Yours assured
JOAN CHEEK.”
Sir John Cheke died about two months after the date of this letter: and Hoby's translation was not published till 1561, because “there were certain places in it, which of late years being misliked of some that had the perusing of it, the Author thought it much better to keep it in darkness a while, then to put it in light, imperfect, and in piecemeal, to serve the time.” The book itself had been put in the list of prohibited works, and it was not till 1576 that the Conte Camillo Castiglione, the author's son, obtained permission to amend the obnoxious passages and publish an expurgated edition.
It would have vexed Sir John if he had seen with how little care the printer, and his loving friend Master Hoby observed his system of orthography, in this letter. For he never used the final e unless when it is sounded, which he denoted then by doubling it; he rejected the y, wrote u when it was long, with a long stroke over it, doubled the other vowels when they were long, and threw out all letters that were not pronounced. No better system of the kind has been proposed, and many worse. Little good would have been done by its adoption, and much evil, if the translators of the Bible had been required to proceed upon his principle of using no words but such as were true English of Saxon original. His dislike of the translation for corrupting as he thought the language into vocables of foreign growth, made him begin to translate the New Testament in his own way. The Manuscript in his own hand, as far as it had proceeded, is still preserved at Bene't College,3 and it shows that he found it impracticable to observe his own rule. But though as a precisian he would have cramped and impoverished the language, he has been praised for introducing a short and expressive style, avoiding long and intricate periods, and for bringing “fair and graceful writing into vogue;” he wrote an excellent hand himself, and it is said that all the best scholars in those times followed his example, “so that fair writing and good learning seemed to commence together.”
3 This has been since printed with a good Glossary by the Rev. James Goodwin, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi Coll. Cambridge, and is very curious. All that remains is the Gospel according to St. Matthew. As an instance of Cheke's Englishisms I may refer to the rendering of προσήλυτον in c. xxiij. v. 15, by freschman. Some little of the MS. is lost.—See Preface, p. 10.
O Soul of Sir John Cheke, thou wouldst have led me out of my way, if that had been possible,—if my ubiety did not so nearly resemble ubiquity, that in Anywhereness and Everywhereness I know where I am, and can never be lost till I get out of Whereness itself into Nowhere.
CHAPTER CXCIII.
MASTER THOMAS MACE, AND THE TWO HISTORIANS OF HIS SCIENCE, SIR JOHN HAWKINS AND DR. BURNEY. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE OLD LUTANIST AND OF HIS “MUSIC'S MONUMENT.”
This Man of Music hath more in his head
Than mere crotchets.
SIR W. DAVENANT.