"for the common benefit of builders, housekeepers, and house owners." The queen, who called Harington "that saucy poet, my godson," again bade him withdraw from Court; but in 1598 he was sent to Ireland with the Earl of Essex, by whom he was there knighted for his services in action. Sir John Harington lived until 1612, and there is more to be said to his credit in the next book of this history. Edward Edward Fairfax, of Newhall, in the parish of Faiston, Yorkshire, was of a Yorkshire family and married to a Yorkshire woman. He was born at Leeds. His father was Sir Thomas Fairfax, of Denton and Nun Appleton and Bilborough, in Yorkshire, whose eldest son, born at Bilborough, was Thomas, first Lord Fairfax of Cameron in the Scottish peerage. Thomas was born in 1560, and lived to the age of eighty; but there is no record of the birth-date of his brother Edward, who died five years before him. Edward was very serviceable to his eldest brother, for he lived a studious life upon his own little estate near by, as one of the family (though his legiti macy has been doubted), and had looked after the education of his brother's children. He had also the charge of his brother's affairs while Thomas was much away on diplomatic and military service in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was not till after the accession of James I. that Thomas, first Lord Fairfax, settled down at Denton, where he gave attention to the breeding of his horses and carefully defined the duties of his servants. Edward Fairfax married a sister of Walter Laycock, of Copmanthorpe, in Yorkshire, and had several children of his own. His translation of Tasso was his chief work. It was first published in 1600, towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and dedicated to the queen. It was valued greatly by King James, who gave it a first place in English poetry. It is said to have solaced Charles I. in his confinement, and Dryden records that he and others had heard Waller say that he "derived the harmony of his numbers from 'Godfrey of Bulloigne."" Edward Fairfax wrote also twelve eclogues, of which two or three have been printed and the rest are lost. He died in 1635, and was buried at Faiston on the twenty-seventh of January. His wife survived him thirteen years. Richard Richard Carew, who had distinguished himself at Oxford in his student days, and afterwards, when Sheriff of Cornwall, produced a valuable "Survey of Cornwall," published in 1594 a translation of the first five cantos of Tasso's Gerusalemme. Carew printed his English version and the Italian original facing each other, page for page, and his translation was accurate. I take for example the fourth stanza of the First Book, where Fairfax has generalised into "Princes" Tasso's direct dedication to Alfonso II. :— "Thou noble-minded Alfonso, who dost save One day, perhaps, my pen forehalsening, Fairfax's "Tasso." Fairfax, in his translation of the first five cantos, shows now and then that he has read Carew's translation; but on the whole, here, as throughout, he takes his own way, and writes like an English poet of his day, according to the fashion of his day, but with addition of the clearest evidence of his delight in Spenser. Many a phrase and image used in the elaboration of his stanzas has been suggested to Fairfax by his study of "The Faerie Queene," which was a new poem while he wrote-its first three books published in 1590, its next three in 1596; Fairfax's "Godfrey of Bulloigne" in 1600. He translates, indeed, stanza for stanza, so that the numbering of his stanzas corresponds with that of the original. But, like Harington in his "Orlando," he gives in his own way the sense of each stanza, or what he takes it to be, when he is doubtful, or goes, unconscious of error, more or less astray as to the meaning of a sentence. Spenser had planned his great poem in early life to be a spiritual allegory, with a poem of knights, ladies, and enchantments, that was to have outward resemblance to the "Orlando" of Ariosto; only it was to be "in sage and solemn tunes," "Of turneys and of trophies hung, Of forests and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear." While Spenser was planning and beginning to write, Tasso's "Godfrey," called afterwards "Jerusalem Delivered," came, as a new poem, into his hands. His pleasure in it was declared by touches of paraphrase and imitations in his verse. Of a beautiful song in the gardens of Armida he gave a poet's translation in the last canto of his second book,* where the description of the gardens of Acrasia owed many a touch to recollections of Tasso. In such passages Fairfax translated with Spenser in his mind. Fairfax's worst blunders, or seeming blunders, in translation do little damage to the spirit of his text. Thus, in canto iii. stanza 32, the commonest inflexion of a familiar verb, volgere, "to turn," which, of course, he knew, and, here as elsewere, has translated rightly, slips through his eye into his mind the name of a great river, and we have this version of the lines "Tal gran tauro talor ne l'ampio agone, Se volge il corno ai cani ond' è seguito, *E. W." ix. 349, 350. S'arretran essi; e s'a fuggir si pone, "As the swift ure, by Volga's rolling flood, And often turns again his dreadful horn Here there is no blunder at all. Se volge il corno is translated; the image is correctly given, although part is amplified and part condensed. We only find that the word volge suggested to Fairfax his addition of the river. In and after Elizabeth's time river names were much used as ornaments of verse. The English of Fairfax's "Godfrey" has, in pronunciation and vocabulary, some ring of the north. Fairfax interspersed old words in his translation to grace an antique. tale, for the same reason that caused Spenser to use them in "The Faerie Queene;" he had also, in this respect, by imitation and by likeness of experience-for Spenser's family was also of the north of England-a Spenserian vocabulary. He often uses the prefix "y" for the old "ge" in past participles, as "yclept," "ypraised." Sometimes he adds the "n" of the infinitive where it had been dropped by the usage of his time-"Two barons bold approachen gan the place; "Do thou permit the chosen ten to gone." He has old plurals in "n," "eyne," "fone," "treen." Sometimes he drops, sometimes retains, the "n" of a past participle, writing "know" for "known," "bounden" for "bound." Very commonly he takes the old indicative-present of the verb "to be," using "been" for "are.” Now and then he drops the sign of a weak verb ending in "t." As translator, according to the fashion of his day in England, Fairfax turns many a direct and simple sentence of his original into metaphor or simile, interweaves mythological and scriptural allusions, or finds emphasis in a homely English proverb, as "A stick to beat the dog he long had sought," or "Doubtless the county thought his bread well baken." With all this, Fairfax found that the vowel-endings of Italian add many syllables that lengthen the expression of a thought while making it more musical. Chaucer translated eight lines into seven. Fairfax, by the compactness of his style, was led to devices of expansion as well as of addition. He set up triplets of words where Tasso had but one, and sometimes gave an air of condensed energy to a line that was in fact one bold expansion by a string of words.* * When Tasso simply wrote (xiv. 1)—– "Ei venticelli dibattendo l'ali Lusingavano il sonno de' mortali," Fairfax translated "And sweet-breathed Zephyr on his spreading wings, When Tasso wrote "China poi, disse, e gli addito la terra, Gli occhi a ciò che quel globo ultimo serra,” Fairfax, having used up the rest of the matter of the stanza in five lines, and having three to fill, translated— "Then bend thine eyes on yonder earth and mould, All in that mass, that globe and compass see, Land, sea, spring, fountain, man, beast, grass, and tree." And as an example of the frequent triplets in Fairfax, which became a favourite device, we may take the translation of Tasso's "Ben sono in parte altr' uom da quel ch'io fui; "Thus hath he changed my thoughts, my heart, my will, |