on Greek books. All of these forces encouraged a new interest in Greece and Greek literature, an interest which was not so much the purely literary attitude of the century and a half which had just passed, as a general interest on the part of the whole reading public.