Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/55

 Tarragona published a volume impudently purporting to be a second part of Cervantes's novel. The author gave himself the burlesque pseudonym of the ‘Licenciado Alonzo Fernandez de Avellaneda, natural de la villa de Tordesillas.’ The deceit prospered; ‘Avellaneda’ was generally identified with Cervantes himself, and Edward Blount, one of the publishers of Shelton's translation of the first part of Cervantes's genuine work, obtained a license on 5 Dec. 1615 from the Stationers' Company to publish an English rendering of the spurious sequel. But this scheme went no further. Already, on 5 Nov. of the same year, Cervantes had obtained at Madrid authority to publish his own continuation of ‘Don Quixote,’ and this was in the hands of readers in the closing days of the year. Early in 1616 the Spanish text was reprinted at Brussels, and an English translation of that version was soon projected by Blount. This was published in 1620 with a dedication addressed by the publisher to George Villiers, then Marquis of Buckingham. No mention of Shelton's name is made in any part of the volume, but internal evidence places it to the credit of the translator of the first part. With the second part was published a new edition of the first, and the two were often bound up together. The second edition of the first has little of the bibliographical value that attaches to the first edition. The chief marks of distinction between the two are that while the first has 549 pages of text, the second has 572, and each page of the first is enclosed in black lines, which are absent from the second.

Shelton's complete translation was reissued in a folio volume in 1652 and in 1675, and in four 12mo volumes in 1725 and 1731. In 1654 Edmund Gayton [q. v.] based upon Shelton's text his entertaining ‘Pleasant Notes on Don Quixote.’ A luxurious reprint, with admirable introductions by Mr. James Fitzmaurice Kelly, appeared in 1896 in the series of Tudor translations edited by Mr. W. E. Henley.

Though Shelton's version bears many traces of haste, and he often seizes with curious effect the English word that is nearest the sound of the Spanish in defiance of its literal meaning, he reproduces in robust phraseology the spirit of his original, and realises Cervantes's manner more nearly than any successor. Subsequent English versions of ‘Don Quixote,’ all of which owed something to Shelton's effort, were published by John Phillips (1631–1706) [q. v.] in 1687; by Peter Anthony Motteux [q. v.] in 1712; in 1742 by Charles Jervas, who unjustly charged Shelton with translating from the Italian version of Lorenzo Franciosini (Venice, 1622); by Tobias Smollett in 1755; by A. J. Duffield in 1881; by John Ormsby in 1885; and by H. E. Watts in 1888.

[Fitzmaurice Kelly's Introductions to his reprint of Shelton's translation, 1896, vols. i. and iii.; the English version of Don Quixote, translated respectively by A. J. Duffield, John Ormsby, and H. E. Watts. Care must be taken to distinguish the translator of Don Quixote from Thomas Shelton [q. v.], the puritan stenographer, some of whose publications have been wrongly assigned to the translator.]

 SHELTON, THOMAS (1601–1650?), stenographer, descended from an old Norfolk family, was born in 1601. It is probable that he began life as a writing-master, and that he was teaching and studying shorthand before he was nineteen, for in 1649 he speaks of having had more than thirty years' study and practice of the art. He produced his first book, called ‘Short Writing, the most exact method,’ in 1626, but no copy of this is known to exist. In 1630 he brought out the second edition enlarged, which was ‘sould at the professors house in Cheapeside, ouer against Bowe church.’ He is styled ‘author and professor of the said art.’ Another edition was published in London in 1636. In February 1637–8 he published his most popular work, called ‘Tachygraphy. The most exact and compendious methode of Shorthand Swift Writing that hath ever yet beene published by any. … Approved by both Unyversities.’ It was republished in 1642, and in the same year Shelton brought out a catechism or ‘Tutor to Tachygraphy,’ the author's residence being then in Old Fish Street. A facsimile reprint of this booklet was published in 1889 by R. McCaskie. In 1645 he was teaching his ‘Tachygraphy’ at ‘the professors house, in the Poultry, near the Church.’ Editions of this work continued to be published down to 1710.

Shelton, who was a zealous puritan, published in 1640 ‘A Centurie of Similies,’ and in the same year he was cited to appear before the court of high commission, but the offence with which he was charged is not specified. In 1649 his second system of stenography appeared under the title of ‘Zeiglographia, or a New Art of Short Writing never before published, more easie, exact, short, and speedie than any heretofore. Invented and composed by Thomas Shelton, being his last thirty years study.’ It is remarkable that the alphabet differs from the tachygraphy of 1641 in every respect excepting the letters q, r, v, and z. It is, in fact, an entirely original system. On its appearance Shelton was still