Arthur Golding

Title page of The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso: Entituled, Metamorphosis. Translated out of Latin into English meeter by Arthvr Golding was first printed in 1567 and was reprinted five times by 1603. This title page is from the 1593 edition printed by John Danter.

Arthur Golding (c. 1536 – c. 1605) was an English translator of more than 30 works from Latin into English. While primarily remembered today for his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses because of its influence on William Shakespeare's works, in his own time he was most famous for his translation of Caesar's Commentaries, and his translations of the sermons of John Calvin were important in spreading the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation.

Biography

He was the second son of John Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halstead, Essex, an auditor of the Exchequer, and his second wife, Ursula (died ca 1564), in a family of seven children. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Golding family had prospered in the cloth trade and by marrying heiresses, and were fairly wealthy and respectable by the time of Arthur's birth, probably in London. In 1548 his half-sister, Margery, by John's first wife, Elizabeth, became the second wife of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, one of the richest peers in England, and by 1552 his brother Henry was steward for his brother-in-law's household.

By 1549 Arthur was in the service of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector. He matriculated as a fellow commoner at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1552. Henry was elected to Parliament in 1558, probably because of Oxford's influence, and from the later 1550s Arthur worked on a translation of Pompeius Trogus that he planned to dedicate to Oxford. But Oxford died in August 1562, and his son Edward, the 17th earl, became a ward in the house of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in The Strand. Cecil appears to have employed Golding as his nephew's receiver for several years, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House, and in 1567 he dated a dedication from Barwicke, one of the de Vere manors near White Colne, Essex.

Translations

Golding's is remembered chiefly for his translation of Ovid, the first directly translated from Latin. Written in rhyming couplets of iambic heptameter (fourteeners), The Fyrst Fower Bookes of P. Ovidius Nasos worke, entitled Metamorphosis, translated oute of Latin into Englishe meter (1565), was supplemented in 1567 by a translation of the complete poem. As a man of strong Puritan sympathies, he intended the work to be read as a moral allegory, and a verse on the title page cautioned the reader that With skill heede and judgment thys work must bee red | For else to the reader it stands in small stead. He prefixed a long metrical explanation of his reasons for considering it a work of edification in which he asked his readers to look past the heretical content of the pagan poem and set forth the moral which he supposes underlies the stories and attempts to show how the pagan machinery may be brought into line with Christian thought.

It was from Golding's pages that many of the Elizabethans drew their knowledge of classical mythology, and William Shakespeare was well acquainted with Golding's translation, using it as a source for both his plays and poems. The poet Ezra Pound characterised it as "the most beautiful book in the English language."

Golding translated also the Commentaries of Caesar (1563, 1565, 1590), the history of Junianus Justinus (1564), the theological writings of Niels Hemmingsen (1569) and David Chytraeus (1570), Theodore Beza's Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice (1575), the De Beneficiis of Seneca the Younger (1578), the geography of Pomponius Mela (1585), Calvin's commentaries on the Psalms (1571), his sermons on the Galatians and Ephesians, on Deuteronomy and the book of Job.

He completed a translation begun by Sir Philip Sidney from Philippe de Mornay, A Worke concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1604). His only original work is a prose Discourse on the earthquake of 1580, in which he saw a judgment of God on the wickedness of his time. He inherited three considerable estates in Essex, the greater part of which he sold in 1595. The last trace we have of Golding is contained in an order dated 25 July 1605, giving him license to print some of his works.

Golding, in translation of The sermons of J. Calvin upon Deuteronomie, has the first known recorded instance of the idiom: "neither here nor there."

External links

• Works by or about Arthur Golding in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

References

• Pound, Ezra. ABC of Reading (1934) New Directions (reprint). ISBN 0811218937

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.