Elizabethan Plagiarism

Arthur Golding is usually credited with translating Seneca’s de Beneficiis into English, but in a 1961 article H.H. Davis described an earlier English translation: “there was an earlier translation by Nicholas Haward of this same moral essay, printed nine years before Golding’s, entitled The Line of Liberalitie Dulie Directinge the Wel Bestowing of Benefites and Reprehending the Comonlie Used Vice of Ingratitude . Anno 1569. Imprinted at London in Fletestrete Neare to S. Dunstones Church by Thomas Marshe. Haward translated – or at least published – the first three books only, as against the full seven of Golding’s version.”

This has not always been recognized as a translation of Seneca because, Davis says, “the earlier translation has no acknowledgment that this is the English of De beneficiis, nor is there any reference to Seneca.”