Edward Fairfax

Edward Fairfax (1580? – 27 January 1635) was an English translator.

Quotes

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

The golden sun rose from the silver wave,
And with his beams enamelled every green.
- Book I, stanza 35

Aurora bright her crystal gates unbarred,
And bridegroom-like forth stept the glorious sun.
- Book I, stanza 71

The rose within herself her sweetness closed.
- Book II, stanza 18

Better sit still, men say, than rise to fall.
- Book II, stanza 79

The throne of Cupid had an easy stair;
His bark is fit to sail with every wind;
The breach he makes no wisdom can repair.
- Book IV, stanza 34

Patience, a praise; forbearance is a treasure;
Sufferance, an angel is; a monster, rage.
- Book V, stanza 47

Base affections fall, when virtue riseth.
- Book V, stanza 62

Sorrow, misfortune's son, despair's foul sire.
- Book XII, stanza 88

The rosy-fingered morn with gladsome ray
Rose to her task from old Tithonus' lap.
- Book XV, stanza 1

Nature gives beauty, fortune wealth, in vain.
- Book XVI, stanza 65

Remembrance is the life of grief; his grave,
Forgetfulness.
- Book XVIII, stanza 2

In their speech is death, hell in their smile.

Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
They will, they will not, fools that on them trust,
For in their speech is death, hell in their smile.
- Book XIX, stanza 84

Quoted in England's Parnassus (1600)

Out of the hierarchies of angels sheen
The gentle Gabriel called he from the rest,
'Twixt God and souls of men that righteous been
Ambassador is he, forever blest,
The just commands of Heaven's Eternal King,
'Twixt skies and earth, he up and down doth bring.
- Book I, stanza 11

My mind, Time's enemy, Oblivion's foe,
Disposer true of each noteworthy thing.
- Book I, stanza 36

The brazen trump of iron-winged fame,
That mingleth faithful troth with forged lies.
- Book I, stanza 81

The fear of ill exceeds the evil we fear.
- Book I, stanza 82

Nor love consents that beauty's field lie waste.
- Book II, stanza 15

Wayward beauty doth not fancy move,
A frown forbids, a smile engendereth love.
- Book II, stanza 20

Chance in uncertain, fortune double faced,
- Book II, stanza 67

High state, the bed is where misfortune lies,
Mars most unfriendly, when most kind he seems,
Who climbeth high, on earth he hardest lights,
And lowest falls attend the highest flights.
- Book II, stanza 70

Vile man, begot of clay, and born of dust.
- Book IV, stanza 10

Power constrained is but a glorious slave.
- Book V, stanza 5

Jealousy is Cupid's food;
For the swift steed runs not so fast alone,
As when some strain, some strive him to outgone.
- Book V, stanza 70

Hard is that heart which beauty makes not soft.
- Book IV, stanza 77

Cupid's deep rivers have their shallow fords,
His griefs, bring joys; his losses, recompenses;
He breeds the sore, and cures us of the pain:
Achilles' lance that wounds and heals again.
- Book IV, stanza 92

O poverty, chief of the heavenly brood.
- Book VII, stanza 10

Coward dread lacks order, fear wants art,
Deaf to attend, commanded or desired.
- Book VII, stanza 114

From whence with grace and goodness compassed round,
He ruleth, blesseth, keepeth all he wrought,
Above the air, the fire, the sea and ground,
Our sense, our wit, our reason and our thought,
Where persons three, with power and glory crowned,
Are all one God, who made all things of naught,
Under whose feet, subjected to his grace,
Sit nature, fortune, motion, time and place.
This is the place, from whence like smoke and dust
Of this frail world the wealth, the pomp and power,
He tosseth, tumbleth, turneth as he lust,
And guides our life, our death, our end and hour:
No eye, however virtuous, pure and just,
Can view the brightness of that glorious bower,
On every side the blessed spirits be,
Equal in joys, though differing in degree.
- Book IX, stanzas 56–57

Greatest praise, in greatest peril, wons.
- Book IX, stanza 28

Two inward vultures, Sorrow and Disdain.
- Book X, stanza 6

They make their fortune who are stout and wise,
Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies.
- Book X, stanza 20

Oh vanity of man's unstable mind,
Puffed up with every blast of friendly wind!
- Book XII, stanza 58

Sorrow, misfortune's son, despair's foul fire.
- Book XII, stanza 88

A narrow room our glory vain upties,
A little circle doth our pride contain,
Earth like an isle amid the water lies,
Which sea sometime is called, sometime the main,
Yet naught therein responds a name so great,
It's but a lake, a pond, a marish strait.
- Book XIV, stanza 10

