Arthur Golding

Arthur Golding (c. 1536 – c. 1605) was an English translator.

He was the son of Jonathon Golding of Belchamp St Paul and Halsted, Essex, an auditor of the Exchequer, and was probably born in London. His half-sister, Margaret, married John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford. By 1549 Arthur was in the service of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector. The statement that he was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, lacks corroboration. He seems to have resided for some time in the house of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, in The Strand, with his nephew, the poet and popular "Shakespeare" candidate, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, whose receiver he was, for two of his dedications are dated from Cecil House.

Golding's chief work is his translation of Ovid, 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. Strangely enough, the translator of Ovid was a man of strong Puritan sympathies, and he translated many of the works of Calvin. To his version of the "Metamorphoses" he prefixed a long metrical explanation of his reasons for considering it a work of edification, asking his readers to look past the heretical content of the pagan poem. He sets forth the moral which he supposes to underlie certain of the stories, and shows 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 there is little doubt that William Shakespeare was well acquainted with the book. Oxfordian scholars such as "Charlton Ogburn" believe that Edward de Vere collabrated on several of Golding's most famous translations (see Shakespearean authorship).

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 July 25 1605, giving him license to print some of his works.

Trivia

Arthur 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

* [http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm "The Fifteen Books of Ovid's Metamorphoses" (1567) online.]
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References

*1911