Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/25

 rendering of cum isto cogitationis solo fluctuarem; yet is it entirely characteristic of his method. Indeed, from beginning to end he treats his author with the freest hand, and never permits the form and colour of the Latin to interrupt his conception of English prose.

But if he sacrificed something by too scrupulous a restraint, he sacrificed still more by his scanty knowledge of Latin. Scholarship was as little fashionable in Tudor England as pedantry, the defect corresponding to its quality; and Adlington laid no claim to profound erudition. He did but purpose 'according to his slender knowledge (though it were rudely, and farre disagreeing from the fine and excellent doings now-adayes),' to translate 'the delectable jeasts of Lucius Apuleius into our vulgar tongue.' Nor is the confession of 'slender knowledge' a mere parade of modesty: it is wholly justified by the event. To compile a list of errors were superfluous. In truth there is no page without its blunder, though, as we shall presently see, the translator commonly manages to tumble not only into sense but into distinction. Now and again the mistakes are so serious as to pervert the meaning, and then one regrets that Adlington was not more wisely guided. For instance, the servants of Philebus, the priest of the Syrian Goddess, are called puellæ by Apuleius in contempt of their miserable profession, and the translator impenetrably obscures the episode by rendering the word 'daughters' without a hint of explanation. Still, all are not so grave, though you are constantly driven to wonder at the ingenuity of error. When Byrrhena, in her panegyric of Hypata, tells Lucius that there the merchant may encounter the bustle of