University Microfilms International - Arizona Campus Repository

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made about the same time is . . . remarkably similar to The Batchelars
Banquet" CP* xxxv). The translator of Les Quinze Joyes employed a method
of translating similar to that which has already been described as
Tofte's. "The Englishman adds as well as amplifies," says Wilson;
"perhaps we should call him an adapter rather than a translator"
Cp. xxi) . Although the evidence is too slight to assign The Batchelars
Banquet to the Tofte canon without reservation, the subject matter of
the French original and the style and method of the English translation
support Wilson's tentative attribution.
Following the publication of Ariosto's Satyres in 1608, Tofte's
only verifiable published translation from French appeared in print.
Honours Academie. Or the famous pastorall of the faire Shepheardesse,
Julietta was published at London by Thomas Creede in 1610. 25
The title
page advertises that the book is "A worke admirable, and rare,
Sententious and grave: and no lesse profitable; then pleasant to
peruse. Wherein are many notable Discourses, as well as Philosophical1,
as Divine: Most part of the Seven Liberall Sciences, being comprehended
therein: with divers Comicall, and Tragicall Histories, in Prose, and
Verse of all sorts."
Honours Academie is without doubt Tofte's most ambitious effort,
containing nearly 350 pages of text in a handsome folio edition. It is
a complex and carefully prepared work, an industrious translation of
Cinquiesme et Dernier Liure des Bergeries de Julliette, the fifth part of
a long romance by Nicholas de Montreux published at Paris in 1598. 26
The
book is dedicated to Lady Anne Heme, wife of Sir Edward Herne; she was