No More Learning

l. 28. _Fame, Wit, Hopes, &c. _ Compare: 'How ill husbands then of this
dignity are we by _sinne_, to forfeit it by submitting our selves to
inferior things? either to _gold_, then which every worme, (because a
worme hath life, and gold hath none) is in nature more estimable, and
more precious; Or, to that which is lesse than gold, to Beauty; for
there went neither labour, nor study, nor cost to the making of that;
(the Father cannot diet himselfe so, nor the mother so, as to be sure
of a faire child) but it is a thing that hapned by chance, wheresoever
it is; and, as there are Diamonds of divers waters, so men enthrall
themselves in one clime to a black, in another to a white beauty.
To that which is lesse then _gold_ or _Beauty_, _voice_, _opinion_,
_fame_, _honour_, we sell our selves. ' _Sermons_ 50. 38. 352.


PAGE =354=. THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMY.

Immanuel Tremellius was born in the Ghetto of Ferrara in 1510. His
father was apparently a Jewish surgeon, a man of distinction in the
Jewish community. Educated as a Jew, Tremellius became a Christian
about the age of twenty, and, under the influence of the Protestant
movement which was agitating Italy as well as other countries, a
Calvinist. When persecution began Tremellius fled from Lucca, where
he had taught Hebrew under the reformer Vermigli, to Strasburg, and
thereafter his life was that of the wandering, often fugitive, scholar
and reformer.
He was invited to England by Cranmer in 1548, and held
the Professorship of Hebrew at Cambridge until 1553. The accession of
Mary drove him back to the Continent, and he was tutor to the children
of the Duke of Zweibruchen from 1554 to 1558, and rector of the
Gymnasium at Hornbach from 1558 to 1560. The Duke became a Lutheran,
and Tremellius was exiled, but found after a year or two a haven in
the University of Heidelberg, where Duke Frederick III had rallied to
the Calvinist cause. Tremellius was Professor of Theology here from
1562-77, and it was here that he issued most of his works. He had
already published a Hebrew version of the Genevan Catechism intended
for his Jewish brethren. The works issued at Heidelberg include a
Chaldaic and Syriac Grammar, an edition of the Peschito (an old Syrian
version of the New Testament), and the Latin translation of the Old
Testament which Donne utilized for his paraphrase. In this work he was
assisted by his son-in-law Francis Junius (father of the Anglo-Saxon
and Antiquarian scholar), a native of Bourges, who had served as a
field-preacher under William the Silent. Junius was responsible only
for the Apocrypha, so that Donne rightly mentions Tremellius alone.
The work was published at Frankfort in 1575-9; in London in 1580,
1581, and 1585; at Geneva in 1590 and 1617. In the Genevan editions
it was coupled with Beza's translation of the New Testament. The whole
was re-issued at Hanover as late as 1715.

Duke Frederick III's successor was a Lutheran, and Tremellius was
driven into exile once more in 1577. His last years were spent as
teacher in the Academy instituted by Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne,
Vicomte de Turenne, in Sedan. Here he died in 1580.

I have compared Donne's version throughout with both Tremellius'
translation and the Vulgate, and wherever the collation helps to fix
the text I have quoted their readings in the textual notes. I add here
one or two more quotations from the originals.