I, ' The Translators : North,' by Mr. T. S. ELIOT
NOT the least of the splendours of our Elizabethan and Tudor heritage is the prose which, like poetry, seemed suddenly to blossom in that sunny morning of the world. Early Tudor prose was not yet the perfect malleable thing it became in the hands of such Elizabethan writers as Sidney, Dokker, and Bacon ; nevertheless,' the seeds of its perfection were there, and it is a mistake to assume that the Bible fathered that perfection entirely. Tudor prose grew out of Tudor life-its abundance, its new horizons, its youthfulness, and its sudden splendour. In this, the first of Mr. Eliot's talks on the subject, the translator is considered ; why he abounded in that period; how his work enriched our language as well as our thought, and, lastly, how ho compares, both favourably and unfavourably, with his modern brother. As a typical example of Elizabethan translators, Mr. Eliot takes North, whose Plutarch everybody knows. Mr. T. S. Eliot, perhaps the most discussed poet of our time and the one whose influence has been widest, shows h;mself in these talks in his critical capacity.