a priori such a conclusion is surprising. To the sixteenth century
boy Latin was almost as familiar as his mother-tongue, and of
all writers in Latin Vergil was probably the most familiar. ¹ To
find a writer of that age turning for help to a translation in a
foreign vernacular is curious. One would expect him to use the
Latin to interpret the vernacular. That Surrey in particular knew
Italian, although he had never been in Italy, is always assumed
from his renditions of Petrarch; but that he understood Italian
with anywhere near the facility with which he understood Latin
is an idea that needs very careful proof before it should be accepted.
On the other hand the correspondence between the Surrey and
the Italian are evident, and it is within the bounds of possibility
that he might have seen the Italian. The fact to be explained is
that the correspondences are there. The first and most obvious
explanation is that they are due to coincidence. Two men, trans-
lating the same piece into verse will be apt to amplify in much
the same way. Thus when the meus Hector of the Second Book
of Vergil (522) is amplified respectively into il nostro figlio and
Hector my son, on the assumption that each translator needed an
extra foot in the verse, it is not necessary to assume a dependence
of one upon the other as the additional matter, son, is implicit
in the Latin meus. This is typical of many of the correspondences
collected by the German scholars. The undoubted effect pro-
duced by their work is due to the accumulation of such minute de-
tails, any one of which is in itself negligible. Numerous as they
seem when so carefully listed and classified, the total effect is also
negligible upon the translation as a whole since they are scattered
through it at long intervals. ² Yet however negligible they may
seem, the fact that it is possible to frame such a list requires an
explanation other than mere coincidence. We are forced to the
dilemma, that either Surrey was familiar with the Italian versions
or there was a common source. This common source, I think, is to
be found in the annotated editions of Vergil. ³ Very early such edi-

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