Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History The Lovers Assistant; Or, New Art of LoveThe Project Gutenberg eBook of The Lovers Assistant; Or, New Art of Love This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The Lovers Assistant; Or, New Art of Love Author: Henry Fielding Ovid Editor: Claude Edward Jones Release date: January 21, 2010 [eBook #31036] Language: English Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31036 Credits: E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joseph Cooper, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVERS ASSISTANT; OR, NEW ART OF LOVE *** E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joseph Cooper, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) The Augustan Reprint Society _HENRY FIELDING_ THE LOVERS ASSISTANT, OR, NEW ART OF LOVE (1760) Edited, with an Introduction by Claude E. Jones Publication Number 89 William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California Los Angeles 1961 * * * * * GENERAL EDITORS Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _Clark Memorial Library_ ASSISTANT EDITOR W. Earl Britton, _University of Michigan_ ADVISORY EDITORS Emmett L. Avery, _State College of Washington_ Benjamin Boyce, _Duke University_ Louis Bredvold, _University of Michigan_ John Butt, _University of Edinburgh_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Ernest C. Mossner, _University of Texas_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_ * * * * * INTRODUCTION The publishing history of this translation has been sketched by Cross, in his _History of Henry Fielding_, and may simply be summarized here. The first edition, entitled _Ovid's Art of Love Paraphrased and Adapted to the Present Time_ (or _Times_) was first issued in February, 1747, and was advertised in the _Gentleman's_ and _Scots_ Magazines in that month. During March, further advertisements appeared in the _London Magazine_ and the _St. James Evening Post_. The most extensive notice ran, however, in Fielding's own _Jacobite Journal_ (No. 15), where it served as basis for a detailed comparison between the art of love and the art of Jacobitism. Of this 1747 anonymous, original edition no copy is known. In 1759, the work was reissued in London and Dublin, under the title _The Lover's Assistant_, and again in London in 1760. Meanwhile, advertisements for the original edition, as by Henry Fielding, had been run by the publisher, Andrew Millar, in 1754 and 1758. Inasmuch as Millar apparently still had unsold sheets in 1758, the 1759 edition may comprise these sheets with new title pages and prefatory matter necessary because of Fielding's death in 1754. At any rate, the "modern instances" referred to by the author of the 1759 Preface are not too modern to have been written in 1747. There has been no reprint since 1760. The present text is printed from the 1760 edition, collated with a copy of the 1759 issue. The Latin text, which in the original faces the English, is omitted. Notes keyed by letters and asterisks appear in the original; it will be noted that Fielding's notes combine scholarly and facetious remarks; he frequently used footnotes for comic effect, especially in the translation of the _Plutus_ of Aristophanes in which he collaborated. Literature affords few pleasures so satisfying as translations done by those who are not only expert in the languages concerned, but who also are of the same spirit as the authors they translate. Some examples come readily to mind: Pope's Horace, Dryden's Juvenal and Persius, Smollett's LeSage, Lang's _Aucassin and Nicolette_, and Pound's translations from Provencal. Such a felicitous combination appears in Henry Fielding's translation of Book I of Ovid's _Ars Amoris_. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English translators of the classics abounded, including Marlowe, Jonson, Chapman and Sandys; Roscommon, Waller, Denham, Cowley and Dryden. By 1700, the major kinds of translation had been differentiated, described, evaluated and practised. To summarize, Dryden wrote as follows in his Preface to the 1680 edition of _Ovid's Epistles_, Translated by Several Hands: All translation I suppose may be reduced to these three heads: First, that of Metaphrase, or turning an Author word by word, and line by line, from one language to another.... The second way is that of Paraphrase, or Translation with Latitude, where the Author is kept in view by the Translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly follow'd as his sense, and that too is admitted to be amplyfied, but not alter'd.... The Third way is that of Imitation, where the Translator (if now [i.e. by taking such liberties] he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sence, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion: and taking only some general hints from the Original, to run division on the ground-work, as he pleases.... Doubtless, he refers to the translation of verse into verse, but actually verse-into-prose also falls within Dryden's "third way." When the author of the Preface to _The Lover's Assistant_ speaks of it as an "undertaking" in translation, he means prose imitation, or paraphrase of verse. Earlier, in the 1743 _Miscellanies_, Fielding had published "Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire Modernized in Burlesque [i.e. Hudibrastic] Verse." The modernization, as in his _Art of Love_, was of place (England instead of Italy) as well as time, and allowed the author to satirize some of his contemporaries, as well as the customs of his own age. When, four years later, he turned to the first book of Ovid's _Artis Amatoriae_, he found prose an even better medium for "Imitation," or "Modernization." The result is a most enjoyable _pot pourri_ of Roman mythology and eighteenth century social customs, combined with some of the patriotism left over from Fielding's anti-Jacobinism during the Forty-Five. His devotion to, and constant use of, the classics has excited comment from every Fielding biographer since his own time. His works abound in classical instances, references and imitations; and most of his writing includes translations from Gree |