Quotes about Fairfax

Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung.
—William Collins

His diction is so pure, elegant, and full of graces, and the turn of his lines so perfectly melodious, that one cannot read [his translation] without rapture; and we scarcely imagine the original Italian has greatly the advantage in either, nor is it very probable that while Fairfax can be read, any author will attempt a new translation of Tasso with success.
- Theophilus Cibber, The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I (1753), 'The Life of Edward Fairfax', pp. 223–224

Fairfax was, it must be confessed, an unfaithful translator, who, if he sometimes expanded the germ of his author to a bright, consummate flower, just as often spoiled what he was trying to improve.
- Hartley Coleridge, Biographia Borealis: Or, Lives of Distinguished Northerns (1833), p. 176

How have I sat, where piped the pensive wind,
To hear his harp by British Fairfax strung;
Prevailing poet, whose undoubting mind
Believed the magic wonders which he sung.
Hence at each sound imagination glows;
[Hence, at each picture, vivid life starts here!]
Hence his warm lay with softest sweetness flows;
Melting it flows, pure, num'rous, strong and clear;
And fills th' impassion'd heart, and wins th' harmonious ear.
- William Collins, Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland (written 1749, published 1788), lines 197–205

Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth: great masters in our language, and who saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original, and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.
- John Dryden, Preface to the Fables (1700)

I shall first cite Fairfax, who understood the harmony of numbers better than any person then living, except Spenser. All the world knows his excellent version (or paraphrase rather) of Tasso's Gierusalem liberata.
- Walter Harte, "Notes Upon The Sixth Thebaid of Statius", in A Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, Vol. IX (1795), "The Works of Harte", p. 847

The only complete translation is that of Fairfax, which is in stanzas that cannot be read with pleasure by the generality of those who have a taste for English poetry; of which no other proof is necessary than that it appears scarcely to have been read at all: it is not only unpleasant, but irksome, in such a degree, as to surmount curiosity; and more than counterbalance all the beauty of expression and sentiment, which is to be found in that work. I do not flatter myself that I have excelled Fairfax, except in my measure and verisification.
- John Hoole, Jerusalem Delivered; an Heroic Poem: Translated from the Italian of Torquato Tasso, Vol. I (1783), Preface, pp.xv–xvi

Fairfax has translated Tasso with an elegance and ease, and at the same time with an exactness, which for that age are surprising.
- David Hume, The History Of Great Britain, Under The House of Stuart, Vol. I (1759), p. 128

In regard to Fairfax's poetical powers, they were never called in question, and many scattered beauties are to be found in his Version of Tasso. But it has one very great fault, that of not being sufficiently faithful. [...] There are also other objections. The first arises from the structure of the stanza, which to the generality of readers is irksome. I know, indeed, that on this subject there is a difference of opinion. [...] The second objection is to be found in the quaintness of many of Fairfax's expressions, which, however correct and proper they might have been in those ancient days, (I need hardly say that he wrote in the time of Queen Elizabeth) are now become obsolete, and from the greater polish which our language has acquired, seem to a modern ear unworthy of the dignity of serious poetry.
- John Hunt Higgs, Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered: an Heroic Poem; with Notes and Occasional Illustrations, Vol. I (1818), Preface, pp. vii–viii; quoted by William Grainge in Daemonologia (1882), Biographical Introduction, footnote on pp. 15–16

I have lit upon Fairfax's 'Godfrey of Bullen,' for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me.
- Charles Lamb, letter to Coleridge (15 April 1797), in The Works of Charles Lamb, Vol. II (1837), p. 160

Fairfax's Tasso, which was so long and so strangely neglected, is now recovering its popularity. Of all the strange caprices of the Public taste, there is none more strange, than the preference which was given to the rhyme-tagged prose of Hoole, over this spirited and truly poetical production of Fairfax.
- Henry Neele, Lectures on English Poetry (1830), p. 57

One of the most judicious, elegant, and haply in his time most approved of English translators, both for his choice of so worthily extolled a heroic poet as Torquato Tasso, as for the exactness of his version, in which he is judged by some to have approved himself no less a poet than in what he hath written of his own genius.
- Edward Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), p. xvi

Milton often copies Fairfax, and not his original.
- Thomas Warton, Poems upon Several Occasions (1785), p. 204

External links

Wikipedia

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Edward Fairfax

Wikisource

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Edward Fairfax

Gerusalemme Liberata – the Edward Fairfax translation, in its entirety, at The Medieval & Classical Literature Library