The Inshape of Inscape

Abstract

IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ON JUNE 10, 1955, V. de S. Pinto pointed out the use of the word inshape the Sir Philip Sidney-Arthur Golding translation, Trewnesse of the Christian Religion by Philippe de Momay. (1) He also noted that the OED quotes this work as the sole authority for inshape. word appears only two passages, each with an apparently different meaning. Pinto quoted the first passage and observed that it is used the context of Parmenides' philosophy and that first employs inscape and instress discussing Parmenides. He concluded that Hopkins may have read the passage A Woorke concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion, and that coinage of the term 'inscape' is due to a conscious or unconscious reminiscence of Sidney-Golding's 'inshape' (p. 317). Before we examine these two passages detail, we must review the book which they appear. of De la Verite de la Religion Chrestienne was first published London 1587 and went through three more editions and a reprint before 1617. Trewnesse of the Christian Religion remained out of print until it was republished a facsimile edition, with an introduction by F. J. Sypher, 1976, by Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. (2) In his preface, Sypher states that copies of earlier editions can be found the Bodleian Library at Oxford and the British Library. first six chapters of the thirty-four also are reprinted volume 3 of Complete Works of Sir Philip Sidney, edited by Albert Feuillerat and published by Cambridge University Press 1923. (3) Feuillerat believed that he could trace Sidney's prose style the first six chapters, but that the rest of the is by the inferior hand of problem of distinguishing between the two translators arises from the 1587 title page which declares: Begunne to be translated into English by Sir Philip Sidney Knight, and at his request finished by Arthur Golding. Subsequent scholars have not followed Feuillerat's division and attribution of the text. Some ascribe the entire to Golding or at least credit him with revising the whole. Others find it impossible to draw a distinction between Sidney's and Golding's hands. For example, a 1969 article the Harvard Library Bulletin, Forrest G. Robinson carefully compares the French original with the English version and deduces that stylistic analysis, this case at any rate, is wholly insufficient for the discrimination between authors. (4) After reviewing Elizabethan opinion, Sypher his preface decides favor of Sidney: The preponderance of the evidence indicates that Sidney should be credited with an important share of the printed translation (p. xv). Traditional opinion up through the Victorian period saw Sidney as the principal author with Golding, after Sidney's death, completing and putting the finishing touches on the translation. was interested Elizabethan prose style, and may have discovered the Sidney-Golding during his Oxford undergraduate days. De Mornay was a Protestant writer, but his De la Verite de la Religion Chrestienne, published Antwerp 1581 when he was just thirty, he avoided inter-Christian polemics favor of a universal appeal through reason and authority to convince Atheists, Epicures, Paynims, Iewes, Mahumetists, and other Infidels, as the title page calls them, to accept the one true Christian faith. author's knowledge is encyclopedic, embracing classical literature and philosophy, biblical writers, rabbinic commentators, and church fathers. He has mastered Christian and Talmudic sources as well as contemporary science, particularly astronomy. He is fascinated by ancient and modern history and is knowledgeable about the non-Christian nations of the East and of Africa and America. His mind was trained logic and argument through reasoning, and his rhetorical style, while remaining freshly imaginative, at times reaches heights of eloquence, as when, invoking one of his favorite metaphors, he writes that in every man there is a certeyne Sunbeame of Reason whereby they conceyve things and debate upon them (p. …